New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars | Hacker News Reader

New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

roadandtrack.com

365 pointsKoftaBob454 comments

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense.

Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

That’s because the last thing anyone wants is a loud noise complaint to escalate into a shooting.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, increasing exposure to police increases number of shootings, especially for minorities. And don’t ask for citations, this is and has been all over everywhere for years.

In one particular country perhaps, not a phenomenon worldwide.

edit: misread the title, assumed this was about them doing this in Paris (also recently announced)

But we're talking about that country right now.

I haven’t actually seen normalized statistics with respect to police density, ‘exposure’ or time on patrol. Do you know who publishes such numbers?

Well, the current approach of decreasing exposure to police has increased crime

Only 13 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...

Well as long as only 13 innocent unarmed people were unloaded on by law enforcement everything is fine

1. unarmed does not mean they were not a threat or innocent

2. No human endeavor is perfect. I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

1. True, but neither one was shown here, so you can choose any assumption you want, and mine was innocence (the law requires the same assumption until proven otherwise)

2. There is no evidence that any prevention of crime was gained in exchange for the deaths of these innocent unarmed people. If anything it created an environment where the law is respected less.

1. true 2. false

> I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

I mostly agree with this, but there needs to be an effort to hold people accountable when mistakes are made, and to change processes to help ensure that these mistakes don't happen again, or at least happen less often. Police departments across the US seem near-violently resistant to this.

I think that irresponsibly spreading propaganda which implies “police are more dangerous than criminals” while simultaneously demanding “accountability” is unlikely to convince the police that any “accountability process” is going to be carried out in good faith.

I also think the existing criminal courts and prosecutors hold police reasonably accountable. They could do better.

What about armed Black men? Having a gun is not grounds to shoot someone. Remember, we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

...Did you read the article you linked to? The bulk of the article is dedicated to discussing why that number is misleading, and how it reflects our lack of data/transparency when it comes to policing, particularly when it comes to police involvement in homicide.

Yep, and I am not persuaded by their special pleading.

Without definitively having some stat that proves or disproves this, the way this opinion was expressed feels a lot like survivor bias because you're reacting to the relatively small number of negative police interactions that are hyped up by the media (because they play on emotions well) and mentioning nothing of the millions and millions of police interactions that go positively or times that police presence prevented a crime.

Okay, I'll bite. I downvoted it because, even if true, it's irrelevant and promotes a toxic (and I use that term advisedly) narrative.

Yes, when you enforce laws, some people are a-holes and escalate to unlawful violence. Sometimes cops, sometimes civilians.

The appropriate reaction to make sure that isn't tolerated either, to improve police-community relations, to train police better, and to review whether we need to update laws to match consensus on expected human behavior.

The appropriate reaction is not in a hundred miles of "oh, well, gosh, do we really need to enforce laws anymore? Someone might get hurt!", and the forum is a worse place for tolerating that mentality.

Now, to be sure, there are many laws that fit the last category above and should probably be scaled back for being petty and kafkaesque. But, "don't wake up a million people around you for your own personal thrills" does not make the list.

Agreed that the solution is not to _not_ enforce laws but the article is about enforcing the law without using Police “on the ground” to do so which helps alleviate the issue of possible escalation. The parent of my comment calls out that issue in response to their parent saying “let’s just get police involved” so in that regard this is a totally reasonable point to make in response to it and on topic for HN as it’s about automation of enforcement vs alternatives.

Don't worry, we have ShotSpotter for that

And since legislation to have unarmed officers handle non-violent citations has gone nowhere in the last decade the push is now for just eliminating all the minor citations that, historically, have selective enforcement against the already vulnerable and tackling them differently.

Jaywalking is a good example, it doesn't get enforced basically ever and when it does it's overwhelmingly poor minorities. So the city has just been adding pedestrian crossings in areas where people where people jaywalk to reduce the incentive.

It seems to me most traffic citations ought to be issued by mail based on dashcam footage now that the technology to do so is widespread. It would also reduce traffic stops as a pretext for searches, which act as an end-run around legal protections from unreasonable search.

Traffic stops could then be relegated to imminent dangers like drunk or otherwise reckless drivers, and serious crimes.

They used to do this when red light cameras were popular in California. You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

If the ticket is for the vehicle owner then yes I could see this working. Perfect for emissions violations and vehicle code violations. You could also double-check for stolen license plates as it should be fairly easy to automate the detection of most car makes/models as long as the car hasn't been heavily modified.

>You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

That seems like an asinine way to apply that law. If the vehicle is registered to you, it's your responsibility. Lent it to your uncle and he rolled a stop? Well, the car's registered to an owner, that's their problem to sort out.

Yeah, I think this makes more sense, as long as you limit it to automated-fine infractions (and not things like vehicular manslaughter), and these infractions don't affect the car owner's driving record or insurance premiums.

I think it would only take one instance of a friend borrowing my car, getting a fine, and that friend refusing to pay the fine, for me to stop lending them my car -- lesson learned. Or hell, why would I even want to be friends with someone who would do that to me?

The vehicle is my responsibility, but that's not proof that I committed the crime.

> You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you.

In Australia its still your problem. If someone else was borrowing the car you have to get them to admit they were using it at the time. The only way I think you will get off is if you report the car as stolen at the time.

That's a good start but people in New York literally deface their license plate and nobody gives a fuck - because half of them are cops or driving government vehicles.

If they're not willing to do the job then they need to get a different job.

There's a freeway about a mile from my house. Summer nights with the windows open, I can easily be awakened by a very loud motorcycle. The freeway is raised and I'm in a sort of canyon (no line of sight to freeway, though!!). Maybe the acoustics are just perfect for my bedroom, but I doubt it's just me. There are probably a million people within earshot of this noise.

Lest people think I'm a motorcycle hater: I owned one for years. I had a stock and quiet muffler on it, though.

Owned four Harleys, like you, mine were stock, quiet. People are surprised to find out Harleys sound almost like sewing machines when they are stock.

Almost.

On the rare occasion that I hear a HD with stock exhaust, it usually turns my head with me asking, "damn, what's that sweet-sounding thing?" Sadly, they're mostly owned by chuckleheads who fuck it up with open pipes.

Yup. Harleys with the stock exhaust have a beautiful sound. What a shame that people destroy that iconic engineering in the pursuit of "loud". I cringe every time I see a Harley modified like that.

On a motorcycle forum, someone asked whether they should upgrade their suspension or their exhaust. I suggested that an upgraded suspension affects your quality of life, an upgraded exhaust affects everyone else.

We don't need the windows open to hear the cars and such around here (and they're modern windows). We're near a freeway, but it's not the only culprit. The freeway is either silent or quite noisy depending on ambient weather conditions.

But when the cars open up, it sounds like a racetrack. We can hear them accelerating up the on ramp, up shifting as they go, and even when they hit the flyover to the other freeway.

The ratio of motorcycles to cars is actually quite low. Most of the offenders are the V8 pony cars.

To be fair, riding a quiet motorcycle is likely to get you sideswiped more if the people can't hear you at all. I've noticed the difference of head movements when changing the exhaust on my new motorcycle, from stock to a louder aftermarket. Prior, people would just veer into my lane without even checking. Anecdotal, but very noticeable difference for myself.

Maybe you just shouldn't ride a motorcycle if, in order to feel safe, you feel the need to unreasonably increase your level of noise pollution.

Anecdotally, over 25 years of riding in most every condition you can think, including several years of one-way 30 mile commute in to downtown LA, I have not noticed this.

As a corollary anecdote, I've seen (and heard), on several occasions, the rev bombing riders revving louder and longer since the person that's "in their way" is not moving out of it.

I've also, personally, jerked and swerved (a little) when startled by a loud exhaust "suddenly" appearing next to me. These events are typically followed by a crude exclamation that isn't worth sharing here.

At one point I did have a bike with a louder exhaust (I didn't keep the citation I got because of it). But the majority of my bikes are stock exhausts and quiet.

Cars swerve in to anything and everything. Especially today, the modern car cockpit is overwhelmed with distractions. But even pre-cell phones I've had to contend with kids, coffee, balloons, and animals apparently designed to convert the car drivers in to motorcycle seeking missiles.

Keep it on two, stay safe, they're not out to get you but they make a good show of it anyway.

I stopped riding two years ago after 30+ years. This was mostly based on my recent experience as a pedestrian- I just watched way too many people running stop signs while staring at their phone. Figured I'd have a good run of it and better to get out while the going was good.

If "loud pipes save(d) lives", your insurance company would give you a discount for your man-child exhaust. And if you want anecdata, I've ridden hundreds of thousands of miles in every U. S. state, most of Canada, and elsewhere. Most of those miles have been with the exhaust that came with the bike when it rolled out of the factory. I've never been sideswiped, nor even once considered that a loud exhaust would do anything to improve my safety.

I sure am glad for the riding classes I've taken, however, which probably do a lot more good than obnoxious exhaust systems.

> your man-child exhaust

Less of this, please

I haven’t even heard of my insurance giving me a discount for wearing a full face helmet instead of a bucket helmet.

Actually, is there a single thing that insurance gives you a discount for?

Like, I’m with GEICO and as far as I can tell, it’s only age of license without accident or ticket that counts.

Either every factor is a wash or insurance companies are keeping the spread as profit on their side or they have no means of enforcing.

Like, do you install a Termignoni and then call your insurance agent? “Hi, I got louder exhaust pipes installed. Also, I’ve decided to wear a nicer helmet. Also, I now keep my bike inside a garage. Just wanted to call about the discount”

They don't give you a discount for a better helmet because it's cheaper for them if you're dead vs paying the hospital bills for your injuries.

Actually, is there a single thing that insurance gives you a discount for?

ABS, having taken a Motorcycle Safety Foundation riding course (in the U. S.), and yes, for storing it in a garage. All of those are items for which Progressive gives a discount.

Huh. Guess I was wrong. I have the latter two (no ABS on my old Ducati Monster). Better go get my discount. Thank you!

I'd say I'm surprised that Geico didn't just come out and ask these things, as Progressive did when we signed on, but Geico has never done a lot to impress me. Probably depends a lot on the agent, I don't know. Anyway, doesn't cost anything to ask, and if that doesn't work, we've been on Progressive for the bikes for decades. Never filed a claim, but rates are reasonable and they give discounts for the stuff we were going to do anyway.

Please don’t use offensive demeaning language like “man-child” it makes you sound immature and pedantic.

What definition are you using for pedantic here? I’m a bit confused and might learn something today.

Yeah, if I rode around with speakers blasting at 130dB and flashing fog lights, people might look at me too.

But I don't do it because people would think I'm a selfish asshole.

I generally do not hear loud vehicles directly next to me while driving down the road. Not cars or motorcycles. My own radio, tire noise, and engine noise is enough to drown out all but the absolute loudest, except maybe when I'm going very slow.

How about the pedestrians and people eating outside at restaurants? Or people in old houses with poor insulation and single paned windows?

However, I don’t like the idea of automatically ticketing people with technology devices alone despite the obnoxiously loud noise pollution from these vehicles. Police can easily hear these vehicles and pull them over for a violation.

My point (I may not have explained it well) was that a motorcycle's loud exhaust isn't saving the rider's life from me, since I can't hear it. (I'm not going to run over motorcyclists in general, though). It really sucks for those on the outside who have to deal with it. If there was automatic ticketing, I would hope there's a high burden of proof. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like.

> ”Police can easily hear these vehicles and pull them over for a violation.”

In practice this doesn’t happen, however, at least here in the UK.

Police are not issued with equipment to measure noise levels, and on a busy road it can be difficult to identify (provably and conclusively) which vehicles are making the noise.

Which is exactly why technology like these “noise cameras” are needed!

> In practice this doesn’t happen, however, at least here in the UK

Especially in the nice areas of London you could probably drive for years without numberplates and nobody would ever stop you.

It very much _does_ happen in the UK, though rarer than it ought.

I've even seen the police crack out light meters to fine boy racers with overly tinted windows.

Wow that’s a loud car. What’s the decibel level inside at highway speed? My Forester is loud to sit in on the freeway but what you’re describing is crazy loud. Can’t even imagine it.

It's not overly loud. I just don't hear other loud vehicles without the radio off and the windows open, and I don't typically have the radio off and the windows open. This has always been the case for me in any vehicle at highway speeds.

I suppose it could be the opposite. A very quiet car. What make, model, and year? I’ve been looking for a quiet car. BMWs seem really quiet on the inside. My friend bought one because he wanted to shield his child from freeway homier when they were driving.

I have a 2000 Oldsmobile Intrigue and a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado 1500. They are not quiet on the inside. Lots of air leaks and stuff. I just don't understand how people hear other loud vehicles going 70MPH or so. I have good hearing (according to my latest hearing test) and unless the loud vehicle is extremely loud (like big truck with a jake brake) then I've never hear the neighboring vehicles in any vehicle, not just the two I currently have.

