New bill would require New York’s distinctive ‘wail’ and ‘yelp’ sirens to be replaced by softer, two-tone, European-style versions

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

With just the flip of a switch, the sound of New York’s streets could change forever.

New Yorkers are accustomed to hearing the rapid, pulsating “wail” and “yelp” sirens that echo around town. But for those who live near fire stations, police stations and hospitals, the sirens can seem like torture, and battles to keep stations out of an area are common.

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Now a fresh campaign is under way to introduce softer, two-tone, European-style sirens. A bill introduced in the New York city council this month would require all emergency vehicles to adopt the two-tone siren.

“People are very passionate about this issue,” said Helen Rosenthal, the council member who introduced the bill.

Rosenthal said she was inspired to take action after receiving positive feedback about one prominent network of hospitals that had found success with two-tone, high-low ambulance sirens.

After numerous complaints about their ambulances, Mount Sinai sought to make its sirens less shrill but maintain their effectiveness. They called the manufacturers and were told they could switch things up – literally.

“Apparently, by flipping some switches in the back of the siren, there are other tones available,” said Joseph Davis, the senior director of Mount Sinai’s emergency medical services in New York. “High-low seemed to be more pleasing. It wasn’t that piercing sound.”

Davis said the hospital experimented with the new siren on four emergency vehicles in 2017. Drivers reported that people on the streets were just as responsive to the new sirens. “We said, ‘Well, why don’t we just change the whole fleet?’ So we did.”

The hospital’s 24 emergency vehicles zipped around the city with their new sirens, and many welcomed the change.

“It’s been better than it was. It was really horrific for a while,” said Roberta Semer, the chair of the Upper West Side’s community advisory board. With the wail or yelp, she said, “people are losing sleep, they can’t go back to sleep, and they’re obviously annoyed”.

Richard Neitzel, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan, said that loud sirens can have serious health effects. A build up of unpredictable and uncontrollable noises a person can lead to stress, anxiety and even cardiovascular disease.

“Cities should be very concerned about the soundscape of the environment they’re creating,” Neitzel said. “Sirens are a piece of it.”

People likely find two-tone sirens more pleasing because they spread sound frequency across a longer time period than other sirens, Neitzel said. Comparatively, wail and yelp sirens produce a louder sound frequency at once.

Not everyone agrees using two-tone sirens is the solution to New York’s problem with noise. Some critics say that the volume of sirens, no matter the type, represents the biggest headache.

Semer said: “If there’s no traffic, there’s no reason for a loud wail.”

Mount Sinai’s emergency vehicles are so far the only ones in the city to switch to a two-tone siren. The fire and police department use classic American sirens in addition to a low-frequency siren called “the rumbler”.

That siren produces a bass-like sound that causes a slight vibration – the sensation is designed to capture people’s attention just like a high-frequency siren would, but without the noise – as another way for police officers to get attention. In 2011, the NYPD rolled out the Rumbler sirens on all its police cars, to mixed reactions.

A spokesman for Mayor Bill de Blasio said the mayor’s office was considering the two-tone siren legislation.

He said: “Our city has always been ahead of the curve on transitioning our sirens to models that better protect New Yorkers’ hearing. This is a quality-of-life issue we take very seriously.”