Someone is raking gravel on this side, some welding and grinding going on over there, there's a guy with a concrete scraper machine to the left, some clipboard warrior is testing his megaphone, up there they are dragging a big tarp around, there's a whole crew going at it with impact drivers and a bloke over there is trying to find Sky on the radio.<br><br>Having been on the job since breakfast, you will have contracted some form of hearing loss, unless you're lucky enough to have your mufflers on absolutely every single time someone drops a scaffolding pipe. With your mandatory ear protection on, that array of run-of-the-mill construction racket sounds like there's a fly buzzing around somewhere. And then there's the minor issue that mufflers make it a lot more difficult to localize sound.<br>OK - the pneumatic jackhammer is clearly noticeable, and so is the guy banging on a steel girder, but that's about it. And remember, since breakfast your brain has also begun to filter out al lot of scraping and hissing. The beeping sound was designed to stand out in a noisy environment, which it does, given the number of people who complain about it, and it does a decent job of registering through hearing protection.<br>You always have to look for what's beeping anyway - once you've spotted the trajectory you're good to carry on. So let's change this somewhat effective system that has been commonly used for so long that everybody now instinctively recognizes, and use a type of sound that will barely stand out as a safety device, so now everybody on-site has to become alert to minute changes in the background noise. Brilliant.,(reply>), The experts have spoken though!  You know.  The ones who don't even work on construction sites.,(reply>), They should just stick a chime whistle on it, because they can work on air and are very distinctive. People generally associate them with steam locomotives, but I'm not sure why they couldn't serve in this application.