Edit: If I'm able to hear them, it's immediately after they have passed me.

In NYC most of the offenders are motorcycles with the occasional Lambo man-children.

Most of the offenders are people honking, especially when stuck in traffic.

Most of the offenders have a license plate that starts with a "T" and honk within a second of the light changing to green.

That's happening to you because sound is refracted by the atmosphere at night and bounced back toward the ground.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43154773

> "What we managed to show is the combination of the crosswind and the temperature gradient can cause sound that's going to go vertically (to) get refracted back down," he said. "The sound was literally bent back downwards."

> The effect often happens at dawn and dusk because sound bends from hotter air into cooler air. During the day, the ground is hotter than the air above it so sound bends vertically upward.

> "Its only when the sun stops falling on the ground that the ground cools down. Then the air gets hotter above," he said. "That's when sound can bend towards the ground and become trapped."

Acoustics play a big role. I used to live a mile from a freeway but the ground sloped gently up towards my house and, being San Diego, there weren't a lot of trees to absorb the noise. On many nights it was about as loud as standing a block from the freeway. It varied based on temp, humidity and wind direction.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2_E1ap9d4

This comes to mind for this thread.

We live down the street from a biker club clubhouse. Even one of them riding by wakes us up (we'll often hear them well after midnight), scares our cats, and sometimes sets off car alarms. My faith in the police ever doing anything about this is effectively nil.

I, too, am not a motorcycle hater. While I don't own one, I'm licensed to operate one, and have several friends who are avid riders. They have stock, quiet exhaust on their bikes, like normal people who actually care about people around them.

I live on a little sidestreet next to a highway. The highway is raised (due to being on a steep hill directly behind our place) and has noise barriers installed.

By and large, highway traffic is a low, background static, somewhat like the ebb and flow of a more mechanical wind.

But, because our sidestreet skips a single traffic light on a parallel street, mororbikes live roaring through it, easily louder that anything from the literal highway. At this point, I'd support a ban on motorbikes over 80db.

I was looking to see if 80db made sense or not as a limit. Looking at these sources: https://alexonautos.com/cabin-noise/

https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/exactly-how-quiet-are-cars-...

It looks as though 80db would be significantly above the max for a stock car. Although I would probably like to see a tax on any cars sold with over 75db of sound as it's a significant burden on society.

European type certification rules set a noise limit of 72 dB(A) for new passenger cars. This will reduce to 68 dB(A) by 2026. [1]

It’s also illegal to modify a car exhaust system in such a way that makes it louder than stock, however in practice it seems there is very limited enforcement of this.

Motorcycles are allowed to emit far higher noise levels than cars, unfortunately!

[1] https://www.vehicle-certification-agency.gov.uk/fuel-consump...

One of the first things taught in the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) course is that "Loud Pipes Save Lives" is a myth: cars can't hear your loud bike until it's too late, and defensive riding is infinitely more effective than relying on other drivers to hear you. The majority of motorcycle accidents are multi-vehicle. I have been riding for many years on everything from sport bikes, dual sport, all with stock exhaust, even no exhaust on an electric bike, and I have never been involved in an accident- defensive riding works. Loud pipes should have been made illegal decades ago.

I believe reaching millions of people with their sound is exactly what some people like to do. Never understood it but there are always some people like that. Especially mopeds are often severe offenders.

Not a fan of camera surveillance for such infractions though.

> Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them.

It allows for discretionary law enforcement. Cops love it.

They can ignore it you if they like you, or fine you if they don't.

Good ol American rule by law

It's single-handedly the best perk of being white in the US. I hate it, it's straight up dystopian, but you can't argue with the benefits of being above the law for anything less than like murder. Being white means I do things like speed, do drugs at parties and concerts, jaywalk, be drunk in public, trespass -- err sorry urban explore, set of fireworks on the 4th without so much as a second glance.

Go on a ridealong. You'll be arresting white people all day.

Yeah it's certainly more nuanced than just race. There has to be the right intersection of race, class, and social network to be above the law in the United States. But I'd essentially guarantee those white people being arrested all day are poor white people and generally not middle- or upper-class white people.

Exactly this. Obama's kid isn't being arrested when she drives through Martha's Vinyard in her Mercedes. Your chance of being arrested and spending time in prison is far more closely correlated with your income (or lack thereof) than your skin tone.

This is an incredibly ignorant statement. Why does everything need to be about race all day?

I think it would be pretty weird if comments about race didn't come up in a post about policing. Scanning through things, clearly it's not "everything" either. Maybe dial down your knee-jerk sensitivity a notch?

But, this system does kinda work and allows for police to charge antisocial assholes with a crime while letting normal, reasonable people who made a simple mistake off with a warning.

And to charge black people and not charge white people.

Noise is noise. There's no need to be discretionary.

Ugh. This is so tiresome

Why do some people find it necessary to turn every discussion into some racism witch-hunt?

The Stop and Frisk policy was a racist witch hunt. This isn't a hypothetical about policing in general, or even NYC cops in specific. And yeah, I'm sick of racism too. But blaming the messengers isn't doing any good.

Unfortunately its the lens many people have been conditioned to see everything through.

Who defines what a "normal, reasonable" person looks like?

At some point you have to let people make decisions. You can't "logic" your way out of everything.

But... the mistakes! Yeah, so what? What about the mistakes of the rules that a human at the scene is not allowed to overrule?

We have that at quite a few workplaces, where employees are not allowed to make any decisions, only work through an algorithm. It's not pretty. Think customer support of very large companies. Or the mistakes of algorithms and "AI", which we already have too, e.g. when we read stories about insurance "automating" decisions with ML?

Except it's usually not "mistakes", it's intentional bias. A "normal, reasonable" person is someone who has a "donated to the police officer's association" sticker in their car window, and "assholes" are everyone else.

To be clear, what is the advantage of discretionary enforcement for traffic offenses? Letting certain people off with a warning even though they broke the law? Why is that a feature and not a bug?

Anyway, we do have a way to let humans make these decisions. You can go to court and challenge the ticket.

>Why is that a feature and not a bug?

Because the law and the punishments for breaking it do not reflect how socially acceptable breaking said law tastefully is.

It's easier to just randomly hand out small tickets a few people who are egregious and a few who are unlucky than it is to amass the political capital to find a more consistent solution.

The problem is that to a cop, "normal" and "reasonable" is code for anyone with a police placard [1]. And if you give them discretion, "antisocial assholes" will end up largely meaning Black people.

Why not have the automated system issue a warning instead of a citation for the first offense?

[1] Check out this Twitter account, which documents NYPD traffic lawbreaking https://twitter.com/placardabuse. It's often really egregious stuff, like parking right in front of a fire hydrant or ticketing every illegally parked car on a street except for one with a police placard.

placardabuse really shows you how many of the most egregious traffic violations are done by unrepentant, repeat offenders. I think there was a story recently about an SUV who ran the curb and killed an 18-month old in Manhattan -- the driver had thousands of dollars of unpaid fines for blowing red lights, speeding, double-parking etc.

I think people should be at a much higher risk of losing their license or driving privileges permanently for this stuff, not to mention offenses like repeat DUIs.

Most interesting to me are how many tickets police and politicians rack up with traffic enforcement cameras. "Do you know who I am!?" works on people, but doesn't work on robots. That's a good thing.

In Australia, rich people have their cars registered to companies so they are not responsible for the demerit points.

If the only punishment is a fine then it's only a rule for poor people.

edit: Just googled and they may have closed that loophole, I have no idea if any of it is actually enforced though. My point about fines only affecting poor people still stands.

Given how prevalent and regressive fines are I really don't understand why there isn't more noise about changing them. A $350 fine could be trivial for one person and life crushing for another. Something like mandatory community service would actually cause rich assholes some pain.

Of course there are probably plenty of ways to game community service so there would need to be strict requirments, or maybe there's a totally different system that would be more fair.

Some countries use day fines, which are proportional to one’s income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

As to why we don’t switch to a system like that: the people with the power to change it are the ones who benefit from the inequitable status quo.

While I agree with the premise of discouraging people from being antisocial assholes, that sort of system is built for bias. Discouraging antisocial behavior is one thing, but other biases might be more destructive then helpful. I think maybe the job of discouraging antisocial behavior might be more suited to something else than law enforcement, where it's more likely to actually work without becoming destructive. I couldn't give you a specific shape of what I mean, because it's a hard problem and I don't have a solution (otherwise I'd be campaigning for it).

Discretion can be abused. "Normal, reasonable people," can be anyone with an 11-99 Foundation license plate holder. Apparently those things actually work, at least in the Bay Area. Otherwise there wouldn't be fakes and people wouldn't "donate" $500+ in order to acquire a real one.

>They can ignore it you if they like you, or fine you if they don't

Or ignore everyone if their approval rating is in the toilet, which is what they're doing as much as they can right now.

HN screeches a lot about it but the meatspace people I talk to don't seem to mind.

I moved to the city for peace and quiet! I didn't know there would be so many people around!

There would be peace and quiet if it wasn’t for people with modded cars and motorbikes. A very tiny % of people are responsible for almost all the noise.

I'll write a charitable response to your flippant comment.

Living in a city has more noise than outside of cities, but that doesn't mean that people deserve to be exposed to noise levels that are harmful to their health. This also ignores people who are born in the city, and can't leave it for various reasons.

Various laws on noise levels have been laws in NYC for decades at this point because it's a public health and quality of life problem.

There is a constant din in a city. The cacophony has a consistency. There is order to the auditory chaos.

Compare to a quiet suburb at 5:30am... dead silence interrupted by the neighbor revving their modified F150 audible a mile in every direction.

The delta is not the same.

It’s strange to complain about occasional motorcycle noise when emergency sirens could be heard all the time on Manhattan. Orders of magnitude more than in any other city I’ve been to. Or you New Yorkers tune that out?

I hear way more honking than sirens.

But even granting that sirens are louder, they serve an explicit purpose. Loud cars and motorcycles do not.

This is something I noticed when I was in the US - It seemed that emergency vehicles leave their sirens on the whole time. Here in Aus they'll leave them off and only turn them on when coming up to an intersection that they don't have traditional right of way on, then back off again (lights on the whole time).

Am I wrong about this? I was only in a couple of cities but it was stark how I could always hear sirens

Where I live it's just like you described in AUS. Policies on this stuff varies city by city.

Ah ok, I didn't realise. I've mostly been within ~5km of Sydney CBD.

Not that strange. Sirens in NYC are largely directional, and you can hear the noise diminish dramatically once you are no longer in the path of the vehicle. The same is not true of loud cars/motorcycles. Also sirens (mostly) serve a necessary purpose for society, while motorcycle noise serve to stroke their owners selfish egos.

I lived in the upper west side 7th fl and sirens are absolutely excessive. Deafeningly loud even in my apartment.

I wonder if the problem is that modern cars are too soundproof. Perhaps they should be regulated to have some kind of transparency mode like with modern headphones so they will hear much quieter sirens.

I don't know what it's like where you live, but in California it increasingly looks like our law enforcement organizations are either dreadfully understaffed or failing miserably at enforcing basic traffic laws.

I just drove to San Diego and back from the Bay Area and counted zero cops on the way down and two on the way back, and I returned on Super Bowl eve. In the south Bay Area, I regularly see folks intentionally disregard basic traffic safety laws. I never see anyone pulled over and generally never see any cops.

My niece works in public safety in WA state and says that morale is in the gutter as police have been told to back off in all but the most imminent situations. The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police.

I'm not typically pro-law enforcement but I am definitely not pro-no-law enforcement.

On an unrelated note, I'm now about to get front window tinting on my vehicles because, why not, it's not like any traffic or vehicle laws are being enforced now.

> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police.

It’s not true but it makes more sense if they’re saying that as a negotiating tactic: the police are banking that if the media coverage is dominated by stories about crime rising there will be a big reduction in support for police accountability.

What inside knowledge do you have that indicates it's not true? You can't just assume something is false because it contradicts what you want to be true.

What knowledge do you have that it is true other than a thirdhand account by someone on a web forum?

None, that's why I haven't made a statement claiming it's true or not, unlike the person I'm responding to. That's what you do when you have no information.

Yet, you didn't apply that level of criticism to the parent post either. Some person's niece saying the police chief said it? Like that wouldn't be news worthy? Like the police chief wouldn't immediately raise that to the press because "look what these liberals are telling me now"? Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Seneca didn't say it was true. They simply questioned acdha's claim that it was false. This is fair to question. But I suspect based on the rest of acdha's post that "it's not true" was shorthand for the more reasonable "I'm not convinced that it's true".

Sure. But senaca wasn't upset how 01100011 got from "My best friends sisters boyfriend" to "That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police."

I can guarantee you that if a school in my particular municipality is under threat, police are going to roll in and roll deep. Morale or no morale.

