Noise and particulate pollution are perhaps the most external of the negative externalities of automobiles, riders being mostly insulated from their own emissions and from those of their peers. It feels fundamentally unfair.
I had the wonderful privilege of, by pure coincidence, having no cars pass through the road that I walk on my way to work, for about 4 or 5 minutes. I was stunned at the sheer peaceful silence of it. No "broooom" noise, no metallic screeching of brakes, no gasoline smell, no burnt clutch smell, no "dirty auto shop" smell in general. Just the trees rustling softly, faint chatter from the primary school kids some 100m away. I believe we are so used to it that we don't even realise what it is to be in relative silence in the middle of the city. I walk that street every day and I was just stunned to be in that place with no noise. My brain probably associated that walk with that constant background noise, and was freaked out when it wasn't there x)
Most city driving is below 22mph, so this is a useless bit of info. Living next to a stop sign in San Francisco, 100% of the traffic near my place is at speeds less than 22mph and I can assure you that the tire noise is completely inconsequential compared to the revving engines and obnoxious exhausts.
Living in Boise's Downtown, I live next five lanes of traffic drive 35 or 40 mph on an asphalt road fortunately not chip sealed, like many of Idaho's roads. The revving engines are bad, but tire noise is easily 50 dB 15 meters off the street.
And I can assure you that most of the car noise where I live is tire noise (typical speeds around or exceeding 40 km/h which is the default limit in urban areas around here) Especially when the streets are wet and/or when it's studded tire season (that is to say, about five months per year). I realize that both of those conditions are almost completely alien to Californians, but there is a whole world outside the Sunny State as well!
Same. My street is (steeply) uphill, so it's a mixture of exhaust smoke, huge revving, burnt rubber, tire skidding, burnt clutch... A veritable bouquet, at 8h30 in the morning.
All at <35km/h. Can't open my windows before ~10am.
GP comment sounded like it was in a town or city (school nearby), where average speeds are lower and "high speed roads" are not the norm. In towns and cities, engine noise definitely dominates tire and wind noise, especially revving from stops, and would thus be vastly improved by electric vehicles. Not to mention smell and air pollution which are always worse in fossil-fuel vehicles.
I live in the center of a city of ~230,000 and the top contributor to automobile noise absolutely seems to be tire noise even at normal urban speeds of roughly 30 to 50 km/h. I suppose traffic is generally calmer and traffic flow smoother here than in, say, large US cities or other parts of the world where people's driving habits are more aggressive. On the other hand, wet streets and studded tires amplify tire noise by a large factor (and most drivers insist on studs even though urban conditions almost never call for them, and non-studded winter tires would be a more appropriate choice).
Many don't anymore. Same story as timing belts. There was period in the late 90s through 2010s where they were standard until the OEMs realized nobody actually changes them and they generally become nasty to the point where they make the air dirtier. Now a lot of cars are omitting them again.