8 ms·

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 abo

by 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.

by jmpman 5y ago

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.