22 ms·

New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

• gataca 5y ago
  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.
• jmpman 5y ago
  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.
  • mschuster91 5y ago
    > 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.
    • woah 5y ago
      • micromacrofoot 5y ago
        It’s not legal to just shoot any animal because it’s in your yard, come on
      • throwawaygh 5y ago
        > If they shot into someone's house or even yard, they would be in jail. That's optimistmic. > If they shot the cat when it was in their yard it was loose and their actions were probably completely legal. For domesticated animals like cats and dogs, this isn't true even on large personal tracts where shooting at nothing in particular is perfectly legal. You can't shoot someone's dog just because it's trespassing. And this certainly isn't generally legal to discharge a firearm at a non-threatening animal in most any suburb or city (OP has "dozens of neighbors"). > They are an invasive species. There are many operations to cull invasive species (including cats) on a much larger scale. Why aren't you mad about those? The comment about the cat is supposed to reflect on the character of the person driving loudly and abusing animals. Just because wildlife management sometimes requires culling doesn't mean that animal cruelty is no big deal.
      • leephillips 5y ago
        I’m with you. The problem is the people who let their cats outside, not the people who kill the cats. Why is a cat’s life more important than the many wild birds that it will kill?
        • jfk13 5y ago
          Why are the wild birds more important than all the insects they will kill? You should be grateful to the cats for helping to protect the bugs.
          • leephillips 5y ago
            They’re not, intrinsically. But on an ecological level, domestic cats kill so many birds that they are responsible for severe reductions in some species populations. I happen to think that species preservation is important. So people's free-roaming domestic cats should be considered fair game.
      • brimble 5y ago
        > If they shot into someone's house or even yard, they would be in jail. Maybe over the weekend, if they got caught and if the cops could be convinced to care about it. Without some serious priors, I'd expect probation and a fine to be the outcome. And now your neighbor, who was willing to shoot a cat, is very angry at you....
      • Hammershaft 5y ago
        This is such an inane justification for intentionally killing a neighbor's pet. Children are intensely harmful to the environment over their lifespan. Had our conception of property rights legally permitted land owners to shoot people on their lawn, would you be chiding commenters for being angry that a neighbor had shot somebody's child for wandering on their lawn on the basis that that child was so harmful to the environment?
        • chucksta 5y ago
          Stand your ground laws exist, although i'm not sure how you would prove you were threatened by a child
      • stjohnswarts 5y ago
        Where do you live that you can go around shooting cats in your yard? That's a felony where I live and I live in Texas which is a very gun friendly state.
  • bowmessage 5y ago
    You could buy your neighbor an electric motorcycle for less than $16k! :-) Best of luck.
  • jjtheblunt 5y ago
    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.
    • brimble 5y ago
      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.
      • MichaelZuo 5y ago
        By ‘Pyrrhic victory’, you mean enforcement action carries risks? That’s true for every society in human history…
        • brimble 5y ago
          Is that how that reads to you?
          • MichaelZuo 5y ago
            Yes, and?
    • brigade 5y ago
      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.
  • alistairSH 5y ago
    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.
    • Maximus9000 5y ago
      > 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.
      • asdfgasdfgasdgf 5y ago
        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.
        • brimble 5y ago
          > 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.
          • pandaman 5y ago
            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.
  • jiveturkey42 5y ago
    Have you tried confronting them about it?
    • NikolaNovak 5y ago
      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.
      • ilamont 5y ago
        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.
        • NikolaNovak 5y ago
          >>Not a car. He shot a cat. Well... that's still kinda bad, I think...? :) Corrected the typo, thx!
    • bronson 5y ago
      I have. Now he guns it when he passes my house.
    • fknorangesite 5y ago
      > These are neighbors who had shot their next door neighbor’s cat, so unlikely to adapt their actions based upon my request.
  • iqanq 5y ago
    I'm not an authoritarian kind of guy but there are people who are better removed from society entirely.
  • jackson1442 5y ago
    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.
