• captainlezbian@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Nah I’m hard of hearing and allowed to drive without hearing aids. All our traffic signals are predominantly visual and sirens are treated as a secondary component to the flashing lights. Hell, cops often only use the auditory components when the visual has failed, the visual never fails for me because I understand that I absolutely must rely on my eyes when driving.

    So actually this is an area of professional interest to me and yeah, it’s often horrifying how easily many systems could incorporate visual sirening but choose not to. Fire alarms have flashing lights in every workplace in my country, but tornado sirens basically never do.

    In as car centric of a country as America it would be a fairly extreme injustice to prohibit the deaf from driving if we’re able to effectively use visual signals within a reasonable margin of error (I’d say so long as our best drivers are better than the average hearing driver)

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        edit-2
        7 months ago

        Flashing blue lights with a pattern mirroring the rhythm of the siren. So a slow undulation of luminosity of blue lights. If you see something like that out of nowhere you’re gonna know something is wrong, it isn’t a fire, and if you don’t recognize the pattern to do as others are.

        As a bonus, put them under the fire lights with a blue backing and the word tornado in white.

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          7 months ago

          ok and what do you do when you are not in range of a tornado siren to see it? Where i live we can hear them, but cannot see them. Only in particularly nearby circumstances would you see one.

          In a building i suppose that would work though, usually there are plenty of other indications there. Like other people. Also i probably wouldn’t explicitly label them as tornado, unless you’re in the US. Extreme weather perhaps elsewhere.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            7 months ago

            Well considering I’m treating this as an and not an instead… so probably whatever was happening then? Combining sensory outputs in alarms and sirens saves lives because different senses have different merits and not everyone has every sense. There is no perfect warning except forewarning and when you hit the “evacuate or seek shelter” stage of an emergency any leg up is valuable

            I went with tornado siren in a building as my frame of mental reference as in my part of the United States workplaces and other similar gathering places often have mandatory audio-visual fire alarms and mandatory audio tornado sirens. These are our two drills. These are our emergencies, and one leaves me absolutely fucked if I’m not wearing my hearing aids at the time.

            • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              7 months ago

              nah i get it, i just don’t think it would do much in many cases. Especially considering that everybody has a phone these days, with a third sensory addition. Those usually tend to also notify people about severe weather events as well.

              • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                7 months ago

                Because you should never trust personal handheld devices to do the job of final warnings. My phone is on do not disturb at work. Many people do that. Sometimes people leave their phones in meetings. No phones are allowed on basically any factory floor unless it’s a work phone that like 1% of employees get.

                So I’m an industrial engineer in addition to being deaf and one of my major professional focuses is actually human factors and as it pertains to the disabled it becomes extra important. So yeah this is basically all industry wide known to be better. So why is the fire flashy and the tornado not? Because both follow the legal minimum. I think workplace legal minimum should be raised so that any mandatory audio signal should contain a visual signal that shares the beat of the audio signal.

                • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  7 months ago

                  i mean, that’s definitely fair, in the instance of something like factory, having some sort of global warning system would be advantageous. Does this stem from the recent tornado that hit a factory floor in indiana and killed like 100 people or something i think it was? If so that would make sense. There was definitely a significant issue in that scenario.

                  Outside of something like work or an institution though im not sure.

                  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    7 months ago

                    No I’ve actually pitched this idea to safety departments for years. Also I’m a Midwesterner, there’s always dead factory workers thanks to a tornado.

                    And like I do actually think that flashing lights in certain areas can be a good idea outside of work and institutions but it’s important to keep in mind how big of a net work and institutions are. It’s a third of your time for most of your life.