The din of city life can take words out of your mouth. Recently, while walking across the Manhattan Bridge with a friend, we had a conversation whose pace was dictated by the D-train; we'd keep walking, but stop talking mid-sentence every few minutes as the deafening subway trains roared past, then pick up where we left off when the trains were gone.

Similarly, the unseen economic effects of a building that's caught fire are that all cell phone conversations in the vicinity must pause as the roaring fire engines rush by.

There's currently nothing design & engineering can do about the former situation, but a solution exists for the latter: Throat microphones, which convert the vibrations from your vocal cords into sound and don't pick up any background noise. I'm not sure how comfortable they are, but the technology apparently works well enough for policemen, the military, motorcycle and snowmobile drivers to use.

Up top is the conceptual Sanwa model reported on by Dvice, Akihabara News et al., which has no release date set. It's the most design-y (read: least offensive-looking) we've seen and is aimed at consumers, but if you're curious about its predecessors, there are several similar devices already on the market:

Clearer Communications' Stryker Throat Mic has a waterproof Push to Talk button that's appropriately large. (Imagine fumbling around for that tiny call button on the Apple headphones when someone's shooting at you.) It runs US $100 and is targeted at cops and soldiers, made specifically to attach to certain Motorola tactical radios.

The huge call button is also a prominent feature on Iasus's throat mics, like the $120 Sniper Pro (1st photo below) and discontinued v2 (2nd photo).

Lakeland's $99 take on the device uses an earbone mic, for those who don't want something wrapped around their throat.

This unnamed German-made Military Throat Mic has a minimal design and runs US $595. I don't know about that buckle on the side though, looks like it would bite into your throat, no?

Lastly, Ear Inc.'s $280 Lightweight Tactical Throat Mic points out an easily-overlooked benefit of a throat mic--you can wear one even if you're wearing a mask. (We presume they mean protective masks as opposed to, say, ski masks.)