British Columbia’s worker-safety agency says more employers are replacing the beep-beep-beep backup alarm on vehicles with white noise for safety’s sake.
WorkSafe B.C. said the white-noise broadband alarm uses the same cadence but broadcasts a range of frequencies and emits a sound that is more focused in an area where people may be at risk.
Sasha Brown, WorkSafe’s occupational audiologist, said people gradually get used to hearing conventional backup alarms and learn to ignore them, while people who hear the broadband sound are less likely to tune it out.
Reversing vehicles pose a safety risk on job sites, WorkSafe said, noting that 11 workers were killed between 2006 and 2015 after being pinned or struck by vehicles that were backing up.
The University of Victoria installed 20 broadband alarms on its fleet of maintenance vehicles in 2015 after getting noise complaints from nearby residents.
WorkSafe said most of the university’s maintenance vehicles have been retrofitted and all new vehicles are evaluated to use the broadband alarm, which emits a pulsing “psssht-psssht” sound.
Darryl Huculak, environmental health and safety co-ordinator of the university’s facilities management department, said the white noise is a better alternative to the typical beep-beep-beep alarm and doesn’t bother people who aren’t in the vicinity.
“The university wants to be a good neighbour to the surrounding community,” he said.
“It has a very unique sound — it makes it more noticeable to those who need to hear it for safety reasons, and it’s eliminated our noise complaints from nearby residents.”
The resort community of Whistler and the Corporation of Delta have also installed white-noise backup alarms on their fleet of vehicles, WorkSafe said.
The agency said broadband alarms are popular in Australia and that research at the University of Ottawa and in Montreal has found that the broadband alarm generates a more uniform sound field behind a vehicle compared to a conventional alarm.
It said broadband alarms have not been evaluated in workplaces and it’s looking to understand what effects the signals may have on worker safety and the perceptions people have about them.
“What we don’t know is the real-world reaction,” Brown said. “When people hear the broadband sound, do they know to get out of the way?”
