Does society oppress those on the spectrum with noise?

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Could do what Proust did. He had a room in Paris which was too noisy for him so he built extra wooden walls around it (inside) so as to soundproof things. He didn't have that luxury when he left the flat of course but at least he could throw those experiences into his writing.

For me, I'm guilty of making noise. I have one neighbour who hates the sound of my typing and in another house I have a neighbour who hates the sound of our door shutting, no matter how quietly we do it.

People who can afford to move to a quiet place like a detached house or the suburbs should.

Towns should favour pedestrians over traffic. Not just for autistic people but for most NTs too. And it's more environmentally friendly.

I think it's pointless arguing about whose responsibility it is to fix the problem. Just as with any other disability, it's not the disabled person's fault and it's not society's fault either. In practical terms, society is unlikely to do jack s**t about an ASD sensitivity, though it'll install special lifts in public buildings for wheelchair users. I don't know how they figure out their priorities. But here we are, and generally speaking we have no practical choice but to find our own solutions, though as I said, the authorities in some places will sometimes step in and deal with people who create noise if it goes above a certain threshold. I make no apology for feeling oppressed when I can't stop people from hurting me, and I'm not going to waste my time listening to people who seek to invalidate the expression of that feeling.

For a few years when my neighbours had young kids, they'd let them play outside, screaming and shouting for hours every weekend. Nobody can say whether that's right or wrong, but from my perspective it felt pretty repressive of them. I used to wonder why they didn't take them to the park or something, I used to wonder how they could be such bastards as to subject me to all that noise. I was forced to live at the back of my house because they'd made it impossible to do otherwise. Then the neigbours at the other side started letting their kids out into their back yard. I fixed it by puttling a speaker outside and playing music through it so loudly that the backyard kids had to go back indoors. After a day or two of that they stopped coming out. Was that fair? Nobody knows. I wasn't comfy with doing it, but the alternative (taking it up the butt) was worse. I took according to my need, and I'd do it again if I had to.

In the end I think there's no right or wrong about these things. If human behaviour hurts somebody enough they're going to feel hard done by or oppressed, and I see no harm in respecting their right to rant about it, and no good in trying to "correct" them by mounting arguments in defense of the people who are causing the harm.

But you make a good point about most people being reasonably quiet. As usual it's the few who cause the trouble that we notice, and they give the whole lot of them a bad name. Society lets a few antisocial ones get away with a great deal. The noise pollution in my neighbourhood was completely out of hand for several years. Society tolerates a lot of things I wouldn't tolerate if I had the power to stop it.

I think the OP needs a bit of correcting in my eyes. If you look back at his previous posts he mentions harming others for small slights. One was wanting to attack a worker using a Jackhammer or the person that authorised it. Another was about killing a maintenance worker should he enter his flat without his permission to check his boiler. A lot of his posts are about noise and even if they are not they're often hostile and directed against the people who are providing the roof over his head or just going about daily life.

OP needs to wear ear plugs (reading between the lines i have no idea why he apparently hasn't tried). It's not up to others to cave to his hostility and conform to his overly demanding wishes. Autism and sensory issues or not, he needs to deal with them himself.

I'd be surprised if the OP carried out his violent fantasies. I think such ideas are very common in people who are secure in the knowledge that they can't live them out. I wouldn't egg him on, just in case he did, but I'd be equally wary of "egging him off." I think preaching to people and trying to "correct" them is more likely to send them the other way.

We don't know whether the OP has tried earplugs or not. It would be helpful if he'd tell us. Personally I have tried them, but success has been limited. I can get a useful reduction in high-frequency noise irritations from a nearby food mixer or (to a slightly lesser degree) from people near me who are talking loudly and from reasonably tinny TV sets, radios and other audio devices, simply by rolling up little bits of a paper handkerchief and putting them into my earholes - it takes some of the grating edge off such noises, and the bits of paper are pretty comfortable.

For other noise with more midrange and (especially) bass, they're useless. I've found conventional earplugs not much more effective and they get physically uncomfortable pretty quickly. Good closed-back headphones with the right kind of music were quite effective at work for some of the noise pollution I experienced there, but sometimes they reduced my effectiveness in doing my job, for example when I needed to be able to hear others talking to me, or because of the need to keep the wires under control and to maintain the feed of the music, and I'd get some funny looks from people who presumably thought it was eccentric and awkward of me to use headphones. They would also become physically uncomfortable after a while. Of course the more you pay, the comfier and more effective they ought to be, but it can be a risky investment when you don't know what will work and you're not wealthy.

For low frequency noise that got into my home from the outside, I used fairly large speakers playing continuous brown noise which was quite helpful in screening out not only the noise of the neighbours' loud conversations coming through the walls, but also the hip-hop crap from car stereos and from the jerk across the way who played reggae from his home music system. I would have invested in one of those deep-bass speakers which might have been significantly better, but they were rather costly and luckily I never had to, because the said noises ceased to happen very much in the end.

I was able to set that technology up without going to great expense, but only because I have certain skills with such things, and I feel sorry for anybody who doesn't have a similar head for that kind of work. I'm quite adept at pitting my wits against the discomforts that bother me, and using ingenuity to solve such problems, but not everybody has that kind of mind.

I also am highly sensitive to sound, as well as having the inability to filter out sounds when focusing on one sound source.

I find many noises found in our modern world that are out of my control in the world distressing. Especially when experienced in my living accommodation.

