Need them here in the UK. There are so many cars modified to have explosive sounding exhausts it's unreal. I get woken up regularly in the night when they drive them around at 2AM making a lot of noise. I still don't get why anyone would want to drive around sounding like that. There is no reason other than you want to look like a complete wanker and at that point society should crush your car to a fucking cube instantly.
Edit: turns out we do have them and they have been fining people. But it's mostly supercars. The problem is with shitty little cars with stupid exhausts which outnumber the supercars by at least two orders of magnitude.
I still don't get why anyone would want to drive around sounding like that.
Evidence from game behavior suggests ~30% of people are willing to experience some cost to themselves in order to inflict a greater one on other people. People like this don't feel they are winning unless someone else is losing. If true, this explains a great deal.
Outright malice probably only explains a small fraction of it. Partly it's just fun to make a lot of noise, and if you have little/no respect for other people then why not?
A less malicious part of it also arises from the fact that the cheaper the modification, the worse it sounds.
You can make a car sound excellent with no drone with a $5,000 factory quality upgrade... or you can pay some bozo $100 to cut out your muffler and weld in a straight line pipe.
That may not entitle them, but it represents how people might make this choice without intentionally being a nuance in mind
I'd say a less mentioned guideline is "Please don't leave insubstantial comments playing psuedo-mod" but it's actually addressed right there in the rules you linked.
I have a 23 year old civic with little to no rust (yay California) except for a huge rust hole on the exhaust just before the muffler. So the modification is free!
I was looking into some kind of fix to wrap around the pipe but instead I had a very good deal on a 13 year old prius fall in my lap so now the civic is parked up while I decide what to do with it.
The key difference is even loud factory exhaust setups leave room for relatively quiet operation depending on how you drive.
That Elantra driver was an idiot: he went in a town and drove in sport mode and drove in a way that forces extra loud pops
If he hadn't been forcing it the car was perfectly capable of not making excessive noise.
—
The $100 bozo special on the other hand has none of that: it's always loud and obnoxious.
In fact it gets more obnoxious at cruising RPM because of drone.
There are aftermarket exhausts that try to match the factory-style "not loud by default", but they're expensive because it takes careful engineering and integrating things like valves and Helmholtz resonators.
That is a good study, and it does explain one of the behaviors.
But do not discount the importance of powerlessness in these behaviors. People who have relatively less power in their work, their surroundings, their relationships, there ability to influence their own econonmic situation, etc, still need a way to express power. It is easy to couch it merely in terms of winning/losing in the moment, but without context it is hard to see what the right solution is.
If it is merely winning/losing/greater cost, with no particular motivation, then banning any particular annoying activity is as good a regulation as any other.
But when you take away a dimension of power over an area that a person strongly associates with "basic freedoms" such as owning a camaro/civic/harley/gixxer and tuning it to their liking, including making it incredibly and illegally loud, you are making a more fundamental policy decision than you might realize.
My take is that these make for bad county/state/federal laws. They are fine for city laws that are associated with modest fines, because that is the kind of law that continues to enable some expression of control and personal power-- an important part of dignity.
They annoy me. The people and their exhausts branded "Neighbor Haters." But so do the pedestrians who choose to enter the intersection when the red hand is up and the countdown timer is at 3 seconds, and they feign feebleness in order to take nearly a minute to cross the street while 500 people in gridlock wait in all directions. But I see it for what it is and choose to respect their dignity, probably when they need it most.
This is an extremely depressing statistic to read. I hope that it's something we can modify culturally rather than being a hard-wired part of our brains.
Troublingly, the study suggests otherwise, noting that consistent preferences seem to be established by age 6 (and citing some other research documenting as such). While it's not definitive or replicated, I do find the large n, multinational sampling, and experimental elegance of this own persuasive; it's had a significant effect on my worldview.
This does not explain it, qnd trying to do so through biology is the wrong angle.
This issue is purely a cultural one, not a biological one, but this is not popular to investigate because 1. it's considered impossible to solve and 2. brings up difficult questions regarding cultural relativity that aren't appreciated in the modern academic Anglosphere.
I'm continuously surprised that even on HN this comes up so often. A phenomenon is presented which is orders of magnitude more common in one culture than another, yet what is reached for is a biological, tech, or otherwise "hard science" explanation.
In this case, the phenomenon is one of publically inflicting harm on others at a cost and no gain to themselves.
I guess it has to do with the community (understandably!) having a strong tendency to approach everything from a STEM PoV when it comes to all but a small number of (mostly US-specific, policy or economic) topics.
Just to prevent misunderstandings here, culture here doesn't mean the culture of a nation but of (much smaller) communities, in 2023.
Motorcycles too. Around here idiots revving and redlining their engine is a relatively regular occurrence. Much more so than cars, although that also happens from time to time.
I live in a motorcycle-heavy US town (blue collar, lots of guys who wish they were 1%ers - the biker outlaw variety, not the rich people variety). It sounds like a warzone during shift change around the industrial districts.
Having been neighbors with a lot of these guys, it has been repeatedly explained to me that theh make their bikes louder to be heard for safety. The assumption here is car drivers are so engaged with their music/podcasts/whatever turned up that they don't pay attention to the traffic around them. They also tend to not look when switching lanes or, gods forbid, use their turn signal to show intent.
While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky. Motorcycles are loud by default, and using aftermarket parts to make them louder is just part of the self-affirming statement of ego. These guys need you to know how big and bad they believe themselves to be that they'll make other sacrifices in their lives to afford projecting that image.
As a motorcyclist, if I had a penny for every time I've heard the "loud pipes save lives" mantra, I'd be a millionaire.
It always felt like "a load of bullpucky", but the defining moment for me was one day riding down a quietish-street with a legal-but-still-obnoxious Akrapovic pipe. In front of me were two or three girls walking in the middle of the road, talking. They only realized I was there when I sounded the horn and seemed really surprised, judging by their jumpiness.
If someone walking in front of the bike can't hear that noise, I really don't see how someone inside a sound-insulated box, in a generally noisy environment, probably blasting the radio, is going to notice the loud pipe.
Most people are either blissfully unaware of their surroundings regardless of the noises or they just tuned out said noises because there are so many of them.
This is not an argument for noisier exhausts. It's an argument to reduce noise in general, from all sources. Then people will react better to the louder noises.
> Most people are either blissfully unaware of their surroundings
Maybe it’s my morbid search history, but I still look on in awe as people cross the intersection in front of me while deep on their phones. They don’t look up to check at all - not even at the start!
Yeah same, it boggles my mind. I'm scared for my life of busy intersections, many drivers get impatient to the point of seemingly not caring if they'll kill you. I never ever look at my phone while on the move.
I know you're being facetious and it would obviously be silly to ban them. That said wearing headphones/earphones while walking around a city, for me, would reduce my situational awareness to a degree I would absolutely not be comfortable with. I know plenty of people are comfortable doing so but, while drivers and road design almost certainly bear the lion's share of the blame for pedestrian injuries and fatalities, distracted pedestrians don't help themselves. (Just the other week, I saw a person come super-close to getting hit in a parking lot as they were obliviously walking across the traffic lane buried deep in their phone.)
I once saw a pedestrian step out in front a speeding police car with lights and siren . . . I guess because the walk light turned green? The police car had to slam on its brakes and honk before the idiot noticed it.
I still think it's "bullpucky" and two or three clueless pedestrians don't demonstrate anything.
When living in a neighborhood where almost all of the houses were old and poorly insulated, the motorcycles which went up and down our street were loud enough that indoors, with the windows closed, we would have to stop conversations, pause tv shows, etc, and wait for them to pass, because one simply couldn't hear anything over them. This is a densely populated neighborhood; 4-8 apartments per building tens of buildings per side per block, so interrupting hundreds of people per block, and many thousands in the course of a ride seems a reasonable estimate. The motorcyclists would joyride in loops, so you would hear them multiple times, being disrupted each time. I think for this reason the disruption caused per ride is comparable to a streaker on the field of a major sports event that forces game play to be paused. For someone who disrupts whole neighborhoods in this way, on regular basis, to say it's "for safety" seems like a narcissistic delusion. If I drive a car on the highway, and there are large trucks with big blindspots and drivers who I know are struggling after having been at it for 12h, should I have a siren to make sure they know I'm there?
I must hasten to add that cyclists and pedestrians also have to deal with drivers in massive metal deathboxes, and we do it without disrupting the whole world around us.
Exactly. As far as I've been able to tell, mere noise will do absolutely nothing to get most drivers' attention. I've seen drivers fail to notice a police car or other emergency vehicle behind them, siren and lights both on, as they stare fixedly at the phone in their lap. Even in less extreme cases, most drivers will just treat loud motorcycle noise as part of the general din of being in a place where they exist. It won't generally have any effect at all on their decisions to speed up, slow down, or change lanes. Fun fact: the more common a noise is, the less likely it becomes that it will have any effect at all on people's behavior.
If the only way for a vehicle to be operated safely is for it to be incredibly loud, then how about we ban them from urban areas or perhaps in general?
Doing dangerous stuff is cool. All the coolest bikers stealth their bikes. Put on extra silent exhausts. Dress in all black. Dim their lights. Hide in the blind spots of other cars.
Hire some people to put that on TikTok, and it's problem solved.
At the low frequencies that tend to dominate and at that volume, it's relatively difficult to figure out where the source of the sound actually is, especially with buildings around that reflect sound every which way
I don’t think your brain learned about one way streets and started fully trusting drivers to follow the law, certainly not the low-level parts that govern the “there’s something there you may need to pay attention to” mechanism.
I usually am aware that I'm in the middle of the street when I'm not supposed to be there (think when there's something blocking the sidewalk or similar). In this case, I'll absolutely pay a lot of attention to my surroundings. Hell, even when I cross the street at a green light, I'll look before I step off the sidewalk.
