https://news.sky.com/story/most-motorists-want-noise-cameras-installed-to-clamp-down-on-loud-cars-12941437
The camera records an image of the vehicle and its noise level, creating evidence which can be used by police to issue fines.
Most motorists? Why is it only people who enjoy motoring that get a say in this? What about the rest of us?
I don't drive and I want them to crack down on those loud as feck vehicles, especially the dirt bike races they have regularly.
Loud as feckin hell.
Car brain headline / premise. Of course only the opinion of motorists is actually valid, you poor jaywalking peasant!
I think the point is to show that even amongst their peers, people who love loud pipes are a minority that the majority would gladly see being stopped.
I agree now but I once was young and had a loud pipe on my truck and on my motorcycle (always with a catalytic converter though!), I think it's just a natural phase in the car person's evolution... Then you've got a bunch of Harley riders and Dodge Ram drivers that never grow past that phase...
I’m not sure if this a joke. Noise cameras are a real thing. They use an array of microphones to show which parts of an image are emitting sound and at what level.
I read it as being a riff off of "speed" cameras, which are obviously cameras triggered by speed and not cameras that capture the concept of speed on film.
Intentionally loud exhausts are obnoxious and selfish. As much as I dislike it, however, I'd far rather deal with the noise than having yet more surveillance. We're already the #3 most surveilled country in the world, only the USA and China is worse.
Harley Davidson bikes are just noise pollution. Unlike cars they are build like this out of the factory.
We may be number 3 but we must be number 1 in terms of % of people monitored by some form of camera. The USA road network is nowhere near as heavily monitored as the UK.
Driving through France, Belgium and the Netherlands was very free compared to the UK.
A taxi driver in Singapore once told me that they hold this title, ahead of the UK. He then pointed out the cameras on almost every lamp post.
Electrics cars will make it a non issue but then we will be stuck with the surveillance. Our country is scary. No one cares.
Having said that if you are intentionally being noisy for noisy sake there should be harder punishments. Even lose your license for a bit, it's not a got given right to drive. You got to earn it.
All drivers should be considerate of others
Electrics cars will make it a non issue
I do not see EVs replacing scooters (which are driven by lower budget commuters). A single unmuffled scooter driving through #Paris at 3am can wake up 10,000 people according to Bruitparif. And don’t forget horns. Assholes will used their horns at 3am on my street. The only thing they give a fuck about is their own convenience when their favorite parking spot is taken.
The idea of harsh punishments works if a vehicle is continuously loud because it will eventually cross paths with a cop. So that position is fair enough. But what about horns? There’s never a cop around when horns are misused.
I think not. But then I’m not living in a wealthy part of town. I think I’ve only seen one, ridden by a colleague. It only takes one of those little 2-stroke 50cc gas fuckers to wake up 10,000 people.
I’d far rather deal with the noise than having yet more surveillance.
My cognitive dissonance triggers on this point because one of the reasons I cycle is privacy. I am also firmly in the #fuckCars camp (noise, pollution, death, selfishness of people putting their convenience above lives of other people & animals). It’s hard to give a shit about car drivers having privacy. And also realize that car drivers inherently sign up to give up privacy in order to use a personal car anyway (registration, insurance, banking transactions tied to those activities and their fuel purchases, etc). The fuel purchases of car drivers feed the oil industry, which in the US feeds the war chests of republican candidates who disrespect both privacy and the environment.
Yet people making the wise pro-privacy considerate decision to cycle are still exposed to breath car fumes, noise, and life-threatening physics (e=mc²).
Hard to have sympathy for car drivers. Although my dissonance needle moves a bit more if these noise cams are always recording video and thus capturing all people not in cars. I don’t know if that’s the case.
yes, and here you have an opportunity for that overwatch to benefit your daily lives. Accepting it everywhere else but bitching about it here seems pretty self defeating.
If it wasn’t obvious, I don’t accept it everywhere else, I think the state surveillance apparatus should be completely dismantled.
