To think police sirens regularly blaring at 11.30

[jammydoger]

Are a monumental PITA and surely not necessary on a residential street late at night.

Haha Devora. Sounds like any kitchen down my road!

I was moaning one night that the police helicopter was up for a couple of hours very close to our house. It turned out that an elderly man with alzheimers had got lost in the bush (we're in Oz) which you really wouldn't want to do in the dark. I felt awful for moaning!

Where I grew up we had a police station to one side, a fire station to the other, we were on a main route for lorries (they used to make the house shake!) and we were under a flight path.

Your kids will stop reacting to the noise, trust me.

I used to have friends over and get very confused when they reacted to the noise, I wasn't even aware of it!

Another friend lived in an area which concorde used to fly over regularly. Even then she got used to the noise.

It's silence that wakes me and disturbs me sometimes if that makes sense. If I'm lay in bed and can't hear cars or people passing it feels eerie. I was brought up in a noisy house so can usually sleep through anything....even the smoke alarm one night

Yeah, you don't want to live somewhere quiet. Remember that vampires only come out in quiet places.

Of course that's unreasonable, they're not doing it for laughs! You'll get used to it and so will dc. I grew up under the flightpath of an airport and to this day I barely tregister passing planes. Now I live less than 200 yards from my area's largest hospital so we get ambulance sirens as well as mountain rescue and the RAF search and rescue helicopters. I don't notice them much now and when I do I don't mind because it surely means someone out there is having s far worse day than I am.

I know what you mean. Until about 9 months ago we lived above a shop on a high street of a dodgy part of SE London. I don't think the police realised there were homes above the shops as they'd have their sirens going at all hours of the night, regardless of traffic. The night I called the polIce and ambulance because someone got shot dead outside, it took almost half an hour for either emergency service to arrive. At 4am. Go figure. (Not sure what my point is really!)

I'm sure they realised there were homes above the shops.

I just think that waking up the neighbourhood children is incredibly irrelevant when they're in the process of trying to save someone's life.

4this week???? You're lucky!!! At least 4 a night here and I'm not in a city centre

I tune it out now

It's vital to sound them in a residential area. Someone may dash across the road, come out of nowhere! People get run down all the time on residential streets. A siren alerts people, who will then not cross a road and get hit by a speeding vehicle.

Late at night = drunken people. Even more important to give them an additional clue that there is a bloody fast vehicle approaching!

I live in a ysuburb on a road that does not go anywhere major, just to the local villages. Last year, every weekday morning at about 4.30am a police car would switch his siren on coming up the hill, drive down the road with it blaring and then switch it off. It used to royally piss me off and I was on the verge or going to the police station for a chat, and then it stopped. No way was the siren being used for an emergency.

that should say a leafy suburb

We hear sirens quite often - not on our actual street, but on the main road nearby. It really hadn't occurred to me to complain, if anything I find it kind of reassuring that the police are about. We get the helicopters overhead as well.

As a student I used to live just down the road from both a fire station and a big A&E hospital - now that was a lot of siren noise! You do kind of get used to it though, the way you learn to tune out traffic or airplane noise.

I do dream of someday living somewhere quiet and tranquil :)

We are supposed to use audible sirens when necessary regardless of time of day and are exempt from the law about using horns at night. Also bear in mind if we have an accident through someone running out or pulling out in front of us when we are on an emergency we are likely to be prosecuted if we haven't got our sirens on even if it's four in the morning.
I do try and use them as little as possible but you'd be amazed at how many people are out in the wee small hours.

Live near a hospital so sirens all the time (and the police helicopter and the air ambulance quite often). Noticed them when I first moved here (and the main London rail line at the bottom of the street - and the flightpath to major airport overhead).

Don't notice them at all and can sleep soundly day and night (apart form the sodding council mowers - the big ride on ones- which always seem to come to mow the local green when I am on nights )

We moved out of South East London at the end of last year and it took a while to get used to going to sleep WITHOUT sirens and gunshots. I always assumed that things involving gunshots required a response involving sirens so it wouldn't occur to me to be annoyed with the police about it.

It's entirely possible to be simultaneously annoyed/irritated while understand the reason for it at the same time It's not a complicated, either/or concept.

I live in a SE London "little village" type place that appears to be the "flight path" for emergency services between Crystal Palace/Penge and Lewisham/Catford. Regularly - 9 or 10 times a day or night - the police go screaming up and down our road. It's not a criticism of the police or the job they do to say - fucking hell, I'm so sick of the noise!

Equally irritating is when a ambulance comes up by you without sirens on, and then turns them on right as they pass you by. Not saying they're doing it to piss people off but by god, it makes me jump and is really irritating! I think also the high pitched short sharp screeches of an ambulance is far worse than the pinging, wailing of a police care siren.

hmmm, not sure they're really that angelic only 'using them if they need to'. I live next door to the police carpark / station and they use to them to make their presence known and have the automatic gate opened for them when them return. They also all times at night come out onto the very open junction with sirens on, you can really clearly see if anything is comes quite a way off. I'm not so bothered by the noise as everywhere being lit up in flashing blue.

Yeah, police sirens and helicopters. I fucking hate helicopters flying around at night.

My gripe was that it was the same time every night which surely defies the laws of probability that an emergency occurs at the same time every night over a period of months?

usually , sirens say someone somewhere is in trouble and needs help , nuff said.

Exit: Perhaps domestic violence? :(

YABU
a woman was killed at a cross roads here (her road was green) because a police car had lights only no siren as it was late at night and was chasing another car which went through the cross road on red into the womans car. Had the sirens been going she prob would have stopped