Because in my mental model of traffic, drivers are very likely to not follow the law.
I may very well be in the right and the guy running me over may very well be certain to get convicted, but what good does that do to me if my legs are broken or worse?
I think it's the same thing with the new electric cars, which have to make a noise because people can't hear them coming otherwise. This, to me, means that pedestrians are expected to pay at least some attention to their surroundings. Which, of course, doesn't mean you should run them over or otherwise put them at risk if they're careless.
But my overarching point is that enough people don't pay attention even when they are expected to, and no amount of noise is going to change that.
Behold, the dialectic of the material conception of the human mind. In my mind it bears an uncanny resemblance to the liquid humours posited by our forefathers, no?
Deaf people exist. And there are going to be people in the middle of the road from time to time; it happens. And sometimes people make mistakes. I’ve even seen people not realize that a street was one way. And sound reflects and bounces, and vehicles are capable of moving at different speeds; they’re even capable of moving the wrong way or on adjacent roads or on cross roads or on fields, making the determination of location not always straightforward. And any factors that did or did not apply in your story may apply in others. Just all the more reason for drivers to be careful.
Even louder pipes with high frequency noise should help with directionality /s
My bike came with a Yoshimura and it is deafening to me even on a 372cc. I had to buy a baffle for it and wear earplugs. My watch warns me it’s still 90 to 100 dB.
I guess it kinda sounds cool for about a minute before being unhealthy. It was a surprise to me that anyone want such a thing when I first started out.
It's an absolutely delusional argument imo. I think SciShow did an episode on it, but drivers can not hear motorcycles until they're right next to them, and I believe it has to do with how sound travels.
The sound on those bikes are directed almost entirely backwards. Which is why you can hear a Harley that blows by you until they get 2 miles ahead, but that same bike is essentially silent while it’s closing on you from behind. It’s a stupid argument.
Pipes point backwards. They still don't make enough noise to be heard from in front. That's why loud bikes always scare people, you don't hear them coming until they are next to you and blasting past you. It's silence and then deafening roar.
Loud pipes save lives is bullshit. Defensive riding, good safety gear, and staying out of blind spots saves lives.
It was a legal, unmodified exhaust. It was loud, but not "extremely" so. Also, they were not crossing, they were walking down the middle of the street. You know, where cars are supposed to go. People walk on sidewalks.
This was a Paris street, with two large sidewalks on either side of a narrowish one-way street. It's not like they had no other practical choice.
"Legal" is an arbitrary metric likely formulated in concert with the car/bike manufacturers via corrup... excuse me, via lobbying, so you should really know better than to use that term as a shield.
Do you not agree that noise pollution is a real problem that has grown to unacceptable levels?
Expect even more civil disobedience -- I've observed the same as you in my city, people started doing it on purpose to sabotage cars and bikes taking way too much space on iconic scenic streets.
I do agree. It's one of the reasons why I've sold that bike several years ago.
But I very much doubt this was done on purpose. This was not an "iconic" street by any means, just a random street of no particular interest, with close to no traffic, pedestrian or vehicle. Such "iconic" streets do exist, and they usually have specific road rules where people are allowed to walk in the middle of street and cars are expected to avoid them (the streets) as much as possible. This was no such street.
Plus, they were already walking down the middle of the road much before I was close to them. I've also seen other people do the same even with no vehicle in sight, in this or other similar streets. This is also a problem for bicycles, which also have to ride in the street and aren't exactly a source of annoying noise.
> Plus, Paris or not, with no setback for the buildings nobody wants to risk getting leftover washing liquid poured on them from a window.
Wtf, this is not backwater Russia we're talking about (aka the places where the Russian units originated that were caught looting washing machines). I've never seen someone be as intentionally rude as to dump out water from a window.
I sort of see it all the time in Paris. I almost got dumped on a couple of weeks ago when walking my children. If we had been five seconds earlier, we would have been soaked.
(I say "sort of" because I assume it's generally people watering plants, but the amount of water coming down seems excessive.)
People are conditioned to ignore the droning sound of exhaust. It's ubiquitous and also not very directional. Horns, on the other hand, usually work to get peoples attention.
Have you considered maybe you're in the wrong? The hierarchy of responsibility puts a motorbike above (more responsible) than a pedestrian.
Three people is more than one, so you are really saying you inconvenienced three more vulnerable people just so you, a single person, could go down a road, at speed, without a care for others.
I wasn't racing down the street, if that's what you're saying. And, at least in these parts, pedestrians aren't supposed to walk in the middle of the street if there are sidewalks available (outside certain designated areas, of which this street was not one).
Many a street has been converted to such an area. But rules apply to everybody, and sometimes even an obnoxious biker can actually be in the right.
> While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky.
I'd think it's an outright self-defeating lie: they're so noisy you will hear them all over with no ability to see them (and most of the time they're irrelevant to you), so you just get listening fatigue, and you stop caring aside from being annoyed by the constant noise. And that's just as a driver, as a nearby resident it's infuriating.
One biker jumped to fight me once after I joked with him that he uses loud exhaust pipes to get a prostate massage while riding. People around him stopped him. I laughed my arse off. Apparently I hit a nerve.
But yeah, that's how much respect I have for these people. Whatever reasons they invent the fact of the matter is that noise pollution is already too much and everyone should be working on reducing it. Everyone. No exceptions. Including mothers with rattling strollers; having one with rubber wheels is not gonna bankrupt her family, I am pretty sure.
You’re being an oaf about the strollers, the noise isn’t anywhere near as loud as for motorcycles (bizarre to compare them) and if you had kids you’d know the inflatable tires only work on large jogger or double wide strollers (and about those you’d be complaining how much space the pay take up on the sidewalk, in the grocery store, in the subway etc and if someone needs to ride the bus or a taxi they are not even an option). Typical complaining from a self centered non parent.
No need for jumping to conclusions. I sympathize with parents' problems and I prefer the bigger strollers because they don't rattle. Whether they belong to public spaces is something people can't agree on but I'm not seeing riots over it.
Me and others are inclined towards solutions that reduce noise.
> Having been neighbors with a lot of these guys, it has been repeatedly explained to me that theh make their bikes louder to be heard for safety.
Very popular line of thinking with people who own (e.g.) Harley-Davidsons… which are loud out of the box. Go over to (say) /r/motorcycles where there's a larger variety of ownership, and not many folks really buy it.
The High Side, Low Side motorcycle podcast had an episode on moto-myths where they went over this:
I was banned from /r/motorcycles for commenting on a handlebar camera video where a guy was racing down a winding, limited visibility road with his buddies and lost control trying to avoid hitting a cyclist who was crossing in a crosswalk, complete with blinking warning lights.
Every comment was "fuck that cyclist, they rode out in front of you!"
Apparently calculating from the video that they were doing 15+ mph over the speed limit, and proving from the video and math that the cyclist could not see him before they'd started into the crosswalk...was ban-worthy.
The guy even blurred out his speedometer to hide that he was speeding.
His comment/post history showed that the motorcycle, which was a very powerful model, was his first bike and he'd very recently bought it. He posted "new motorcycle day" pictures.
The guy was a textbook squid: recently acquired first bike was too powerful for him, no brains/skills, riding dangerously, putting himself and others at risk.
Pointed that out to the mods and was told I was being reported for "doxxing." For clicking on "posts" on his profile and seeing he'd recently posted a picture of the bike.
This kinda nails an issue with reddit. You can find a hobby/community that you have overlapping interest in, but the culture/moderation of that community may not have any consistency with what you want. Which would be fine, but reddit doesn't provide room/discoverability for multiple subreddits of the same topic with different moderation styles/cultures.
Very popular line of thinking with people who own (e.g.) Harley-Davidsons… which are loud out of the box.
No they are not, at least not in the U. S. Thé EPA dictates a max dB sound output, and HDs must meet it, like everyone else. Stock HDs sound quite nice.
Of course, you might not know this because no real American leaves a HD dealer with the stock exhaust installed.
The aftermarket for noise scofflaws should not exist. I lived near some kind of chopper club years ago and every Sunday around 10am you'd have these clowns revving loud enough to nearly make eardrums bleed. I theorize the reason they feel comfortable inflicting this on others is because they have the admiration and encouragement of the individuals on the police force who would do the same with their cruisers if the city would buy the parts. Pox on all of them in this narrow regard.
Not to mention, the noise from pipes emanates backwards, toward cars that have the motorcycle in their field of vision. Even the loudest bikes I don't really hear until they pass me.
I don't buy it, and I'm both a motorcycle rider and a driver.
Some people like loud exhaust, period. It's a cool sound. It makes you feel powerful. Safety aspect is a rationalization for others and possibly yourself. In busy traffic, to another moving vehicle, sound is neither going to be heard clearly nor will it provide directional or distance cues. If they're interested in safety (or would like to think they are), ask them about their full face helmet, which motorcycle course they're thinking of taking next, and what's their training routine in the spring. Maybe whether they're considering a high visibility outfit instead of black leather.
That’s the first I’ve heard of the insurance argument, and I think you’re right. If loud pipes saved lives, Progressive Flo would’ve mentioned their noise discounts.
Actuaries can tell us the exact relation between volume and deaths per mile, I bet, and it must be nearly zero.
> it has been repeatedly explained to me that theh make their bikes louder to be heard for safety
I always found that argument to be a bit of a red herring.
_Even if_ that was true and _even if_ the only way to safely ride a motorcycle was by disturbing every single person you pass by on the street, that still doesn't justify people riding loud bikes.
At that point, you are making a deliberate, selfish choice that your enjoyment of riding a bike is more important than other people's comfort.
It's like someone bringing smelly food on a plane and saying they're justified because it's the only way they can eat their favourite dish. We don't go "oh, they're right, the smell is necessary for them to enjoy their food." We go "just eat something else, you're being selfish".