I think people are confused as to the types of crime police are backing off of policing. Shooting up Walmarts, schools, or churches will absolutely evoke a robust response here.

Of course, I can't speak for municipalities outside of this particular county here in flyover country. But knowing police and firefighters the way that I do, I find it difficult to believe that any school under threat would be ignored.

If you're genuinely curious, ask LEO you're friends with in your municipality, or LEO among your own family and friends to get an idea how professional LE is in your area. But you shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet. My assertions included.

I notice that you didn’t demand a citation for the original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to be true: did California pass a law treating police officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely given that they still have resource officers assigned to schools and there’s no way that wouldn’t be a major national news story. Now, given our national obsession with gun rights it may be that they couldn’t stop someone white with a gun from walking near a school[1] but there’s a 0% chance they couldn’t monitor the situation and make their presence known the way they do every day for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on their clothes.

Note to the deleted comment: note that I'm not saying that it's definitely untrue but simply that we have no way of evaluating it without something like a reference to a specific law or policy document, public comment from a named spokesperson, etc. There are enough levels of removal that the potential for misunderstanding would be high even if this wasn't touching on several of the hottest political issues at the moment, and that lack of context also affects how a lot of people might feel about it. For example, if this is true as written is that because there was a legal restriction passed setting a burden of proof for a police officer to interact with members of the public or was it something like the local sheriff not wanting to have an incident when a provocative local gun owner is insisting on their rights to free carry anywhere? A lot of people might have different opinions on the appropriate course of action based on context like that.

1. I realize some people might find this provocative but I'm thinking about how at two of the high schools I went to I had at least one classmate who'd brought a gun to school, and the second one had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated when some warning signs were apparently ignored. It's quite the contrast with the way hispanic students were “randomly” searched, and really didn't want to be found to have anything even as dangerous as a Swiss Army knife.

This is happening in my major metro, as well. A kind of flippant attitude toward even the most basic of compliance seems to be taking root. Cars are running Stop signs and red lights without even slowing, the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise and all of this seems to be happening at a time when enforcement is virtually non-existent. Even more alarming is that property crime (theft, particularly) is through the roof.

While I place a lot of the blame at the feet of the police for failing to enforce law, I also understand that at least in my city, even repeat offenders are being released back into the wild with no skin in the game - a "personal recognizance" bond.

I'm a left of center kind of guy, but this idea that we can totally kid-glove criminals (especially repeat ones) with peace and love and respect and whatever new-agey shenanigans that's helped us get to where our social order is falling apart doesn't fly with me.

> the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise

I have noticed this too, and am curious if it is:

- DMVs being slow/understaffed or plates aren't available, but people need to drive

- conscious negligence of simply not registering your car and betting it won't be enforced

DMVs have been easily accessible and you can even make online appointments in my state since before pandemic, but I see plenty of cars driving without license plates or without paying the annual car taxes (i.e. registration fees seen via sticker).

Every city cop I know is checked out and counting the days to retirement. They have families and don’t want their lives ruined because an encounter with a person of the wrong race went bad.

Who is allegedly telling the police they "cannot intervene"? And why would they say it?

I can't find the stat, but it was in an SF Chronicle article on police not doing anything about a homeless person tearing down a parklet, but in San Francisco, the number of traffic violations ticketed has gone from 10K+ to <1K in the same period... it is really astonishing how lax it has become and it looks like traffic and property crime is the least enforced.

> I don't know what it's like [in NYC]…

It's hilarious. Our biggest traffic offenders are the cops themselves. They speed, run reds on a whim, park in the middle of sidewalks, it's totally cool and we love it. It’s so great that there's a twitter account (@placardabuse) that tracks public officials who flout the law and has no shortage of content.

As for enforcement: they don't. The explanation I've heard is, "We don't like being the bad guy." They join the force to become CSI detectives or terrarism-fighting SWAT soldiers, not to be that shithead who ruined your commute home.

I'm definitely sure that our new police-chief-mayor — who just cancelled a widely-loved car-free-street program in Clinton Hill because one of his cronies thought it was annoying — will be right on top of things.

[edit] Oh, and regarding these noise cameras… the very vocal minority of New Yorkers who have cars fight tooth and nail against camera speeding enforcement. The rest of us don't speak up because we don't have cars so we don't feel as affected. Also we don't even have control over our own laws, that’s all in the hands of the state gov't. So I have little faith that this will plan will survive, but hey, fingers crossed X,,

Check it out, same NY court officer

https://twitter.com/_elkue/status/1494021798924623872?s=21 https://twitter.com/nycbikelanes/status/1494022728185270277?...

Since we are sharing anecdata, CHP are camped out on southbound 280 by 85 almost every morning. They usually have someone pulled over.

More broadly, I think it makes sense to automate some law enforcement activities by using speed cameras, etc. Cameras remove problems with bias and escalation. They also free up LEOs to focus on activities that can't be automated.

The alternative is hire more officers and pay them more. That's not something that voters appear willing to do, even in the affluent Bay Area. (...or to do anything about homelessness in the South Bay; apparently we have collectively decided that the answer is to just ignore the problem and look the other way as people slowly die on the street)

A licensed gun owner can have a gun near a school in Washington, so why would you expect police to be able to intervene when someone is merely approaching a school?

Police could ask the person what they are doing, but unless they have probable cause that the person is committing a crime they can't arrest them.

Police are everywhere in Manhattan. Pre-pandemic, it would be odd not to see several per day on patrol on a normal day to day. In SoCal, I can go days without seeing one.

Having said that, they don't have the best rep for enforcing traffic violations here.

The lack of enforcement appears to be causing an increase in bad driving[1]. Anyhow I view this as a good thing. The people spoke loudly that they wanted less policing and they got what they asked for. This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened. Now I personally don’t want depolicing, but I accept that in a democracy I won’t always get my way.

[1] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-releases-...

> This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened.

Are you aware of any changes in (local) government policies in these affected areas? My cynical take is that this is an intentional play by police to allow things to deteriorate so that the public begs for the police to step up and rollback the loss of support since the high profile police-instigated incidents that culminated in George Floyd's killing. I don't think it's going to shake out that way, at least not as quickly as they'd hope.

Many district attorneys who ran on a leniency platform were elected. Every arrest involves risks to both the officer and the suspect. If the DA isn’t going to file charges why would a rational officer take those risks?

I'm not sure what it's like in the USA, but in Australia it's rare to see police on freeways, because traffic enforcement is done with cameras these days.

When I drove from Melbourne to Brisbane and back, a 3,500 km round trip on mostly dual carriageway freeways, I didn't see a single cop outside of built up areas.

There is one car that drives by my neighborhood on a regular basis that sets off multiple car alarms as it goes by. Some times it's in the middle of the day, some times it's in the middle of the night. If I can hear it in the house through walls / windows etc from a distance I can't imagine how loud it'll be in the car itself.

Putting aside consideration for others around you, what is even the appeal of hearing damage levels of car noise?

I really don't get why motorcycles are legal at all - loud, terrible emissions, used for crimes, huge fatality rate, usually driven by a psychopath who loves revving his toy at 5AM at a residential neighbourhood.

Those things you listed are pretty much already illegal: Loud motorcycles with poor emissions. As for the fatality rate, it's mainly only impacting the driver. Forcing them to a car is arguably worse.

> Those things you listed are pretty much already illegal: Loud motorcycles with poor emissions.

Good luck getting police to enforce that, though.

Yeah enforcement is usually the issue. We are commenting on an article about a new way to enforce though

"Used for crimes!". This sounds like that standard argument against crypto, when cash (cars) have done that since their inception.

> used for crimes

This gave me a chuckle. I have absolutely no data but I'm quite certain cars are "used for crimes" at a much higher rate than motorcycles.

Motorcycles are almost all manual, nearly invisible to other drivers, and prone to issues with the smallest of road hazards/obstacles, making them really risky to use as a getaway vehicle seeing as you'd need to be outpacing law enforcement much of the time. Add the adrenaline of "doing a crime" on top of that of high-speed motorcycle riding and you've really got a recipe for disaster in most cases. There was a stolen bike in LA being chased by the cops last month who collided with a car and the rider died. https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-01-24/mot...

Maybe being "used for crimes" would be better since you're less likely to actually get away on them!

I think the OP is a little hyperbolic, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of the idea. My metro has a no-chase policy for motorcycles. Sure, it's a heck of a dangerous way to make a getaway, but as long as you can shake the first guy, a rider is pretty well free to make a getaway as long as there is no helicopter in pursuit.

Touché, I remember hearing about such a policy for the first time recently. That certainly could change the value proposition quite a bit!

> recipe for disaster in most cases.

hence why it wouldn't be legal if invented now (well probably most things won't)

good comparison would be passenger drones - super useful, universally hated, regulated to death.

I really don't get why computers are legal at all - create excess emissions from all the power use, used for crimes, generate hard to process waste, usually used by a psychopath who loves Tweeting about hatred for people not like them.

On the other hand, a purely technological solution isn't so much open to accusations of bias, whether justified or otherwise, as are officers using their judgment to decide who to stop and ticket for excess noise.

The cops in NYC more or less ignore everything (unless your black), I've seen people walk right past them smoking weed and they didn't even turn their heads. Every once in a while they'll set up a table in the subway to search backpacks, but they don't dare stop anyone, instead they just stand around comparing their benefit plans for 2.5 hours and counting down until they can retire with pension. Same topic every time. Amazing to hear them rattle off the precise number of years, months, and days until they get their pension. They probably know their HMO handbook better than the HMO does.

> I've seen people walk right past them smoking weed and they didn't even turn their heads.

It's legal, why would they turn their heads?

They stopped me at one of those tables once and I'm not black.

There are fart cars everywhere all over NYC now. Definitely annoying millions.

I think it's a matter of time before someone deploys tiny quadcopters with with a steel body and db meter and camera. The drones sit and listen for a very large sound and then when they hear it they fly as fast as they can to the source of the audio and kamikaze right into the wheel where the steel body will destabilize the bike causing an accident.

No need to ram the driver and spend the drone. It could just spray some paint onto the helmet and clothes. The paint should be easy to wash out, but it should stick for enough time to cause the driver to stop.

I wouldn't recommend anyone go anywhere near creating such a thing.

IANAL, but I think it goes waaayy over the line of setting a trap, which is very illegal (even to trap ppl repeatedly doing highly illegal things), and will most definitely get you sued for all you're worth if you manage to cause any injuries, and probably face criminal charges [0][1][2].

Just because you can does not mean that you should... (now having the drone catch up to them and cover them in glitter, maybe)

[0] https://www.sfinelaw.com/blog/2019/october/how-setting-a-boo...

[1] https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/

[2] https://www.halt.org/booby-traps-and-the-law-defend-your-pro...

The apologists always scream about how "cars will run us over if we're not loud enough to shake the teeth out of your skull!" but I've searched and not found one single study that supports that claim.

I've searched and cannot find one single apologist that screams "cars will run us over if we're not loud enough to shake the teeth out of your skull!"

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22cars+will+run+us+over+if+we%27r...

Loud honking? As opposed to what?

Good. I look forward to this enforcement in my city. I currently live against a major road. During the night, the traffic noise isn’t disturbing, except for about one vehicle in a thousand. And that motorcycle wakes me at 3am. For weeks on end. My neighbor’s kid’s motorcycle. On his way to work at 3am, has to gun it when turning out of the neighborhood, waking everyone. These are neighbors who had shot their next door neighbor’s cat, so unlikely to adapt their actions based upon my request. I’d happily pay for this device for my town. And yes, I’ve investigated soundproofing my bedroom. Quote was around $16k. Multiply that by the dozens of neighbors he wakes each night, and he forces everyone else to bare hundreds of thousands of dollars in upgrades so he can make noise at 3am. As much as I don’t want to step on anyone’s “freedoms”, noise sucks.

You could buy your neighbor an electric motorcycle for less than $16k! :-) Best of luck.

they killed a neighbor's pet, but were they punished by the law? that's insane. and it also should significantly lower the threshold to having them in trouble as assholes again.

This kind of thing isn't all that uncommon. Police don't do much about crime, really (no, not even in middle-class white suburbia), as far as investigating or trying to punish anything. If you tried to bring the issue to them, you'd likely end up in a nasty he-said-she-said thing with your neighbor, possibly inviting further attacks from them, or might even end up (one way or another) being the ones receiving fines or other punishment (say, if they started recording your every move so they can find something to take to the cops, HOA, et c).

Even if you caught it clearly on camera and can get the cops to give a shit, what's going to happen is probably a fine or probation, and now your demonstrably-shitty neighbors have a serious grudge against you. You've "won, but also lost so badly that you may end up having to move. So your best likely outcome, after much effort and possibly some expense, is a very Pyrrhic victory.

