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Zürich voters ban noisy leaf blowers
- gblargg 1y agoSeems like one compromise would be that they can only be used during a few-hour period every other week or so. So you'd only get the noise in a predictable window.
- izacus 1y agoThat's just worse than what got voted in though.
- bsder 1y agoIn the US, at least, it doesn't help that almost everyone using leaf blowers are using the cheap, loud, stinky two cycle motor abominations. Those leaf blowers put more garbage into the air than a car or pickup truck. They're that bad.
- unglaublich 1y agoIn Zürich, the worst offender is the outdated two cycle moped. Sadly, not much is being done about it because of the cult and retro status of these things.
- BSDobelix 1y agoAt the Gold-coast the worst offenders are the Bugatti, Lotus and Ferrari leasers...how is it legal to be that loud??
- 1718627440 1y agoIs it? Police do charge vehicle owners that have modified there vehicles, because they are now too loud.
- willvarfar 1y agoPeople have loud motorbikes and cars because they want attention. It seems very fundamentally selfish. I've spent a lot of time in the countryside where there is a motorway in the distance, and the general low rumble road noise seems to be mostly the tires etc. But then sometimes a loud motorbike revs and that really carries and intrudes.
- blargthorwars 1y agoMotorbikes herald a man’s passage unto the alehouse, where he doth hold court and lament, ‘Why must my women always cheat on me?’
- unglaublich 1y agoWhy, quiet but capable alternatives exist. Let's stop with all this outdated combustion technology.
- tchalla 1y agoThere are noise restrictions and quiet time periods in Zurich https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/de/stadtleben/veranstaltungen-und-bewilligungen/laermschutz/gartenarbeiten.html https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/de/stadtleben/veranstaltungen-u...
- pferde 1y agoCool, now do loud motorbikes in cities. Those things, several times louder than cars, should be illegal anywhere but on isolated highways.
- intsunny 1y ago100000% Agree. Here in Germany, I'm convinced the Police simply don't care about motorcycles with modified mufflers. The sound is deafening. In the last decade the noise has gotten worse and worse. Once one of those small penis motorcycle owners saw that I was covering my three year old child's ears as he passed by, and only then did he put his bike into neutral and walked it by us.
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoNot every inconsiderate person is compensating for something. Some people just have different opinions from you about how to behave in public. And no, I don't have a loud motorcycle.
- rsynnott 1y agoWell, no, but, you know, common things are common. These, along with various other obnoxiously loud and/or big vehicles, are _strongly_ coded 'insecure man'. Not necessarily insecure about that in particular, of course, but insecure about something.
- holowoodman 1y agoProblem with motorcycles in Germany is, they are usually too fast for the police to catch with their car, and the helmet prevents usable photos of the driver. But unfortunately the laws require that the driver committing the speed/noise/redlight offense is identified and fined, fining the owner by license plate doesn't work (except if the bike was modified).
- herbst 1y agoIs that why some YouTubers started to make ads for a "sue your motorcycle speeding tickets invalid" company as if this is really working, because it is? Germany has such a specific way of making laws with holes.
- Kenji 1y ago[dead]
- NedF 1y ago> There is also a new restriction for battery-powered models. They may only be used from October to December. If you want to live in nature and in a city you need the tools to manage it. Cutting the trees down is also a valid solution. It's the classic arsehole world we have become, people have to be indignant about everything. For the people who don't create, lazy sloths sitting in their basements, they lash out at those who do. Trees are a lot of work, when you work in gardening half the time is cleaning (leaf blowing, hedging and mowing) the other half is chopping them down because they are too much work for the owner.
- sschueller 1y agoWe had weekly leaf blowing outside our office regardless if it was raining or not by the management staff of other buildings. If you don't pick up what you blew away what is the point? It got really out of hand.
- KingOfCoders 1y agoThey are paid to do this, they are not paid to check the weather.
- sysguest 1y agohmm then why are they paid to do this? it's not to blame those workers, but re-think about the job itself
- sysguest 1y agothe point? well... blocking the road drains & inducing flood?
- sschueller 1y agoThis wasn't the city, they were blowing the leaves into the street making that issue worse. The city uses other equipment to clean the roads, drains etc.
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- socalgal2 1y agoDid they ban car alarms?
- croisillon 1y ago20 years ago there was a big gap between Western Europe, mostly no car alarms, and Eastern Europe, car alarms all the time blaring for nothing. Nowadays Eastern Europe turned quieter too. Is it different where you are?
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- izacus 1y agoI don't think I ever heard one in Zurich.
- BSDobelix 1y agoLet's start with banning car's first ;)
- herywort 1y agocars*
- beAbU 1y agoI honestly can't remember the last time I heard a car alarm going off for seemingly no reason. I live in a car choked European town.
- throw93949494u7 1y ago[dead]
- sschueller 1y agoYou know that certain breeds are illegal in Switzerland and many Canton require you and your dog to attend mandatory training school?