>While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky. Motorcycles are loud by default, and using aftermarket parts to make them louder is just part of the self-affirming statement of ego. These guys need you to know how big and bad they believe themselves to be that they'll make other sacrifices in their lives to afford projecting that image.
It basically is. Most bike horns are going to be louder then stock or aftermarket exhausts, yet no one's gone around tapping the horn button down.
There's a problem in that the danger is in front but the exhaust noise goes out the back. I was once driving cross crunchy in a big truck with a trailer when I was startled by a loud motorcycle coming up beside me. He had been in danger the entire time he was next to me but I never heard him until he got right next to the cab.
They should really point the loud exhaust forward but who wants to live with that noise?
While I am annoyed by loud motorcycles, I understand and totally agree with riders about being loud so cars are aware. Drivers are shockingly unaware of their surroundings. It's worse with drivers of larger trucks and SUVs. Drivers don't address their blind spots, they don't pay attention, they don't signal, they don't look. I've fortunately never seen a motorcyclist hit by a car, but I've seen a lot of close calls, and not one of them has been saved because the driver suddenly noticed the bike.
I'm sure there are guys who want to be loud, just like the kids who put the noisy mufflers on their cars. For most bikers I don't think they see a better alternative.
At moderate to high speeds you can’t even hear bikes until they’re beside or in front of you anyway. Loud pipes just fuel anti-motorcycle sentiment. As a motorcyclist it’s frustrating to see people vote for rules and regulations that limit motorcycle modification, but I understand why they do it.
Underpowered scooters/mopeds can also be a huge problem (near me this is the main noise problem at night - usually food delivery drivers) - they get very noisy when they go a bit faster in a way more powerful motorbikes don't.
Scooters are often 2-stroke. They have centrifugal clutches so they need to be revved high to engage and accelerate. They are also cheap and a large portion seem to have failed mufflers. These three things make them particularly annoying even if they aren't the loudest things on the road.
And they stink, which is even worse than the noise. Ever since my nose worked again after covid, I've gotten intensely sensitive to diesel, gas and two-stroke smoke - even a whiff is enough to send me into serious headaches.
Around here it's definitely motorcycles, they have a completely different sound than delivery mopeds (which are almost nonexistent nearby), and they're speeding on the road just over.
Some idiots on motorcycles blast music at 120dB in addition to engine noise. Back when I lived some thirty yards from a fairly busy street, I couldn’t hear any car traffic, but these motorcycles announced their arrival from a mile away.
Live near a 'late shop' where teens 'hang out', and most of the time the wankers revving their bikes here are doing it to impress teenage girls, sadly being able to overhear them occasionally, it seems to work.
One particular bike owner literally just rides around in a rectangular pattern most evenings, over and over, revving only when he gets the junction in front of where the teens hang out - yes, I can hear his bike on all 4 sides of the pattern.
However, the most annoying motorist we get, is a middle aged woman who owns a white audi and sits arming/disarming and triggering her alarm whenever she sends her husband/partner into the shop, she performs this ritual 2-3 times a day usually. Very annoying hearing 'bip.... bip bip bip... bip. wuuuuwuuuuwuuu bip, bip bip bip...' and so on.
I regularly lie awake as some idiot is racing round residential London streets in the distance, in densely populated areas it must be in the thousands of people that are being disrupted by a single person.
thousands of people that are being disrupted by a single person
We are in a very weird place as a culture where this isn’t necessarily considered a slam dunk to come down super hard on whatever it is. The pendulum has swung way too far, we need to move back in the direction of protecting the community.
Ha-ha, but seriously: Society seems to have lost the ability to curb "annoying, mildly belligerent, but not strictly illegal" antisocial behavior. Used to be, if someone did some taboo thing that irritated everyone around them, the community would shame him for it. Now, you say something to them, and everyone whips their phone out and you're suddenly the Village Karen, butting your nose in where it doesn't belong. From loud motorcycles to cutting in queue, to abusing retail workers, to holding up traffic to take a selfie, to TikTok "pranks", everyone can basically get away with being a narcissistic asshole, and everyone else just keeps their heads down, desperately minding their own business.
In the 90s, the small town I lived in had a local community triple action principle. This was demonstrated on a little shit that had a noisy Renault 5 that used to get revved up all the time for no reason (between begging for £5 worth of fuel at the petrol station to keep it alive).
The first time he pissed someone off, it cost him a new tyre with a warning posted under the windscreen wiper, the second time it cost him a windscreen and a tyre. The third time the car had to be scraped off the road with a pick axe after being torched. The police saw nothing and did not do anything about it because they were happy with the outcome.
You've actually raised a fantastic real example of this in practice.
If I post a trollish comment, it'll likely get downvoted and/or flagged/hidden. In plausibly accidental cases, someone might leave a comment saying "you're likely getting downvoted because <douchey thing>." If I demonstrate a significant pattern of the same, I'll get shadowbanned (or fully banned).
You don't need to behead drivers of annoying bikes, but chastisement, mild punishment, and then significant punishment, is a sensible escalation. One potential system might be where the first offense gets a warning to fix the problem, the second offense gets a ticket and order to fix the problem, and the third gets the vehicle impounded.
How do you forsee a bill getting enough votes to make even a minor change, let alone 'whatever it takes', that could potentially penalize tens of thousands of people? Won't they all band up to defeat your proposal?
What happens in practice is that those thousands of people degrade the quality of life of millions of people. Those millions, don’t do anything, and don’t do anything, and don’t do anything, and then elect a populist right winger running on a law and order platform. Then you get all kinds of distraught think-pieces from distraught 25 year old graduates of elite art colleges wondering how this could possibly have happened.
For first few offenses a few days in the stocks sounds reasonable, the second time we take an ear and for third offense you can pick between the gallows or being shipped to Australia.
When I moved to London from Central Europe, I was surprised how many people drive with loud exhausts in residential areas. It was especially annoying during the night, when every fifteen minutes some idiot would drive down the nearby 2-lane road (Aerodrome Rd, Colindale) at full throttle.
It’s actually ridiculous the level of noise some people drive around making. People buy “pop and bang” ECU tunes that when combined with a aftermarket exhaust make their car sound like a howitzer. I live on a main road, and there are some cars driving around at night that I can hear half a mile away or more. The cops or council should seize the cars and the owners should have to pay to have the mods undone before they can get them returned.
The other thing I don’t understand is how in the UK these people are passing MOTs. Either they are colluding with a garage to get fake passes, or they are on fake plates, or they’re undoing the mod every year when they need to go get an MOT.
Don't force them to fix them. Just crush them with zero warning. Word gets around quickly.
I'm in favour of banning all modifications to vehicles as well. Seen several cars with turned in wheels and appendages which are clearly affecting traction and aerodynamics.
No point in going after mechanics. The supply of people who can do these mods probably outnumber the number of drivers who want these mods 10 to 1, or more.
I can do most mods at home, and I know at least 5 other diyers who can, but I don't personally know anyone who wants these mods.
Forget tunes, manufacturers are sending the things out of the factory with "pop and bang" settings. It needs to be outlawed. It's getting worse and worse. Presumably MOT doesn't cover it if they are getting set this way by default.
Noise pollution in general is getting really bad and I think manufacturers need to be held accountable for this. My neighbour has recently installed some kind of "smart door bell". When the postie, or whoever, rings this, it makes a chime on the outside of the house. So the whole street knows when that doorbell is pressed. Why in the ever-loving fuck does it even have a speaker on the outside of the house?!
Years ago a friend dropped his car off for three hours to get an MOT. When he received the certificate it had apparently been issued by a garage hundreds of miles away so it was plainly bogus. He reported it to the police. They did not give two fucks. I would be surprised if these modders have any trouble getting an MOT.
They have more an issue if they ever try and claim something on their insurance. Insurance companies are definitely motivated to find reasons not to pay out, and undeclared modifications are a pretty easy way to void your insurance.
We already have them in some areas (along with PSPOs which create the legal basis to fine for excessive noise). I think Knighsbridge was the first but believe they now also have them on Brompton Road and a few others - see here https://www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/london-counc...
I never understood the desire to be loud. My EV is probably faster than most of the cars on the road screaming at the top of their lungs and showing off their engines and it's whisper quiet. I like it that way.
Prior to the current generation of very fast EVs, having a louder vehicle was a way to indicate more power. A more powerful (internal combustion) engine implies more noise. Of course the reverse doesn't apply, more noise doesn't strictly imply more power - it can just be an exhaust with lousy noise suppression. ALSO you might eke a little more power from an engine with less back pressure from the exhaust, so there is some real effect available.
So if you've got some modified monster with an insane engine, it's going to be loud. And if you're a wannabe with a superficially-modified, underpowered car, you can add more noise easier than you can add more power, and hope to fool people. It's not very laudable, but you can see how it could motivate the ego of the inconsiderate.
Sure, and I get that I suppose. Driving fast ICE cars is a fun but different experience. What kills me are Honda civics with "performance" mufflers that muffle.. less.
I don't think it is about the speed. My combine tops out at 18MPH, but there is something about the sound its engine makes when it is revved up – and when you throw the hydro level forward, oh boy.
I also enjoy concerts, though. Understandably music isn't for everyone.
Blame Jeremy Clarkson and the car culture he fostered. For decades, new and old cars were judged by their ability to spin their wheels around a test track, and by the loudness of their exhaust heard inside a tunnel.
Blaming Clarkson for loud cars is like blaming videogames for mass shootings. Car yobs, and the tuning culture, existed way before Top Gear became popular entertainment, but is nearly as old as the invention of the automobile.
