Amsterdam to use “noise cameras” against too loud cars
nltimes.nl
nltimes.nl
Edit: turns out we do have them and they have been fining people. But it's mostly supercars. The problem is with shitty little cars with stupid exhausts which outnumber the supercars by at least two orders of magnitude.
Evidence from game behavior suggests ~30% of people are willing to experience some cost to themselves in order to inflict a greater one on other people. People like this don't feel they are winning unless someone else is losing. If true, this explains a great deal.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451 - see figure 3 if you want to get right to it.
You can make a car sound excellent with no drone with a $5,000 factory quality upgrade... or you can pay some bozo $100 to cut out your muffler and weld in a straight line pipe.
That may not entitle them, but it represents how people might make this choice without intentionally being a nuance in mind
But do not discount the importance of powerlessness in these behaviors. People who have relatively less power in their work, their surroundings, their relationships, there ability to influence their own econonmic situation, etc, still need a way to express power. It is easy to couch it merely in terms of winning/losing in the moment, but without context it is hard to see what the right solution is.
If it is merely winning/losing/greater cost, with no particular motivation, then banning any particular annoying activity is as good a regulation as any other.
But when you take away a dimension of power over an area that a person strongly associates with "basic freedoms" such as owning a camaro/civic/harley/gixxer and tuning it to their liking, including making it incredibly and illegally loud, you are making a more fundamental policy decision than you might realize.
My take is that these make for bad county/state/federal laws. They are fine for city laws that are associated with modest fines, because that is the kind of law that continues to enable some expression of control and personal power-- an important part of dignity.
They annoy me. The people and their exhausts branded "Neighbor Haters." But so do the pedestrians who choose to enter the intersection when the red hand is up and the countdown timer is at 3 seconds, and they feign feebleness in order to take nearly a minute to cross the street while 500 people in gridlock wait in all directions. But I see it for what it is and choose to respect their dignity, probably when they need it most.
This issue is purely a cultural one, not a biological one, but this is not popular to investigate because 1. it's considered impossible to solve and 2. brings up difficult questions regarding cultural relativity that aren't appreciated in the modern academic Anglosphere.
I'm continuously surprised that even on HN this comes up so often. A phenomenon is presented which is orders of magnitude more common in one culture than another, yet what is reached for is a biological, tech, or otherwise "hard science" explanation.
In this case, the phenomenon is one of publically inflicting harm on others at a cost and no gain to themselves.
I guess it has to do with the community (understandably!) having a strong tendency to approach everything from a STEM PoV when it comes to all but a small number of (mostly US-specific, policy or economic) topics.
Just to prevent misunderstandings here, culture here doesn't mean the culture of a nation but of (much smaller) communities, in 2023.
"In a perfectly predictable and rational world filled with rational actors, here is what would happen!".
Except people aren't rational actors, they don't have all information available to them, and there aren't any "rules of the game" in real life.
Having been neighbors with a lot of these guys, it has been repeatedly explained to me that theh make their bikes louder to be heard for safety. The assumption here is car drivers are so engaged with their music/podcasts/whatever turned up that they don't pay attention to the traffic around them. They also tend to not look when switching lanes or, gods forbid, use their turn signal to show intent.
While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky. Motorcycles are loud by default, and using aftermarket parts to make them louder is just part of the self-affirming statement of ego. These guys need you to know how big and bad they believe themselves to be that they'll make other sacrifices in their lives to afford projecting that image.
It's really all very silly, to be honest.
It always felt like "a load of bullpucky", but the defining moment for me was one day riding down a quietish-street with a legal-but-still-obnoxious Akrapovic pipe. In front of me were two or three girls walking in the middle of the road, talking. They only realized I was there when I sounded the horn and seemed really surprised, judging by their jumpiness.
If someone walking in front of the bike can't hear that noise, I really don't see how someone inside a sound-insulated box, in a generally noisy environment, probably blasting the radio, is going to notice the loud pipe.
This is not an argument for noisier exhausts. It's an argument to reduce noise in general, from all sources. Then people will react better to the louder noises.