    • ryandrake 5y ago
      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.
      • t8e56vd4ih 5y ago
        yes, this. what do you think would be hypothetically an apt repercussion? maybe a few drops of butyric acid down a window pane?
        • germinalphrase 5y ago
          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.
          • t8e56vd4ih 5y ago
            good idea. that's precisely the stuff I'm coming to hacker news for.
  • lanamo 5y ago
    this is a case for John Wick.
  • bogwog 5y ago
    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.
    • MerelyMortal 5y ago
      Just get a boombox and play engine-revving noises. They might be too dense otherwise to make the connection.
  • ahthat 5y ago
    Towels work pretty well apparently (sometimes better than foam acoustic panels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKwb58vvFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKwb58vvFI
    • leephillips 5y ago
      That video has nothing to do with soundproofing.
      • ahthat 5y ago
        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-ideas/ https://soundproofliving.com/soundproof-room-cheap-free-idea...
  • shtopointo 5y ago
    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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2TaWG4aeEU
  • xkqd 5y ago
    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.
    • Sharlin 5y ago
      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.
  • Sharlin 5y ago
    > 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.
  • megablast 5y ago
    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.
    • mastercheif 5y ago
      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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY
    • oh_sigh 5y ago
      They said that they don't have a problem with 999 out of 1000 cars. That's not being hypocritical.
    • Gigachad 5y ago
      Normal cars do not produce noise issues. I live in the city and it’s basically _only_ motorbikes and modded cars I can hear.
    • jmpman 5y ago
      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.
  • fallingknife 5y ago
    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.
• udfalkso 5y ago
  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.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    I moved to the city for peace and quiet! I didn't know there would be so many people around!
    • Gigachad 5y ago
      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.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • prions 5y ago
      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.
    • wildrhythms 5y ago
      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.
  • cassac 5y ago
• myself248 5y ago
  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.
  • defterGoose 5y ago
    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.
• diebeforei485 5y ago
  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.
  • et-al 5y ago
    Unfortunately we won't even allow speed enforcement cameras, so this seems unlikely. https://cal.streetsblog.org/2021/05/21/california-wont-be-getting-speed-enforcement-cameras/ https://cal.streetsblog.org/2021/05/21/california-wont-be-ge...
    • fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
      I wouldn’t be so sure. The interest group of speeders may be much larger than the interest group of loud pipes.
      • et-al 5y ago
        You're right. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction.
    • diebeforei485 5y ago
      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.
      • tommoor 5y ago
        Agreed, let's say all intersections within a mile of a school? ;-)
    • bradlys 5y ago
      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.
• tempfs 5y ago
  Death to the burble-tunes and the idiots that acquire them, then use them to assault the neighborhood.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  Cars that make a lot of noise are one in 10,000 where I live. Motorcycles every second one.
• globular-toast 5y ago
  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.
• antisthenes 5y ago
  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.
  • collegeburner 5y ago
    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.
    • et-al 5y ago
      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-rule-allowing-adaptive-driving-beam-headlights-new-vehicles https://www.autonews.com/regulation-safety/nhtsa-finalizes-r...
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • indymike 5y ago
    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.
• smm11 5y ago
  Good. Now target Harley Davidson motorcycles.
• shmageggy 5y ago
  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.
  • globular-toast 5y ago
    Apparently it's happening in Paris too: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/noise-radar-in-paris-will-catch-raucous-cars-and-motorbikes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/noise-radar-in...
    • bandris 5y ago
      and in London since 2020: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54452835 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54452835
    • noahtallen 5y ago
      Cities in the Netherlands have been making great progress as well: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8 https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
• humanistbot 5y ago
  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.
  • drsnow 5y ago
    how are they unconstitutional?
    • margalabargala 5y ago
      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.
      • barbazoo 5y ago
        In the case of red light cameras, aren't there pictures to prove the violation?
        • ubermonkey 5y ago
          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.
          • barbazoo 5y ago
            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.
