> just let people figure out sleep patterns that work the best for them, do we really need a national law around this?

We do. It's already essentially dictated (at the city level)

Every city I've lived in have quiet hours of 11pm to 7am. If your neighbors are assholes, unless they're REALLY pushing it, there's fuck all you can do until 11 (and even by 11, good luck having anyone to anything about it). If there's construction in your area, it will start at 7 on the dot (and often earlier, because again, good luck getting someone to enforce this strictly).

If you need 8 hours of sleep (and that's in the middle. Teens can need even more), you have to be in bed precisely at 11 (when the loud music stops) and be ready to go at precisely 7am (when the jack hammers start). Hope your cycle matches that, you fall asleep instantly, and you're not on the upper bound of sleep requirements. Else move in the wood or get fucked.

If that's not an issue for you, you're quite lucky and privileged to either have great neighbors, or have been blessed by mother nature. Alternatively you're in sleep withdrawal and running at a fraction of your full potential and think its normal.

Not sure where you live but a quick call to the police or code enforcement would solve the problem. Most construction is permitted.

Only in extreme circumstances. If they start 30 minutes early, enforcement will just tell you it's no big deal. But you lost a significant part of your sleep time. And there's the whole deal about police brutality in the US making that a potentially problematic solution.

With that said, often it's not even an option. See: NYC where overnight construction variances are approved left and right. In our case, a construction project that is breaking all the rules and even got brought up in court is still going. The city won't (and even the court) won't do anything because "need more housing, at all costs!"

All in all it doesn't matter though: even if everything is done by the book, it gives you a strict 8 hours window to sleep. Not one minute after, not one minute before. That's my point. The rules already give you zero options unless you're straight up lucky.

Most people have some choice about where they live - noise should be a factor when deciding where to live. In a place as busy as NYC, I would think a person choosing to live there places "quietness" low on the list of priorities.

First, not really: moving means leaving your job (unless you can do it remote), and incurs significant monetary expenses. If you have a family it's even worse, switching school, etc.

Even if you do get to pick where you live, we live in a highly dynamic world. The quiet dead-end of today could change within a matter of months and have a highrise on it, especially given how cities are sometimes taking drastic actions to fight the housing crisis.

Finally, there's a difference between ambient noise and outliers. You can live on Manhattan and be naturally dealing with cars and people, but then your upstairs neighbor decides to get into drumming or start dating someone with 3 toddlers, and that's a whole different game.

Even if we take out changes from the equation, it's VERY hard to properly assess how noisy somewhere will be, even if you visit it multiple times. By the time you realize there's a problem, you're stuck with a mortgage or a lease and have to deal with it for a year or more.

In France after lockdown, bars and people can be noisy up until 4am with no code enforcement whatsoever. In Paris intra muros: https://youtu.be/GaYPLv6diXA

The police don't do shit here. And the construction is permitted and starts at 7am as the other poster says.

with respect to C, probably, because many people don't choose the clock time at which they have to be at work, at school, etc.

But surely they have the agency to choose the clock time at which they go to bed, no?

Neighbors and city noise ordinance dictates when you can go to bed. Neighbors, city noise ordinance, work and school hours dictate when you have to wake up.

One of the reasons I had to leave SF was because the sleepable window was just too squeezed. Between people making noise in the evening, cars and motorcycles racing at night, and sunlight, cars, and construction in the morning, there just wasn't enough time to wind down (this can take a long time depending on chronotype) and get enough sleep.

Not really.

Winter time, 8-4 work week. Do what we can so that sleep schedule is closer to centered around the darkest point.