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It's odd that this article popped up, as I have been recently thinking about noise pollution when walking my dog around the outside of my neighborhood. My unsci

It's odd that this article popped up, as I have been recently thinking about noise pollution when walking my dog around the outside of my neighborhood. My unscientific guess is that 50% of vehicles that pass by are significantly louder than they ought to be, and my further guess is that at least half of those vehicles are louder because the driver desires it. In the grand scheme of the world's problems it is probably very low on the list - but I'm guessing it negatively affects people, animals and insects more than you would expect. Would it be so difficult for noise pollution to be regulated like emissions (in fact, couldn't it be done in the emissions process most states in the USA perform?)

jacquesm 7y ago
> at least half of those vehicles are louder because the driver desires it Motor cycles are the worst for this. It's not rare to have whole neighborhoods woken up because one of those passes through.
- morley 7y ago
  Not sure why you're getting downvoted here. In Brooklyn and Queens, this happens a ton. If a loud motorcycle happens to rev when you're on the street, it's viscerally terrifying.
- buckminster 7y ago
  There is a reason for this. When car drivers stop pulling out in front of motorcyclists, motorcyclists will stop fitting loud exhausts.
  - dijit 7y ago
    This is the same tired excuse my friend made when he got a loud bike. It’s just not true. He later told me he enjoys the feeling (vibrations) and that there was something primal about “taming” something that sounds powerful. As for car drivers, you should be assuming they can’t see you. Driving defensively is the only way to stay alive and you can argue that it shouldn’t be that way but it doesn’t make it any less true.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    Modern cars are so sound-insulated that the volume of the motorcycle isn't going to have that much of an impact in normal operation. Fit a louder horn to the bike if you need to draw attention in specific situations. Loud exhausts are definitely not designed to make motorcycles more noticeable to cars.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Sure, that's why open pipes at three AM are run full throttle in second gear on a city street with thousands of houses. It's simply narcissism. I had the pleasure of living on Overtoom in Amsterdam, which is a beautiful street but I'm a relatively light sleeper and even at the back part of the house you'd be woken up several times every night by some 'look at me' dude making as much noise as possible. Not a car pulling out in sight at that hour.
  - maerF0x0 7y ago
    I ride and do "feel" the sentiment that loud pipes might help in some situations. But here's a rider-centric article that helps address the situation _and_ provide some actionable advice. https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/stop-saying-loud-pipes-save-lives https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/stop-saying-loud-pipes...
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Thanks, that article makes lots of good sense. I see more and more riders (on relatively quiet bikes) drive with high visibility gear, especially on the highway, which is great. But those are rarely the 'loud' types, they're just people using their bikes as transport rather than as an attention seeking device.
- wanderingstan 7y ago
  I recently learned that (at least in the US) those loud motorcycles are actually illegal, and that it is near-standard practise that motorcycles are sold with cheap but compliant mufflers which everyone knows (wink wink) will be replaced with aftermarket loud (but illegal for road) mufflers. I applaud the research of this young student, showing that noise pollution is not just a nuisance, but a real health concern. Young ears getting permanently damaged is one aspect. Entire neighborhoods losing nights of sleep is another. Relevant article where police mention that they simply are not given a proper decibel meter: https://patch.com/california/berkeley/ask-a-cop-why-deafeningly-loud-motorcycles-not-cited https://patch.com/california/berkeley/ask-a-cop-why-deafenin...
- piinbinary 7y ago
  When a loud motorcycle [0] goes though a city at night, I wonder how many people it wakes up. It could easily pass thousands of people with just a few miles of driving. If 1% are woken up, it could still cost dozens of total hours of sleep. Based on how much a loss of sleep lowers performance (and increases health risks), the total cost of that one motorcycle driving one night might be huge. The cost of the health damage and lost productivity might be about as much as stealing a car. Since the cost is spread out over a lot of people, we don't tend to care as much about it. [0] Likely with the muffler deleted. While technically illegal, no one enforces any laws related to the noise output.
papln 7y ago
It's not 50% unless you live in a tight-knit ricer neighborhood. It's not a trivial option to customize a car to make it louder; it takes a bit of effort. What is true that we tend to notice annoyances more than non-annoyances, and that the car may be louder because the driver want to accelerate or velocitate more than they should, and noise is a side effect. Or the stereo is louder than it should be, not because they want you to hear it, but because they want to hear it and they don't care about you.
- ihattendorf 7y ago
  It can actually be extremely trivial and cheap by just drilling holes in your muffler (yes, I've seen this). Or by installing a glasspack for ~$20. This is what everyone gets annoyed at, usually.
- jgalentine007 7y ago
  My observations are a bit different. I live in a populous suburb (150k residents?) north of Denver. Truck culture is very prominent here and mainly consists of raising a vehicle and making it louder - mostly because they do want to attract attention. My 17 year old neighbor modified his Subaru so that it can (literally) be heard from miles away - and when he simply turns the car on can be heard clear across the entire neighborhood until the engine warms up and throttles down. I'm not so much annoyed as I'm curious as to how all of this noise affects the environment at large (people's sleep quality and mood, birds migrating, insects mating etc.)
  - SparkleBunny 7y ago
    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-04/phantom-expander-targets-new-zealand-hoons/283368 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-04/phantom-expander-targ...
ken 7y ago
> in the emissions process most states in the USA perform I'm not sure how accurate that is. From what I can tell, only about half of states have some region that requires emissions testing for some vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit... For example, Washington requires testing in part of 5 counties (out of 39), for non-hybrid, 4-wheeled vehicles older than 2009. But even that is misleading, as the emissions testing program is being discontinued entirely at the end of the year. So even if they wanted to just add noise testing (it sounds so simple!), most cars don't get annual testing, and in another 6 months, none will. The state won't even have facilities for it. The bigger issue I see is that emissions is generally seen as bad by everyone. Most people don't spend money to mod their car to pollute more, so if you test cars once a year, it's probably going to be OK the rest of the year. People do mod their cars to make more noise, though, so if you test once a year, they're going to fix the noise for the test, and then put it back the next day. To fix this problem, you need to be able to catch people on the road.
- jgalentine007 7y ago
  I didn't realize how tragically limited emissions testing is (everywhere I've lived in the last 37 years has required it.) After some cogitating, I think you're right about enforcement needing to be done on the road which is unlikely to ever happen.
  - mark-r 7y ago
    How hard would it be to make a drone that hones in on the loudest car nearby and snaps a picture of the license plate?
    - jgalentine007 7y ago
      I was thinking something a bit more simple like a smartphone with a directional mic and opencv could work - at least for getting an idea of the scope of the problem. Put one on each side of a two lane road and you could probably get accurate results.
distances 7y ago
> Would it be so difficult for noise pollution to be regulated like emissions Are there no noise regulations for vehicles in the US then? EU does have these thankfully, currently 74dB but meant to go down to 68dB by 2024.
dylan-m 7y ago
I'm surprised that making sure noise output is sane isn't a standard part of certifying stuff for human consumption, but then I guess that's the whole "free market will sort it out" idea not working as expected. Nice to have work like this to say that maybe it would be a good idea :) It isn't just the "loud" noise, either. There's a giant white and dark grey yacht parked in the Vancouver Harbour about half of the year. (It's the one near Jimmy Patison's yacht, except at least twice as large and probably modelled after a Star Destroyer). I have never seen it move, but as long as it is there, it emits a low-frequency hum that causes noticeable churn in the water over a ~150 meter radius. It is like a giant, evil subwoofer of the unreasonably rich. It's frustrating to paddle anywhere near it, it gives me a headache, and I can't imagine what it does to animals that share the water. Whenever I'm near it I'm bothered that the thing is allowed to exist, let alone park there.