By ‘Pyrrhic victory’, you mean enforcement action carries risks? That’s true for every society in human history…

Is that how that reads to you?

Yes, and?

It's pretty typical for cops not to bother to pursue animal cruelty charges, especially if it's "just" a neighbor's pet. Then if there's any potential "defense", like the pet entering their property, it's basically guaranteed it won't be pursued unless the victim has cop connections.

They could be sued civilly, but the damages you'd win are basically the cost of a replacement pet, so super insulting.

Except in NY, IL, FL, and maybe TN, which have laws allowing recovery of damages beyond just the cost of replacement for a household pet.

But loud pipes save lives! /s

We have a similar problem. Replace "motorcycle" with "bro-dozer" and make it 4am.

Noise sucks. And since the pandemic lockdowns have lifted, it's even more abrasive. Those few months of relative quiet were marvelous. Where I live, it's a lot of tire noise from a highway over a mile away - just a constant background "brrrrrr" that I didn't notice before and can't ignore today.

> But loud pipes save lives! /s

Bikers actually say that with a straight face. It drives me bonkers. If I look at any list on the internet about top 10 ways to stay safe on a motorcycle, none of those lists will include "loud pipes". Yet, those same bikers will ignore other items on those safety lists like wearing brightly colored high visibility jacket/vest.

Next time you are in a car driving next to a Harley, listen to it. It will be quiet even at a stoplight and inaudible at speed.

The road is a noisy place. Cars are soundproofed to deal with that. A loud engine antagonizes everyone not driving but drivers won't even hear it.

> Next time you are in a car driving next to a Harley, listen to it. It will be quiet even at a stoplight and inaudible at speed.

Do they make Harleys totally different where you're from? Serious question, maybe your country has noise regulations the US doesn't, or something, so they have to modify them for that market. This isn't at all true in the US.

The post you're replying to is not about Harleys being silent in absolute sense but about their noise not standing out to drivers over the noise of other cars, car's own noise, and sound insulation.

Right, I haven't found that to be true at all. Some are louder than others (I assume they've been modded so?) but they're ~always quite loud and do not fade into the general background noise of the road.

I found it to be true, all bikes are virtually silent when I drive. All the road noise is just monotonous hum in the background even with music off.

Huh. Motorcycles are on a pretty short list of types of vehicles that startle or distract me with noise fairly often, along with emergency vehicles (popping on their sirens) and semi trucks (if they happen to rev to go up a hill or pass while right alongside me, or use a Jake Brake while fairly close).

Cars almost never do unless they've clearly got some severe problems with their mufflers, even though ordinary non emergency cars must represent something like 80% of vehicles I encounter on highways in my city. Even for the loud-bass types, the radius in which I can hear that and the volume is lower than typical "Hog"-alike motorcycles. Motorcycles are also the only non-emergency vehicles that sometimes sound really loud inside my house about 300 meters—and a bunch of trees—from the nearest highway (though that's mostly a couple of jerks who seem to like to race on that stretch of highway every so often, on what sound like racing-style bikes, not Harleys)

Motorcycles are loud outside the car, nobody argues that. Most cars have heavy sound insulation though. E.g. I can hear emergency sirens but just because of the different spectrum, if it had been engine sound at the same level I'd likely would not notice most of the time.

I mean from inside a car. The sound is very noticeable, stopped or within 2-3 car lengths while driving.

If I'm driving 30 or 40 mph then I will not hear a loud motorcycle directly next to me. Between my radio, my engine noise, my tire noise, and whatever insulation there is, I just won't hear it.

It's not generally other drivers that are detrimentally impacted by loud cycles/vehicles (though there have been numerous times I got spooked by a rider gunning it to lane split next to me). The problem is for the people relaxing, trying to unwind in their homes being constantly assaulted by road noise.

Edit: and the idea that a big Harley chopper idling at a stoplight isn't ridiculously loud is absurd. "FUD DUD DUD DUD DUD"

Maybe newer stock Harleys. When owners replace stock tailpipes with aftermarket ones, that's when the noise issue really comes in. Straight shotgun pipes are loud and have no baffles.

um... harleys have a wide range of sounds depending on accessories and aftermarket mods. I can definitely hear one idling if it's next to me.

While driving I-10 through Jacksonville, I witnessed a biker on a Harley splitting the lanes, riding on the dash. Hearing the rumble from well behind, I held my position in the lane as he passed but the next set of cars in front of me wasn’t as prepared. When the biker slipped between the two cars in front, he decided to gun it, scaring the driver in front of me to swerve across the interstate, bouncing off both guardrails on each side of the interstate, like a pinball. Nearly caused a big pile up, while the biker motored off with his obnoxiously loud pipes. Granted most bikes aren’t this loud, but there are plenty that will rattle your bones as they pass.

> Cars are soundproofed to deal with that.

That's why dodge charger owners always put the most loud obnoxious exhaust ever on them. I used to have a Chrysler 300 and it was THE QUIETEST car I've ever been in, by a longshot.

A stock Harley is relatively quiet, although it's still a bit louder than any modern car I've seen. The problem is that people regularly install aftermarket mufflers which do not muffle, even in states where this is theoretically illegal, and I've definitely heard them drown out my car radio in chk-chk-chk a few times.

I haven’t found that to be true. At speed, maybe. But at a stop light, I can hear the potato-potato of just about every big V-twin.

> those same bikers will ignore other items on those safety lists like wearing brightly colored high visibility jacket/vest.

If anything, the black leather jacket is practically a uniform.

> But loud pipes save lives

The argument falls flat on its face when you extrapolate it to any other medium. Cyclists and pedestrians should be going around with boomboxes attaches to their bodies.

I love the sound of a good vehicle. But pump that sound in for the driver, not for the unconsenting bystander.

When I first heard of the new-ish trend where car makers are now playing fake engine noise through the car's speaker system[1], I thought "how stupid and phony". But, the more I think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense. Obnoxious engine noise is mostly for the benefit of vain drivers who need validation--so just play it at the driver, and keep it out of the community environment. It's a win-win. Driver gets to drive around hearing his loud vroom-vroom noises, and the public benefits from the quietness of modern engine design. There's no valid reason to deliberately project your vroom-vroom sounds at everyone else around you when you don't have to.

1: https://motorandwheels.com/cars-with-active-sound-design/

Any evidence against this claim though?

Best I can find is this:

https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a35952569/loud-p...

There's loud pipes, and then there's LOUD PIPES. I'm a motorcycle rider with an aftermarket exhaust, but I didn't put it on to make it louder, I simply prefer the different visual look of the aftermarket exhaust (undertail vs underslung). The new exhaust is slightly louder (~5dB) and has more of a bass characteristic, but it's certainly not obnoxious. Do I get noticed more? Yes. However I also know I can start my motorcycle at 7 in the morning and go for a ride and my neighbours aren't inconvenienced (I've asked them), so it's not a black or white situation.

I think most riders are in this camp as well - they just want their bike to look and sound good (good!=loud necessarily), rather than be obnoxious, but there's a small number of riders that just want volume for the LOOK AT ME factor. I'm 100% against those folk - they're just being selfish and spoiling it for everyone else.

Curiously, Harley sounds don't raise my hackles the way a loud sport-bike does. What are they, Ducati's or something? There is just something just so shrill about their sound.

Most likely the Japanese bikes. A lot of Ducati's run in a parallel twin cylinder format, which doesn't rev as high as the inline 4's.

Captain Pedantic, swooping in to nitpick with one correction, Citizen: Ducatis run V-twins these days, much like Harleys (though that is where the comparison stops). Ducati did make parallel twins some forty years ago, and they were...less than reliable.

It was a Kawasaki.

> These are neighbors who had shot their next door neighbor’s cat

Jesus. At that point I'd go up to questionably legal methods to get these fuckers some justice. People who intentionally murder cats deserve everything that's coming for them.

Have you tried confronting them about it?

Statistically, confronting a Harley rider who guns their bike in their neighbourhood at 3 am, tends to have a negative return on investment. Given the ops description as "they also shot another neighbour's cat", I feel it likely they will fall well within the normal bell curve.

I agree in general that approaching your neighbours first is the theoretically right thing to do before escalating. That works out well far far less likely than I'd like it to.

Not a car. He shot a cat.

In our neighborhood, there is a family in the same vein whose kid insisted on honking the horn whenever he rounded a corner, no matter what time of day or night. Nice requests via email by the two nearest homeowners did nothing. Showing up at his house after one of the incidents antagonized the father. The only thing that got the kid to stop was exposing him (describing the car, which is unique) on the neighborhood FB group, and the father only reluctantly stopped his son after angrily criticizing the affected family and condemning the issue coming out on Facebook.

>>Not a car. He shot a cat.

Well... that's still kinda bad, I think...?

Corrected the typo, thx!

I have. Now he guns it when he passes my house.

> These are neighbors who had shot their next door neighbor’s cat, so unlikely to adapt their actions based upon my request.

I'm not an authoritarian kind of guy but there are people who are better removed from society entirely.

Similar deal here. Some asshole at my apartment got an expensive new car that literally the entire building (with god knows how many units, it's big) hears every single time he enters or leaves. He revs his engine twice on every single floor of the parking garage and all along the street I'm situated on. He'll even do it for hours on end (he did on Monday!). I honestly think he's trying to harass someone in particular because it's obscene at this point.

Literally one person. Always the same car. I am so sick of this shit. Management is sick of it but "can't do anything." I have yet to meet a neighbor who is not aware of this problem and sick of it.

I'm honestly amazed at the audacity of these people.

It's not that amazing: They do it because they can, and they know that everyone around them has learned to be helpless to stop it. Consequence-free belligerence is endemic here (I'm assuming USA), because it's usually not against the law and when it is, nobody is willing to stop it. And if you take action against it, you're the one in trouble. So the bullies get free rein.

yes, this. what do you think would be hypothetically an apt repercussion? maybe a few drops of butyric acid down a window pane?

I’ve heard that anti-SUV activists somewhere in the Nordics would place a small stone under the air valve cap and the screw it back on causing the tire to slowly go empty over the course of a day. Inconvenient, nondestructive - but also not very kind.

good idea. that's precisely the stuff I'm coming to hacker news for.

If he does that enough, I wouldn't be surprised by someone taking some self-help measures.

Gas tank donations are one common approach, as is helping aesthetics by removing those unsightly air valves on tires.

When I was growing up I had heard that a good use for old potatoes was to weather-seal the open end of exhaust pipes.

Nobody will do anything because the kind of people who are annoyed by this kind of behavior are generally well off and religiously law abiding. The kind of people who would do something a) aren't that bothered by it and b) generally have bigger thorns in their sides than someone else's loud car

This is fundamentally a conflict of class based social norms. The kind of people who have obnoxiously loud cars don't have a lot of the kind of people who complain about obnoxiously loud cars in their social circles.

Oil pan drain plug removal can help them change the oil on their car, but remember to remind them to refill the oil or else their engine might seize!

They might notice the low oil light warning. If they immediately shut off their engine, the engine will probably be just fine. Modern oil "sticks" to the moving parts much better, so it takes a day or two for it to all drip down into the sump.

I've always fantasized about getting a coffee can of thermite…

Engine can't make noise if there's a 6" hole going through it.

> Management is sick of it but "can't do anything."

Doesn't your building have rules about noise, and (hopefully) fines for non-compliance? That seems pretty standard.

this is a case for John Wick.

Well if they go to work at 3am, that probably means they’re asleep earlier in the day. All you gotta do is blast music at that time until they get the message.

For extra fun, automate it to start playing music as early as you can to match their sleep schedule, even when you’re out of the house. Say that it’s to warm up your speakers for when you get home.

Just get a boombox and play engine-revving noises. They might be too dense otherwise to make the connection.

Towels work pretty well apparently (sometimes better than foam acoustic panels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKwb58vvFI

That video has nothing to do with soundproofing.

Towels work just as well as sound proof material and are a cheap alternative. Here are some other ideas: https://soundproofliving.com/soundproof-room-cheap-free-idea...

You may have seen numerous videos, but just thought I'd share another one that I saw recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2TaWG4aeEU

Historically, people just left for more rural parts rather than try and change behavior.

I know your scenario is particularly egregious, but there’s other stories in this thread that make me wonder how someone can live in Manhattan or along an interstate highway and still complain about noise.

We as a society should do everything we can to make cities nicer places to live because it's so much more sustainable than suburban lifestyle. This includes minimizing unnecessary noise.

> As much as I don’t want to step on anyone’s “freedoms”, noise sucks.

I definitely want to step on anyone's "freedoms" if those freedoms egregiously infringe on other people's freedoms.

Do you drive??

I find it hypocritical for someone to drive and complain about noise from a major road.

And it's why people choose not to live near major roads.

There is a huge difference between the amount of noise generated by a Toyota Camry vs a car or motorcycle with a purposefully modified exhaust.