When living in a neighborhood where almost all of the houses were old and poorly insulated, the motorcycles which went up and down our street were loud enough that indoors, with the windows closed, we would have to stop conversations, pause tv shows, etc, and wait for them to pass, because one simply couldn't hear anything over them. This is a densely populated neighborhood; 4-8 apartments per building tens of buildings per side per block, so interrupting hundreds of people per block, and many thousands in the course of a ride seems a reasonable estimate. The motorcyclists would joyride in loops, so you would hear them multiple times, being disrupted each time. I think for this reason the disruption caused per ride is comparable to a streaker on the field of a major sports event that forces game play to be paused. For someone who disrupts whole neighborhoods in this way, on regular basis, to say it's "for safety" seems like a narcissistic delusion. If I drive a car on the highway, and there are large trucks with big blindspots and drivers who I know are struggling after having been at it for 12h, should I have a siren to make sure they know I'm there?
I must hasten to add that cyclists and pedestrians also have to deal with drivers in massive metal deathboxes, and we do it without disrupting the whole world around us.
My bike came with a Yoshimura and it is deafening to me even on a 372cc. I had to buy a baffle for it and wear earplugs. My watch warns me it’s still 90 to 100 dB.
I guess it kinda sounds cool for about a minute before being unhealthy. It was a surprise to me that anyone want such a thing when I first started out.
Loud pipes save lives is bullshit. Defensive riding, good safety gear, and staying out of blind spots saves lives.
Whenever I hear a douche nozzle with an extremely loud exhaust, I start crossing / walking obnoxiously slow. Two can play the game.
I'd think it's an outright self-defeating lie: they're so noisy you will hear them all over with no ability to see them (and most of the time they're irrelevant to you), so you just get listening fatigue, and you stop caring aside from being annoyed by the constant noise. And that's just as a driver, as a nearby resident it's infuriating.
One biker jumped to fight me once after I joked with him that he uses loud exhaust pipes to get a prostate massage while riding. People around him stopped him. I laughed my arse off. Apparently I hit a nerve.
But yeah, that's how much respect I have for these people. Whatever reasons they invent the fact of the matter is that noise pollution is already too much and everyone should be working on reducing it. Everyone. No exceptions. Including mothers with rattling strollers; having one with rubber wheels is not gonna bankrupt her family, I am pretty sure.
I'm trying to drive over here.
Very popular line of thinking with people who own (e.g.) Harley-Davidsons… which are loud out of the box. Go over to (say) /r/motorcycles where there's a larger variety of ownership, and not many folks really buy it.
The High Side, Low Side motorcycle podcast had an episode on moto-myths where they went over this:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1UlW-sfbBA&t=21m47
The MCRider moto-training channel covered it:
Every comment was "fuck that cyclist, they rode out in front of you!"
Apparently calculating from the video that they were doing 15+ mph over the speed limit, and proving from the video and math that the cyclist could not see him before they'd started into the crosswalk...was ban-worthy.
The guy even blurred out his speedometer to hide that he was speeding.
His comment/post history showed that the motorcycle, which was a very powerful model, was his first bike and he'd very recently bought it. He posted "new motorcycle day" pictures.
The guy was a textbook squid: recently acquired first bike was too powerful for him, no brains/skills, riding dangerously, putting himself and others at risk.
Pointed that out to the mods and was told I was being reported for "doxxing." For clicking on "posts" on his profile and seeing he'd recently posted a picture of the bike.
Fuck that subreddit and its mods.
No they are not, at least not in the U. S. Thé EPA dictates a max dB sound output, and HDs must meet it, like everyone else. Stock HDs sound quite nice.
Of course, you might not know this because no real American leaves a HD dealer with the stock exhaust installed.
And you would be correct:
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/new-study-confirms-loud-pipes-s...
Some people like loud exhaust, period. It's a cool sound. It makes you feel powerful. Safety aspect is a rationalization for others and possibly yourself. In busy traffic, to another moving vehicle, sound is neither going to be heard clearly nor will it provide directional or distance cues. If they're interested in safety (or would like to think they are), ask them about their full face helmet, which motorcycle course they're thinking of taking next, and what's their training routine in the spring. Maybe whether they're considering a high visibility outfit instead of black leather.
That is all it is. It lets you impose yourself on others without sufficient probability of retribution.
It’s not, otherwise they’d get a discount on insurance…which they don’t. And it’s bullshit for a lot of reasons, including good ol’ physics.
Actuaries can tell us the exact relation between volume and deaths per mile, I bet, and it must be nearly zero.
I always found that argument to be a bit of a red herring.
_Even if_ that was true and _even if_ the only way to safely ride a motorcycle was by disturbing every single person you pass by on the street, that still doesn't justify people riding loud bikes.
At that point, you are making a deliberate, selfish choice that your enjoyment of riding a bike is more important than other people's comfort.