So you protest the ubiquitous surveillance a bunch?
Often?
Ever?
Yeah. Never. You've never once gone out on the real ones taking the piss out of you every fucking day. Never.
But this has you up in arms.
To put things succinctly, I'm not convinced mate.
I have no idea why you’re making assumptions about me with literally no context. I’m heavily involved with activism locally, but it’s more in the area of direct action rather than protest, because protest is a waste of time.
Anyways, I haven’t been involved in anti-surveillance action, because it would be illegal to damage CCTV cameras, to cover them with paint, or to glue plastic bags over them. Lasers can be dangerous and people shouldn’t buy high powered ones from China. Fortunately lasers aren’t really good at permanently damaging cameras, but it’s still hazardous to use them to blind CCTV cameras, especially while disabling them with another method, because someone might get hurt or you could cause damage to the cameras.
I live in a city center, and frequently have loud cars drive past. Some are substantially worse than others. The loudest of them are so loud that when they go past I can't hear my TV for 30 seconds or so, and that's with my windows all closed and listening via headphones.
Something really does need to be done to enforce the noise laws that are often being ignored.
I'm on the fence. Daft custom exhaust on a 1.5 turbo 3cyl is stupid, but there's no way I can agree to more surveillance.
I guess it depends what your comfort level for surveillance is.
In this case, it would likely be "camera activated at 96dBA, numberplate in view was BO55 MAN, NIP being sent to keepers address"
It would be brilliant if it was this isolated. But it seems like every step in surveillance always leads to more surveillance. It's always some innocent excuse, without ever drawing the full picture together with preexisting stuff.
There's now a generarion that has grown up without ever having experienced not being watched.
I'm on the fence with your statement because it kinda describes WRC cars and they're FUCKING AWESOME
In general I wouldn't mind people having the freedom to make their cars impossible to sit any reasonable amount of time inside, but I don't currently have a suggestion on how to make certain peeps be not assholes in residential areas.
In regards to WRC - isn't that world rally championship? I don't think I've ever seen one happening anywhere near apartment buildings on single lane streets with cars parked on both sides and kids' playground nearby.
I'm an American who stumbled here by accident but do you guys have many cars/bikes that are noisy out of the factory? The guys running Civics with a pineapple shooter look like assholes but I kind of get it if you've got a big V8 that just sounds like that
Nothing really sounds loud out of the factory. It's always the peashooters with custom exhaust.
I never even considered that was an option. I figured loud jackasses was just something we'd have to live with.
Some idiot is going to hang out near the camera with a boom box and play loud engine noises every time an electric vehicle drives by.
It will most deffo a member of the law and order party who love the law except when it impacts them.
Its motorbikes round my way that are stupidly loud. Not even kidding you can hear some of them a mile away. I know this because I can see the road about a mile away and still hear them!
Same here. And in recent years the amount of drivers are pushing their luck more. Like driving clearly illegal bikes, driving on grass parks and footpaths and even through underpasses. I saw three teenagers break into a bike shed to stash their stolen scooter in. The Police didn't seem to care much even though I called with a crime in progress. Nothing like this happened where I live a few years prior.
Well theres no deterrent these days.
Another one is those electric scooters, they're a real menace!
Yeah for sure. I honestly think electric scooters and electric bikes are the way forward (not wasting energy on 1-2 tonnes of metal while going round town). But until they are better regulated and enforced it's just mayhem.
I saw a couple of cops stop a guy on a moped who was running a red light yesterday and I wanted to applaud. Mopeds and electric bikes (especially if they're driven by food delivery people) run lights, go the wrong way on one-way streets, go on the sidewalk... And they're not just doing this on empty streets. They usually stay out of the way of cars (being hit by a car hurts, I suppose) but they're happy to cut off pedestrians. Heh, I think I haven't seen them driving indoors yet but it's only a matter of time since they're almost never stopped.
