5 ms·

Whilst I seriously doubt that this will be regularly or universally enforced, I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud a

Whilst I seriously doubt that this will be regularly or universally enforced, I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying, and that especially in built-up areas it's not really acceptable where good alternatives exist. Noise pollution is usually very avoidable, and it can be quite disruptive and sometimes damaging to health. Further, where I live (in the UK), there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise (close to as loud as gunfire). This kind of deliberate noise pollution is exceptionally antisocial behaviour and should not be tolerated by society.

throwway120385 9mo ago
We have the same problem where I live in the US. When I get some free time I'm going to lobby our state congress to have the sale of them banned, because it's the only way to get people to stop installing them. There is a law against driving them but it's impossible to enforce because there's no means of measuring the sound and associating it with the vehicle quickly enough to enforce it. I'd love to have an ALPR system that localizes the noise and snaps a picture of the plate and vehicle and sends them a ticket in the mail.
- pc86 9mo ago
  Noise enforcement is a normal thing in areas that want to enforce it. It happens exactly the same way speed enforcement happens, the officer has a device that measures it and can present that information in court if the other party disputes it. The problem for both noise and speed enforcement is entirely a problem of will. Some jurisdictions simply don't care, or just do targeted enforcement to drive revenue but not actually change driving habits. Do any driving around the country and you'll see areas where people regularly drive 20mph over the speed limit and areas where people barely go 5 over.
- pbmonster 9mo ago
  German police have a what amounts to a dyno mounted on a truck bed, and they pull over suspicious cars and sound check them while an officer goes through the gears on the dyno. Failing that test is expensive, and you don't see your car again for a few weeks. They revoke your permission to operate the vehicle on public roads, so in addition to the fine, you face fees (towing, storage of car in evidence locker, towing your car to a shop after getting it back in order to make it street legal, then redoing the road-worthiness certification).
  - kube-system 9mo ago
    Police in the US can just give people a faulty equipment ticket based on their perception of it being too loud or visually modified. But you are not likely to see this enforced outside of rich quiet neighborhoods where police don't have anything better to attend to. Culturally, sentiment in the US does not want the law coming down hard on drivers and their vehicles. For instance, most US states do not even require vehicles to be safety inspected. And in urban areas the police have worse infractions to be going after.
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno roadside on an elevated platform for the loudest vehicles they think they can find, which by itself would likely also make the police violators of the law since they are the one operating the vehicle in public at the time of the sound infraction they have induced.
    - kube-system 9mo ago
      Noise control laws typically exempt law enforcement and first responders, for obvious reasons. e.g. their vehicles have devices installed that are intentionally noisy: sirens.
    - yetihehe 9mo ago
      > Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno It would be bad only if it didn't result in decrease of loud vehicles. If they run the dyno and impound vehicle, it means that this loud vehicle won't be coming back this street for some time.
- mc32 9mo ago
  Some of the most annoying offenders are motorbikes who almost see it as an obligation to revv as annoyingly as possible every chance they get on residential neighborhoods. It’s not all of them. Some ride responsibly but my god, some are extremely good at being the most annoying human beings on earth.
- potato3732842 9mo ago
  This is such a bad idea I don't know if you're serious, or if you're satirizing these kinds of people or an accelerationist looking to burn down the credibility of your state legislature. The right thing to do is to ban their use on a local level pursuant to some specific criteria is one thing (as many municipalities do, and Portland took a step further by doing categorically city wide). To ban their sale (but not use, are you kidding?) state wide is a great example of not only crap law, but the exact sort of minutia that the state level government should not be regulating and is necessarily proceeded by the sort of evil "I know best, damn the exceptions" world view that underpins much of the bad policy that sours people on the same institutions you are trying to use to solve what you perceive to be problems.
  - iamnothere 9mo ago
    Not to mention that these are often DIY mod jobs, so banning the sale of what? Generic car parts? Steel tubing? Welders?
- cmxch 9mo ago
  I’d love to see it get smacked down in the courts.
- altairprime 9mo ago
  https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera-loud-exhaust-case/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera... NYC installed these. Turns out with a city noise limit of 76 and ticketing those in excess of 84dBa, that you’ll ticket certain street ‘legal’ cars whose noise levels can reach into the 90s (!) if driven improperly in-city. Always glad to see technology progressing; I hope it spreads elsewhere.
