Perhaps it is just that I spend much less time in the city, but out in the suburbs & the country, even on the rare occasions one sees them racing past, they make no more noise than a normal speeding car - & a lot less than a show off in a 4x4, whose tyres make a heck of a din on the road surface.
The world probably divides into two kinds of people on this issue however – some of us feel intimidated rather than excited by sirens. I remember my first visit to New York (in the summer of 1966); although I never actually saw anything going on, the seemingly constant sound of sirens was disquieting. Mind you I think Scotland Yard – even the Flying Squad – still just used bells in those days.
I doubt such old fashioned sirens could be heard at all in today’s noisy city. Sometime in the 1970s there was some kind of practice in London, just in case the Thames should flood before the new barrier was completed (we even had maps on every office wall to show us which areas of the capital would be high enough to be safe). Listen out for the sirens, we were told (no other action was required, as I recall). The old WWII bomb sirens were to get a rare outing.
Most of us struggled to hear anything at all, even though we knew at what time they were supposed to go off. Very discombobulating, when you think how the sound of sirens could instil fear even into cinema audiences in the post war years – or into us children when the siren on top of the Town Hall was regularly tested until well into the 1950s
I can barely remember the last time I saw a fire engine answering a call.
The peace is only ever shattered by a paramedic first responder; those guys really do like their sirens.
Link
60's SFX old police siren
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60's SFX old police siren
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