For me, the heavy machinery is the worst. Excavators and the like; they're louder than most trucks but stick around in earshot for hours a day. And worse than their engines are some of the tools they use for breaking up road surfaces. The jackhammers and particularly the road cutting saws both make awful noise. The diesel engine noises are easy enough to tune out, but the road saws are like banshees.
On the other hand, the noise peaks from (older) accelerating engines is one of the most annoying sounds. I can live with the background hum of tire/road friction.
We live on a semi-main road. Normal engines aren’t really noticeable or annoying. Nearly all of the road noise is generated by tires with a fraction coming from large truck engines and vehicles with broken exhausts.
Tires are an issue but diesels engine trucks and semis are audible. Also some times regular gas customers have modified exhausts. Tire noise is higher frequency though.
The really frustrating thing is I love cars. I love driving, I love shifting though the gears, I love working on them, I've replaced headgaskets, rebuilt transmissions, and regeared differentials. I just hate how obnoxious noisy vehicles are.
When I was learning to drive, my biggest complaint was that I couldn't hear the engine when there was noise in the area - it was a very quiet one. It made it harder to do hill starts and clutch balancing. Now I drive a diesel.
I have to say after driving a non-gasoline car for a few months, the sound of a loud internal combustion engine sounds trite and tacky, even when I watch a movie.
When I go on a walk in town (with speed limits usually at 50 kph or 40 kph), it's generally the tire noise that prevents me from having an enjoyable chat. It's especially bad in wet weather, but even on dry asphalt it's rarely the engines that disturb me most.
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