Absolutely, though as someone who notices louder exhausts I gotta say that, as much as they stand out, they’re really quite rare. It’s the never-ending drone of tires on pavement, loud cooling fans, heavy diesel trucks, and whatever other clattering and clanging that make up the bulk of the noise. The main street where I live goes pedestrian in the summer and I remember just how much noise a late-ish model Honda Civic made as it drove across it slowly one day even though it’s engine was essentially silent. The contrast between the peaceful pedestrian street and this single, “very quiet” sedan was startling. I already had sorta known but that moment is really where I decided that there’s no such as thing as a “quiet” car.

Our school busses have gone electric, though, and city busses are rapidly being replaced with hybrids that are quiet when they sit or need to accelerate. Those have reduced a lot of noise, and that’s super nice, but again they’re not the bulk of the noise. Removing the worst offenders but keeping the “quiet” cars doesn’t actually help beyond making us feel like we did something. We gotta start making main, commercial streets pedestrian only year-round. We gotta start being aggressive about making public transit accessible. We gotta start building on a human scale.