You can tell you’re a lawyer, scaredy – you can sell anything!
I tend to dislike background noise, whether it be a road, train, or other. I like nice quiet morning where all I hear are birds. And I have that at my house.
On the other hand, if I’m just visiting (hotel, etc) highway noise is just fine and actually acts as white noise to help me sleep.
Trains. My son’s first college apt was right up against RR tracks. I remember the first time we visited. it was like that scene in Blues Brothers where the entire apt shook. He saw the fear in our eyes as the train went by. He and his roommates smiled and shrugged. Didn’t bother them.
To each their own.
My parents moved after I left home to a house that backed up against a highway. It was extremely noisy in their back yard. If that was OK with them, fine. But they also had a layer of filth that would cover everything in the back yard. You could clean it off and within a day or two it would be back. I believe it was tire particles and brake dust and I think studies show that to be the case in the immediate vicinity of major roadways. My mother died of cancer while living in that house. I always wonder if that would have happened had they picked another house.
When we bought our first new home, we toured the models of the development and then sat down with the agent to pick a lot. I noticed that one home was significantly more expensive than the others for no reason I could tell. I asked the agent why that was. She said because there were no homes behind it. I said, “yeah that’s because it backs up to a FOUR LANE ROAD!”. She just smiled. I think she agreed with my perspective.