It's like someone bringing smelly food on a plane and saying they're justified because it's the only way they can eat their favourite dish. We don't go "oh, they're right, the smell is necessary for them to enjoy their food." We go "just eat something else, you're being selfish".
It basically is. Most bike horns are going to be louder then stock or aftermarket exhausts, yet no one's gone around tapping the horn button down.
I'm sure there are guys who want to be loud, just like the kids who put the noisy mufflers on their cars. For most bikers I don't think they see a better alternative.
If something can’t be safe for the operator without being a nuisance to thousands of people along their route, then it shouldn’t be on the road.
Bring on the fines for loud motorcycles. It’s ridiculous that we let this problem proliferate.
One particular bike owner literally just rides around in a rectangular pattern most evenings, over and over, revving only when he gets the junction in front of where the teens hang out - yes, I can hear his bike on all 4 sides of the pattern.
However, the most annoying motorist we get, is a middle aged woman who owns a white audi and sits arming/disarming and triggering her alarm whenever she sends her husband/partner into the shop, she performs this ritual 2-3 times a day usually. Very annoying hearing 'bip.... bip bip bip... bip. wuuuuwuuuuwuuu bip, bip bip bip...' and so on.
We are in a very weird place as a culture where this isn’t necessarily considered a slam dunk to come down super hard on whatever it is. The pendulum has swung way too far, we need to move back in the direction of protecting the community.
The other thing I don’t understand is how in the UK these people are passing MOTs. Either they are colluding with a garage to get fake passes, or they are on fake plates, or they’re undoing the mod every year when they need to go get an MOT.
I'm in favour of banning all modifications to vehicles as well. Seen several cars with turned in wheels and appendages which are clearly affecting traction and aerodynamics.
Some of these mods also affect odometer readings.
Noise pollution in general is getting really bad and I think manufacturers need to be held accountable for this. My neighbour has recently installed some kind of "smart door bell". When the postie, or whoever, rings this, it makes a chime on the outside of the house. So the whole street knows when that doorbell is pressed. Why in the ever-loving fuck does it even have a speaker on the outside of the house?!
So if you've got some modified monster with an insane engine, it's going to be loud. And if you're a wannabe with a superficially-modified, underpowered car, you can add more noise easier than you can add more power, and hope to fool people. It's not very laudable, but you can see how it could motivate the ego of the inconsiderate.
I also enjoy concerts, though. Understandably music isn't for everyone.
Also, here's some AI generated Top Gear to give you nightmares: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYWCIJgw610
There's a balance to be had, and I would suggest neither Germany nor Austria nor the UK has it right.
I see you haven't visited the Netherlands, where what you're describing is even worse than the UK.
Even the super cars have to obey noise regulations. The modified cars can be 10-20dB louder, which is a lot.
0: choosing countries I’m familiar with
There is a purpose to this in turbocharged cars in motor racing - anti-lag - as the extra gases keep the turbo spinning during gear changes. No reason for it on public roads though.
There's also a lot of "cat deletes" (removal of catalytic converters to improve exhaust gas flow and increase engine power). Illegal, but very common to see on YouTube and just like pretty much anything else illegal on the roads in the UK these days, the police don't seem to care at all.
> There is no reason other than you want to look like a complete wanker
In case anyone doesn’t know, the pop sound can serve a real purpose. The sound comes from extra fuel being ignited in the exhaust, which is done to keep the turbo spinning when you let off the gas. It helps minimize turbo lag. It also occurs in older race cars that had carburetors because they had less precise control over fuel injection compared to modern cars.
That said, some people tune their car to imitate that sound with no purpose just cause they think it sounds cool. They waste extra fuel just to sound like that.
I noticed it increased after 2020. My theory was here at least that people got accustomed to speeding from the empty roads and lower enforcement but I think the extremely low interest rates let people get into the car market and a lot of people bought obnoxious cars and modded them. Some people must like that noise. I think it's a signal of how their car is fast and they are willing to flaunt rules.
How anyone can be comfortable annoying more people per hour than they'll meet in their entire life I'll never understand.
My advice here is the only one actually guaranteed to improve the problem. It also costs less than bribing politicians to passing a law for you or inventing bespoke technology and deploying it to the sides of every road.
I would assume that most people here do understand that they can close their windows.
I mean, probably not, since other countries have greatly reduced the problem without much issue.