  - 4d4m 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - Gibbon1 9mo ago
      My Prius isn't boring the way I drive it honey.
      - 4d4m 8mo ago
        You literally made my point.
    - infecto 9mo ago
      Nope there is a difference between a modified exhaust and a straight pipes or more commonly a tuned ecu that causes after fire. It can be quite loud, pretty darn close to gun shot level and is a disruptive. If you like it go take your car to a track.
      - 4d4m 8mo ago
        There are MANY factory production vehicles with exhausts above the DB limits for what is considered legal by municipalities and states. Is the onus on the consumer for buying these or on the manufacturer? Or are these laws asinine when they don't apply to horns, trains, construction sites and other noise-emitters? As a fellow vehicle customization enthusiast you have the flexibility to do what you want for snaps, crackles and pops up to the limit of what is deemed acceptable by your locality. It's not like a blanket ban is going to fix the behavior of people that mod their cars. I don't personally add after-fire to ECU tunings but they are popular in the bimmer community - what harm are these people causing that motorcyclists aren't? I got the answer: it's easy to target car modders and sports/supercars because those who don't drive them are petty + jealous.
- davidbanham 9mo ago
  It’s a pretty solved problem. In NSW, Australia we have automated systems for heavy vehicle noise fines. (They could of course be used for regular vehicles as well, we just don’t) For all vehicles the police can issue a defect notice to anything that seems too loud. The owner then has to present to an inspection station and prove that they’re compliant. If they don’t show up or don’t test as compliant their registration is voided and they’re fined. Of course, they can remove the modification before visiting the induction station then reinstall it afterwards, but that gets pretty time consuming pretty fast and people largely stay within the bounds of reason as a result. The system isn’t perfect but it works fine.
phoronixrly 9mo ago
The notion of leafblowing is also mindboggling to me... You don't need a leafblower to clean up your driveway, and leaves on a lawn will turn into soil.
- soco 9mo ago
  My neighbour has a golf court style yard and constantly provides friendly suggestions how to better take care of my yard - with fruit trees and wild flowers. There are no mechanisms he could force his views around here, but boy would he love that.
- BoneShard 9mo ago
  More likely leaves on a lawn will destroy it and will create a dirt patch, at least this is what happens in PNW (Seattle & Portland). I have giant maple trees next to my house and I get 2 feet of leaves in my backyard every fall, if you don't remove them you get a breeding ground for rodents, you get mold and dirt everywhere (and clogged gutters, clogged street drains) and standing water. And it's not only leaves, I'm getting fir/cedar needles and maple seeds on my drive way, good luck removing it without a blower.
boringg 9mo ago
What I find interesting about this ban: probably mostly makes sense in the for city for low workloads however the electric blowers (even the good ones that I am sure the city isn't paying for) are underpowered for real work leaf workloads. They operate as a midlevel gas powered blower. As someone who is on board with electrify as much as possible - I still see where there are limitations and chokepoints. Though for noise pollution makes a lot of sense.
- bryanlarsen 9mo ago
  They shouldn't be underpowered. Small electric motors are way more powerful per mass/volume than small gas motors. You'd have to use a backpack mounted battery pack, but contractors are already doing that.
  - boringg 9mo ago
    Have they started doing that? I haven't seen the backpack mounted version in use in the wild. I haven't seen any electric blowers get to the same capability in the contractor market segment. Prosumer -- for sure no problems there.
    - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
      Perhaps not. Businesses are way more conservative than consumers when adopting new tech, so there will be little demand at the beginning. And with little demand, there's little supply. Laws like the headline will break this chicken/egg problem.
- quickthrowman 9mo ago
  Leaf blowers with EC motors and backpack battery packs perform just as well as the gas versions.
  - iamnothere 9mo ago
    Except that they require keeping lots of expensive extra batteries on hand—batteries with a limited lifespan—driving up overall operating costs. This is basically just a stealth tax on the already not very profitable landscaping industry. Prices for landscaping services are already getting out of hand, at least in my area. This will make things worse.
SirFatty 9mo ago
"I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying," Hence the ban.
- cainxinth 9mo ago
  There is another issue. The 2-stroke gas engines in backpack leaf blowers emit very toxic exhaust. Much worse than a 4-stroke. The landscapers are breathing that in all day.
  - Gibbon1 9mo ago
    Worth also mentioning leaf blowers are terrible for air quality because they blow a lot of dust in the air.
arandomsapien 9mo ago
> there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise I live in Portland and we have the same issue all over the city. They are much louder and more frequent than gas power leaf blowers. There are supposedly laws against them, but they are not enforced.

