What is a Quiet Zone?
The term “Quiet Zone” pertains to a single highway/railroad grade crossing or a consecutive stretch of highway/railroad grade crossings (a corridor) in which a locomotive engineer, under normal conditions, is ordered to not blow the train horn while approaching a crossing. From a community’s point of view, the result is improved living conditions as loud train horns are silenced. From a railroad’s perspective, a warning device (the loud train horn), has been silenced. Some communities currently have a full or partial day Quiet Zone recognized by railroads that date back many years. Other communities, without success, have recently requested the implementation of Quiet Zones from railroads. Without an order from The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), railroads are hesitant to eliminate any existing warning device such as a train horn.
A quiet zone is the blank, marginal space at the beginning and ending of each barcode that enables a scanner to accurately read the information. A quiet zone, in most cases, does not need to be very large. In fact, oftentimes it may not even be distinguishable to an individual consumer. In the quiet zone, no signal is produced by the scanning device. Thus, the area is named a “quiet zone” because of this lack of production. A quiet zone is needed because any information near the barcode could confuse a scanning device, which is making complex measurements in the time it takes a person to blink an eye. No quiet zones may cause the scanner to read the product inaccurately or not read the barcode at all. Those who design packaging must keep this in mind. Without the quiet space, scanning using the method used today would likely not be possible. In most cases, the quiet zone is no bigger than 0.1 inches (2.5 millimeters) or 10 times the width of the “X” dimension, whichever is greater. The