> My advice here is the only one actually guaranteed to improve the problem. It also costs less than bribing politicians to passing a law for you or inventing bespoke technology and deploying it to the sides of every road.
No one is denying the existence of bandaids solutions, but that doesn't mean we should stop at bandaid solutions. Frankly this sounds like libertarian ideology. We don't just let people do bad things because we can choose to insulate ourselves in a fortress, instead we focus on fixing society first and plan to one day remove the bandaid.
I think the thing with motorbikes is everything is so much more exposed, and they rev higher in general, so the sound thing is probably a harder problem.
I am actually of the belief that motorbikes and scooters should be encouraged in cities, because they are a lot smaller, and more efficient in general than cars (so long as you don't have a massive bike), and take up a lot less space when parking. Do most people really need a 1.5 tonne car to go to work as opposed to a 200kg bike?
Meh. Some have figured a way to make them quiet. Most "touring" bikes are very reasonable. I'm thinking BMW K16s, Honda Goldwings, Yamaha FJRs. With stock pipes, of course. Hell, even my VFR1200 is very quiet with the stock pipe, which closes a flap below 5000 RPM. When idling at a traffic light, if there's a car around, I can't hear the bike.
You inspired me to exchange my Akrapovič (came with the bike when I bought it) to the stock pipe (which also came with the bike).
I find that their exhaust smells much worse though, especially scooters.
Source?
I live in Paris, a few meters from the busiest crossroad of the city, and my experience with scooters (even the best 4 stroke ones) is very, very different.
[BMW made a cruiser bike for a few years. They were trying to move into Harley’s market segment. In order to get the “right” sound they had to detune the engine, resulting in a massive decrease in horsepower.]
https://www.bmwmotorcycles.com/en/models/heritage/r18-b.html
Because your car is actually insulated from that noise. Look at every car review ever and there is a section about noise isolation.
Furthermore the sound is also dependent on the length of exhaust - your average car exhausts is longer than a whole bike and for example previously mentioned BMWs wriggle it around the whole engine back and forth just for that reason. This comes at the price of weight and thus handling/fuel efficiency and actual pollution.
With motorcycles, it's a choice, but loud bikes are tied very closely to perceived power and manliness for some riders, plus the whole patently-bullshit POV of "loud pipes save lives." Honestly, it's MOSTLY Harley riders, at least in the US.
I have a motorcycle. It's louder than a car is, but it's not obnoxiously loud at all. You can't hear it from inside YOUR car, for example. Further, I can have a conversation with someone without turning the bike off. MOST motorcycles are like this, in fact. But the loud assholes kinda ruin the overall reputation for everyone.
I couldn't care less and prefer not to annoy everyone in a 100 yard radius from me.
Unlike what most riders will say loud pipes don't really save lives, good and safe riding does. They just use this excuse for the mistakes they make most of the time.
I was looking at a house with my wife that was relatively close to a major road. I wasn't sure if it was going to be an issue or not. A loud bike drove by and we crossed that house off the list.
If I had a bike, I'd model my look after a disco ball instead of the road tar.
I'm 31 now and have ridden all my adulthood and still like the style, but I don't intend to announce my presence via annoying sound to everyone within a football field radius.
I actively try to be a friendly driver unlike some of the dumbasses I share this hobby with who make us all look bad.
I am a motorcyclist, and I get angry when I hear a loud motorcycle. I want my next motorcycle to be as quiet as possible! And I want people to be fined when they produce such high levels of noise pollution.
Also, I don't think people tilt their headlamps up on purpose.
Or they just drive around with their high beams on all the time. That happens, too.
Edit: also in the Netherlands there is no periodic technical check required for motorcycles
Modifying any vehicle just to make it louder seems really, really rude to me.
There's plenty of motorcyclists who do the same though.
> There's plenty of motorcyclists who do the same though.
What's funny is that in my neck of the woods, it's motorcycles with bad aftermarket pipes that had been making that noise for a long time. So now, whenever I hear a car making that noise, instead of associating it with some "big mean engine" as their owners probably hope, I associate it with some overworked 600cc.
Not only that, they deliberately put speakers on the electric Harley's so the morons driving them could feel like "real men".
Honestly, if you want to make noise while looking ridiculous, just get a tuba and parade around the block!
They pass it off as safety to make up for their lack of skill. It's honestly appalling the low amount of skill/practice needed to get a bike here in the states.
Heck, some people will literally drill a hole in the exhaust to get that noise, for absolutely no performance benefit whatsoever.