I lived on a road with light-medium traffic recently. I couldn't tell you if 10 or 100 passenger cars went by the house.

My blood pressure would shoot up whenever I heard a car with a "Burble Tune" go by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY

They said that they don't have a problem with 999 out of 1000 cars. That's not being hypocritical.

Normal cars do not produce noise issues. I live in the city and it’s basically _only_ motorbikes and modded cars I can hear.

House was a short sale back in 2011. Beautiful house, for an absolute steal. Only real downside is the road, which my bedroom is about 100ft from. Although I describe it as a major road, during rush hour there are a few thousand cars an hour. After 10pm, it’s down to a couple dozen an hour. While sitting here for the past 15min paying attention to the road noise, I can barely hear the tire noise of a 4x4, the way off acceleration of a sports car and the barely audible road noise from regular passengers vehicles. Nothing at all like this motorcycle. Kawasaki sports bike, so a high pitched whine, not the low rumble of a Harley.

How do you not go to jail for shooting the neighbor's cat? There is no possible claim of self defense like there would be with a dog.

Tangent: We should outlaw leaf blowers in cities while at it. It's february and freezing out and for some reason the idiotic management in the apartment across the street has contracted some crew to do daily leaf blowers on nearly completely clean sidewalks disturbing probably hundreds of people WFH. Not to even mention how particularly awful leaf blowers are for the environment.

this is my #1 public nuisance

Gas powered leaf blowers are horrible - noise and air pollution. Electric ones aren't bad.

It's still a lot of energy to push leaves around for no good reason. But yes, much better than gas.

It’s not a whole lot of energy really. They run for ages on tiny little batteries.

James Fallows, a pretty influential journalist, did just that in the District of Columbia. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/james-f...

Oh wow, thanks for the article. I'm right across the river -- perhaps Arlington will follow suit!

The worst part about the noise is the constant cycling. Whirr WHIRRR whirr WHIRR whirr. For me, at least, it is dramatically more annoying than just a constant hum.

Have you ever spent a day landscaping?

Like most people in the suburbs the OP could probably answer in the affirmative. My brother does this professionally and he gets by just fine without any such machines. It’s kind of a selling point for people who don’t want fumes, dust and chemicals in their gardens.

How are you getting "fumes" in your garden, which is outdoors?

This just seems like such an obvious class divide thing to me. Those guys out there with the leaf blowers are working their ass off, sorry it's loud for a few minutes per day.

> Those guys out there with the leaf blowers are working their ass off, sorry it's loud for a few minutes per day.

So is the real answer pay them better and have them use rakes?

> sorry it's loud for a few minutes per day

It's more than a few minutes. Often times it goes up to a full hour, and it's usually super early in the morning, waking up a bunch of people. Each apartment complex will bring them in at different times, and now people who work late just have to have their sleep interrupted.

> This just seems like such an obvious class divide thing to me.

Why? People who are forced to work late, btw, are usually not upper class. And it's not like we won't want clean streets. If anything, this efficiency decrease will create more jobs for landscaping folks. It will also be less of a nuisance for everyone.

Sure plenty of times growing up. Not sure the point of this question?

Ignoring the environmental aspect I think limited use in suburban settings is reasonable. I'm particularly focused on egregious use in urban settings when we aren't talking fall leaf collection but constant "cleaning". Obviously it's not the workers fault... it's a matter of mis-priced negative externalities. Napkin math say the noise makes 100 people WFH 10% less effective for an hour at say $50hr wage average it certainly makes more sense to just pay workers to work twice as long with brooms (if the work is even necessary in the first place).

California just did this! https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38004981/california-ban-g...

I don't think it phases in fast enough, tbh, but it's a start. Someone the next block over from me runs their leaf blower around 7 AM everyday and it is godawful noise -- the sound carries at least 2 or 3 blocks in every direction

Hard agree. One of the most shockingly rude inventions. High CO2 emissions, particulates, dust and noise. And it only really works for one person until their neighbors blow all the debris back over the fence. Fortunately California already too steps to phase them out: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-life/california-s...

Years ago, I lived in an apartment complex that would have landscapers come once a week.

And of course, they'd begin their work promptly at 8 AM, and it always felt like they would spend extra time blowing leaves right outside my window.

personally I just think of them as the Song of the Suburbs.

But yes, 2-stroke lawn-care engines are egregious offenders in the climate and air quality battles. At least make it all electric like CA's been doing.

YES THANK YOU

The vast majority of motorcyles in America are illegally modified to be louder than they should [0]. This crime is basically impossuble to police because you need an offer with a reliable sound meter device in the right place at the right time. I am glad NY is going to automate this.

I used to live on a street (Guerrero St in SF) that had loud motorcycles ripping down in the middle of the night on a daily basis. Every time this happens I am sure multiple people wake up, causing loss of sleep and therefore loss of happiness and productivity. All so some selfish rider can have their loud toy.

0: https://rickeyholtsclaw.com/2016/03/10/the-truth-about-loud-...

If the DMV enforced smog checks for motorcycles this problem would disappear within the year - the aftermarket exhausts delete the catalytic system and mean that the output of oxides is actually higher than most cars. It's trivial to swap an exhaust but most riders won't bother to keep around an extra muffler just to swap it on every few years.

Even factory stock NOx emissions from motorcycles are ~1000x higher under California rules compared to light-duty cars and trucks.

From some brief googling it seems that catalytic systems haven't widely been implemented on motorcycles until fairly recently, so that ratio may be for motorcycles without any emissions equipment, even if left stock. That being said, my '05 BMW for sure had a cat. I haven't been able to find info on whether they're similarly effective compared to catalytics on modern cars.

I don't completely understand it but California laws seem to permit the sale of new motorcycles with very old designs. It appears that the laws come into force when a new model needs to be certified, or something like that. So you can buy a brand new XR650L from Honda, that still has a 1980s carbureted engine design and no catalytic converter, and that's a CARB-compliant bike for some reason.

But given the low mass, does it have more emissions than a single occupant 2 ton SUV?

The CARB standards are per-mile. CARB standards for motorcycle total hydrocarbons + NOx are 800mg per km. For light-duty vehicles (cars and trucks and SUVs < 9000 pounds) the standard is 12 mg per mile (no, I do not know why one is in miles and the other is in km). So an SUV that holds maybe as many as 7 people emits much less.

Of all NOx emissions statewide from on-road cars and motorcycles, the motorcycles emit one third of it, despite being only 5% of the fleet and putting on < 1% of the fleet miles.

Of course motorcycles are usually a lot better on CO2.

When it comes to NOx and particulate stuff - yes. Much higher.

When it comes to CO2 it’s obviously less.

It's also worth pointing out that motorcycles are surprisingly inefficient for their mass. If you're carpooling with 2 other people, chances are pretty good you're doing better than a motorcycle on CO2 and NOx both.

I would get something like 40? mpg city, maybe like 55 highway. Paradoxically, some of the best efficiency I had was at 90mph cruise, because I tucked behind the fairing, dramatically increasing my aerodynamics.

While I may be knocking on moto for co2/emissions, I feel compelled to note that motorcycles do not contribute substantially to traffic or road wear. If you see someone lanesplit past you in traffic, just be glad they're one less car in your way.

I've got nothing at all against motorcycles except for the idiots making noise.

If they're willing to take on the risk of riding around all these distracted idiots in SUVs, then more power to them.

I'd like to ride a motorbike but I just wouldn't feel safe considering how many close calls that weren't my fault that I've had in the car, despite considering myself a defensive driver.

California is no different than the rest of the US in this.

Probably because motorcycles account for nearly nothing in terms of actual miles driven/ridden. It’s incredibly common to find 10+ year old bikes with <10k miles on them. This is ignoring that bikes are basically declining in sales overall too since the 90s.

People just notice them because bikes are novel when on the road. No different than seeing an exotic car.

See: https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles

They’re less than 1% of miles accounted for. Trivial amount. I still think we should adopt Euro5 type standards or something but it’s just not worth fighting over for most of the US. Especially since a large portion of the motorcycle audience is boomers on Harley’s - and that would go counter to their whole lifestyle.

Note that the largest source of fugitive hydrocarbons is parked motorcycles, because 1) CARB estimates that about 30% of bikes in the state have had their evap canisters removed, and 2) even the ones that still have their canisters can't work for more than about 7 days, so a motorcycle that doesn't have the engine started for more than a week leaks as much fuel as one that never had California emissions equipment in the first place.

from your source:

> Approximately 60-80% of the large displacement motorcycles operating on our public roadways at any given time in the United States have been illegally modified

you’re missing an important qualifier in your own text (“large displacement”). your source also repeatedly says that noise disruption in and of itself is domestic terrorism, which seems… a little ABSURD to me? really? are people TERRIFIED by loud motorcycles? no: it’s a disturbance, an annoyance, a nuisance, many things. but TERRORISM it is not. i really wouldn’t put a whole lot of stock in this source of yours.

But why would anyone do that? What's the advantage of having a loud motorcycle?

It distracts from the small pee-pee.

> The vast majority of motorcyles in America are illegally modified to be louder than they should [0]

"vast majority" just doesn't pass the giggle test.

> This crime is basically impossuble to police because you need an offer with a reliable sound meter device in the right place at the right time.

I live down the street from a biker club clubhouse. It would be beyond trivial to police this here, but of course the police don't care. Or, worse, probably have some sort of agreement with them. Meanwhile, I get woken up at 3am several times a week by a loud bike that sets off car alarms as it goes by.

Officers can give a ticket simply by inspecting the muffler. They don't need to measure the sound. Non-compliant mufflers lack the EPA sticker required by law.

Great news, and I hope this catches on elsewhere. Our acoustic environment is a commons, and a particularly fragile one at that. Quiet surroundings are a boon to health and happiness, a fact that is not only immediately obvious to anyone with ears and a nervous system but also proven by scientific studies. However it can be destroyed so easily by one a-hole to the detriment of all. It's about time we start protecting it.

Apparently it's happening in Paris too: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/noise-radar-in...

and in London since 2020: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54452835

Cities in the Netherlands have been making great progress as well: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8

On the one hand, I think red light cameras and automated speed traps are unconstitutional and there have been shady companies caught fixing them. I hate the idea of putting super sensitive microphones in public spaces and connecting them directly to police departments.

But on the other hand, fuck loud cars and motorcycles, they are a menace to society, and they are the only thing that makes my blood boil, when they wake me up at 2am.

how are they unconstitutional?

To be clear, their constitutionality status is a matter of opinion.

In my opinion, they should be deemed unconstitutional via a violation of rights against search and seizure, and rights for a proper trial. It's impossible to face your accuser in court, it's impossible to actually check the software used to identify whether you were speeding, and asymmetrically automating enforcement of something where it's in the enforcer's interest to find violations is a perverse incentive we should not allow in our legal system.

In the case of red light cameras, aren't there pictures to prove the violation?

There are pictures to prove the VEHICLE was there, but the mechanism then assumes the owner of the vehicle was the driver, which is a problem.

Take two pictures then maybe, one from the front, one from the back.

But also, unless the vehicle was stolen, why not put the burden of proof on the owner. Don't people know who they're giving their car to? I think that's how it works in many European countries. If the car is stolen, just file a report.

why not put the burden of proof on the owner.

In the U. S., I'm innocent until proven guilty: prove it was me. No, I'm not telling you who was driving, because my lawyer said something something 5th amendment. But that's the theory, as this not-a-lawyer understands it. In practice, you'll just pay the ticket because the future of civil rights law does not rest on determining who was driving the car that day, and you know it was you anyway.

> I'm innocent until proven guilty: prove it was me.

This is trivially circumvented via "attach fine to car" and "driving in a car with fine attached is illegal." (AFAIK that's how it works in Ukraine).

End result is the same.

The argument is not that a photo-enforcement mechanism couldn't be structured to abide by US law. The issue is that, thus far, the only attempts have run afoul of foundational elements of our legal structure because the towns/counties who have tried have tied the photo-enforcement tickets to the existing criminal statutes about driving.

If it were a civil infraction, with no license points, they'd have a better standing, but nobody has bothered to take that path.

Right to trial, I could see the issue there. Right to inspect the evidence used against you, sure.

But where on earth do you get an expectation of privacy in deafening sounds you blast in public, which people can't ignore even if they want to? And audible inside others' private areas?

> But where on earth do you get an expectation of privacy in deafening sounds you blast in public, which people can't ignore even if they want to? And audible inside others' private areas?

Nowhere, because I never said anything about that.

You said:

>>In my opinion, they should be deemed unconstitutional via a violation of rights against search and seizure

The only things searched are that very same deafening noises that everyone has to hear without any effort on their part. If you're saying that's a violation of search and seizure, you're saying there's some expectation of privacy around the violation being prosecuted.

If not, what are you saying was being searched/seized that violated privacy?