- herbst 1y agoLoud dogs are not illegal but a valid reason to never got a place to live at again, so it's defacto banned. Except a very few remote places there is no nightly dog concerts like in our neighbour countries like Italy, France, Austria, ..
- 4gotunameagain 1y agoIt would be nice if we could solve our problems in a nice and civil way, and to be considerate to one another instead of making things illegal. But then again, we are talking about a country where in many buildings you are not allowed to shower after 9pm.. Or take out the glass to the recycling on sundays..
- unglaublich 1y agoA democratic vote and a clear regulation isn't a "civilized way"? In a free society, where the default is "allowed", the only lever that you have is restriction. We can also turn it around, we prohibit everything unless it's explicitly allowed. Then people don't have to complain so much about "too many prohibiting rules".
- Orygin 1y ago> Then people don't have to complain so much about "too many prohibiting rules". They can't complain if it's prohibited, straight to jail!
- scottgg 1y agoThe showering thing is an urban legend; you can have landlords try and enforce it, but it infringes on your basic right to enjoy your property iirc and is unenforceable. The glass thing is accurate tho!
- pjmlp 1y agoWhen I used to live there, about 20 years ago, getting notes under the door from some neighbour complaining about whatever noises during the evening used to be common.
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- testfrequency 1y agoCongrats! We have this ban as well in Los Angeles and it’s been lovely, though it’s within 150m of a residential zone.
- WesolyKubeczek 1y agoI wish there existed a law that defined a single three-hour or so window of time on Saturday during which you could mow your lawn, and if you do that outside that window, you get sent into a room where you're bombarded with sounds of angry lawnmowers for 96 hours straight.
- BSDobelix 1y agoI'd like to add something. The problem is not just the noise. It's also the fine dust concentration.
- thousand_nights 1y agohonestly i don't get the point of leaf blowers, you move the leaves with an extremely loud gasoline powered machine from one place to another for what purpose, to make it someone else's problem and then they can blow them back?
- lm28469 1y agoIt boggles my mind too, I always see these workers blowing leaves for HOURS in my street, you'd be more efficient with a rake, while using 0 gas, and producing 0 noise. Even from the workers perspective, you're just sitting there next to a two stroke engine with no emission filtering the whole day, that can't be good for your lungs. Same thing for removing temporary paint strips or killing weeds, they burn liters of propane slowly moving 50 meters per hour, the best part is that they're often two or three workers per burner, one holding the flamethrower, one pulling the gas tank, one pulling the half melted paint strip. Last time I saw them using a bulldozer to scrape a 10cm wide road paint strip... the amount of energy wasted is insane, we're truly living as if gas was free, unlimited and without side effects
- forgotoldacc 1y agoI always saw people acting like game NPCs blasting a single leaf for what seemed like forever trying to get it into a specific spot. I'm not convinced leaf blowing is faster than raking. I'm not even convinced it's faster than picking up leaves by hand.
- samuli 1y agoI have been wondering also about this. Why would you use a leaf blower when you can use an electric leaf mulcher, which shreds the leaves, seed and sticks. You can then dispose the leaves in your garden or put it into bio waste.
- integralid 1y agoSo you can take them to a bag or trash can and they don't ruin your lawn. I hated doing this as a kid btw, and it's one of the reasons I don't want a home with a lawn.
- sonnig 1y agoAre many HN members in Zürich? I was suprised to see this type of news with so many points, though it's quite amusing to see the mixture of different topics in the front page.
- blitzar 1y agoMany live in an HOA in the US - noisy leaf blowers are on the agenda at every meeting.
- t8sr 1y agoZurich and its environs are basically the Bay Area of Europe. Probably explains the huge concentration of HN users.
- BSDobelix 1y agoWell there are the Zoogler's and the ETH ;)
- dddgghhbbfblk 1y agoAlso, it's currently the middle of the night in the USA, so current users will skew towards those outside the Americas.
- broken-kebab 1y agoWhile Zurich is definitely an important IT hub, but "Bay Area of Europe" stretches things a lot.
- t8sr 1y agoName one other place on the continent that has: 1) At least token engineering presence by every major tech company 2) Tech-savvy VC, legal, audit and tax services you can get on a short notice 3) A pool of talent to fill any engineering position 4) A funnel from a big engineering university to the industry that generates startups 5) Tax authorities willing to work through complicated situations like acquihires, IP riders in contracts for a consideration in the form of stock, etc. It’s much smaller than the Bay Area, of course, but it’s the only place in Europe that has everything you need in one spot. (Except maybe London, but that’s more like the New York of Europe, minus the high salaries.) Also, “IT hub” is a place where salaries are low and you plop down a call center. IT are the support roles that install antivirus, not a profit center. There’s a huge difference between that and a “tech industry.”
- tasoeur 1y agoMaybe it’s just me but I wonder why western countries don’t implement noise limits for vehicles with sirens in residential areas (fire trucks, police, ambulance etc.). It always felt to me unnecessarily loud.