jacquesm 7y ago

> at least half of those vehicles are louder because the driver desires it Motor cycles are the worst for this. It's not rare to have whole neighborhoods woken up because one of those passes through.

morley 7y ago
Not sure why you're getting downvoted here. In Brooklyn and Queens, this happens a ton. If a loud motorcycle happens to rev when you're on the street, it's viscerally terrifying.
buckminster 7y ago
There is a reason for this. When car drivers stop pulling out in front of motorcyclists, motorcyclists will stop fitting loud exhausts.
- dijit 7y ago
  This is the same tired excuse my friend made when he got a loud bike. It’s just not true. He later told me he enjoys the feeling (vibrations) and that there was something primal about “taming” something that sounds powerful. As for car drivers, you should be assuming they can’t see you. Driving defensively is the only way to stay alive and you can argue that it shouldn’t be that way but it doesn’t make it any less true.
- freehunter 7y ago
  Modern cars are so sound-insulated that the volume of the motorcycle isn't going to have that much of an impact in normal operation. Fit a louder horn to the bike if you need to draw attention in specific situations. Loud exhausts are definitely not designed to make motorcycles more noticeable to cars.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Sure, that's why open pipes at three AM are run full throttle in second gear on a city street with thousands of houses. It's simply narcissism. I had the pleasure of living on Overtoom in Amsterdam, which is a beautiful street but I'm a relatively light sleeper and even at the back part of the house you'd be woken up several times every night by some 'look at me' dude making as much noise as possible. Not a car pulling out in sight at that hour.
- maerF0x0 7y ago
  I ride and do "feel" the sentiment that loud pipes might help in some situations. But here's a rider-centric article that helps address the situation _and_ provide some actionable advice. https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/stop-saying-loud-pipes-save-lives https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/stop-saying-loud-pipes...
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Thanks, that article makes lots of good sense. I see more and more riders (on relatively quiet bikes) drive with high visibility gear, especially on the highway, which is great. But those are rarely the 'loud' types, they're just people using their bikes as transport rather than as an attention seeking device.
wanderingstan 7y ago
I recently learned that (at least in the US) those loud motorcycles are actually illegal, and that it is near-standard practise that motorcycles are sold with cheap but compliant mufflers which everyone knows (wink wink) will be replaced with aftermarket loud (but illegal for road) mufflers. I applaud the research of this young student, showing that noise pollution is not just a nuisance, but a real health concern. Young ears getting permanently damaged is one aspect. Entire neighborhoods losing nights of sleep is another. Relevant article where police mention that they simply are not given a proper decibel meter: https://patch.com/california/berkeley/ask-a-cop-why-deafeningly-loud-motorcycles-not-cited https://patch.com/california/berkeley/ask-a-cop-why-deafenin...
piinbinary 7y ago
When a loud motorcycle [0] goes though a city at night, I wonder how many people it wakes up. It could easily pass thousands of people with just a few miles of driving. If 1% are woken up, it could still cost dozens of total hours of sleep. Based on how much a loss of sleep lowers performance (and increases health risks), the total cost of that one motorcycle driving one night might be huge. The cost of the health damage and lost productivity might be about as much as stealing a car. Since the cost is spread out over a lot of people, we don't tend to care as much about it. [0] Likely with the muffler deleted. While technically illegal, no one enforces any laws related to the noise output.