You could have said so the first time you posted, or in your last reply, but elected instead to have plausible deniability of any specific argument.

I feel like you're trying to force a very specific wording, "expectation of privacy", that doesn't fit very well with what I'm trying to describe, because in different contexts there can be different definitions/interpretations/kinds of "privacy".

For example, if one is driving down a public street, obviously one does not have an expectation of "privacy" in the traditional sense.

If everyone driving down a public street is checked, without probable cause, to make sure they aren't violating any laws, I think that should be an unconstitutional search.

Obviously that isn't an unconstitutional search under current interpretations of laws, but I think it ought to be.

>I feel like you're trying to force a very specific wording, "expectation of privacy", that doesn't fit very well with what I'm trying to describe

You referred to constitutional search and seizure, referencing the 4th amendment. The things protected by the 4th amendment are generally referred to as the things you have an "expectation of privacy" in; I was just using the relevant jargon for the situation.

>Obviously that isn't an unconstitutional search under current interpretations of laws, but I think it ought to be.

Yeah, I got where you're coming from. It's just ... very dubious, for exactly the reason I gave, and which you had a chance to reply to, but elected to nitpick my (appropriate) jargon instead.

Yes, privacy is a thing that should be respected. But in no reasonable interpretation does privacy apply to something that you force a large number of indiscriminate, unconsenting people to observe, through no effort of their own. Whatever privacy applies to -- and there's plenty of room for disagreement otherwise -- it can't reasonably apply to that.

The "search" in question happened by passively observing the very same thing that the huge number of indiscriminate people were forced to observe anyway, only with quantifiable numbers for consistency. That can't have an expectation or pr-- er, can't count as an unreasonable search. They did not touch the vehicle. They did not look inside it. They simply received the very conspicuous observables that it threw off into its environs, for the purpose of enforcing the law against throwing that specific observable, that time.

There are many issues you can come up related to prosecuting that. "But you searched my private space" is not one of them.

You can face your accuser in court. The camera isn't accusing you. The city is. It's using the camera as evidence.

It's easy to use a camera as evidence in, say, a robbery. The camera will show you actually committing the crime.

If you're speeding, something's measuring your speed based on camera images. The method used to determine speed is not described in detail, just "trust us, they were going the speed we say". It's not generally the city who is doing this, but a third-party private company which sometimes is paid per ticket issued.

You can face the city in court, and the city will just say "Our contractor says you did this." The contractor will say "we totally think you did this. No, we will not show you our proprietary software that says you did it." In my opinion, that last statement violates the rights of the accused.

There have been numerous cases in the last decade of red light and speed camera companies issuing hundreds of illegitimate tickets. The system is ripe for abuse, and gets abused all the times. Happy to pull up some examples of this if you're curious.

I can definitely see these systems being used illegitimately, but this has nothing to do with whether you can face your accuser. A software company telling you that you cannot validate the methodology of their measurement instrument is definitely troubling, but it is not fundamentally dissimilar to the police using speed guns whose internals you cannot inspect to convict you of speeding. Even more problematic than either of these technologies is the fact that the cops jail motorists for DUI on the basis of their own subjective interpretation of those motorists' performances on sobriety field tests.

The use of opaque technology by law enforcement raises significant issues in a free society. But so does the use of opaque non-technological judgement by police officers. Since there are significant benefits to automated enforcement, we should be pushing to improve transparency, rather than pursuing a chimera where we can only be prosecuted on the basis of transparent and reproduceable forensic analysis.

> there are significant benefits to automated enforcement

Could you elaborate on what you think the benefits are?

I'm of the opinion that systems that indiscriminately check whether all people nearby are currently committing a crime should not be things we should be building in our society. I would prefer there be a reason to suspect a person of a crime, and pursue on a targeted basis, rather than simply have panopticons charging people with crimes.

For example- with the system in this article, I would prefer if a person were required to call in and complain "there was a too-noisy car at this location at this time", and then a person reviewed footage from that location at that time and determined whether to send a ticket out or not.

Regarding your points about transparency, I completely agree with you.

> Could you elaborate on what you think the benefits are?

Very simply, I don't want people driving around New York with blown-out mufflers. I have to deal with these people all the time. They are a constant, low-level annoyance that lowers quality of life for everyone in the city. Presently, there are presently no consequences for this sort of selfish behavior, and I'd like that to change by ticketing the perpetrators.

I don't understand what the added value is in making ordinary New Yorkers call the police with a time and cross-street as a precondition for a summons. What are we gaining here? Are we trying to validate the existence of a victim? Of course there is a victim -- there is hardly a block of the city where a loud motorist will not be negatively impacting a resident's life. This place is incredibly crowded. People live almost everywhere. Are we assuming that a manual reviewer is going to be more effective than an automated system? How? At the end of the day, they're going to have to base their judgment on a decibel reading anyways.

You have no ability to question your accuser, because your accuser is a machine. The source code is proprietary. The data chain is secret. You have no ability to meaningfully audit it to see if it actually works or is making a lot of false positives.

Regular speed-guns have the same issues, though.

You can face your accuser (the traffic cop) and you can challenge the calibration/accuracy of their radar/lidar gun.

If you challenge the accuracy they have to prove it was tuned recently (usually 6 months~) prior to issuing the ticket and tested the day of (usually).

There IS an audit trail for of certificates and logs of tuning for radar guns so they can prove it in court if challenged.

There is NOT an audit trail for traffic cams because the companies don't expose enough information to audit.

If you challenge a traffic ticket from a red light camera, you will usually win because they can't prove you guilty.

What shitty red light cameras are these where the data is all secret? In my city, tickets from red light cameras include a video of the incident, which clearly shows the car and traffic light.

Is that really how it works elsewhere, they just send you a ticket saying "we caught you running a red light, please pay fine"? What happens if you show up to court to contest, can't you just point out they have literally no evidence?

it is extremely easy to edit a green light to a red light, just partially delay the feed. Data is meaningless.

That implies malicious intent rather than a bug causing a false positive.

> it is extremely easy to edit a green light to a red light, just partially delay the feed. Data is meaningless.

It is extremely easy to tamper with most evidence, and there are ways to detect tampering.

If they actually did it at scale they would run into conflicting dashcam footage very quickly, and the whole conspiracy would go belly up before bearing any fruit.

If you think data is meaningless we should also remove police cruisers' dashcams and stop the rollout of body cams, I guess? Those aren't conspiracy-proof either.

I'm not aware of governments just asking one to pay a fine. The thing that really bothers me is that it allows the state to perform legal action at scale. If a city, let's say Chicago, just started sending people ticket how many would just pay it? From what I've seen [0], my guess would be a lot.

[0] https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2021/07/29/chicago-speed-camera...

I agree red light cameras are problematic for other reasons, but parent's claim specifically was that they were unconstitutional because the evidence can't be inspected.

Not OP and can't speak to constitutionality, but red light cameras drive some perverse incentives. There have been a number of verified reports[0] that cities with red light cameras shorten the length of the yellow light in order to get more tickets, and therefore revenue.

0. https://time.com/3505994/red-light-camera-problems-tickets/

Does any agency have the authority to enact a rule that mandates a minimum duration for the yellow light?

IMO all Pigovian taxes and fines (alcohol, tobacco, speed fines, etc.) should go in special pool and then distributed to citizens.

Fixes moral hazard pretty good.

The legality of them is largely in the implementation. For example, many red-light/speeding cameras don't prove who was driving the vehicle. There have also been issues with shady companies operating them and cities deliberately timing lights to increase ticket revenue.

They arguably violate the right to confront one's accuser in court. Not sure if I buy that argument personally, since there's probably a technician who operates the camera system who could show up to court.

There have been microphone arrays in many neighborhoods for years: "ShotSpotter has been in operation for 25 years, serves more than 120 cities..." https://www.shotspotter.com/

That is terrifying, I had no idea.

Oh, that's fine, we'll just limit cars at the speed limit. They all ship with GPS for 20+ years, it's time to use it. Nobody needs to pay, nobody needs to simulate a PID controller.

Speed- and red-light cameras are constitutionally problematic because they generate CRIMINAL citations without proof of who was actually doing the driving.

Holding the titled owner of a vehicle responsible for excessive noise or pollution, though, makes sense regardless of who's driving. I see no issue here, while I definitely oppose the former.

This is an excellent example for people concerned with privacy rights.

In order to have nice things the population really needs to culturally understand that "with great power comes great responsibility".

Instead we have a culture of entirely selfish individualism, so the popular backlash is that damn near everyone is this thread (including myself) applauds the erosion of privacy rights because we're fed up and sick of living in a society with assholes.

If we can't govern ourselves voluntarily, we'll be governed by machines that we build.

We do desperately need to have income and wealth-adjusted tickets for these things though. A $20 slap on the wrist might be more than some people who are on the edge of homelessness can afford while a CEO might need a minimum of a $10k fine to even register for their attention.

i think what you’re looking for are called day fines. they’re used in a lot of nordic countries.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

> Instead we have a culture of entirely selfish individualism, so the popular backlash is that damn near everyone is this thread (including myself) applauds the erosion of privacy rights because we're fed up and sick of living in a society with assholes.

I dunno, I find this framing by "Privacy Advocates" to be a bit... hyperbolic. When every little thing is the first step to complete tyranny, nothing is. To me at least these things are tradeoffs, and in this case it seems worth it?

I agree that some things seem hyperbolic, but I'm not convinced that audio recording devices scattered around a city is one of them.

Desperately need these in San Francisco. These cars and motorcycles that have been modified to be super loud are a menace.

If you want to modify your vehicle for performance on the racetrack, fine. But when you leave the racetrack, make it compliant again.

Unfortunately we won't even allow speed enforcement cameras, so this seems unlikely.

https://cal.streetsblog.org/2021/05/21/california-wont-be-ge...

I wouldn’t be so sure. The interest group of speeders may be much larger than the interest group of loud pipes.

You're right. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.

Public opinion is changing. Someone ran a red light at the intersection of Franklin and Union and killed a teacher right in front of a school recently.

In New York City, speed cameras started in school zones. I think that's an excellent place to start.

Agreed, let's say all intersections within a mile of a school? ;-)

I wouldn’t have an issue with speed cameras in certain places if we had reasonable speed limits. Problem is - we set speed limits quite low in California.

101 is 55mph for major portions of it. Yet, ain’t no one going 55 because there’s no reason to. We all can safely drive on it at 75 and that’s the prevailing speed right now regardless of what the signs say. Even 75 is low for many and you can go 85+ with no real increase in risk many times.

Speed limits like most laws are often set for the lowest common denominator, to harvest tax money, and/or as reactionary adjustments rather than based on reason/studies.

I'd wager you have fart cars out there like we do in NYC now, right?

> Desperately need these in San Francisco. These cars and motorcycles that have been modified to be super loud are a menace.

> If you want to modify your vehicle for performance on the racetrack, fine. But when you leave the racetrack, make it compliant again.

I can almost guarantee the cars you're annoyed with are mostly clapped out V8 Mustangs, Camaros, Challengers, etc. and large v-twin bikes like Harleys (I mean - they're probably literally Harleys). If that's the case then you can bet that these cars and motorcycles have never and will never see a racetrack - or likely even a backroad at a spirited pace for any period of their life.

All of the really loud cars and bikes I hear in SF are not performance oriented. The performance oriented ones... they go by before you even really register it. (Again - the whole point of performance cars is to go fast - not just slowly build RPMs from 10-30mph)

About 7 years ago I was toying with making an open-source raspberry pi with a decibel meter you could stick to your window and it would listen for loud noises and tweet the police department to say that a loud noise (likely motorcycle groups that ride up and down my street) had been located at X location.

I had a few friends who said they would also put them in their windows, so we could have a few devices coordinate to confirm it wasn't just a loud neighbour or something.

I built a prototype, but when I started measuring how loud the motorcycles were, it was often within the legal limits (I think 80db or something).

Partly, this is because it was inside my apartment, but they sure sounded loud.

I spoke to a police officer friend about what to do, and he said the police just didn't care. I pointed out how easily they could use a decibel meter on their phone to measure how loud, but it was a complete non-interest for them.

Good to see NYC taking action on this. Hopefully more cities follow suit.

> I spoke to a police officer friend about what to do, and he said the police just didn't care. I pointed out how easily they could use a decibel meter on their phone to measure how loud, but it was a complete non-interest for them.

Ostensibly this is because the incentives aren't aligned properly. The reason why many areas over-enforce traffic violations is because of quotas and incentive structures that encourage people to hand-out tickets. If you did the same thing with noise, you could actually encourage departments to try to enforce this.

I had a neighbor with a Dodge Charger with no muffler. I talked to a police officer about it. He basically told me that he himself drove a loud car, and his neighbors complained to him about it because he leaves for work at 5:00 AM, and that's the nature of sports cars and you just have to get used to it.

