In the olden days (which I remember far too well for comfort), the only informational sound your car gave you was a click click sound to let you know you were signaling a turn. Later, and most helpfully, your car would let you know when you left the lights on, when a door was open while the car was running, and if you left your keys in the ignition when opening the drivers’ side door.
Today, your car beeps, chirps, chimes, and buzzes to alert you to far more things and that makes the sound alert system more critically important.
As recently as a decade ago, there wasn't much research behind the chirps, bells and chimes inside cars. Most automakers had a dedicated speaker for the sounds, and some even used the crude noise from electrical relays for turn signal clickers and other alerts. But as more features have been added in cars and trucks, the number of sounds has grown, and their functions have become more important.
The average car has 10 to 15 different sounds for anything from keys in the ignition with the door open to seat belt reminders. Some luxury vehicles, or even mainstream cars with a lot of advanced safety features, can have as many as 20 noises. That's only going to grow as more safety features are added on the way toward self-driving cars.
Teams at automakers, some with music backgrounds, come up with the sounds for the various devices. Then they are often tested with real drivers to find out if they're annoying enough for emergencies and soothing enough for greetings. And the cars have to be programmed so the sounds coincide with dashboard text alerts.
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Nearly all automakers have engineers and others assigned to special groups that make sure musical greeting sounds are pleasant and that warnings like forward collision alert are so annoying they get a driver's attention fast.
How long will it be, I wonder, before our cars start sounding more like R2D2 from Star Wars than our customary rolling palaces of transportation where the only sound we heard was from the radio, audio tape (yes, I AM that old), or CD we were playing? Will we ever be able to play music in peace again?
While these sounds are created with our safety and convenience in mind (hardly anyone comes back to a car with a dead battery from leaving the lights on or to find they’ve left the keys in the ignition), will we become so accustomed to them that we don’t really hear them anymore? I find myself automatically “not hearing" the annoying and loud sound of the "please put on your seatbelt" chime when I start my car. I start the car first to give my Garmin GPS time to load up before I put on my seatbelt. It's just faster to get going that way and I don’t waste fuel waiting for Garmin to load maps and acquire satellites.
That’s the real problem that will face the sound science engineers in the future. How to make sounds that a so annoying that they can’t be ignored.
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TOP COMMENTS September 17, 2016
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I liked this important reminder from filby on who wins debates. From Donald Trump polls his supporters on what he should say during the debates by Hunter.
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TOP PHOTOS September 16, 2016
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