I'm a Brit (living in Germany) and I think it's much more related to our hatred of rule-following, combined with austerity. I am still surprised at how rebellious people are in the UK. During COVID, I barely saw any police confront those who weren't wearing masks. When I moved to Hamburg, the transport security would stand at the stations and if they saw someone asleep on the S-Bahn with their mask falling off they would go on the train and berate them. One funny thing was getting the S-Bahn from the airport, all the Brits would not be wearing masks even though you were required to by law. They would keep it up for about 3 stops before getting scared at all the staring and putting their masks on. Frankly, it's just a very different world. In the UK, it genuinely seems like the police are often too scared to confront anti-social behaviour. This is not so in mainland Europe
On the other hand, when I leave London to visit Vienna or Berlin or Frankfurt and I see a dozen Germanophones standing motionless at a crossing with a red light for pedestrians, but there is not a single car in sight, I think what on earth is wrong with these lemmings, do they have no brain of their own?
There's a balance to be had, and I would suggest neither Germany nor Austria nor the UK has it right.
> but there is not a single car in sight, I think what on earth is wrong with these lemmings, do they have no brain of their own?
We have more than enough bored cops that love to annoy people both on feet and on bike with red-light tickets in quiet areas. For pedestrians it's just annoying with a 5€ "fine", but for bicyclists or e-scooter drivers it means a strike in your driver's license.
There’s a marked difference between a performance car with an aggressive exhaust under wide open throttle and a modified economy car with a stupid loud exhaust under normal driving.
Even the super cars have to obey noise regulations. The modified cars can be 10-20dB louder, which is a lot.
I’d blame the people doing that, not the one who makes a show, it is not because I like cars and like to run them on tracks I am responsible for those who drive modified cars in urban areas
Oh come on. He’s a terrible person, loud cars are a freaking nuisance, but to claim that he’s the reason everyone from Thai teenagers to Georgian gangsters to Emirati chammaks[0] is removing their muffler because of him is bizarrely and myopically Anglocentric.
Part of it is the prevalence of "pop and bang" maps, modified ECU configuration which changes timing and allows unburnt fuel to enter the hot exhaust and explode.
There is a purpose to this in turbocharged cars in motor racing - anti-lag - as the extra gases keep the turbo spinning during gear changes. No reason for it on public roads though.
There's also a lot of "cat deletes" (removal of catalytic converters to improve exhaust gas flow and increase engine power). Illegal, but very common to see on YouTube and just like pretty much anything else illegal on the roads in the UK these days, the police don't seem to care at all.
> There are so many cars modified to have explosive sounding exhausts it's unreal
> There is no reason other than you want to look like a complete wanker
In case anyone doesn’t know, the pop sound can serve a real purpose. The sound comes from extra fuel being ignited in the exhaust, which is done to keep the turbo spinning when you let off the gas. It helps minimize turbo lag. It also occurs in older race cars that had carburetors because they had less precise control over fuel injection compared to modern cars.
That said, some people tune their car to imitate that sound with no purpose just cause they think it sounds cool. They waste extra fuel just to sound like that.
There’s also the pop on gear shifts, due to killing the spark on gear shifts for a faster shift. The alternative is that awful dreadful rev-hang in standard transmission cars.
same here by me in a random part of the US. My house sits on a street that is not incorporated by the local city so the sheriff has jurisdiction over it and won't bother to send a squad car to watch for speeding. It's a residential street that is very straight for the area and easy to see on. The speed limit is 35 mph but I have clocked people going 80 mph past my house. I think people know it for being a good road to speed on. One car used both lanes to do a speed test and the marks are still on the street, smoke all over my yard from that one.
I noticed it increased after 2020. My theory was here at least that people got accustomed to speeding from the empty roads and lower enforcement but I think the extremely low interest rates let people get into the car market and a lot of people bought obnoxious cars and modded them. Some people must like that noise. I think it's a signal of how their car is fast and they are willing to flaunt rules.
My old high school friends put noisy exhaust systems on because the unrestricted systems promised to increase the hp of their 100hp honda civics by 5-10hp. BMW actually used to play fake engine noises through the speakers bc they were afraid the cars had become to quiet. Harley Davidsons whole reason for existence is to be noisy. Wankers everywhere.
Same problem in the US. 16year olds think the only way to be cool is to attach a stupid rattler to your exhaust, or cut a hole to make it louder, or intentionally make it backfire.
Did something change with regard to the value of a catalytic converter in the last ten years? Has the recycling market become more open than it used to be?
Doesn't always work when the car is modified to make as much noise as possible. There's one near us that speeds up and down but the exhaust sounds like a gun being fired. Seriously loud and obnoxious.a
As far as tasks go making the world quiet is probably more difficult than adapting your home to be a more sound proof and climate controlled.
My advice here is the only one actually guaranteed to improve the problem. It also costs less than bribing politicians to passing a law for you or inventing bespoke technology and deploying it to the sides of every road.
> As far as tasks go making the world quiet is probably more difficult than adapting your home to be a more sound proof and climate controlled.
I mean, probably not, since other countries have greatly reduced the problem without much issue.
> My advice here is the only one actually guaranteed to improve the problem. It also costs less than bribing politicians to passing a law for you or inventing bespoke technology and deploying it to the sides of every road.
No one is denying the existence of bandaids solutions, but that doesn't mean we should stop at bandaid solutions. Frankly this sounds like libertarian ideology. We don't just let people do bad things because we can choose to insulate ourselves in a fortress, instead we focus on fixing society first and plan to one day remove the bandaid.
This is great. Noise pollution really is a massive blind spot in vehicle regulations. Even combustion-powered cars can be made pretty quiet, but morons associate "loud" with "fast", so manufacturers keep installing defeat devices in the mufflers. Motorcycles are even worse. The noise measurements are apparently made under completely unrealistic operating conditions, and on the road they are many times louder than most cars.
My 1200 petrol car is so quiet you can't actually hear the engine from within the car, and there's no sound damping under the bonnet (no top engine cover, no padding on the bonnet itself despite the mounting there for it), so petrol cars can absolutely be quiet.
I think the thing with motorbikes is everything is so much more exposed, and they rev higher in general, so the sound thing is probably a harder problem.
I am actually of the belief that motorbikes and scooters should be encouraged in cities, because they are a lot smaller, and more efficient in general than cars (so long as you don't have a massive bike), and take up a lot less space when parking. Do most people really need a 1.5 tonne car to go to work as opposed to a 200kg bike?
> I think the thing with motorbikes is everything is so much more exposed, and they rev higher in general, so the sound thing is probably a harder problem.
Meh. Some have figured a way to make them quiet. Most "touring" bikes are very reasonable. I'm thinking BMW K16s, Honda Goldwings, Yamaha FJRs. With stock pipes, of course. Hell, even my VFR1200 is very quiet with the stock pipe, which closes a flap below 5000 RPM. When idling at a traffic light, if there's a car around, I can't hear the bike.
I live in Paris, a few meters from the busiest crossroad of the city, and my experience with scooters (even the best 4 stroke ones) is very, very different.
It’s a great theory, but it has a problem. There are quiet motorcycles. For example, BMW motorcycles are quiet.
[BMW made a cruiser bike for a few years. They were trying to move into Harley’s market segment. In order to get the “right” sound they had to detune the engine, resulting in a massive decrease in horsepower.]
> My 1200 petrol car is so quiet you can't actually hear the engine from within the ca
Because your car is actually insulated from that noise. Look at every car review ever and there is a section about noise isolation.
Furthermore the sound is also dependent on the length of exhaust - your average car exhausts is longer than a whole bike and for example previously mentioned BMWs wriggle it around the whole engine back and forth just for that reason. This comes at the price of weight and thus handling/fuel efficiency and actual pollution.
With motorcycles, it's a choice, but loud bikes are tied very closely to perceived power and manliness for some riders, plus the whole patently-bullshit POV of "loud pipes save lives." Honestly, it's MOSTLY Harley riders, at least in the US.
I have a motorcycle. It's louder than a car is, but it's not obnoxiously loud at all. You can't hear it from inside YOUR car, for example. Further, I can have a conversation with someone without turning the bike off. MOST motorcycles are like this, in fact. But the loud assholes kinda ruin the overall reputation for everyone.
I wish they'd bring this to near me. I'm especially interested because I'm a motorcyclist. Seems 90% of riders get angry when an exhaust isn't loud as a jet and it's often one of the first mods people make.
I couldn't care less and prefer not to annoy everyone in a 100 yard radius from me.
Unlike what most riders will say loud pipes don't really save lives, good and safe riding does. They just use this excuse for the mistakes they make most of the time.
I always thought it was an excuse. Like, 'Check out my cool bike. It's matte black because that looks cool. I got a pretty rad old-school matte black helmet to match. And of course a black riding jacket. Oh yeah, and I set the carburetor to sound like a cessna because cars don't see us!'
I was looking at a house with my wife that was relatively close to a major road. I wasn't sure if it was going to be an issue or not. A loud bike drove by and we crossed that house off the list.
If I had a bike, I'd model my look after a disco ball instead of the road tar.
I mean I won't lie, I like how my bikes look. I like the style of wearing my gear and whatnot. It's what I grew up aspiring to do, I wanted to ride from the time I was like 12.
I'm 31 now and have ridden all my adulthood and still like the style, but I don't intend to announce my presence via annoying sound to everyone within a football field radius.
I actively try to be a friendly driver unlike some of the dumbasses I share this hobby with who make us all look bad.
> Seems 90% of riders get angry when an exhaust isn't loud as a jet and it's often one of the first mods people make.
I am a motorcyclist, and I get angry when I hear a loud motorcycle. I want my next motorcycle to be as quiet as possible! And I want people to be fined when they produce such high levels of noise pollution.
In most countries there is a mandatory periodic technical examination for motor vehicles (like MOT, TÜV, etc) where lights are tested for exactly this reason.
Also, I don't think people tilt their headlamps up on purpose.
