Perceptibility of approaching vehicles in urban background noise

Vehicle noise emissions are an ongoing research topic in the field of sound quality design. Another area, which been hardly investigated in the past years, is the warning function of this noise for other road users, especially pedestrians. Therefore, this paper will show results of experiments dealing with the detection of the sounds of different cars in a typical urban background noise. Moreover, some considerations on road safety are given and will be related to the experimental results. Additionally, a method predicting the perceptibility of cars in background noise is introduced and evaluated.