Annoyance

About: Annoyance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2015 publications have been published within this topic receiving 38300 citations. The topic is also known as: annoy.

Urgent alarms in trucks: effects on annoyance and subsequent driving performance

Abstract: Previous research has shown that urgent auditory warnings are likely to annoy drivers. Increased urgency could also raise drivers’ stress levels, which in turn could impact their ability to detect and react to subsequent changes in the traffic environment. We conducted a simulator experiment with 24 truck drivers to investigate the potential of urgent alarms to raise annoyance and negatively affect drivers’ subsequent responses to unrelated, critical events on the road. The drivers received two types of warnings that were designed to significantly differ in perceived urgency. Several times in the trial, an unexpected event occurred just seconds after drivers were presented with an unrelated warning, and the drivers had to brake immediately to avoid a collision. The results indicate that acoustic characteristics and semantic meaning may impact the perceived annoyance of in-vehicle warnings. Interestingly, we found a significant, negative correlation between the drivers’ experience (years of truck driving experience) and the rated annoyance for both types of warnings. Also, the drivers who received the high-urgency warning braked significantly harder and tended to brake later than the drivers who received a low-urgency warning. These results have implications for ITS systems for heavy vehicles that intend to implement auditory warning signals.

Annoyance caused by the sounds of a magnetic levitation train.

Abstract: In a laboratory study, the annoyance caused by the passby sounds from a magnetic levitation (maglev) train was investigated. The listeners were presented with various sound fragments. The task of the listeners was to respond after each presentation to the question: "How annoying would you find the sound in the preceding period if you were exposed to it at home on a regular basis?" The independent variables were (a) the driving speed of the maglev train (varying from 100 to 400 km/h), (b) the outdoor A-weighted sound exposure level (ASEL) of the passbys (varying from 65 to 90 dB), and (c) the simulated outdoor-to-indoor reduction in sound level (windows open or windows closed). As references to the passby sounds from the maglev train (type Transrapid 08), sounds from road traffic (passenger cars and trucks) and more conventional railway (intercity trains) were included for rating also. Four important results were obtained. Provided that the outdoor ASELs were the same, (1) the annoyance was independent of the driving speed of the maglev train, (2) the annoyance caused by the maglev train was considerably higher than that caused by the intercity train, (3) the annoyance caused by the maglev train was hardly different from that caused by road traffic, and (4) the results (1)-(3) held true both for open or closed windows. On the basis of the present results, it might be expected that the sounds are equally annoying if the ASELs of the maglev-train passbys are at least 5 dB lower than those of the intercity train passbys. Consequently, the results of the present experiment do not support application of a railway bonus to the maglev-train sounds. © 2004 Acoustical Society of America.