What typically happens around me seems to be that someone installs aftermarket headlights — often obnoxiously bright — and then fail to actually adjust them correctly. And we (in this American state) don’t have those types of safety inspections.
Or they just drive around with their high beams on all the time. That happens, too.
I know a guy who does this. Was a passenger in his truck at night and pretty quickly noticed he was blinding everyone. "Dude, you have your high beams on!" "Yea, they're brighter so I can see better." "You're supposed to turn them to low when other cars are coming." He looked at me like I had antlers growing out of my head. It never occurred to him to give even a single shit about everyone else on the road. Total "Main Character" syndrome.
Two of my friends rode motorcycles and did this on purpose because “it’s more annoying so people see me coming” and I’ve never been able to convince them it’s dangerous because you’re basically blinding people…
Edit: also in the Netherlands there is no periodic technical check required for motorcycles
The reason exhausts are loud is that there is detonation happening inside the exhaust. This happens when you increase the fuel-air mixture above what the cylinders will support for combustion and often gives slightly (maybe 10%) better performance of the car, for the cost of much lower lifetime of many components (not just the cylinders), and of course making enough noise to wake the dead.
There's plenty of motorcyclists who do the same though.
Even though what you describe has, for some reason, become much more common lately, many exhausts are just loud for no good reason. Think Harleys or even the Yamaha TMax with the Akrapovic exhaust. They don't have the "pop-pop-pop" sound related to detonations, but are still absurdly loud.
> There's plenty of motorcyclists who do the same though.
What's funny is that in my neck of the woods, it's motorcycles with bad aftermarket pipes that had been making that noise for a long time. So now, whenever I hear a car making that noise, instead of associating it with some "big mean engine" as their owners probably hope, I associate it with some overworked 600cc.
What do you mean by speakers? As in for the radio? I've noticed that, too, but, fortunately, where I live they aren't that common yet.
What is common, though, is people on bicycles and kick scooters carrying a loud-ass speaker blasting random music. Reminds me of boomboxes in old American movies. Fortunately, that doesn't carry as far as the exhaust, so it's not a problem while I'm in my apartment, only when walking down the street.
No, by speakers I mean the audio output devices they've installed that replicate the noise effects of a gas engine, on an otherwise whisper-quiet electric Harley. Pointless, expensive features to keep clowns happy with their "outlaw" motorcyclist image.
Wow. I'd heard about some cars using the stereo to blast "fake" engine noise inside when they switched to smaller, quieter engines, but never for bikes.
In the US especially it seems to be the trend. I've ridden elsewhere where the problem seems to be less present (but not non-existent).
They pass it off as safety to make up for their lack of skill. It's honestly appalling the low amount of skill/practice needed to get a bike here in the states.
Some people optimize for the noise, and not performance, for the same reason people stick racing decals and put a spoiler on a car that doesn't really need it.
Heck, some people will literally drill a hole in the exhaust to get that noise, for absolutely no performance benefit whatsoever.
I don’t know about that. I have an older sport quad ATV. Loud AF with custom exhaust the last owner installed. I have full control of the fuel delivery with the carb mixture/jetting/etc, and there is no nothing other than preventing backfiring/popping that has any effect on the noise. I even tried repacking the “muffler” with new stuffing—- didn’t help.
Most newer bikes barring maybe Harleys come stock with exhausts that aren't monstrously loud because of regulations (though some have ways around that).
Problem is most peoples first course of action is to modify it to sound louder/"better". You'll often see this as the first complaint people have about bikes in motorcycle review videos.
My current bike is a newer CBR650R, mand it sounds relatively tame. But some people complain about that.
An older vehicle I may not fault as much, but you also have people revving to redline for no probable reason.
OT: It's not actually a "noise camera". It's a speed camera with some directional microphones that triggers if there is too much noise, probably with some filtering to try to avoid triggering on noise that isn't loud car noise.
There are actually acoustic cameras that are much more like a "camera" in that you get a 2D map of the sound reaching the device. This can be overlaid on an image from a light camera and you get an image where you can see where all the sounds are coming from.
Some of them can make acoustic movies, where each frame is a light camera image overlaid with the sound map, usually coloring the optical image based on the sound with color indicating frequency and brightness indicating loudness.
With these you can do neat things like make a sharp sound and see the echo bounce around a room, or look at something making a variety of sounds and see which sounds are coming from where.
They often include software that is kind of an audio image version of Photoshop. You can use that software's equivalent of the eye dropper tool to point anywhere in the image and here the sound coming from that point. E.g., if you had an acoustic movie of the strings of piano and the pianist was playing a 10 note chord you could pick an individual string and play back the sound of just that string.
Here's a video where science YouTuber Steve Mould was loaned some to play around with, showing some of the cool things you can do with them [1].
It's a minor nit-pick either way but a speed camera doesn't make an image of the speed nor usually use images to calculate speed. It usually measures the speed using radar, laser or wire loops and then captures an image. So I think the term "noise camera" makes sense in this context.
I am in Amsterdam right now. Two things you notice quick when you are where Dutch people actually live (i.e. outside of Centraal): first, that it is remarkably quiet, and second, that cars are remarkably loud.
The loudest vehicles are the mopeds, though. It's almost like they don't have mufflers. I wonder if they are regulated differently?
My maxi scooter has its OEM mufflers and it isn't too noisy.
Problem is many people mount noisy aftermarket ones. They mount back the original one when they have the scheduled inspection.
Having said that, outside of the amount of decibels there are engines that are more annoying. 2-strokes high pitch screamers and single and bi-cylinder with lots of low frequency / bass noise.
And there are models that are probably made to pass homologation but do higher noise outside of the rev range used during homologation/inspection. The Yamaha T-Max is one example. It should be prohibited and all its drivers euthanasied. I am obviously joking for the second part but I have never encountered a decent human being riding one, they only attracts the worse of humanity. Yamaha should be ashamed of that.
I did a brief stint in Hoogte Kadijk one summer a few years back , seriously I actually developed severe depression which I think was from lack of sleep due to the unusual heat , the mopeds going past and the Airbnb guests checking into our old building at all hours making so much noise.
I couldn’t wait to leave, which was sad because the winter and autumn was absolutely bliss. We had a great life there.
The mopeds were astoundingly loud though, I’ll never forget it, I had PTSD, I could hear them coming from a ways off and it would make my blood boil before they went past and fuel my insomnia.
What is funny is the mopeds are still plaguing me in a different part of the world now :) they should be banned altogether, they suck.
When i was a kid, removing or significantly altering the muffler was the #1 mod to obtain more speed, and then of course there was the psychological effect of making noise to let everyone know you were around, which to me isn't that different to beasts growling loud to mark a wider territory. I guess that is normal for kids, not so much for grown ups.
Yes, 50cc scooters were subjectively as loud as 500cc grand prix bikes and made only 40 km/h. I hated them even when I was 14, the age when I could start driving one.
I live in Amsterdam and beg to differ. You are probably only referring to Jordaan, indeed it's pretty quiet for a simple reason: most streets aren't accessible by car (or if they are, they are a huge pain to drive around on). Have you been to de Pijp? Or the Oud Zuid? They're much more accessible by car and they're also incredibly noisy. I have lived in all 3 and can tell you that the difference is noticeable to say the least.
And also in Holland they barred right from the start using a mobile phone in restaurants which I love. I remember walking around the cobblestones one evening wearing dress shoes with a solid wood heal and got a lot of dirty looks for the clops. Not surprised at all this innovation is Dutch.
Last night I was listening to audio, went outside for a walk, quiet area, but when a car drove by I couldn’t hear what was being said for maybe 6 seconds, from the headphones that were pushed right into my ear holes.
What had been a comfortable speech listening volume is dwarfed by ordinary cars, not even modded boy racer cars speeding, just basic sedans doing the speed limit.
I listen to stuff on my headphones quite a lot when walking. In my previous city, I never had any hearing problems. I am now in a place where the larger your car (truck), the cooler you are. Its impossible to listen to anything because the cars are so loud. The old cities had smaller cars driving slower.
> "The car was probably driven by someone who needed to do a human thing. Drivers are not evil Captain Planet villains."
In other situations where someone annoys hundreds of people, harms the health of hundreds of people, primarily for their own benefit, we'd call that bad, undesirable, and socially shame the person doing it, wouldn't we? The situation is anti-human; it's not a nice situation to exist in as an unaugmented human outside a car, not nice to walk in, to talk in, tarmac road isn't beautiful, vehicle fumes don't smell nice, they're harmful to health, and it's not cheap to build cars and roads everywhere and maintain them. Cars take a huge amount of space to move one person compared to the space of one walking human or one biking human, and they push 'places' further apart to make room for vehicles and car parks.
It should be that for such tradeoffs, cars need to have an enormous payback - things which absolutely can't be done without them. For example, emergency services - noisy, but needs to move mutiple people and equipment in a hurry. Delivery vehicles needing to move large quantities of goods around, labour needing to move equipment around. However if it's done for travelling 2 miles because urban design gave no thought to walking or biking so that the only safe and convenient way to cover 2 miles is by car, even though owning a car is a huge cost, that's anti-human design.
The NotJustBikes YouTube channel linked above has the message that most people are not 'car people' but will use whatever transport is (the cheapest, the quickest, the most convenient). It's a failing of urban design and big picture thinking when individual car driving is the winner for many short journeys when it could be otherwise. It's a bit of a failure when walking and driving are a sidewalk beside a main road and other routes have no (sidewalks, streetlights, bike lanes, safe crossings, etc).
Compare for example the NJB videos:
- "Why grocery shopping is better in Amsterdam" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk where he compares shopping for food in Amsterdam with driving to an out of town box store in Canada, and having to drive in Canada.