There are actually acoustic cameras that are much more like a "camera" in that you get a 2D map of the sound reaching the device. This can be overlaid on an image from a light camera and you get an image where you can see where all the sounds are coming from.
Some of them can make acoustic movies, where each frame is a light camera image overlaid with the sound map, usually coloring the optical image based on the sound with color indicating frequency and brightness indicating loudness.
With these you can do neat things like make a sharp sound and see the echo bounce around a room, or look at something making a variety of sounds and see which sounds are coming from where.
They often include software that is kind of an audio image version of Photoshop. You can use that software's equivalent of the eye dropper tool to point anywhere in the image and here the sound coming from that point. E.g., if you had an acoustic movie of the strings of piano and the pianist was playing a 10 note chord you could pick an individual string and play back the sound of just that string.
Here's a video where science YouTuber Steve Mould was loaned some to play around with, showing some of the cool things you can do with them [1].
The loudest vehicles are the mopeds, though. It's almost like they don't have mufflers. I wonder if they are regulated differently?
Problem is many people mount noisy aftermarket ones. They mount back the original one when they have the scheduled inspection.
Having said that, outside of the amount of decibels there are engines that are more annoying. 2-strokes high pitch screamers and single and bi-cylinder with lots of low frequency / bass noise.
And there are models that are probably made to pass homologation but do higher noise outside of the rev range used during homologation/inspection. The Yamaha T-Max is one example. It should be prohibited and all its drivers euthanasied. I am obviously joking for the second part but I have never encountered a decent human being riding one, they only attracts the worse of humanity. Yamaha should be ashamed of that.
I couldn’t wait to leave, which was sad because the winter and autumn was absolutely bliss. We had a great life there.
The mopeds were astoundingly loud though, I’ll never forget it, I had PTSD, I could hear them coming from a ways off and it would make my blood boil before they went past and fuel my insomnia.
What is funny is the mopeds are still plaguing me in a different part of the world now :) they should be banned altogether, they suck.
It also specifically calls out mopeds: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8?t=680
https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromfiets
The equivalent English translation would be "Pthththththbike".
What had been a comfortable speech listening volume is dwarfed by ordinary cars, not even modded boy racer cars speeding, just basic sedans doing the speed limit.
That’s rather anti-human.
The car was probably driven by someone who needed to do a human thing. Drivers are not evil Captain Planet villains.
The anti-human thing is NIBMYs driving everyone out of cities and preventing density.
In other situations where someone annoys hundreds of people, harms the health of hundreds of people, primarily for their own benefit, we'd call that bad, undesirable, and socially shame the person doing it, wouldn't we? The situation is anti-human; it's not a nice situation to exist in as an unaugmented human outside a car, not nice to walk in, to talk in, tarmac road isn't beautiful, vehicle fumes don't smell nice, they're harmful to health, and it's not cheap to build cars and roads everywhere and maintain them. Cars take a huge amount of space to move one person compared to the space of one walking human or one biking human, and they push 'places' further apart to make room for vehicles and car parks.
It should be that for such tradeoffs, cars need to have an enormous payback - things which absolutely can't be done without them. For example, emergency services - noisy, but needs to move mutiple people and equipment in a hurry. Delivery vehicles needing to move large quantities of goods around, labour needing to move equipment around. However if it's done for travelling 2 miles because urban design gave no thought to walking or biking so that the only safe and convenient way to cover 2 miles is by car, even though owning a car is a huge cost, that's anti-human design.
The NotJustBikes YouTube channel linked above has the message that most people are not 'car people' but will use whatever transport is (the cheapest, the quickest, the most convenient). It's a failing of urban design and big picture thinking when individual car driving is the winner for many short journeys when it could be otherwise. It's a bit of a failure when walking and driving are a sidewalk beside a main road and other routes have no (sidewalks, streetlights, bike lanes, safe crossings, etc).
Compare for example the NJB videos:
- "Why grocery shopping is better in Amsterdam" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk where he compares shopping for food in Amsterdam with driving to an out of town box store in Canada, and having to drive in Canada.
- "Safe cycling showdown - Good vs. Bad city design" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8F5hXqS-Ac which is a 20 minute video, first 10 minutes is NJB cycling from Amsterdam center to a hardware store ~10Km away on the edge of town, voice overlay is him describing what makes good/bad cycling infrastructure along the way. The next 10 minutes is an equivalent ride in Calgary, Alberta, from city center to out of town hardware store a similar distance, and similar overlay commentary. The contrast is stark.
