Having used bells, two tone air horns, yelp/wail/white noise and bull horn over a 32 year career, I can honestly say that two tone air horns worked the best (in an urban environment).

20 years later, and this isn't a thing 😂

20 years later, ambulances in the Netherlands started to use 2 tone airhorns again....

Well it's 2018 and I still haven't heard it used anywhere. Maybe people should learn to check their mirrors more for flashing lights and turn down the music to listen for sirens. Mechanical sirens have proven to be more effective. Especially in addition to a traditional electronic siren. If you hear a siren always check your surroundings to see where it's approaching from. The whole point of a siren is for people to know from all angles. Especially at an intersection.

This was featured in london's burning around the same time if anyone remebers!

Obv a roaring success 18 years on haha. -I heard it once about 15 years ago.

I remember they went through a phase of trialing all sorts of wowed siren ideas. I remember hearing one in Sussex on an ambulance that sounded like a cross between a seagull and the ghostbusters car!

We trialled one of these on a traffic car, bloody useless.

For a moment i thought i was watching Monty Python. "Two years of development have produced this sound." *white noise siren* 😂 I love it.

Never heard it until watching this

They are widely used for reversing alarms, there they are effective. Not loud enough for emergency vehicles. What is effective is old fashioned two tone air horns in conjunction with electronic sirens. Low frequency sirens like howler or growler can be very effective.

Well white noise is finding a use in reversing alarms nowadays.

From 70s too 2024 two tones are best siren to use

Sounds like after the siren the speaker is busted with the white noise 😂

We Hong Kong got this Emergency Sound from the Ambulances and Fire Trucks when Hong Kong was still under the control of the British Government.

I remember watching this as it aired, back in the good old days. Pleased this white noise tone didn't take off!

2 years of development... we never used it.

There is a new siren which is a higher pitch siren which allows people to here where the emergency vehicles are coming from it is linked in with different sound waves

Both teams of the football match looked only because they thought wtf.

I heard it used once in the early 2000s. I can't understand why it was utilised! The directional sound bursts I mean.

Well it's 2020 and i havn't heard it anywere

A lot of sarcastic comments, but I certainly heard 3 or 4 variations of it throughout the 2000's in the North East, with various different types of siren wailing that had white noise bursts in-between. Whilst I haven't heard the white noise in more modern sirens for a while now, has it occurred to people that maybe more modern sirens are still just a further evolution of this research rather than being exactly the same as a 20 year old clip?

I used to drive a good old transit ambulance it had two tones and a then a wail and yelp siren fitted With the wail and two tones going in heavy traffic never really had a problem but that was in the 90s 😉

Sirens or not, that roundabout they ran the test on is an absolute nightmare 🤣🤣

Died a quick death, never to be heard again.....From experience compressed air two tone horns seemed to be best. The more effective redesign that is used a fair bit in the US and is on a few vehicles in the UK (the limited use is down to cost) is the Fed Sig Rumbler (& other manufacturers equivalents) that adds low frequency versions of the tones that better penetrate glass & metal and can even cause vibrations perceptible to humans in cars - search on here for examples

2:20 well they obviously looked for the siren which was hilarious

It doesn’t sound like an emergency vehicle siren To me

remember this

3:55 notice how we actually don't get to hear the siren? And throughout the whole video we actually don't hear the siren coming from a vehicle? I think this was bollocks edit: I'm daft, the ending has it

00:18 Look at the white Car on the left. What a Pillock XD

How’s that worked out for you

The problems with the white noise were that this sound wouldn't carry very far. You don't get something for nothing, if you are using the available energy to generate sound over a high bandwidth, you can't expect it to travel like the regular siren. That being said, it could still be useful. The other day, i was sitting at a complex intersection, i knew there was a fire engine approaching because of the siren, i had windows open and could hear the siren no problem, just couldn't tell where it was coming from. One of the white noise tones offered by premier hazard (the manufacturer of the siren in the clip) was yelp with a short burst of white noise after each yelp. If the engine was using this tone, instead of just normal yelp, i might have been able to predict it's location with far greater accuracy. The white noise might not help 100m away through closed windows, but it could still help pedestrians, cyclists, drivers not listening to music with their windows open etc. I thought at the time that these sirens would become commonplace. If they had been developed in the USA, perhaps they would be? Over 20 years later we have some ambulances and most police cars using the "pipe" speaker, which is significantly/substantially quieter than other speakers (it's not used anywhere else in the world except the UK and maybe Ireland). And the piercer siren tone which, while it might be claimed is more attention getting again/perceived as louder and more urgent, has a massively shorter range than the other siren tones. Emergency services/installers seem to have very little ability to assess the performance of the warning equipment

I say the solution is to increase the loudness, Most people can't hear sirens cause they got the radio blasting or other things to tune it out, So I'd say upping the decibles by 100 or so than they currently are thus making it loud enough, might be the answer.

I guess this new siren never caught on because it's now 2024 and no department that I'm familiar with currently uses anything like this. They use the traditional yelp, wail, hi-lo and phaser sirens. In my department we often didn't turn on the sirens at all, and just air-horned the shit out of everyone! 😅

Ten years of development in Leeds lol

lol it didn't make it to 2020 (updated)

why didn't this work?

un video fue grabado que hace 20 años hoy en día en el 1999

still nowadays QAS ambulance siren

Lol it sounds like Pac Man just shit himself

Lol fucking cars everywhere. Bring forth the flying car

real Thomas the tank engine town

The level of traffic is expected to double in the next thirty yurrs.

Where is that siren now???

White noise siren is cursed

Whatever happened with the trial?? Was it successful??

1:13

And in the Uk this did nothing

When they showed the video on the tv they didnt do the test multiple times which makes the results actually inconclusive so me a little prick is somehow smarter than Leeds University

Duh. Tea, Diana? Gives it away before the wedding.

Great you can now drive an ambulance while blasting Pac Man sounds out of the speaker............

No, you're NOT Doctors. Have you got the pac- man noise?

I would feel embarrassed using that as a test ;p

I always thought the idea for police cars was that criminals couldnt tell where it was coming from and it was designed that way.

Used a vehicle with one fitted. Absolute rubbish.

This is utter rubbish. I work for the ambulance service, and the standard emergency sirens is far more effective than this stupid one they were trialling. People would be confused with this sound if it went live and and national. Im glad it never came through.

A load of crap

It's so disappointing this research hasn't resulted in an effective white-noise embellished siren used everywhere. The traditional whale tones are annoying af.