- "Safe cycling showdown - Good vs. Bad city design" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8F5hXqS-Ac which is a 20 minute video, first 10 minutes is NJB cycling from Amsterdam center to a hardware store ~10Km away on the edge of town, voice overlay is him describing what makes good/bad cycling infrastructure along the way. The next 10 minutes is an equivalent ride in Calgary, Alberta, from city center to out of town hardware store a similar distance, and similar overlay commentary. The contrast is stark.
> n other situations where someone annoys hundreds of people, harms the health of hundreds of people, primarily for their own benefit, we'd call that bad, undesirable, and socially shame the person doing it, wouldn't we?
Annoying for living vs annoying for entertainment.
> “He’s the “everything could be done on a bike” type of guy.”
No? He drives cars, uses multiple car rental/car shares schemes, often says that it’s not cars he dislikes it’s urban design which leads to car dependency - unsafe for anyone outside a car, no provision for anything other than driving, single family housing zoning leading to everything being too spread out to go anywhere without a car - and that he’s not a ‘cyclist’ and would prefer taking a tram when possible.
The channel is even called “not just bikes” to push back against your kind of mischaracterisation.
> I kind of like his ideas (I know the channel), but he’s heavily biased against cars. He’s the “everything could be done on a bike” type of guy.
It's kind of hard to over emphasize the the damage they've done, specifically as forms of personal transportation (versus more commercial transport).
He does have a video called "The Best Country in the World for Drivers", in which he shows that by reducing the need for cars for most people, actually helps the optimize things for operating a car:
I used to walk through midtown new york city every day.
It's incredibly people-dense so there's definitely some baseline human noise, but I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely dwarfed by cars and delivery trucks it is. Construction work, shouting, music, etc. are almost a non-factor in comparison.
there's a new roundabout currently under construction about 200m from my house. i can hear the construction equipment working early in the morning and mid-afternoon when the road is quiet, but 90% of the time the construction noise is completely drowned out by the normal road noise, from the road on the far side of the roundabout. construction noise from a dozen pieces of heavy equipment working all day just isn't a significant source of noise compared to a moderately busy road. not to mention that in a few months the construction will be done, but the road will always be there.
"people shouting" and "loud music" don't even factor.
> He’s the “everything could be done on a bike” type of guy
While not everything can be done on a bike, a lot of people use a car when there is no need to. I can't understand why because cycling is way more enjoyable and in most cases a much faster way to get around town than a car. Especially if you own an e-bike.
I own a car but hardly feel the need to use it. I usually need to buy a full tank of gas once or twice a year.
His channel is literally named NOT JUST bikes...
He makes a lot of points about other aspects of safety, like speed bumps/other speed limiters, safe roundabouts, public transportation, etc...
Cars are by far the biggest noise contributor in a city and tbh i'd like drivers to pay a tax based on max sound a car may make on max engine speed(and if they want to pay less tax, speed should be physically limited to max 100km/h or something similar based on gps. But that's just a fantasy
This is why I kind of like the idea of so-called "Active Sound Design"[1]--where car makers are starting to play vroom-vroom noises over the internal speaker system to make their engines sound louder. Car enthusiasts criticize it as "fake engine noise" but it's actually brilliant: The only person who really cares that someone's car is loud and obnoxious is that car's driver, so let him blast himself with vroom-vroom and let everyone else enjoy a slightly quieter existence.
Never looked at it like that. My gut reaction when hearing about this first was a huge eye roll, ugh these babies, but now after you said that, hmmm, if it makes the car on the outside quiet...
This sounds great and all, but…. I live in an urban residential neighborhood and have a major hospital at the end of our block. Our street is a pretty big cut through street.
Yeah loud engines and music (and phone calls!) from cars is annoying, but that’s not where most of the sound comes from.
It is just tires on the asphalt that is so loud. I don’t know if this is due to how heavy American cars have gotten or changing roads from concrete to asphalt, but it has become quite unbearable.
The rise of e-bikes and personal mobility scooters has helped cut down on the noise somewhat, but I don’t know what you do about regular car noise (other than banning cars).
Also, whatever vehicle designer that decided the horn should honk whenever the car locks — you are on the top of my list!
> Also, whatever vehicle designer that decided the horn should honk whenever the car locks — you are on the top of my list!
This should be illegal. I sort of get it 30 years ago when aftermarket & OEM car alarms were a new thing, but that's it's still acceptable in 2023 is asinine.
No artificial sound should be allowed when locking or unlocking a car. Maybe flashing the headlights at most.
My last sedan would beep when you hit the lock button twice, which was great because I could lock it without being annoying but I could also use a beacon to find it in a parking lot. Now, my new RAV4 makes the tiniest little blip no matter how you lock it, it's only audible from a few feet away, so I can never find it in a parking lot.
I know this isnt a popular take but as a diesel engine mechanic, i think Amsterdam is going to be surprised at just how many "clean idle" diesel and modern trucks they are going to catch simply due to the nature of the regulation.
the regulatory ban on dirty trucks is a good thing, but most manufacturers implemented their fixes in the most ham-fisted and half-hearted way they could think of at the expense of noise emissions. take Vortec for example, a technology that creates a little mini "tornado" or air in the intake box to boost performance and improve emissions. at the hood or 'bonnet' of the truck during accelleration this thing can peak around 100db. Volvo tries to solve this with foam insulation for the intake area but that never lasts more than a few hundred thousand miles. Ive seen vortec trucks set off car alarms.
then theres the desperate attempt to keep unmaintained trucks on roads. If trucks dont get service regularly for urea tanks and other emission control devices, theyre supposed to go into 'limp' mode. 30kph, no faster, until service is made. well truck companies got around this by instituting 'regenerative' mode. if you walk past a very loud truck (and i mean freight train loud) idling in the street during a delivery, chances are good its past its service interval and has entered regen mode. idle engine speed is ramped up from 750 RPM to nearly 3500 in an attempt to generate temperatures hot enough to combust waste gasses instead of clean them on exit (frankly it doesnt really work.) its hard on the entire engine and environmental system but hey, truck still gets to do its job for the week.
I don't see anything in your comment that suggests a problem with their plan if the goal is to prevent vehicles from being too loud.... sure there may be some vehicles that are too loud because of good intentions on the emissions side, but that doesn't change the fact that they're too loud?
> i think Amsterdam is going to be surprised at just how many "clean idle" diesel and modern trucks they are going to catch simply due to the nature of the regulation
To me, this didn't read as a problem with the plan so much as an observation that they're going to be catching a broader profile of problem vehicles than they anticipated.
All in all, probably a good thing, but (as a foreigner who hasn't been there) it was, for me, an interesting observation.
It took me a few reads to come to the conclusion that this was the meaning instead of opposing the law. It feels like in needs an extra sentence along the lines of "this law will also help prevent work-arounds of existing emissions regulations."
The regeneration mode is to burn off accumulated particulates in a diesel particulate filter. This is why diesel cars typically need to be driven at motorway speeds regularly or have their DPF manually cleaned.
Urea is used to reduce NOx emissions, not particulates. It’s unrelated.
This is very timely as some jerk has just got himself a very loud motorcycle and decided it would be fun to ride it through our neighborhood day and night. I mean night, like after 11pm. And this is Seattle, where we leave our windows open at night because nobody has air conditioning. He is single-handedly interrupting the sleep of at least a thousand people every night.
Because this thoughtless dweeb actually seems to stick to a schedule, I’ve managed to capture his license plate, but I am considering building and deploying a personal “noise camera” to deliver a mountain of evidence to the police and see if they’ll take action. From this thread it sounds like that might be a popular open hardware project!
Amazing, it's so great to see this done and I wish sound pollution was taken nearly as seriously where I live.
Another cool thing is when I visited Japan and I learned a lot of the tools and drills used in renovations have more quiet/less noisy counterparts so when someone remodels a room in an apartment building or house next door it doesn't actually have to ruin your work-from-home day.
God bless Amsterdam for doing this. I had to move because of the noise produced by cars and motorcycles in the city where I lived. The vehicles were intentionally made noisier with "aftermarket exhaust systems". The people who intentionally make cities noisier are the lowest possible scum. Their vehicles should be confiscated and sold at auction, with none of the proceeds returning to the former owner.
I honestly rarely experience cars that are unreasonably loud in Amsterdam, they’re all roughly as loud, which bugs me but I’m used to it my whole life (and they got quieter over time).
But scooters and motorcycles? They frequently stand out as being much louder than anything, it’s jolting and creates an immediate annoyance that lasts until it’s out of hearing range.
I’m very optimistic as I expect these to be electrified relatively quickly. Not heavy motorcycles per se but they’re pretty rare. Gasolike scooters were everywhere though but they’re disappearing quick, in part due to helmet/roaduse rules in Amsterdam, in part due to electric scooters and bikes.
This summer I was bicycling for a while behind two (combustion engine) BMW touring motorbikes, and they were so quiet I think my clunker bicycle may have been the noisier of the three. I thought about thanking the riders, it really makes a big difference in the city.
Cities aren’t loud. Cars are loud. Especially the ones that are modified or designed to be loud.
Given the newest research regarding excessive noise’s impact on human, I wish more countries put some kind of effort into reducing noise on roads like the Netherlands does (this isn’t the only thing they do).
I'm not sure how common it is over Europe, but at least in Prague and in Amsterdam, there are very active campaigns regarding respectful noise levels in the major city areas, which most people seem to be pretty okay with.
I still see huge groups drinking and smoking outside every night at the pubs near where I live, but I can't say I've ever needed to complain about their noise levels, so people definitely seem on board with it; I can't say I've ever seen/heard persons getting into a heated discussion over noise, but naturally this is just my limited point of view and reality may differ.
Edit: also, just remembered that I even saw a more active approach to this when I lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where a few bars even had a "noise meter" outside the bar (just a simple dim but legible LED screen with the purported noise level and a sign explaining that if the number is > N, you're being too loud). It seemed to work pretty well.