Annoying for living vs annoying for entertainment.
The reality is, cities are incredibly noisy due to cars, but also construction work, people shouting, loud music and much more.
No? He drives cars, uses multiple car rental/car shares schemes, often says that it’s not cars he dislikes it’s urban design which leads to car dependency - unsafe for anyone outside a car, no provision for anything other than driving, single family housing zoning leading to everything being too spread out to go anywhere without a car - and that he’s not a ‘cyclist’ and would prefer taking a tram when possible.
The channel is even called “not just bikes” to push back against your kind of mischaracterisation.
It's kind of hard to over emphasize the the damage they've done, specifically as forms of personal transportation (versus more commercial transport).
He does have a video called "The Best Country in the World for Drivers", in which he shows that by reducing the need for cars for most people, actually helps the optimize things for operating a car:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
And until the ~1920s, societies managed to function pretty well without the streets being taken over by cars:
* https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516129/fighting-traffic/
I don't see why they need to have total priority with-in cities to the extant they currently do.
It's incredibly people-dense so there's definitely some baseline human noise, but I cannot emphasize enough how absolutely dwarfed by cars and delivery trucks it is. Construction work, shouting, music, etc. are almost a non-factor in comparison.
"people shouting" and "loud music" don't even factor.
While not everything can be done on a bike, a lot of people use a car when there is no need to. I can't understand why because cycling is way more enjoyable and in most cases a much faster way to get around town than a car. Especially if you own an e-bike.
I own a car but hardly feel the need to use it. I usually need to buy a full tank of gas once or twice a year.
Cars are by far the biggest noise contributor in a city and tbh i'd like drivers to pay a tax based on max sound a car may make on max engine speed(and if they want to pay less tax, speed should be physically limited to max 100km/h or something similar based on gps. But that's just a fantasy
1: https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15117726/faking-it-en...
Yeah loud engines and music (and phone calls!) from cars is annoying, but that’s not where most of the sound comes from.
It is just tires on the asphalt that is so loud. I don’t know if this is due to how heavy American cars have gotten or changing roads from concrete to asphalt, but it has become quite unbearable.
The rise of e-bikes and personal mobility scooters has helped cut down on the noise somewhat, but I don’t know what you do about regular car noise (other than banning cars).
Also, whatever vehicle designer that decided the horn should honk whenever the car locks — you are on the top of my list!
This should be illegal. I sort of get it 30 years ago when aftermarket & OEM car alarms were a new thing, but that's it's still acceptable in 2023 is asinine.
No artificial sound should be allowed when locking or unlocking a car. Maybe flashing the headlights at most.
I recommend never visiting Ecuador. Car alarms (false alarms), lock, and unlock sounds are an all day thing.
If you think America is bad you ain’t seen nothing yet.
My last sedan would beep when you hit the lock button twice, which was great because I could lock it without being annoying but I could also use a beacon to find it in a parking lot. Now, my new RAV4 makes the tiniest little blip no matter how you lock it, it's only audible from a few feet away, so I can never find it in a parking lot.
the regulatory ban on dirty trucks is a good thing, but most manufacturers implemented their fixes in the most ham-fisted and half-hearted way they could think of at the expense of noise emissions. take Vortec for example, a technology that creates a little mini "tornado" or air in the intake box to boost performance and improve emissions. at the hood or 'bonnet' of the truck during accelleration this thing can peak around 100db. Volvo tries to solve this with foam insulation for the intake area but that never lasts more than a few hundred thousand miles. Ive seen vortec trucks set off car alarms.
then theres the desperate attempt to keep unmaintained trucks on roads. If trucks dont get service regularly for urea tanks and other emission control devices, theyre supposed to go into 'limp' mode. 30kph, no faster, until service is made. well truck companies got around this by instituting 'regenerative' mode. if you walk past a very loud truck (and i mean freight train loud) idling in the street during a delivery, chances are good its past its service interval and has entered regen mode. idle engine speed is ramped up from 750 RPM to nearly 3500 in an attempt to generate temperatures hot enough to combust waste gasses instead of clean them on exit (frankly it doesnt really work.) its hard on the entire engine and environmental system but hey, truck still gets to do its job for the week.
To me, this didn't read as a problem with the plan so much as an observation that they're going to be catching a broader profile of problem vehicles than they anticipated.
