Recently, I was commenting on a reddit thread, about people hearing ambulance sirens constantly. There I got talking to others, including in private messages, about what we were seeing in our respective countries and areas, finding that we all notice the same things.
I started to take photos and videos of what I am witnessing now. The two following photos are from the last two times I've been out in the morning for groceries this week. These two ambulances weren't the only ones I saw though. In all I must have easily seen 5 on those two days. And just as I am writing this, I had two ambulances racing through our street, quietly, only the siren lights flashing.
The ambulance in the first picture turned the siren on for a moment, while they were crossing that busy area. But as soon as they passed the area, the sirens were off again and I didn't hear them anymore.
From the beginning:
I started to notice the uptick on ambulance sirens sometime in the summer of 2021.
Then suddenly... it was quiet, from one day to the next. I found out why very soon. I was out for errands and saw that the ambulances were just as common, but they all had started turning off their audible sirens, within residential areas. They only turn them back on when they get onto a busy main street, and even then, they only turn them on for a moment, when they are on an intersection, or if they have to overtake a whole lot of cars. Even in busy streets like that, they try to keep the siren off as much as possible.
Growing up in this city, I know they never cared about the noise disturbance of sirens before. They always turned the siren on and kept it going for the whole ride to the hospital, no matter how small the street was they were going through.
This is still going on to this day.