It does need them, just not on every corner and just as last resort after foot, public transport, bikes and rentals, but car's shouldn't be banned, just regulated
I've lived in nyc for close to 20 years and never needed own a car. Between the subway, buses, and taxis (and uber, etc. nowadays) there is no reason to own a car unless you're using it to drive others around.
There is, but there is a vast difference in how much noise and when they make noise. I live next to a tram line with a 10-minute schedule. 12 trams/hour are substantially less annoying noisewise than the constant influx of cars the whole day.
The airport this plane was approaching was converted into an asylum processing centre for Ukrainians, the replacement is just outside the city limits: https://youtu.be/OIu-dDKCBoI
It was, naturally, much louder IRL than it seems in this clip.
People are loud. If you live in a city where people walk around, you'll hear every conversation from your street-facing windows. Cars are more obnoxious for sure, but they're hardly the exclusive problem contributing to noise.
stayed for a week in Barcelona. there was this little park in front of the hotel where some chirpy homeless people spent the whole night talking. not overly annoying as it was a constant noise.
In my experience, delivery trucks with very loud aftermarket exhaust aren't drag racing in residential areas at 2AM like cars do. I moved out of the city a few years ago though so maybe they do now.
There is not a constant stream of delivery trucks under most people's windows.
Furthermore it's likely easier to bring the hammer on delivery trucks if and when they become the primary issue, as those tend to have registration and responsible companies.
Articles like these always bring out suburbanites who point out that cities are loud and you need to deal with it if your are in the city. But most city noise is vehicles and it's quite amazing when you get a chance to realize this (for example when a normally busy street is made pedestrian-only for a weekend).
And sometimes you don't realize how life-alteringly noisy a particular street is until you move there. I have 2 examples. Near Cambie street bridge in Vancouver can be extremely loud at night. Normal traffic noise during the day. But there's a traffic light followed by a bridge which is slightly uphill, which I guess is an invitation for people in loud cars to burn out when the light turns green in the middle of the night. In Tokyo I lived on a very-quiet looking side street, it was nearby a Domino's and parallel to another small street, just large enough to have a traffic light. So my short street had a loud scooter accelerating into and out of it every few minutes to bypass the traffic light. These sorts of things aren't noticeable when you just visit a city but are absolute hell if you end up living nearby. The first example at least would be a good candidate for a noise camera.
Step 0 in the US might be enforcing laws against fake temporary tags or concealed license plates. If I had a dollar for every “thin blue line” sticker-sporting car with a barely-transparent bit of plastic over the license plate…
Seems like the illegal covers would be straightforward to enforce any time these cars are parked on public streets.
Non-obscuring covers are typically sold to protect the plate from the elements, flying rocks, UV exposure, etc (may be handy for vanity plates).
It also adds a bit of deterrence against tag theft, depending on how you secure it.
A person walking by may not be able to tell the difference between one meant to protect the plate and one that hides the plate from cameras, which can cut both ways. I've heard from people who have non-blocking plates get tickets because they were assumed to be the camera-defeating variety, even though they were basic polycarbonate covers.
They are also illegal here in Mississippi. We don't need to start with cameras though, police are quite capable of ticketing loud vehicles. They just don't.
It’s much more difficult to do traffic enforcement by sweat and blood in Boston where narrow roads are more common. Bots for traffic enforcement would free cops up to deal with less rote work too.
In some towns, there's an issue with ordinances and laws not being specific enough and a lack of training for measuring accurately. Someone could measure dBA and someone else could measure dBC, and the ordinance doesn't specify which measurement applies.
Finally. Loud cars are one of the biggest "silent" contributors to health risks and climate change. Loud vehicles are tightly coupled with excess speed and acceleration as well. People want to "show off" their rides. Sacrificing the health of those that surround them while they make as much noise as possible.
Think about it. Windows open you suddenly get jolted out of bed when a car flies by that has been modified to produce more noise to boost someone's ego. Moreover the excess tire exhaust and vehicle exhaust from rapid acceleration causes respiratory issues.
About climate change? Of course this causes more climate change. People are forced to close their windows and use conditioned air because of the noise outside. So many summer nights people can't open their windows near streets because of the noise modified vehicles cause.
The same noise and pollution issues apply when you're driving next to them as well. You have to close your windows in case your kids are sleeping or you are trying to listen to something then one of these noise attention seekers comes by who thinks they are awesome and wants you to pay attention to them. Their car is loud, and he or she needs that attention.
It's ridiculous. Its a waste of taxpayers money due to elevated health risks and its a waste of energy because people are forced to close their windows while driving or at home.
I would like to mention Timo Gatsonides here. He was CEO and CTO at SensysGatso BV. They build popular speed cameras. When I was an employee there, he was building these noise cameras along with emission capture etc. I am not affiliated with them anymore, was they were implementing some really good strategies in netherlands. Not sure if this implementation is by them, there is lot more you can do when it comes to traffic enforcement.
PS. Most of the Trajectcontrole in netherlands are implemented by them
This is such a great initiative. I lived on a busy crossroad for a few years. I went from thinking motorbikes were pretty cool to having a passionate disdain for the sad little selfish men that ride insanely loud bikes around the city. the constant noise from motorbikes was so so bad. bikes in the countryside are probably just about ok but in the city it's just selfish and embarassing
Can we make car horns louder for the occupant too? using a horn should be a rare thing, in order to make someone aware of your presence, not as a stress relief toy.
I live on a busy road, not too far from the intersection with another road that has a quarry on it. The worst thing of living here are the dump trucks who come speeding around the corner and then use their unmuffled engine brakes to slow down to zero to make a turn onto the road with the quarry. Sure, we've got the kind of assholes who mod their trucks and motorcycles to be as loud as possible, too, but nothing can compete with the low frequency vibration of those engine brakes. When I'm in my basement, I can barely hear the road noise at all, but I can feel the truck engine brakes.
Can we do leaf blowers too? Can we do people who start cutting their lawn with a Dixie Chopper at 7pm on a Sunday evening? These things annoy me a lot more than a momentary noisy car passing.
I would like to be in favor of automated enforcement, but cops and enforcement-tech companies have been caught shortening yellow lights to increase revenue while literally killing more people in the process.
I created an account only to comment because holy fk...
The amount of "female males" in the comment section is unbelievable, no one likes a good V12 V8 V6? No? Soy milk and Tesla anyone?
Actually it's quite funny. None of you provide actionable insight but rather Karen-omics arguments.
"Car loud must not go brrr"
"Only our money printers go brrr not your car!"
"If its not silent as a Tesla as the media tells me I have to go rage mode on guys enjoying/reliving their youth!"
Yeah we get it. Most of us have lived in big cities. There are already solutions as pointed out by other commentators whether preventative or active measures to deter a lot of too loud car drivers.
We praise pseudo-individualism yet you get judged even if you'd buy a car with louder exhausts not modify one.
The prejudice is real and just because you can't afford it that doesn't mean someone else shouldn't have or enjoy it RESPONSIBLY.
You don't like racism yet you are racist towards people who enjoy cars. But then again can't be a pseudo intellectual/a ycombinator Karen like 90% of people here if you don't hate digital currencies and oppose anything different than whats shown on TV.
I think they’re missing the point of noisy cars / motorcycles.
Sure, there are the minority who have noisy vehicles.
But the real culprit are the tires.
Tell me, when you walk by a highway or a road, what do you hear? That sound that is vaguely like an ocean lapping against the shores, just louder and artificial and annoying right?
You never really hear the engine, even at a short distance away.
The tires make a LOT more noise than the engines and exhaust do! And it carries farther than an engine does.
Tired need more regulation, and roads need to be built with quieter materials.
I've been trying to find out how much these cost so I could do the math and pitch it to my city council (they only care about money these days), but not a single manufacturer has pricing and none of the 4 that I emailed have replied in a month.
I live right next to a very high-traffic road, but I got used to the noise. What I can never get used to is the dozens of idiots on motorcycles and modded cars with removed mufflers that drive by in the dead of night at twice the speed limit.
Research-grade acoustic cameras from the leading providers cost anywhere from 50k-150k€. But they have much more than the "four microphones" the article cites, so I don't know which kind of solution they are implementing.
Nuisance drivers have become a real problem over here. Idiots driving around with no muffler at 4 AM blasting music so the windows nearly fall out of their sockets.
I have a rare disorder called hyperacusis from a noise trauma, which causes pain from everyday sounds. While I'm thankfully not sensitive to these kinds of sounds, most are and it's quite dangerous to us.
This disease is repetitive stress injury, in that every time you experience pain it lasts for weeks or years even and your sound tolerance goes down. So it is imperative that we never have accidents like those that cars like these can produce.
It can get so bad that you can't tolerate even simple things like the sound of sheets. The other patient in my city is confined to a closet 24/7 with earplugs and earmuffs because his tolerance is so low. He continues to worsen because sounds like these penetrate buildings well.
It is nearly unstudied so there's little hope of getting out of this hole. The least society can do for us is protect us from these assholes so we can hide in closets in peace.
Very loud vehicles in our neighborhood make me have revenge fantasies of ack-ack guns mounted to the roof of my house. But I'm too peaceful a person to do anything about it. Extremely annoying though and if I ever buy another house I will make sure to do better research about the noise levels.
I'm looking forward to the day when they stop adding loudspeakers to electric vehicle to make them noisy. I recently heard an electric sports car with a loudspeaker playing a mock sports car "vroom" ... it was a bit sad.
Yes I know why they are there like the red flags on front of the first automobiles and I wonder when they will disappear. They shouldn't go now, obviously!
Additionally it's weird they pretend to be combustion engines. Why not play something unique?