All in all, probably a good thing, but (as a foreigner who hasn't been there) it was, for me, an interesting observation.
Urea is used to reduce NOx emissions, not particulates. It’s unrelated.
Because this thoughtless dweeb actually seems to stick to a schedule, I’ve managed to capture his license plate, but I am considering building and deploying a personal “noise camera” to deliver a mountain of evidence to the police and see if they’ll take action. From this thread it sounds like that might be a popular open hardware project!
Another cool thing is when I visited Japan and I learned a lot of the tools and drills used in renovations have more quiet/less noisy counterparts so when someone remodels a room in an apartment building or house next door it doesn't actually have to ruin your work-from-home day.
But scooters and motorcycles? They frequently stand out as being much louder than anything, it’s jolting and creates an immediate annoyance that lasts until it’s out of hearing range.
I’m very optimistic as I expect these to be electrified relatively quickly. Not heavy motorcycles per se but they’re pretty rare. Gasolike scooters were everywhere though but they’re disappearing quick, in part due to helmet/roaduse rules in Amsterdam, in part due to electric scooters and bikes.
Given the newest research regarding excessive noise’s impact on human, I wish more countries put some kind of effort into reducing noise on roads like the Netherlands does (this isn’t the only thing they do).
I still see huge groups drinking and smoking outside every night at the pubs near where I live, but I can't say I've ever needed to complain about their noise levels, so people definitely seem on board with it; I can't say I've ever seen/heard persons getting into a heated discussion over noise, but naturally this is just my limited point of view and reality may differ.
Edit: also, just remembered that I even saw a more active approach to this when I lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia, where a few bars even had a "noise meter" outside the bar (just a simple dim but legible LED screen with the purported noise level and a sign explaining that if the number is > N, you're being too loud). It seemed to work pretty well.
There is more than just cars that make noise, but at least we have all the tools and technology to make cars in cities almost completely quiet.
Yes, by getting rid of them. A well designed city doesn't need private automobiles.
There is, but there is a vast difference in how much noise and when they make noise. I live next to a tram line with a 10-minute schedule. 12 trams/hour are substantially less annoying noisewise than the constant influx of cars the whole day.
The airport this plane was approaching was converted into an asylum processing centre for Ukrainians, the replacement is just outside the city limits: https://youtu.be/OIu-dDKCBoI
It was, naturally, much louder IRL than it seems in this clip.
Furthermore it's likely easier to bring the hammer on delivery trucks if and when they become the primary issue, as those tend to have registration and responsible companies.
And sometimes you don't realize how life-alteringly noisy a particular street is until you move there. I have 2 examples. Near Cambie street bridge in Vancouver can be extremely loud at night. Normal traffic noise during the day. But there's a traffic light followed by a bridge which is slightly uphill, which I guess is an invitation for people in loud cars to burn out when the light turns green in the middle of the night. In Tokyo I lived on a very-quiet looking side street, it was nearby a Domino's and parallel to another small street, just large enough to have a traffic light. So my short street had a loud scooter accelerating into and out of it every few minutes to bypass the traffic light. These sorts of things aren't noticeable when you just visit a city but are absolute hell if you end up living nearby. The first example at least would be a good candidate for a noise camera.
Seems like the illegal covers would be straightforward to enforce any time these cars are parked on public streets.
It also adds a bit of deterrence against tag theft, depending on how you secure it.
A person walking by may not be able to tell the difference between one meant to protect the plate and one that hides the plate from cameras, which can cut both ways. I've heard from people who have non-blocking plates get tickets because they were assumed to be the camera-defeating variety, even though they were basic polycarbonate covers.
I hate that noise pollution in general isn’t a higher priority as it really impact people’s lives.
But the biggest issue is motor bikes, not the cars. It’s as if bikers are truly anti-social scum, and I’m saying this as a former biker.
Think about it. Windows open you suddenly get jolted out of bed when a car flies by that has been modified to produce more noise to boost someone's ego. Moreover the excess tire exhaust and vehicle exhaust from rapid acceleration causes respiratory issues.
About climate change? Of course this causes more climate change. People are forced to close their windows and use conditioned air because of the noise outside. So many summer nights people can't open their windows near streets because of the noise modified vehicles cause.
The same noise and pollution issues apply when you're driving next to them as well. You have to close your windows in case your kids are sleeping or you are trying to listen to something then one of these noise attention seekers comes by who thinks they are awesome and wants you to pay attention to them. Their car is loud, and he or she needs that attention.
