Becky Says...

October 2005

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Beep - October 18

I've been noticing the past few days that there has been a change made to at least some of the buses in the local system. Whenever the driver uses the turn signals, there is a persistent, high-pitched beeping sound. It's definitely not as loud as the sound used to indicate that a bus or truck is in reverse gear, but it is loud enough to be heard all through the bus. To my knowledge, people outside the bus can't hear it.

I'm not sure why the new sound was installed. If I am correct that people outside the bus can't hear it, it would not be of use to anyone except the driver. Who, since said driver is the one who engaged the turn signal in the first place, probably doesn't need that much noise to indicate that it is still engaged.

And I'm not paranoid enough to think that Chapel Hill Transit installed this in an attempt to drive me completely insane.

It's annoying enough when the bus is actually going somewhere, but at least at those times it can be expected to go off as soon as the signal is disengaged. The noise is really obnoxious when the driver does what one did today: leave the turn signal on when he parked to take a break. It was five of the longer minutes of my life.

I thought about getting off the bus and walking to work. That we were several miles away from my office pretty much made that idea a bad one. I thought about driving the bus myself, but I would have gotten into trouble and would have had to recruit someone else to take over once we reached my stop. I thought about asking if I could ride the rest of the way seated on the bike rack attached to the front of the bus. I decided against that because I might have had to hold two bikes in addition to my handbag.

So I didn't reach a good solution today. I did try putting my fingers in my ears, but that didn't work so well. I hope tomorrow I will wind up on buses without the high-pitched turn signals. If not, I may get creative with harmony.

This was not what I had in mind when I said I wanted to compose more. Perhaps I should have made that clear to the music muse.

Text © copyright 2000-2005 Becky