I've had a fair few near misses with electric scooters both walking and driving. The main problem is kids who sadly have no road sense and don't appreciate the dangers.
With motorbikes there is the additional problem that most of their owners actually rework them to be louder. I can regularly hear the motorbikes on the bypass, which is about the same distance, with a hill in between. You don't hear the busy car traffic, but you hear the motorbikes.
I'll take the loud cars if we can get some real fucking regulations on headlight brightness so I don't get blinded every time I drive at night.
There is already the regulation in the Highway Code:
114: "You MUST NOT use any lights in a way which would dazzle or cause discomfort to other road users"
The "MUST NOT" indicates that this is a legal requirement and so it is a criminal offense to disobey it. Now if we could get the police to actually ENFORCE the legal requirements in the Highway Code, then maybe things might improve on the roads.
I mean if that's the case then they have to enforce it on the companies as well because in 2023 it's the default on many models on the road, not even with their brights or high beams on.
Just went down the legislation.gov rabbit hole, and it seems there are regulations on headlight height and angle that have been in place since 1989, but unfortunately no maximum power or brightness restrictions.
Which means that although a driver could be fined for using excessively bright headlights, the manufacturer of the car could not be fined for making the car like that in the first place.
Perhaps if things like these noise cameras gain in popularity it will encourage the lawmakers to look at other issues like this one.
(Apologies for USA centric comment)
I think if that was proposed in the USA, people's heads might actually explode. When 2 roundabouts were put in nearby, some people acted like the UN new world order was on its way. I grew up in Basingstoke so I love roundabouts. Thankfully people have come around to the idea.
I'd support it just so my dog can walk near a road without some pickup gunning its engine as it flies past us. Any kind of traffic speed reduction is treated with fury over here.
People with loud pipes don't realize they look like a nobend and sound like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/s0xqopmjbSo?feature=share
I’m American and love roundabouts. I think my fellow drivers hate them because they require a small amount of thought and planning, which is too much to ask from your average American driver.
Roundabouts are easy, and easy to learn. When I got my license, there were just three roundabouts in my state. Now there are three within two minutes of driving, and a fourth one is planned.
Roundabouts are actually better than normal crossings for traffic flow and reducing the accident rate, but they require respect and consideration for the fellow traffic participants, so I don't expect them to work in the US.
I agree they’re easy. Which is why I don’t understand why nobody else seems to be able to learn them
Don't worry - that's not purely American. People here acted like the illuminati were on the march when a couple of 'school streets' were announced (no access during pick up/drop off hours
Roundabout installation should be celebrated. So much better than lights if you can drive. Maybe not so much for the walkers crossing.
So much better than lights if you can drive.
That's the problem, most of our drivers can't drive. I saw someone enter a roundabout in the wrong direction and get mad at everyone else.
Have you seen the videos of those idiots trying to use the roundabouts in the US? They were totally clueless, and not even able to follow the signs.
It was staged. A fake.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kentucky/comments/n3c5zq/the_viral_roundabout_video_was_staged_by_the/
I have seen people drive the wrong way around the local roundabouts. The most frequent error is people treating it as a four way stop and waiting for their "turn" to go, then getting frustrated when other people don't do the same.
All motorists are loud. Cities aren't loud, cars are loud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8
and the difference is personal opinion. We had anti-noise bylaw removed because of 2 factors, the limit was too high for most people (96DB) and because it's really difficult and expensive to monitor. They need special noise detectors and they don't have lots of them so they only used them in areas where most people complain and it resulted in zero change while increasing costs.
My motorcycle is loud. Louder than any stock car but it's far from 96DB yet it's also quieter than a lawn mower, or a weed whacker, or a plane so what do you about those noises?
It's an easy fix. Vehicles are whatever volume they are from the factory. Then just ban modifying them in any way to become louder.
An absolute decibel limit doesn't need to exist. You're just not allowed to deliberately increase the volume of your vehicle above what it's natural level is.
