Exposure of road users to the traffic noise in urban environment: insights from a mega metropolitan city

An increase in urban traffic especially in developing countries like Pakistan has led to huge noise chaos on the major arterials with a lack of facilities to manage it. Such harmful excessive noise from road traffic creates a direct impact on the daily commuters and can have severe health consequences such as hearing loss, stress, and heart disease. Despite the alarming situation discussed above, research on the aforementioned topic in the developing world is limited. This paper for the first time measures the traffic noise experienced by four road user groups which include: (1) car drivers with open windows, (2) car drivers with closed windows, (3) motorbike riders with helmets, and (4) motorbike riders without helmets. The noise level experienced by these four road user groups was measured by travelling on one of the major routes (i.e. Saddar to 4K Chowrangi via Rashid Minhas Road) in Karachi (Pakistan) with four different devices. The highest noise level was 110 dBA obtained from non-helmeted bike riders while the closed-window car users received the least level of 49.8 dBA. Furthermore, there was no significant difference observed in the noise for helmet and non-helmet users. Therefore, there is a need to improve the design of helmets for reducing noise impact. The analysis of variance test performed also shows that the noise experienced by the motorcyclist is significantly higher than that of commuters in cars.