Out of interest, after a 4 year campaign sending letters to my local social housing provider, my local social housing provider has finally agreed to fit my living accommodation with soundproofing, and in fact, are right now (over the next few weeks) fitting soundproofing in my living accommodation. Yippee!

In some countries now, providing medical adaptations is now law for housing for people with disabilities which include ASD (and the symptoms of ASD, which include sound sensitivity).

Having a BA Degree in Sound Engineering (Sound Technology), i was able to source a good company that provided robust quality solutions for this type of problem.

One company that i think is worth a look at is as follows. sound proofing company They appear to offer a number of solutions for various purposes and budgets, as well as offering some really good guides and instructional videos.

So at least i will have some sanctuary!

As for the rest of the world of noise, i am afraid the noise encountered outside my living environment will be much more less out of my control, so in such cases, perhaps the employment of some form of devices may be useful.

I have found wearing good quality noise cancellation headphones (such as Bose QT35's) is useful in some environments, especially if used with some form of blue tooth music player, as the music and noise cancellation does block out a lot of the environmental noise.

Ear plugs are another possible solution for noisy environments, and it is possible to get some personally moulded ear plugs from your local audiologist. I have some that block out most sound, that cost £40.

The audiologist that i met with also are able to get specialist musicians ear plugs, which turn down all sound by approximately 30 db. These are useful for turning down all noise, in the case you may have low tolerance of sound across the frequency ranges.

In case you were wondering, low tolerance to sound is an actual documented hearing condition called misophonia, and is fairly commonly part of the symptoms among people who attain a diagnosis for ASD.

A qualified audiologist can diagnose you as having misophonia, after giving you a hearing tests if you want one.

Billy Connolly did a fine rant about the ubiquitous reversing alarms on trucks and construction equipment. These are always on, even in the middle of the night with no chance of surprising anyone with ears for engine noise. They are also obsolete now, because it is trivial to fit back-up cameras and make it the operator's responsibility again. I wish I was fit to organize a campaign to change the laws.

Well that depends whether this issue is something physical like tinnitus or something neurological, seems circumstantial to me although there are theoretically treatments either way.

I'm pretty sensitive to noise but it's not reasonable to expect air not to vibrate.

You assume they're only used in areas that aren't job sites when they're used at night? If they're being operated there's always the potential for a spotter to be involved, or for other people to be working in the general vicinity. Regardless of who bears responsibility (operators already would bear responsibility, even with an audible alert, certainly on a personal, moral level) and even if cameras were fitted it would still make sense to retain the audible alerts. This remains especially true as quiet electrics start to replace louder ICE powered heavy equipment.

I work in a factory, not only do all of the internal vehicles beep when they back up, they're also equipped with horrible, bright blue lights that shine on the floor in front of them when they move. It gives me a headache almost instantly if the light catches my eye, but it's also saved me from getting run over more than once. Multiple methods of warning people nearby demonstrably improve safety. Removing audible warnings would be a terrible idea.

I've used those cameras on a JCB telehandler not long ago. The workshop I'm in needs it regularly but chances are if you're around those vehicles you probably wear hearing protection and the piercing screech of the sirens are A LOT quieter with industrial ear plugs in. When you drive things like that JCB telehandler you realise quickly that you still can't see everything and you have big blind spots, for example when the arm is raised the entire right hand side is a blind spot. You also need to look at more than just where you're going as those machines usually pick things up. In short you need that siren. Without a siren they'll become even more intimidating machines and they already give little room for a second chance. Even those little tiny forklifts weigh more than a large pickup with their cast iron counterweights on the rear.

It's not about making the operator responsible again. They're already legally responsible to watch out for people but those vehicles are huge and they need sirens irrespective of sensory issues of aspies nearby.

^^2 Jobsites are a special case, not involving the general public. I'm talking about single machines, like the ones removing snow, or digging up pipes, or a single forklift and truck in an open yard beside houses.

If you are a minority of any kind you are going to disadvantaged because the majority is catered to because that is where the profit and empathy lies. Most people will partially or not get you at all.

They'll still need sirens otherwise the workers will be in more danger than they should be.

"The workers" are all on board and safe. Also, where there is no other noise, a machine says more about its activity just by itself than an alarm does, and perfectly audibly. We get so accustomed to constant alarms that we are likely to tune out any that matter. Even people without a special sensitivity can have their sleep ruined by alarms playing to perfectly empty streets, and then be accident prone the next day.

Not really. When you have earplugs in even their huge engines don't make that much noise. The earplugs I use can make angle grinders which are 110 decibels perfectly tolerable all day long. There are also other noises which will drown out industrial mobile machines. People with autism just have to deal with the noise should they be doing work nearby.

I am not talking about workers!! ! I am trying to protect the general public, particularly when most are sleeping.
Ear plugs are good for preventing hearing damage from loud sounds, but they are not selective, producing a new sound environment that is also distracting, particularly since it is a constant reminder of an irritation. They also cause bacteria in the ear canal to proliferate wildly.

Using a forklift and offloading trucks ect doesn't work like that though. You need to get out to unstrap, place things on bearers, slide the forks apart and in most cases its the rules for drivers to stand outside of cabs to be offloaded. The general public are in even more need of a siren too as they're blinkered to the dangers. I wouldn't mind a snowplough with a siren especially. Secondly pretty much all industrial and maintainance noise is during the day.