Once again - anecdotal evidence from my own experience - when we bought our house, which was the biggest purchase of our lives, we made sure that during the cooling off period before final settlement, we spent a lot of time parking our car on the street where our house was and walking around.

Day time, night time, weekends, working hours, we spent at least 30 to 60 minutes in the neighbourhood on multiple occasions to see what the noise and traffic levels were like amongst many other factors. I cannot believe that most people don't do this more often when looking to settle in a family home that you are going to live in (and possibly raise children) for a large chunk of your lives.