The Truth About Backup Beepers

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

Longtime TTAC commenter/contributor David Holzman has a piece in Environmental Health Perspectives entitled Vehicle Motion Alarms: Necessity, Noise Pollution, or Both? tackling the problems and effectiveness issues associated with audible vehicle warnings. He writes

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 and 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. For reasons having to do with the physics of sound, they also are notoriously hard to localize, further undermining their utility, says Laroche.

Read the whole thing.

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Highway27 Highway27 on Jan 03, 2011

    I was recently on a construction site and some of the vehicles were using the 'broad spectrum' audible alarms (mentioned near the end of the article), and they were much more attention-getting than the usual 'beep-beep-beep' sounds. Some of that is attributable to them being different, but they were definitely more localized, and didn't carry as far. Hearing beeps from 1/4 mile away doesn't help anyone, especially when they're indistinguishable from the ones 25 feet away.

  • K5ING K5ING on Jan 03, 2011

    I used to work at a place that had a fleet of Chrysler minivans, and a few of them had a backup warning device that said, in a very loud and female voice, "WARNING! THIS VEHICLE IS BACKING UP.......WARNING! THIS VEHICLE IS BACKING UP" over and over as long as it was in reverse. Very embarrassing for the driver, but it got people's attention.

    • Mcs Mcs on Jan 03, 2011
      in a very loud and female voice, “WARNING! THIS VEHICLE IS BACKING UP…….WARNING! THIS VEHICLE IS BACKING UP” English only?? Uh oh! Better be a multilingual version! This approach would be a target for personal injury attorneys representing the non-English speaking community.
  • Chuck Goolsbee Chuck Goolsbee on Jan 05, 2011

    I currently work at a place that is a construction zone, crowded with scissor lifts, forklifts, trucks, cranes, etc. Every damn one of them beeps the same damn beep, and given that at any particular moment several of them are in motion the beeping pretty much never stops. Ever. When "wolf" is cried over and over again, the villagers quit paying attention. So much for safety eh?

    • MidLifeCelica MidLifeCelica on Jan 05, 2011

      That would drive me nuts in short order. To add insult to injury, it seems that the majority of this equipment is meant to be USED primarily in reverse, especially fork lifts, so the effect is more like a Simpson's episode... Homer: THIS ALARM WILL SOUND EVERY 3 SECONDS, UNLESS SOMETHING ISN'T OKAY! Marge : HOMER, TURN IT OFF! Homer: IT CAN'T BE TURNED OFF!

  • HCUA HCUA on Aug 09, 2013

    I always look when I hear the beep. I installed one on my kitchen sink. Whenever I hear it, I know that the sink is backing up.

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