- 1718627440 1y agoI don't now where you live, but there seam to be drastic differences between countries. These vehicle do have an in-city and out-city loudness. Also here they tend to have the siren off most of the time and only turn them on immediately before an intersection.
- aneutron 1y agoFunnily enough, I got into trouble in Korea (Jeju to be specific) because of this. I had just stopped at a red light (huge intersection), and I saw a police car get behind me, they had their lights on and put on the sirens. In my home country (France), lights mean emergency, sound means "MOVE ITS URGENT" (and they generally ONLY use sirens when it is REALLY urgent). So when they started the siren, I put my warning lights on and moved slowly through the red light and to the outside of the road (I did not continue moving). The guy ripped me a new one in Korean, but then I explained that I thought it was urgent because we were all stopped and they put the sound on so I moved out of the way in the safest way I could and even stopped. He calmed down eventually. Apparently, it's normal in Korea for police cars to 1) always have the lights on and 2) just randomly blast the sirens going about their day.
- tasoeur 1y agoI live in Paris, France and it’s so loud (but people here don’t really respect emergency vehicle so it could be part of why it’s so loud). In contrast, I spent a month in Tokyo Japan; and even though I was near a police station, it was nowhere near the sound level of what we have here. Curious what other countries you have in mind?
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- nopelynopington 1y agoI live in a very leafy area with a lot of deciduous forest cover, so we're no stranger to leaves. I have never understood leafblowing. It seems like such busy work. It's not hugely common here but I have seen people carefully shepherding leaves into little piles on pathways, battling against the entropy of a light breeze. I'm sure there's a good reason but it always just seems like the ultimate expression of man trying to conquer nature in every way
- dzhiurgis 1y agoI agree. Rake is far easier to get bulk amounts in autumn. Leaf blower is still pretty useful for keeping things tidy, but I’m still embarrassed to use my battery one.
- blitzar 1y agoThey ruin the look of the lawn you have put 1,000 hours of work into this season.
- nopelynopington 1y agoWell maybe that's the issue, I don't spend 1000 hours on my lawn
- easywood 1y agoI live in an neighborhood with a lot of retired people, and I agree with the "busy work" sentiment. As soon as some leaves have fallen, you can hear them firing up their leafblowers. Why? Why not wait until there is a decent amount of leaves and ... use a rake? I really think it's because they don't have anything else to do and it gives them a sense of purpose.
- gutafoki 1y agoI basically live in the forest and get an unreasonable amount of leaves each autumn. Most of these leaves are also from oak and do not decompose well, leaving the lawn a mess in the spring. Using a rake is unreasonable for me, and a leaf blower saves me many, many hours each year that I can spend better elsewhere.
- Gud 1y agoI love direct democracy.
- anal_reactor 1y agoI live in the Netherlands. Moved right next to a cycling path that connects my district with the rest of the city. Big mistake - the sound of mopeds is unbearable. On top of that, there are kids who enjoy revving their engines. The sound drives me mad, but for reasons out of scope of this comment I can't move out. Fortunately, the city scheduled a ban on combustion engine mopeds. The problem is that it'll take a few years for the ban to come into force. Funnily, previously I lived next to a railway and also under fly path of airplanes and these sounds never bothered me. It's the tiny combustion engines that make high-pitched noises that are the worst.
- bob1029 1y agoI moved to a neighborhood where a surprising majority of the residents do not outsource their lawn care and I think this makes the biggest difference. The noise reduction of simply not having beaten up landscaper trucks with muffler deletes driving through the streets every day is a massive help. Letting your landscapers blow nutrients off your property is insane when it's difficult to find good quality top soil. The stuff you buy at Home Depot is essentially trash and rocks now. What comes out of the mower bag each spring can yield an incredible amount of dirt after it's had a full summer to cook in the pile.
- linksfaschist 1y ago[flagged]
- pajko 1y agohttps://environmentamerica.org/center/articles/leaf-blowers-arent-just-noisy-theyre-also-huge-climate-polluters/ https://environmentamerica.org/center/articles/leaf-blowers-...
- conartist6 1y agoSo jealous
- cafard 1y agoIn Washington, DC, gasoline-powered leaf blowers are forbidden. But less than an hour ago, I passed a powerful-looking one ready for use on a lawn nearby. We finally bought a battery-powered leaf blower. This is really not for the lawn, which is relatively small and easily raked. Rather, my wife likes to remove the leaves from the garden beds. These are difficult to rake, what with shrubs etc., and one generally brings a good deal of mulch along with the leaves. We also have a strip of gravel to one side of the garage, and the blower makes it possible to remove leaves without gravel coming along. And since you asked, the leaves end up at the curb. The city has a couple of collections every fall.
- beAbU 1y agoLeaves in garden beds keeps moisture in, keeps dust low, help insulate against thermal events, and becomes a good source of nutrients over time. Is there a reason why your wife wants them removed from the beds? Unless we're talking about an amount of leaves that's endangering the plants there?