Amen. Steel legal shouldn't include performance enhancements - get a track car and go at it where there's a suitable environment!
If there was an easy fix, they would have done it. Loud is subjective so you need to set a baseline and you need decibel numbers for that.
Just banning modifying exhausts is short-sighted because think of all the companies out there making custom exhausts that aren't super loud.
You're applying kid logic to an adult problem.
Loudness is not subjective. You can use a cheap device called the phone in your pocket to measure decibel readings come up with a baseline for every car and if it's louder than that baseline then it's not allowed. Also it'll be pretty obvious if it's too loud because the person driving the car will be a chav
I want headlight cameras to clamp down on idiots blinding other drivers with their brighter-than-the-Sun headlights.
Please. I live on one of the busier streets in my town, right by an intersection. The amount of people driving by with cars that sound like someone's farting through a megaphone are insanely obnoxious. Fuck, most the time they're shit boxes that go slower than normal cars. People in my area buy cheap, shitty cars, pay to have a falsified safety, then make them loud and obnoxious while slowing down traffic because their cars can barely accelerate.
The point is that most really loud cars are made to be loud. And usually equipped with a way to quickly undo that, if needed.
I've seen a TV report on some policemen hunting "tuned" cars. They were following an obnoxiously loud car in an unmarked police car, stopped them, and took measurements - suddenly, the car was "just normal". But they knew what they heard, and the measurements they had taken from a distance had been way louder than the measurements taken at a defined distance from the exhaust, so they impounded the car for further investigation. And found a switch in the glove compartment that changed the car from "normal" to "loud".
You've got to catch them red-handed. As long as they can disable or just quickly undo something like that before a MOT , it won't get a single idiot and his car off the road.
The experience in Germany is, that manufacturers will just engineer around it. You define a testing method and they will make sure their exhausts comply in that specific scenario, but are loud in all other cases. The most egregious example are probably motorcycles. The law limits most to 77dB(A), but in reality many are closer to 90dB or even louder. The government has been trying to define better standards, but we will have to see where that gets us. Real-life measurements are much harder to fake and probably more impactful.
Can't they just deal with it at the MOT?
Plus I'm pretty sure it would be pointless recording the noisy bollock whizzing up and down my road on his motorbike, because apparently number plates are optional when there's fuck all police about.
It's the inverse - the car is quiet for just one day, its MOT day. The owner will put the standard exhaust on for the MOT, then put the loud one back on once they have the MOT pass certificate in hand. Same thing with numberplates with odd spacing to make words. The owner will put a standard plate on for the MOT then swap it for their illegally spaced one once the MOT is done.
Yes.
There was (is?) a bunch of tiny-dick halfwits rolling coal in Ashfield who would abandon their shitmobiles in front of the local Tesla chargers.
It's not even the engine. It's the exhaust. Nowadays they even use speakers that literally play fake engine sounds.
I don't really care what's in their pants as long as fines are harsh. 20% net worth and also we take your bike away. That should do it. Maybe public spanking too.
20% net worth for a non criminal offense 😂 Alright, I want cyclists to be fined 10% of their net worth when they ride straight through stop signs, 20% for red lights!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The camera records an image of the vehicle and its noise level, creating evidence that can be used by police to issue fines.
RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: "Our research with drivers shows there is a very strong desire to put an end to the scourge of excessively noisy vehicles that disturb the peace all around the country.
"It's plain wrong that those who have fitted their cars with modified exhausts, some motorbike riders and supercar owners can currently just get away with making an unacceptable amount of noise.
"There is no good reason why cars and motorbikes should make so much noise, so the sooner effective camera enforcement can be put in place the better."
Roads minister Richard Holden said: "Boy racers are an anti-social menace and we have extensively trialled noise camera technology in various parts of the country over the past year.
"We are currently analysing data from the trials and will update in due course on any future measures which will help bring peace and tranquillity back to our towns, cities and villages."
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