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by unionemployee 1498 days ago
Yes, happens frequently to me in my area of Queens. Especially on weekends. Often, it's difficult to go back to sleep. A day of productivity lost for me and probably many others for no particular reason. It's kind of a tragedy. I once commented on it in the neighborhood FB group, only to receive a cascade of "get over it" and "Karen" comments. It's amazing to me how few New Yorkers are aware of the effects of noise. And then there's the honking. Every day, on a quiet neighborhood morning, at least one person will feel the need to make their displeasure at having to briefly stop known to hundreds of people. It's the main reason I can't live in NYC full time. Not sure what it would take to get anyone to care, but it seems that it'd require such a large cultural shift as to be almost impossible to change. Even NYPD use their siren through almost every intersection for no particular reason.
1 comments

I think part of the issue is that there's a wide distribution of sleeping sensitivity. I'm a very light sleeper, and I find that a bad night sleep can ruin an entire day of work. Which is partly because I write for a living, which I really can't do well when I'm groggy. But for how many people are those two things true? I don't think many. A lot of people aren't light sleepers, and a lot of light sleepers aren't fazed by a bad night of sleep.
I used to sleep under the number 3 wire on a carrier. Good luck waking me up with an exhaust.
Seems like a superpower to me. Light sleeping was probably great 50,000 years ago, when other human tribes might raid you in the night, and when big cats might be lurking in the darkness. Back then, heavy sleepers were effectively free-riders: the light sleepers would act as an alarm for the whole tribe. But, today, it's a fairly serious maladaption.