You could sue him in small claims court.

>use a decibel meter on their phone to measure how loud

Phone microphones are not calibrated for this and the apps just spit out completely wrong numbers. They show relative noise changes fine but one phone could show the same sound at a higher or lower db rating just because the mic is a little more amplified or something.

The Apple Watch actually is calibrated for this and has a built in app which shows noise levels quite accurately.

So much wrong with this...

80db is a measure of relative sound level, not the absolute level.

And vehicle noise levels must be measured at a specific distance to be useful.

YES. I have lived on some incredibly busy streets in New York. Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud.

It's remarkable how much more pleasant a city is on streets that are closed down to cars. If your city hosts Ciclovías, go and check them out if only to sit at a restaurant outside and eat lunch in near total serenity.

> Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud.

Fantastic video with that very name exploring just how true this is: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8

It was remarkable just how quiet NYC was recently during a snow storm. Cars weren't out and about and it was heaven.

I find towns and cities to be unbearably noisy now and almost all of that noise is from cars and other motor vehicles. Certain people, of course, need to stand out from the crowd and have responded by making even more noise. Some of those cars and motorbikes are obnoxiously loud, but I think something like the top 20% are louder than they have to be. It needs to stop. There are studies showing the bad effects of noise pollution on people's health. Electric cars should reduce the overall noise level but the outliers definitely need to be targeted.

Noise pollution is a major consideration of mine (now) when choosing where to live. Having lived 'downtown' in a major city, in an older building, it was near the top of my 'list' of nuisances and materially impacted my quality of life. Cops also never did anything about it.

Can we start using something like this with light meters to ticket obnoxious LED beams that have not been properly retrofitted into older cars?

It's extremely obvious which cars these are when you're driving at night. That these people are endangering dozens of other cars on the road is lunacy.

Honestly. Loud motorcycles is annoying but the LED shit is actually dangerous. If theres 1 coming the otherway I legit can't see the road in front of me until its passed. Im kind of considering getting some though, because its kinda a positional arms race about "who can have the brightest lights to see the best at everybody else's expense". Its mean but I don't wanna be the guy who gets fucked over and blinded then found at fault.

So this doesn't solve all the shoddy DIY HID mods out there, but adaptive headlights are finally coming to the States: https://www.autonews.com/regulation-safety/nhtsa-finalizes-r...

In most states those are actually illegal to turn on when driving on a street or highway. Source: owned a 4x4 for off-roading that had a bunch of KC lights on top. I was advised by the installer to keep the covers on them because it's illegal to have them on the street in an uncovered state. Other source: got pulled over for something, and the cop let me go because someone drove by in what looked like a UFO landing sight.

Oh my god, how can I get two of these? I want one facing each way down the street.

I would love to somehow take the ticket money from people who deliberately make their cars obnoxious, and use it to help people with shitboxes fix their mufflers.

Shit, I'd gladly donate the money to city coffers. Just make these idiot drivers' actions hurt them more than they hurt me, which is currently not the case.

Fantastic! I live in south Queens next to the Brooklyn border and good lord the idiots here with their loud cars. Every night it's a cacophony of revving engines, tires screeching and exhaust bangs. You hear the same bullshit sound repeatedly every god damn day. Usually a slammed mustang, infinity or BMW with a two step or whatever that noise making exhaust mod is and either an instagram tag or car club name. And its not just a few cars but a culture around here. You see these clown cars parked all over the neighborhood and I know a few spots where they congregate and street race. The city's response so far has been to install speed trap cameras all over the damn place and nothing else. And people are complaining, loudly, but no one has been seemingly listening.

Though my gripe about this is: Many of those cars have questionable registrations with mostly PA and FL plates. Those guys purposefully gun it for the speed cameras as the tickets go nowhere. The city installed a speed camera the block before me and one night walking home from the store I saw a supra speed down the block, a residential street, at 50+ mph with middle fingers out both windows for the camera. I want these people to die.

Speaking of NYC, we've enjoyed some amazingly effective soundproof windows in many spaces, it seems like a thing there, but when we ask window salesmen in the Bay Area about soundproof windows like that, they kind of shrug and say " double pane is pretty much all you can do". Why can NYC do this but not SF? Or have we just not called the right store?

I have not heard of this unless its part of a recent local building code. I live in a house that was built in 1927 and partly renovated in the late 80's.

Because it probably won't make much difference unless your building is made of brick (like many NY buildings), which it can't be, because earthquakes.

The window sales guy doesn't want you to shell out megabucks on his recommendation and then get no benefit. That makes him look bad.

For the unfamiliar, in addition to 'loud pipes' motorcycles, the biggest thing this is for are 'fart cars'. They're all over NYC. These are generally BMW 3 series, Infiniti, etc that are tuned and have specific exhausts to sound like they have more performance than they do, and to backfire after revving and then spooling down a bit... aka fart. They try to achieve the loudest possible rev and backfire, sometimes sounds like gunshots. They drive up and down residential streets in the outer boroughs mostly at night, revving and farting over and over. Residents here in NYC despise them.

Here's a decent example of a "fart car" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY

Why do they do that, is it basically sadism, i.e. deriving pleasure from others undergoing discomfort or pain?

I assume it fulfills their ego to know they have the power to affect unwilling others. They might not have a good education, retirement fund, upward career prospects, but they can impose at least this little bit onto the world to offset their broader lack of power.

These pops and crackles are common on exotics (cars that cost a lot). So, you’ve got it backwards actually.

An M3 isn’t cheap cash these days. Jaguars have this too (again, is that a cheap car?). AMGs as well. I mean - the list goes on even for more reasonable cars. Your Lamborghinis and Ferraris will vary but plenty of other exotics have them. Common with race cars as well.

I’m guessing most people here have just never watched any kind of motorsport - as these sounds are incredibly common in them. And - here’s the thing - these people like the sound.

Even if you cannot afford an upwardly mobile and financially secure life, you can easily be able to afford financed BMWs in monthly payments. As I understand, repossessing a car is not that hard nowadays with GPS and mobile networks, so there is a lot less risk. Also, it is almost never the more expensive cars I see making sounds. It is mostly cheap Honda/Subaru/Chargers that are modified.

The term in the community is “burble tune” and, yes, it’s extremely annoying and lame.

These should be placed along every major artery in NYC with enormous fines for violators. If people want to behave like selfish children they should be treated as such.

This is great, I am all for enforcing more quality of life measures over things like street sweeping. Ticket people who take two parking spots by not pulling all the way forward, loud cars, loud subs, etc. All the things that make living in a city that much harder. If you want to live in tight proximity with tons of people it is reasonable that you need to have a higher level of consideration.

Cars that make a lot of noise are one in 10,000 where I live. Motorcycles every second one.

Worse than motorcycles are cars with a "pop and bang tune". I can hear these things literally for miles, and they run all day and all night. It's extremely annoying.

Here's an example of what I mean:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DChy9sKVhEo

Somehow the police do almost nothing about this stuff (except what NY is apparently going to do), but the federal government has the time to force tesla to remove the "make fart noise after horn" option from my car.

The only reason to get a mod like that is because you're a psychopath that likes to piss people off for entertainment.

Pop and bang tunes sound like utter shit. They make your car sound broken, and offer zero performance benefit.

The proper term is "fart cars". That's what we refer to them as in NYC.

Unfortunately I’ve spotted at least one of these in NYC driven by a city firefighter. So no chance of enforcement for at least that guy and his stupid exhaust.

Ugh, the comments on that video make me angry. Should never read the comments. Effing sociopaths.

Noise pollution is just one of the many reasons we should have never allowed cars to be the default mode of personal transportation.

In practice, it is more quiet and peaceful at night in a dense walkable city neighborhood, than it is in the supposed bucolic suburbs or countryside. Purely because the first does not have cars.

This enforcement is a great step, but the it's dabbling in the margins. Cars, and especially ICE cars, are fundamentally incompatible with a healthy and safe city life.

> Purely because the first does not have cars.

Not here in my suburb. The bulk of the noise comes almost entirely from katydids, crickets, cicadas, etc. There was plenty of car/truck noise at night in Manhattan, and it was particularly jarring when not among the hum of busier traffic.

Would need to know more about the details, but I agree with the intent while being slightly fearful of police/prosecutions being automated.

As many have posted, loud motor vehicles are a quality of life issue for me (live on a busy street, near an intersection, and not far from a freeway). I am frustrated that obnoxiously loud vehicles are not policed. And, yes, I went through the “loud car stereo” phase of my own youth, including one ticket for volume.

My biggest fear is that police/prosecutors will become efficient at automating/scaling their prosecutions. Yes, consistency of prosecution is very important for encouraging compliance. Automated systems are less likely to be corrupted than human-centric systems where officers can choose to use their discretion for their friends/family or just people they are more likely to like.

However, we have soooo many laws, the more they are enforced, the more we will see how big of a burden the totality of law will become increasingly visible and painful to the average person.

That said, I’m not a fan of slippery slope arguments. So long as we continue to evaluate each of these automated systems as they roll out, I’m a fan of increasing quality of life through enforcing laws that are already on the books in a mostly fair way.

I mean these seems like the lowest bar for enforcing a violation...I believe we should do something similar with parking violations, speeding violations, and others. The only one type of violation I generally dislike is red light violations given the predatory misuse we have seen and the contextual challenges of interpreting WHY a car goes or doesn't go during a yellow-red light.

Agree.

Some red light camera enforcement have proven to be schemes to generate revenue. Yellow light duration was shortened. Camera vendors have a revenue incentive to maximize the number of tickets, so they aren’t impartial and make pretty bad umpires.

>this new system uses a strategically placed sound meter to record decibel levels on the road, matching it to a license plate using a camera.

Are there more details as to how this works and how it prevents false positives? Would the rumble or crack of thunder and lightning trigger a microphone to incorrectly mark a vehicle as loud? Or are there algorithms processing the recorded sound beyond just pure dB/volume to determine if it's actually a muffler?

One option could be to use an array of microphones to detect the source of the loud noise

This is how they do work, at least in the paris trial. Multiple mics around which can locate the source of the sound. They can also just record the sound + video and play it back in case of a dispute.

I wonder legally how 'loud' is assessed. A microphone is subject to a number of environmental anomalies- wind direction, a box truck next to a vehicle reflecting sound back to the mic etc.

A camera is a good visual representation of a vehicle being over a line, visual location speeding evidence accompanying data etc. This pilot project seems dangerously arbitrary. (Not a fan of overly loud vehicles but I am of civil liberties).

One acceptable method would be that getting caught subjects you to having an inspection done to test your vehicle. With enough cameras, it would become too difficult to keep swapping parts for tests.

My thoughts were really about 'getting caught': being summoned because some other vehicle was making a lot of noise, or there was background noise and your vehicle was then tagged, resulting in your having to spend time and money going for government inspections is highly questionable. It also raises a lot of other civil liberties issues about public recording

I think this is just an acceptable responsibility that comes with driving on roads. When you have the ability to cause massive amounts of damage, you have to accept that there is a lot of regulation and compliance to deal with to keep this damage under control.

You wouldn't think twice about requiring private pilots to be subject to all kinds of safety and management rules and I think it's fair the same applies to roads.

If you don't want to take on this responsibility, take a train or bicycle.

People have been 'driving on roads' for over 100 years. Why do you think more and more regulation and oversight is now necessary, coupled with endless penalties? Surely train operators and cyclists (the latter often don't seem to think the rules of the road apply to them, endangering others) have similar concerns

Because more people live in cities than ever before and more value is being put on having quality sleep and quiet. Cities need to be transformed in to the nicest places to live to lower housing costs and help the environment. One of the most impactful things that can be done is catching the very tiny percent of people causing basically all the noise. It should also be in the hands of the people who live there. If you want to drive through an area, you should be subject to measures set by the people of that area.

I wish something would be done about cars that honk when they lock. I ride a bicycle so I take every car horn seriously. Living in an apartment complex that has a parking lot nearby is awful, I hear beeping horns every night, all night.

People with egregiously loud motorcycles that cause others to turn their head and look are suffering from a couple of mental disorders imho

Anti-social behaviors are actions that harm or lack consideration for the well-being of others. It has also been defined as any type of conduct that violates the basic rights of another person

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is listed in the DSM-5 under Disruptive, impulse-control, and conduct disorders and defined as "a pattern of angry/irritable mood, argumentative/defiant behavior, or vindictiveness"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppositional_defiant_disorder

As such, I think that along with tickets, repeat offenders should be required to attend some type of counseling

Good. Now target Harley Davidson motorcycles.

In case some people confuse "freedom" with just being a douchebag.

Living in the calm and quiet East Flushing, I now put my noise cancelling headphones on without anything playing, just to walk through the morning Manhattan.

The mosaic of noises is so jarring that I would come to my desk already all riled up, before I even sat down.