papln 7y ago

It's not 50% unless you live in a tight-knit ricer neighborhood. It's not a trivial option to customize a car to make it louder; it takes a bit of effort. What is true that we tend to notice annoyances more than non-annoyances, and that the car may be louder because the driver want to accelerate or velocitate more than they should, and noise is a side effect. Or the stereo is louder than it should be, not because they want you to hear it, but because they want to hear it and they don't care about you.

ihattendorf 7y ago
It can actually be extremely trivial and cheap by just drilling holes in your muffler (yes, I've seen this). Or by installing a glasspack for ~$20. This is what everyone gets annoyed at, usually.
jgalentine007 7y ago
My observations are a bit different. I live in a populous suburb (150k residents?) north of Denver. Truck culture is very prominent here and mainly consists of raising a vehicle and making it louder - mostly because they do want to attract attention. My 17 year old neighbor modified his Subaru so that it can (literally) be heard from miles away - and when he simply turns the car on can be heard clear across the entire neighborhood until the engine warms up and throttles down. I'm not so much annoyed as I'm curious as to how all of this noise affects the environment at large (people's sleep quality and mood, birds migrating, insects mating etc.)
- SparkleBunny 7y ago
  https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-04/phantom-expander-targets-new-zealand-hoons/283368 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-02-04/phantom-expander-targ...

ken 7y ago

> in the emissions process most states in the USA perform I'm not sure how accurate that is. From what I can tell, only about half of states have some region that requires emissions testing for some vehicles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_Unit... For example, Washington requires testing in part of 5 counties (out of 39), for non-hybrid, 4-wheeled vehicles older than 2009. But even that is misleading, as the emissions testing program is being discontinued entirely at the end of the year. So even if they wanted to just add noise testing (it sounds so simple!), most cars don't get annual testing, and in another 6 months, none will. The state won't even have facilities for it. The bigger issue I see is that emissions is generally seen as bad by everyone. Most people don't spend money to mod their car to pollute more, so if you test cars once a year, it's probably going to be OK the rest of the year. People do mod their cars to make more noise, though, so if you test once a year, they're going to fix the noise for the test, and then put it back the next day. To fix this problem, you need to be able to catch people on the road.

jgalentine007 7y ago
I didn't realize how tragically limited emissions testing is (everywhere I've lived in the last 37 years has required it.) After some cogitating, I think you're right about enforcement needing to be done on the road which is unlikely to ever happen.
- mark-r 7y ago
  How hard would it be to make a drone that hones in on the loudest car nearby and snaps a picture of the license plate?
  - jgalentine007 7y ago
    I was thinking something a bit more simple like a smartphone with a directional mic and opencv could work - at least for getting an idea of the scope of the problem. Put one on each side of a two lane road and you could probably get accurate results.

distances 7y ago

> Would it be so difficult for noise pollution to be regulated like emissions Are there no noise regulations for vehicles in the US then? EU does have these thankfully, currently 74dB but meant to go down to 68dB by 2024.

dylan-m 7y ago

I'm surprised that making sure noise output is sane isn't a standard part of certifying stuff for human consumption, but then I guess that's the whole "free market will sort it out" idea not working as expected. Nice to have work like this to say that maybe it would be a good idea :) It isn't just the "loud" noise, either. There's a giant white and dark grey yacht parked in the Vancouver Harbour about half of the year. (It's the one near Jimmy Patison's yacht, except at least twice as large and probably modelled after a Star Destroyer). I have never seen it move, but as long as it is there, it emits a low-frequency hum that causes noticeable churn in the water over a ~150 meter radius. It is like a giant, evil subwoofer of the unreasonably rich. It's frustrating to paddle anywhere near it, it gives me a headache, and I can't imagine what it does to animals that share the water. Whenever I'm near it I'm bothered that the thing is allowed to exist, let alone park there.