Sound pollution: one of the reasons why cars should be banned

The most disturbing noise I experience in general is car noise. Cars make só much noise!
In the village where I lived, only once in a while a car drove by. I could hear it coming way before I could even see it. The birds, the soft breeze through the trees, my mother singing along with music, the raindrops touching the ground – it all got disturbed by passing cars. Listening to the sounds of the living world could only continue after the cars vanished into the distance, and calmness would be restored. But that was in the village where I used to live -now, I live in a city, and there are noisy cars everywhere! I don’t know what is worse, the cars or immature students screaming all night through the streets, drunk, thinking they are having the time of their lives.

Unless they have their smartphone, then they are quite.

Anyways, to hear the sound of a bird here is uncommon. If you hear one, you are lucky. Seagulls and jackdaws seem to be the only birds that can compete with car noises and if you can hear the wind through the (few) trees, it is probably because there is a heavy storm going on.

Many people do not realize how many different kinds of noises affect them (for more, see this post: Cities of sound). There are many studies showing how sound pollution negatively affects the well-being of humans and other animals. Well, it is certainly called sound pollution for a reason – it increases stress, an already too common illness for urban people. If you want to know  how the world sounds like, you must leave the city. Ironically, people who want that usually go by car. Arguably, people need cars in places where every other place is far, but not here in Holland…

Car drivers also miss what goes on outside their four-wheel box. They can only experience that what the car allows them to.

If you don’t need to use a car, why don’t you enjoy that moment, take a walk away from motor vehicles, then listen carefully and feel?