• pizzabearman 5y ago
  Kind of off topic. But we need to find a way to reduce the noise of squeaking subway trains.
• aqme28 5y ago
  YES. I have lived on some incredibly busy streets in New York. Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud.
  • tomjakubowski 5y ago
    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.
  • shmageggy 5y ago
    > Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud. Fantastic video with that very name exploring just how true this is: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8 https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
  • bobbylarrybobby 5y ago
    It was remarkable just how quiet NYC was recently during a snow storm. Cars weren't out and about and it was heaven.
• koolba 5y ago
  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.
• xwdv 5y ago
  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.
  • julius_deane 5y ago
    yes, the solution to fast cars is to insist they also have to be loud
  • bronson 5y ago
    You need your loud car because of the children?
  • woodruffw 5y ago
    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.
  • ahoy 5y ago
    Exactly, it would be much better if my kid was crushed under a loud-ass F250.
• treesknees 5y ago
  >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?
  • acid__ 5y ago
    One option could be to use an array of microphones to detect the source of the loud noise
    • Gigachad 5y ago
      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.
• olivermarks 5y ago
  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).
  • Gigachad 5y ago
    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.
    • olivermarks 5y ago
      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
      • Gigachad 5y ago
        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.
        • olivermarks 5y ago
          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
• jdprgm 5y ago
  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.
  • denimnerd42 5y ago
    this is my #1 public nuisance
  • 2arrs2ells 5y ago
    Gas powered leaf blowers are horrible - noise and air pollution. Electric ones aren't bad.
    • valenaut 5y ago
      It's still a lot of energy to push leaves around for no good reason. But yes, much better than gas.
      • Gigachad 5y ago
        It’s not a whole lot of energy really. They run for ages on tiny little batteries.
  • kccqzy 5y ago
    James Fallows, a pretty influential journalist, did just that in the District of Columbia. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/james-fallows-leaf-blower-ban/583210/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/james-f...
    • jdprgm 5y ago
      Oh wow, thanks for the article. I'm right across the river -- perhaps Arlington will follow suit!
• errantmind 5y ago
  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.
• stjohnswarts 5y ago
  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.
  • chickenpotpie 5y ago
    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.
    • bitminers 5y ago
      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.
      • chickenpotpie 5y ago
        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.
        • bitminers 5y ago
          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.
          • chickenpotpie 5y ago
            A cop can still legally follow me around and overhear my conversation with a recorder
• UnpossibleJim 5y ago
  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".
  • TigeriusKirk 5y ago
    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.
    • Gigachad 5y ago
      “Very minor annoyances” like being woken up multiple times every night. I’ll accept a lot of surveillance to sleep well.
• intrasight 5y ago
  Speeding should be enforced the same way. Police have better things to do.
  • defterGoose 5y ago
    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.
• habosa 5y ago
  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-motorcycles-the-police-wont-or-cant-tell-you/ https://rickeyholtsclaw.com/2016/03/10/the-truth-about-loud-...
  • 0_____0 5y ago
    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.
    • jeffbee 5y ago
      Even factory stock NOx emissions from motorcycles are ~1000x higher under California rules compared to light-duty cars and trucks.
      • 0_____0 5y ago
        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.
        • jeffbee 5y ago
          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.
• emadabdulrahim 5y ago
  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.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• chadrs 5y ago
  Can we ban car alarms next? I can't believe we allow such an obnoxious feature with basically a 100% false positive rate.
• jordanpg 5y ago
  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.
• wavefunction 5y ago
  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."
• throwaway5371 5y ago
  hopefully this goes away with push to EV
  • papito 5y ago
    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.
    • _whiteCaps_ 5y ago
      https://www.pocket-lint.com/cars/news/ford/131151-ford-admits-to-pumping-fake-engine-noises-through-mustang-speakers-to-make-cars-sound-better 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!
  • jalgos_eminator 5y ago
    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.
• post_break 5y ago
  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.
• papito 5y ago
  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.
• MisterTea 5y ago
  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.