GOOD.

Holy cow I hate the whole "loud pipes" thing. Even when I was a horsepower person, I didn't want my cars to make excessive noise. It just seems unneighborly / antisocial.

I'd be more interested in seeing this used for violators like construction projects and renovations. Not to disregard loud cars but they are a transient problem usually. Meanwhile someone else is grinding concrete and impact hammering for 8 hours straight for a week. And that's assuming they're not "starting early" or "going late."

Try living in a state with no car inspection and it's absolute hell. So many cars and trucks either without mufflers or improperly working mufflers. There are even people who try to keep driving around after someone has stolen their cat convertor which is insanely loud.

And having grown up for decades before booming car stereos were even a thing, the lack of enforcement is unbelievable. It would be one thing on the road but people have zero care/respect to drive into apartment complexes at all times of the night at volumes you can hear blocks away.

We used to seize cars for repeat noise violations but some judge ruled that was illegal, some kind of "free speech" violation by the city/state. Which is insane.

My only concern with an automated system is false positives. I've gotten automated red-light tickets from in and out of state on my car when I've never driven to the actual city/location it was cited, it was a bad plate scan and I have to stop and dispute it online or they keep fining.

Speeding should be enforced the same way. Police have better things to do.

I'd argue that life for everyone would be better if police were actually writing tickets for noise rather than just doing 80 on the freeway at 2am.

Can we ban car alarms next? I can't believe we allow such an obnoxious feature with basically a 100% false positive rate.

I have no sympathy for people who'd get tickets as a result of this. It's illegal, and inexcusably rude.

However, any kind of automated surveillance-based ticketing makes me nervous. We should be careful about turning off our skepticism about the misuse of information just because it's being used to punish people we have no sympathy for.

Due process requires an accuser to take the stand at a hearing for cross-examination if requested by the defendant. All defendants have this right. Good luck getting the entire development team to explain the code, line by line, in front of a judge, explaining how the audio is always in-sync with the vehicle on screen.

Anyone know of any plug and play ai cameras that I can put outside and program to yell at the people who don't clean up after their dog goes on the sidewalk. It's gotta be like one or two people In each neighborhood who need to be lightly scolded by a robo voice to pick up after that pet.

Death to the burble-tunes and the idiots that acquire them, then use them to assault the neighborhood.

What assurances are there that cameras with microphones won't be turned into devices of mass surveillance of the population at large? It isn't exactly out of the realm of New York's track record, given their propensity towards "Stop and Frisk".

There are no such assurances.

It took a very minor annoyance for people to not only accept these surveillance tools, but to actually cheer them on.

“Very minor annoyances” like being woken up multiple times every night. I’ll accept a lot of surveillance to sleep well.

Singapore has a major problem in this regard, with loud sometimes expensive cars revving up to the allowed speed limit (50-90km/h) on very short stretches of road.

Particularly irksome given the high population density within earshot, and all the stranger given the fairly strict laws in Singapore which only recently outlawed electric scooters on the roads among other immediate effect measures.

Wonder if they'll follow suit with this, though the prevalence of the modded/sports car culture for showing off and the fact that having a car at all is rightfully seen as a privilege given the sky-high costs of ownership probably make it harder to do so.

So shot spotter but for cars. We know how well that system works... My biggest gripe isn't loud cars, but loud motorcycles. Yes there are loud cars here, but 9/10 it's a harley.

This should be implemented in every major city. Loud and modified motorcycles cause so much nuisance it's actually insane how they get away with it.

Good grief. The number of comments that unequivocally praise the police placing autonomous systems to fine people for annoyances.

Last year, all this stuff was racist and explicitly targeting minorites, and ACAB. Now, hail the new surveillance state! Go get those people who personally annoy me! This certainly will have no unintended side effects!

If the side effects end up being worse, than the law can be changed back, right? I would argue it is a major annoyance for many, and for what, so a few people can get off on being loud.

Maybe last year was a bit bullshit.

My children grew up from birth till they went to college on the second floor of a New York City apartment with their bedroom facing a relatively busy street (110th Street by Broadway)

It is astonishing what they can sleep through. My wife and I are in the back bedroom and street noise that wakes me up they just sleep right through.

I'm down with this, though I honestly don't know why this isn't handled at yearly road worthiness checks - around where I live the problem is essentially the same 2 or 3 people who have done the standard oversized exhaust mod to their cars.

Just ban the stupid things on public roads and stop letting people register them.

Seems difficult to prove where the sound came from. Couldn’t one contest it and say “that wasn’t my car, it was a different vehicle making the violating noise”? Unless you’re the only vehicle on the road it seems more difficult to prove than, say, red light cameras.

Kind of off topic. But we need to find a way to reduce the noise of squeaking subway trains.

Good. They need to make fines so high that getting it twice means going to a poor house.

yes, i remember reading about this in london.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54452835.amp

>> 7 October 2020

>> More than a hundred people have been threatened with fines after London's first noise cameras were set up to combat antisocial supercar drivers.

>> The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea set up the cameras to tackle drivers using Knightsbridge streets as "racetracks".

>> The cameras intercept when a 74 decibel noise threshold is exceeded and records the offending vehicle.

This sounds like such a good idea – more cities should do it.

Win for the city budget, win for the people living in the city.

There's no place for loud cars in cities. One could argue no place for cars at all, but that's a separate story.

This is so amazing so so amazing. I live next to a popular road that leads to a beach and there are often imbeciles craving attention on their toxic-fume-spewing man-baby toys making insane amounts of noise.

Another way to deal with this in addition to vehicle related pollution and safety issues is a good technical vehicle inspection program through the state DMV to get or renew the vehicle registration.

I would mind less smogging my car every two years if I thought it actually made an impact on this at all. I just wish police would actually crack down on these sorts of crimes. But I get the feeling that a lot of them are the same ones driving Harleys and Chargers.

What a wonderful thread to watch.

Is there a brave soul out there who will defend the right of cars and motorcycles to be ultra-loud?? I've recall seeing "safety" invoked as the reason on Reddit once.

In NYC and across the river in jersey, the culprits also include emergency vehicles. You can hear them blocks away when people have no business knowing about them.

It seems like it would just be a better idea to have meter maids do this manually rather seeding cameras and microphones with direct feeds to the state.

Imagine a future where cars will be electric and loud exhausts will be a relic just like poop on the street due to horse-drawn carriages.

I wonder what else they're listening to. I wonder if their data streams are as regulated as private firms.

depending on how its implemented, it could be similar NYC's "gunshot sensors" which react to a decibel threshold rather than a full digital stream.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/27/nypds-gunshot-sensors-lay-out-...

though if you're getting at concerns of government surveillance and integrity of data management then i'm sorry to burst your bubble..

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cia-secretly-collecti...

Meh, it's not motorcycles & cars that are the problem in my neck of the woods. It's quarries and logging companies that don't maintain their trucks & have unmuffled compression brakes.

I can 100% guarantee a big rig running an unmuffled jake brake down a 50mph road is 10x louder than any motorcycle you have ever heard

i can appreciate loud cars (i race cars and some of them are pretty loud; they only get run at the appropriate time and place) but my neighbor's subaru with some sort of rattley muffler delete wakes me up every fucking time.

hopefully this goes away with push to EV

There is a new iteration of an old car (was it the Camaro?) and the engineers had to hack the motor to make it louder because customers were complaining the car was not as loud as it used to be.

https://www.pocket-lint.com/cars/news/ford/131151-ford-admit...

Maybe you're thinking about Mustangs? - I think the engineers came up with a great solution!

There's big demand for loud cars. You really only need a couple assholes per 100,000 population to buy them and hoon around late at night for it to be a public nuisance. This isn't going away until the government bans gas cars completely or cracks down hard on existing noise regulations.

A better solution for everyone is less dense living, and a culture of respect for not engaging in anti social behavior.

Loud vehicles are just as much of a problem in rural areas as in cities. Nothing spoils a country road like a load, speeding vehicle. I agree people should have a better sense of respect, but here we are.

this is a phenomenal use of technology

Good riddance.

omg. Please bring this to LA.

I wish the microphones test they have could become a standard thing and used in apartment buildings to police nose of noisy neighbours as well.

I hope this spreads everywhere. Even performance enthusiasts can get what they want without the car being loud all the time. It is purely obnoxious.

Illegal. One has a right to face their accuser per the Constitution. I also knew a guy where the toll booth reader sent him a ticket for a car from another state with the same license plate digits. Took him forever to prove it wasn't him. More draconian AI computer police is not the answer to this problem.

Anh. The "testimony" is the recording. A lawyer cross-examining the computer would simply be met by the computer continuing to replay the recording over and over. Obviously verbiage from the 18th century isn't going to be able to deal with the concept of a modern digital computer, and needs to be updated as such. Computers are here to stay; old crufty ideas about semantics are rather more ephemeral.

If it needs to be updated, you actually have to update it, though. You can't just pretend it isn't the law anymore.

Well, in particular my argument is that there isn't a legal issue with the computer being an accuser. Just that the accused doing the confronting might not get what they want out of it. I mean, what's the definition of 'confront' in this context?

"Confront" means that you can actually take it to court and evidence is examined deeper than "this machine generated this alert and the machine must be right".

I get nervous that so many cases in our legal system get pled out, because sure - if the person is actually guilty and owns up to it that saves the cost of a trial. But it also means that an awful lot of tactics just never get put in front of a judge or a public court. This is one of the prime examples.

I've lived in one state that decided cameras couldn't be witnesses, and I've lived in another state that has had scandals related to cameras being tampered with in order to increase ticketing revenue, etc. And in my current state it's fairly common knowledge that if you get a camera-related fine in the mail you just have to contest it because they will never let it get to court - they're just harvesting the low-hanging fruit. All of these policies suggest to me that your particular opinion of this law is far from the settled consensus. The combination of those things makes me very skeptical of how critical an eye has been over the whole system to verify it's working well. It doesn't seem anyone is willing to go under oath on behalf of the system that's fining people. It'll send out fines, people will from time to time find out the fines are wrong, but I just don't hear much about how much rigor is being spent actually proving anything on the other side.

Yeah this is a slippery slope.

But if the system instead forwards the videos to like the police department where a human reviews it before writing a ticket, it’d take the AI dystopia down a few notches. At that point it’s just an AI-assisted security camera.

There’s still the question of the integrity of the system. How do we know the microphone was working properly at the time of the recording? Or that the video wasn’t tampered with, etc.

Did you read the article? It’s not an instant ticket. The offender gets summoned for testing and if the vehicle is loud at the point of testing, then you get a ticket. You have the ability to face your accuser, go to the testing site and prove your car is quiet.

Ah just couple more steps away from Demolition man and receiving on the spot tickets for cursing after you stub a toe. I want to like Democrats and I prefer their take on sexual and societal freedom, but they are always doubling down on taking away our rights to privacy just like the police state (violence) loving right wing people in the USA.

What privacy are they taking away? You’re in a registered vehicle in the most populous city in the US on a public road, there’s absolute nothing private about that situation.

Imagine you are walking down the street talking to someone either on your phone or in person. Facial and voice recognition are very advanced these days.

And where’s the privacy in that? I’m walking down a public street in the largest city in America talking out loud. There’s nothing private about that situation.

Perhaps a couple strangers would hear a few words but don't know who you are. If police or other state agency are pervasively watching, listening, and recording, I think you would agree that is quite a different situation.

A cop can still legally follow me around and overhear my conversation with a recorder

Sure but there are not enough cops to follow and record everybody on the street all day. Any number of cops following and recording random people would cause some alarm. One computer can do the job of a million cops and be imperceptible.

Not without a warrant

This will become a tax on the poor. Plenty of poor people in rough neighborhoods will get their catalytic converter stolen, will lack the money to fix it, and then will get a ticket in the mail. Taking the human factor out of police work here is a bad idea. Why can’t they up just ramp up enforcement of egregious offenders that are running straight pipes to be dickheads instead?

I bet Trudeau wishes they had this in place in Ottawa.

I understand the desire to curb excessive noise, but anything that involves a faceless machine dishing out summons is a hard no. One errant ticket is hours of wasted time where you’re guilty until proven innocent.

If they really want to do this, pay for some plain clothes officer with body cams to wander through the city. That would likely be cheaper and prevent all kinds of other crime as well.

Everyone hates loud cars until their child is crushed under the wheels of whisper quiet Tesla that zooms by at 70mph+ in a 25mph zone without any warning.

yes, the solution to fast cars is to insist they also have to be loud

You need your loud car because of the children?

This is a very silly dichotomy: you'd need to show that cars that are intentionally modified to make more than the legal noise limit are actually saving lives.

The opposite is probably true, given that that's probably a relationship between wanting to illegally modify your car and disregarding other automotive laws and norms.

Exactly, it would be much better if my kid was crushed under a loud-ass F250.

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