Backup signals - Annoying and useless.

[GoneOffShore]

Have they actually kept anyone who wasn't looking from harm?

Or are they just another manifestation of "The Fearful, Litigious Society"?

[CaliforniaPeggy]

1. You mean, the beep beep beep?

I have to disagree.

All-electric vehicles need them, since their engines are silent. You don't hear them backing up at all.

[GoneOffShore]

6. I'll give you all electric vehicles.

But there's also a need for folks to look where they are walking.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. You don't hear them going forward either

Should they go beep all the time? Or maybe a vroom-screech soundtrack.
Oh, yeah, the electric shuttle carts in airports make a beeping sound whichever direction they move.

[Chan790]

19. Interestingly this was once a DU flamewar.

The NTSB considered a proposal to require electric vehicles to make some sort of noise to warn pedestrians and other motorists. I assume it didn't get ratified.

There were people on DU whose entire argument was "it's my given right to have a silent electric vehicle, I bought one because it's silent and they'd better be prepared to arrest me because I'm not altering my car to make it "vroom", whistle, click or beep even if they legally obligate me to."

[elleng]

2. Annoying; NOT useless.

People LOOK.

[GoneOffShore]

4. They look where the sound is coming from so they can rip the damned thing off the vehicle

[TheMadMonk]

3. Yet another example of good old American: "It's my Gods bedamned...

...right to behave as irresponsibly as possible. And it's up to the rest of the world to stay out of my way."

Seatbelts, helmets, hard hats, safety boots, etc. They're not there just to save your life. They're there to protect society's pocketbook when you fucking well don't quite succeed in killing yourself.

[GoneOffShore]

5. No objection to anything you've named - except backup signals

Intensely annoying and not needed on EVERY piece of construction equipment.

[GoneOffShore]

8. I thought it was just me - but here's an interesting study

For all their ubiquity, backup beepers are poorly designed for their job, and some of their most annoying attributes are part of that poor design, says Chantal Laroche, a professor in the Audiology/Speech Language Pathology Department at the University of Ottawa, Canada, who has devoted much of her career to investigating the practical shortcomings of alarm sounds. Their single tones, with a typical volume of 97–112 decibels (dB) at the source, are loud enough to damage hearing.4 They can be heard blocks from the danger zone, says Thalheimer. Their sound is so commonplace that their warning can lose its authority through the cry-wolf phenomenon.5 For reasons having to do with the physics of sound, they also are notoriously hard to localize, further undermining their utility, says Laroche.

Robert Andres, a principal with the consulting group Environmental and Safety Associates and technical advisor for the advocacy group Noise Free America, takes a slightly different view. “I don’t believe that backup beepers are necessarily poorly designed for the job. The ‘job’ is to warn people around machinery and, in most environments they do this well by providing a sound that is unique to the surroundings, loud enough to be heard under a variety of circumstances, relatively directional, and easily understood to be a warning,” he says. “Problems arise when multiple beepers are present at a site or the alarm creates an annoyance beyond the danger zone.”

There may be no proof of harm from backup beeper noise, but there is evidence that beepers do not protect life and limb as well as hoped. An investigation by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) found that an original equipment manufacturer backup alarm failed to prevent two-thirds of backover accidents analyzed. In a vote of no confidence in backup beepers, Washington State established a requirement for a spotter at all times—someone who alerts the driver if a pedestrian steps behind the machinery. Some 183 fatal backovers are estimated to occur annually, with 44 of those attributed to nonpassenger vehicles, according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).11

This study is on the Environmental Health Perspectives site.
Very informative reading.

[hedgehog]

7. You think those are bad -

in our plant in South Korea, the overhead crane plays a jaunty little tune every single time it moves!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

10. Better that than the loud ringing

after getting your bell rung by a crane's load. (but of course everyone wears a hard-hat, right)

[IcyPeas]

11. I'm not against them, but they do seem to go on forever...

[AngryAmish]

12. Saved me more than a few times back when I used to really work for a living.

When you are working someplace loud you can't hear vehicles over the din.

[RebelOne]

13. There is construction behind me with a lot of heavy equipment.

And those beeping signals are all I hear every day. I am so thankful when the weekend rolls around or if it is raining and they are not working.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

14. We disabled them on our backhoes, and skidstear

when I owned a landscaping/snow removal company. There was nothing more pointless, and annoying than hearing those damn things when going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth plowing snow all night at a deserted strip mall, or industrial plant, or a housing complex where people where trying to sleep.

[GoneOffShore]

15. Good for you.

I got started on this rant after listening to Harry Shearer's show.

Are we now so unable to take cognizance of our own surroundings that we need to be warned of every hazard?

[chollybocker]

16. Yes.

And car alarms that go off for NO REASON, for TEN damn MINUTES.

And people who need to announce to the entire neighborhood that they're locking/unlocking their car doors, *dweep-dweep-dweep.* Just put your fucking key in the fucking slot in the door, idiot, and stop waking me up.

Cars SUCK.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

17. Cars suck now.

I bet a considerable chunk of the price of purchasing a new vehicle covers all kinds of bells and whistles and mandatory safety features. Not getting all of this crap is not an option anymore, nor is repairing your own vehicle. I'd love to go out and buy a new vehicle without an alarm system, without air bags everywhere, without stickers everywhere telling me how to properly seat my nonexistent child, without back-up cameras, without on-star and without a black box tracking me. I don't need a killer stereo, heated seats, power windows/mirrors and for gods sake I want a goddamn cigarette lighter and ashtray not a power-point and jumbo sized cup holders.

[GoneOffShore]

20. Righteous rant

[Chan790]

18. No, but...

in HS, my teammate Justin's father went to prison for 8 months because he accidentally backed over his mother-in-law with the company truck, killing her. It wouldn't have been prosecutable except that he was responsible for maintaining his company vehicle and the backup-warning did not work. It's unclear if it would have made a difference.