  • zanderz 5y ago
    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?
    • MisterTea 5y ago
      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.
    • octoberfranklin 5y ago
      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.
• ericmcer 5y ago
  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.
• oversocialized 5y ago
  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.
  • defterGoose 5y ago
    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.
    • macksd 5y ago
      If it needs to be updated, you actually have to update it, though. You can't just pretend it isn't the law anymore.
      • defterGoose 5y ago
        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?
        • macksd 5y ago
          "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.
• jimmyvalmer 5y ago
• scsilver 5y ago
  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.
• dqpb 5y ago
• XorNot 5y ago
  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.
• imnotlost 5y ago
  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.
  • defterGoose 5y ago
    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.
• pedalpete 5y ago
  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.
  • Shank 5y ago
    > 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.
  • tsomctl 5y ago
    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.
    • mleonhard 5y ago
      You could sue him in small claims court.
  • 5y ago
• notyourday 5y ago
  Good. They need to make fines so high that getting it twice means going to a poor house.
• oyebenny 5y ago
  I wonder what else they're listening to. I wonder if their data streams are as regulated as private firms.
  • disambiguation 5y ago
    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-citys-surging-shooting-problem/ 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-collecting-bulk-data-pertaining-americans-senators-say-rcna15830 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/cia-secretly-collecti...
• JackFr 5y ago
  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.
• 1970-01-01 5y ago
  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.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
• lamontcg 5y ago
  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.
  • kmlx 5y ago
    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 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine
  • tqi 5y ago
    > 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?
    • kelnos 5y ago
      I agree that some things seem hyperbolic, but I'm not convinced that audio recording devices scattered around a city is one of them.
• trgn 5y ago
  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.
  • antiterra 5y ago
    > 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.
• hailmac 5y ago
  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.
• bjt2n3904 5y ago
  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!
  • francisofascii 5y ago
    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.
  • clusterfish 5y ago
    Maybe last year was a bit bullshit.
• kmlx 5y ago
  yes, i remember reading about this in london. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54452835.amp 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.
• nickysielicki 5y ago
  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?
• jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  A better solution for everyone is less dense living, and a culture of respect for not engaging in anti social behavior.
  • francisofascii 5y ago
    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.
• thepasswordis 5y ago
  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 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.
  • Sohcahtoa82 5y ago
    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.
  • JohnTHaller 5y ago
    The proper term is "fart cars". That's what we refer to them as in NYC.
  • grvdrm 5y ago
    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.
  • kelnos 5y ago
    Ugh, the comments on that video make me angry. Should never read the comments. Effing sociopaths.
• shtopointo 5y ago
  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.
• waiseristy 5y ago
  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
• ghostly_s 5y ago
  Good riddance.
• _blz2 5y ago
  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.
• causalmodels 5y ago
  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.
• gameswithgo 5y ago
  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.
• thephyber 5y ago
  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.
  • darkwizard42 5y ago
    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.
    • thephyber 5y ago
      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.
• JohnTHaller 5y ago
  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.
  • mastercheif 5y ago
    Here's a decent example of a "fart car" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY
  • RivieraKid 5y ago
    Why do they do that, is it basically sadism, i.e. deriving pleasure from others undergoing discomfort or pain?
    • lotsofpulp 5y ago
      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.
      • bradlys 5y ago
        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.
• holografix 5y ago
  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.
• TheDudeMan 5y ago
  omg. Please bring this to LA.
• bitminers 5y ago
• joshu 5y ago
  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.
• aaron695 5y ago
• scottcodie 5y ago
  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.
• fleurjs 5y ago
  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.
• ubermonkey 5y ago
  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.
• brunoqc 5y ago
• karaterobot 5y ago
  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.
• drewmol 5y ago
  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.
• labrador 5y ago
  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 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 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
• hbarka 5y ago
  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.
• ck2 5y ago
  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.
• footlose_3815 5y ago
  [dead]
• kerryoco 5y ago
  this is a phenomenal use of technology