Will our future streets be filled with electric vehicles with the same shape pretending to carry bulky ICE engines in the front and making the sound of an extinct machine? What an odd future.
Could we use US state ballot initiatives to require the installation of informational noise cameras, similar to informational speed cameras that have become prevalent in recent years?
I suspect any such votes would pass by overwhelming margins.
How does the camera distinguish and localise a noisy car amoung 20-30 normal cars.
Even with directional microphones automated fines may be indiscriminately issued for potentially just being near one or behind one.
This system needs to be close to perfect so to not distract innocent drivers with the idea of a rogue fine, in turn cause a driver to stress and elevate road risk.
It is a very comfortable vehicle to drive. The physical reality is that more inertia = smoother ride.
I absolutely agree though. American trucks should stay 100% in America. They barely fit in Texas-sized streets and parking lots... I cannot comprehend what it must be like to own one outside the US.
Amsterdam is definitely at the forefront of inventing a liveable city. It is already more walkeable / bikeable that the vast majority of cities but it does not rest on its laurels.
But have people thought about the implications of planting always-on microphones all around the city (connected to the always-on cameras)?
Amsterdam is one of the least livable cities of the Netherlands. Everywhere else is just as easy if not better to bike and walk, but not nearly as traffic-jammed or as full of tourists.
Despite all efforts tourists are confined to the inner city. Traffic jams are mild compared to typical large city patterns and they affect you only if you use a car - which you dont really need in the city.
The liveability comparison that makes sense is with cities offering similar economic and cultural opportunities. Compared to major world cities Amsterdam is already somewhat of a backwater but outside it it gets positively boucolic.
The efficient frontier is when you optimally combine liveability with vibrancy.
There are regulations for those, at least in Europe a cleaning and automatic leveling system is mandatory. Which avoids scattered light and ensures they're pointed downwards.
The most annoying lights around here are all on Tesla's or very old cars. Tesla because (at least on the model 3) they allow owners to change the leveling height in the settings and people raise it for more light. Plus a lack of quality control on the early model 3's seems to put their two headlights often at different angles with one being blinding.
Old cars because they're kept to the regulations of the construction year not the new ones. So they don't have mandatory leveling and/or people have put aftermarket xenon lights on them.
Not going to work well in practice, as long as these are installed in known fixed locations. It will catch only those that are a bit noisy at all times.
The worst offenders can switch the behavior of their exhaust, and they will pass the checks in whisper-mode, with less noise than most normal cars.
I think it is the opposite, it will be very effective. But how to prove it works will be difficult as the goal is not safety, something easy to measure, but annoyance.
Currently it’s illegal for a car to be too quiet, or too loud. There is a Goldilocks range, increasingly specific, about how loud a car should be. The aliens are laughing at us.
That's great. They need to make "smell cameras" too to catch people who remove their catalytic converters and DPFs. In my experience a LOT of taxis seem to have their emissions systems disabled.
I've seen this used at hacker camps, where they mount noise level detectors in trees to ensure that certain party areas don't exceed their noise levels and disturb the quiet family areas.
it's a world wide issue, and it seems to have started with the covid lockdowns (at least in Canada).
would be interested to understand what is the motivation for these anti-social people, and is there anything other than police that could stop it.
How is enforcing the law to not make loud noises that make everyone else's life around you worse a bad thing?
What justifies someone suffering from PTSD, with a sleeping baby in their home or just enjoying life being put through noise pollution just because someone wants to make loud noises?
Police officers can pull those people over and issue citations for vehicles that are too loud. You could create similar justifications for using these systems for monitoring Wrongspeak in the same way by citing PTSD, the children, or people who just want to enjoy life without being put through thought pollution when someone's thoughts are contradicting the Cabinet's thoughts.
It's better to not have this technology deployed in the first place. It's very easy to have an officer pull someone over if their vehicle is too loud, issue a hefty citation in place, and then let word get around that you will get pulled over for exceeding the local decibel limit for your vehicle.
Sure you could which is why your society should have strong protections for content of speech. Technology should not and will not be the limiting factor on enforcement of laws, the laws and the constraints we place on them are.
I don't trust the Party to care about protecting speech. Or to steward this technology properly. Or to be honest about what they're doing with the hardware. What the Party says publicly and what it does internally are two different things.
What are you going to do if they abuse the power? Protest and try to raise awareness? They'll just bankrupt the entire group of protestors for being too loud.
Do you prefer the Cabinet? Anyway if all you have are qualms about the allusions, then that’s just the same as saying you don’t like what I said because it makes you uncomfortable. It doesn’t invalidate what I said. Notice how you ignored a legitimate question to gripe over allusions and words.
I don’t know, are you talking about the Cabinet? And no, it has to do with imprecision and lack of seriousness. For example I never would’ve guessed that “the Party” was meant to refer to “the Cabinet.”
So your claim is that in the US, where there are strong protections for content of speech, the Secretary of Defense, Transportation Sec, Secretary of Interior, etc, will bankrupt protestors?
Seems like a laughable claim but I’m interested to see your evidence for it.
I'm not sure that adding a layer of human discretion into this is going to make it more palatable to the affected people. For something like traffic stops, being able to make a convincing argument that you're not picking and choosing who to cite for prejudiced reasons is probably useful. Whether that's a good equilibrium, I'm less sure, but I get why a government might pursue it.
To argue in court that a vehicle is too loud, they'd need a meter in their cars similar to how they measure speed to be able to argue in court that you were speeding. So in effect, you'd have the exact same thing except it would be mobile.
As the article said, several microphones are required to pinpoint the location of sound. Location and distance are very important to measuring sound.
I forget what city recently tried to enforce vehicle noise, but I recall reading that virtually all tickets were thrown out under argument that the distance, angle of meter, nearby materials weren't perfect enough to measure adequately.
Furthermore as far as I've seen, measurements are with a handheld meter after the vehicle is pulled over, not when the driver is wide-open-throttle and over the speed limit.
It makes much more sense to measure from a fixed location while the vehicle is in motion.
You'd need police officers in police cruisers waiting for the sign of trouble. The officers would communicate with one another when they notice a loud vehicle pass by. Then they can use a noise gun to get a decibel reading. This is an intentional physical bottleneck placed on the surveillance apparatus so that it is limited to only identifying and pursuing those cars that are too loud. You would have the same end result if the fines are hefty enough without needing to build and deploy a surveillance dragnet that you won't be able to escape from once it exists.
A town or city would do better with a few police officers in cruisers keeping an eye on things than with these boxes deployed on every streetlight listening 24/7.
We're very much stopping "thought pollution" all the time, we're not too great at it but the equivalent to someone forcing sound on you is someone forcing thoughts on you.
We have laws and automatic tools (again, not great ones) to find propaganda and lies and try to stop them. We absolutely should let people decide what information to be exposed to better.
Several cities in the US are way ahead of you. There are cameras and microphones on LED lamp posts being used for "big-data" whatever that means. Here [1] is just one of the cities and I suspect that once the lawsuits started being flung the other cities buying these likely kept it quiet. There are no federal or state laws banning these so it is up to cities to decide if they want to ban/permit this data ingestion. There are a myriad of other articles if one wants to go down this rabbit hole.
I do not support this technology being used anywhere. It is not surprising to me that cities in California would be the ones interested in this. I do not trust most of these cities to be responsible stewards in general, least of all when it comes to surveillance equipment. California's politicians have lost track of reality and priorities.
If I were to walk around in public blasting airhorns in strangers' ears and shining laser pointers in their eyes just for fun, would you be outraged when a police officer tells me to stop exercising my free speech?
Those things are not free speech and your examples are disingenuous. If you need to reach for disingenuous examples in defense of the Cabinet's chosen machinery, you don't have an argument worth standing on.
There was no comparison between road noise and wrongspeak. That was a warning. The Cabinet wants boxes that hear things with precision 24/7 and can issue fines. Of course they'll justify it however they can.
It's a warning because the power will be abused. You have 1984 in your username - I recommend re-reading that book if it's been a while since you read it.
It's not about what I do. Your response is similar to people who respond to privacy advoates with "what do you have to hide" or who brush aside their concerns with "I have nothing to hide."
One thing to consider is the trend of expected speech or compulsory speech. There are people who would want to see if other people are saying what they want them to say, rather than just not saying what they don't want them to say. There are people who weigh someone's words to see how dedicated they are to a cause or to an idea or to a movement.
These technologies empower language police even in cases where someone would otherwise choose to say nothing. And they establish a precedent.
I’m firmly not in the “I have nothing to hide” camp.
I am firmly in the “pick your battles” camp.my
Worrying about cameras on the road picking up your speech when 99% of the population willingly carries smartphones doesn’t seem like the right place to pick a fight.
Every law written can be abused. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have laws. And of all the differences people have, most people agree with the laws that protect people from intentional and indiscriminate harm.
People with loud exhausts are injuring people intentionally and indiscriminately.
Usually it's through a stress response that turns into PTSD if a person has to endure it for too long.
Another injury comes from sleep deprivation. Going days/weeks/months/years without reliable and uninterrupted sleep is an actual torture method that permanently damages people in both mind and body.
Other times it's tinnitus from being exposed to noise levels far, far above safe ranges. Even "quiet" bikes are allowed to be well above safe noise levels. Tinnitus doesn't heal.
Hiding behind your freedom of expression to justify intentionally and indiscriminately injuring people is low.
Nah, what's low is to pretend that the solution to any of those is surveillance deployed at scale. Police officers in cruisers with radar and noise guns coordinating amongst one another to pull over and fine some drivers with very loud cars accomplish the same result without empowering abusive centralized authorities with boxes that hear everything 24/7.
Edit: turns out we do have them and they have been fining people. But it's mostly supercars. The problem is with shitty little cars with stupid exhausts which outnumber the supercars by at least two orders of magnitude.