|
|
|
|
|
|
by bartread
1700 days ago
|
|
|
> They stop multiple times in the night so you wake to the beeping of the doors opening and closing. Triggered. This is one of my biggest bugbears with early trains into and (particularly) late trains out of London: endless overly loud beeping and automated announcements at every single station. I'd usually like to catch up on an hour's sleep whilst I'm on the train but unless I'm completely exhausted even earplugs don't cover the din. I get that some people have impaired vision or are hard of hearing, and therefore need affordances (which I am strongly in favour of), but is it strictly necessary for those affordances to torture the rest of us? Surely we can do better in the 21st century? "Oh, but the announcements need to be loud because people who've fallen asleep might otherwise miss their stops." They might. I've done this (on the tube, as it happens). It was incredibly annoying and resulted in a very expensive taxi journey home, but it was also entirely my own fault and responsibility. I took it on the chin, and learned a lesson. Again, is it necessary to torture everyone so a few people avoid this every night? I'm not so sure it is. |
|
|
The security announcements are the worst offenders for this in my experience, I used to travel by train a lot and the blaring auditory nag every five minutes when you're waiting in a station about reporting anything suspicious combined with the fact many stations are a bit grotty and Brutalist really adds up to an Orwellian experience.
Come to think of it, I'm fairly sure the British government's obsession with three-element slogans started with the trains; "see it, say it, sorted" is massively burned into my brain which I guess is the intention.