It's ridiculous. Its a waste of taxpayers money due to elevated health risks and its a waste of energy because people are forced to close their windows while driving or at home.
PS. Most of the Trajectcontrole in netherlands are implemented by them
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/noise-radar-in... [2] https://www.nyc.gov/site/dep/news/22-005/roadside-sound-mete...
The amount of "female males" in the comment section is unbelievable, no one likes a good V12 V8 V6? No? Soy milk and Tesla anyone?
Actually it's quite funny. None of you provide actionable insight but rather Karen-omics arguments.
"Car loud must not go brrr"
"Only our money printers go brrr not your car!"
"If its not silent as a Tesla as the media tells me I have to go rage mode on guys enjoying/reliving their youth!"
Yeah we get it. Most of us have lived in big cities. There are already solutions as pointed out by other commentators whether preventative or active measures to deter a lot of too loud car drivers.
We praise pseudo-individualism yet you get judged even if you'd buy a car with louder exhausts not modify one.
The prejudice is real and just because you can't afford it that doesn't mean someone else shouldn't have or enjoy it RESPONSIBLY.
You don't like racism yet you are racist towards people who enjoy cars. But then again can't be a pseudo intellectual/a ycombinator Karen like 90% of people here if you don't hate digital currencies and oppose anything different than whats shown on TV.
-George
FYI I travel by public transport.
Sure, there are the minority who have noisy vehicles.
But the real culprit are the tires.
Tell me, when you walk by a highway or a road, what do you hear? That sound that is vaguely like an ocean lapping against the shores, just louder and artificial and annoying right?
You never really hear the engine, even at a short distance away.
The tires make a LOT more noise than the engines and exhaust do! And it carries farther than an engine does.
Tired need more regulation, and roads need to be built with quieter materials.
I live right next to a very high-traffic road, but I got used to the noise. What I can never get used to is the dozens of idiots on motorcycles and modded cars with removed mufflers that drive by in the dead of night at twice the speed limit.
This disease is repetitive stress injury, in that every time you experience pain it lasts for weeks or years even and your sound tolerance goes down. So it is imperative that we never have accidents like those that cars like these can produce.
It can get so bad that you can't tolerate even simple things like the sound of sheets. The other patient in my city is confined to a closet 24/7 with earplugs and earmuffs because his tolerance is so low. He continues to worsen because sounds like these penetrate buildings well.
It is nearly unstudied so there's little hope of getting out of this hole. The least society can do for us is protect us from these assholes so we can hide in closets in peace.
It’s such an obnoxious thing; almost as bad as people who yell on speakerphone when in small public spaces
Additionally it's weird they pretend to be combustion engines. Why not play something unique?
Will our future streets be filled with electric vehicles with the same shape pretending to carry bulky ICE engines in the front and making the sound of an extinct machine? What an odd future.
I suspect any such votes would pass by overwhelming margins.
Even with directional microphones automated fines may be indiscriminately issued for potentially just being near one or behind one.
This system needs to be close to perfect so to not distract innocent drivers with the idea of a rogue fine, in turn cause a driver to stress and elevate road risk.
I absolutely agree though. American trucks should stay 100% in America. They barely fit in Texas-sized streets and parking lots... I cannot comprehend what it must be like to own one outside the US.
But have people thought about the implications of planting always-on microphones all around the city (connected to the always-on cameras)?
The liveability comparison that makes sense is with cities offering similar economic and cultural opportunities. Compared to major world cities Amsterdam is already somewhat of a backwater but outside it it gets positively boucolic.
The efficient frontier is when you optimally combine liveability with vibrancy.
They're blinding from both front and back :(
The most annoying lights around here are all on Tesla's or very old cars. Tesla because (at least on the model 3) they allow owners to change the leveling height in the settings and people raise it for more light. Plus a lack of quality control on the early model 3's seems to put their two headlights often at different angles with one being blinding.
Old cars because they're kept to the regulations of the construction year not the new ones. So they don't have mandatory leveling and/or people have put aftermarket xenon lights on them.
The worst offenders can switch the behavior of their exhaust, and they will pass the checks in whisper-mode, with less noise than most normal cars.
I always say to my wife that I can't wait until all cars and bikes are electric. In a decade or so this problem will go away by itself.
Soon they will start to fine you for loud exhaust.
Even more, similar to air pollution maps, it would be great to have noise pollution map, at least over cities.
And we need them for motorcycles too.