throwway120385 9mo ago

We have the same problem where I live in the US. When I get some free time I'm going to lobby our state congress to have the sale of them banned, because it's the only way to get people to stop installing them. There is a law against driving them but it's impossible to enforce because there's no means of measuring the sound and associating it with the vehicle quickly enough to enforce it. I'd love to have an ALPR system that localizes the noise and snaps a picture of the plate and vehicle and sends them a ticket in the mail.

pc86 9mo ago
Noise enforcement is a normal thing in areas that want to enforce it. It happens exactly the same way speed enforcement happens, the officer has a device that measures it and can present that information in court if the other party disputes it. The problem for both noise and speed enforcement is entirely a problem of will. Some jurisdictions simply don't care, or just do targeted enforcement to drive revenue but not actually change driving habits. Do any driving around the country and you'll see areas where people regularly drive 20mph over the speed limit and areas where people barely go 5 over.
pbmonster 9mo ago
German police have a what amounts to a dyno mounted on a truck bed, and they pull over suspicious cars and sound check them while an officer goes through the gears on the dyno. Failing that test is expensive, and you don't see your car again for a few weeks. They revoke your permission to operate the vehicle on public roads, so in addition to the fine, you face fees (towing, storage of car in evidence locker, towing your car to a shop after getting it back in order to make it street legal, then redoing the road-worthiness certification).
- kube-system 9mo ago
  Police in the US can just give people a faulty equipment ticket based on their perception of it being too loud or visually modified. But you are not likely to see this enforced outside of rich quiet neighborhoods where police don't have anything better to attend to. Culturally, sentiment in the US does not want the law coming down hard on drivers and their vehicles. For instance, most US states do not even require vehicles to be safety inspected. And in urban areas the police have worse infractions to be going after.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno roadside on an elevated platform for the loudest vehicles they think they can find, which by itself would likely also make the police violators of the law since they are the one operating the vehicle in public at the time of the sound infraction they have induced.
  - kube-system 9mo ago
    Noise control laws typically exempt law enforcement and first responders, for obvious reasons. e.g. their vehicles have devices installed that are intentionally noisy: sirens.
  - yetihehe 9mo ago
    > Ah yes, nothing quiets the streets like the police literally running a damn dyno It would be bad only if it didn't result in decrease of loud vehicles. If they run the dyno and impound vehicle, it means that this loud vehicle won't be coming back this street for some time.
mc32 9mo ago
Some of the most annoying offenders are motorbikes who almost see it as an obligation to revv as annoyingly as possible every chance they get on residential neighborhoods. It’s not all of them. Some ride responsibly but my god, some are extremely good at being the most annoying human beings on earth.
potato3732842 9mo ago
This is such a bad idea I don't know if you're serious, or if you're satirizing these kinds of people or an accelerationist looking to burn down the credibility of your state legislature. The right thing to do is to ban their use on a local level pursuant to some specific criteria is one thing (as many municipalities do, and Portland took a step further by doing categorically city wide). To ban their sale (but not use, are you kidding?) state wide is a great example of not only crap law, but the exact sort of minutia that the state level government should not be regulating and is necessarily proceeded by the sort of evil "I know best, damn the exceptions" world view that underpins much of the bad policy that sours people on the same institutions you are trying to use to solve what you perceive to be problems.
- iamnothere 9mo ago
  Not to mention that these are often DIY mod jobs, so banning the sale of what? Generic car parts? Steel tubing? Welders?
cmxch 9mo ago
I’d love to see it get smacked down in the courts.
altairprime 9mo ago
https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera-loud-exhaust-case/ https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a60583398/nyc-noise-camera... NYC installed these. Turns out with a city noise limit of 76 and ticketing those in excess of 84dBa, that you’ll ticket certain street ‘legal’ cars whose noise levels can reach into the 90s (!) if driven improperly in-city. Always glad to see technology progressing; I hope it spreads elsewhere.
- 4d4m 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - Gibbon1 9mo ago
    My Prius isn't boring the way I drive it honey.
    - 4d4m 8mo ago
      You literally made my point.
  - infecto 9mo ago
    Nope there is a difference between a modified exhaust and a straight pipes or more commonly a tuned ecu that causes after fire. It can be quite loud, pretty darn close to gun shot level and is a disruptive. If you like it go take your car to a track.
    - 4d4m 8mo ago
      There are MANY factory production vehicles with exhausts above the DB limits for what is considered legal by municipalities and states. Is the onus on the consumer for buying these or on the manufacturer? Or are these laws asinine when they don't apply to horns, trains, construction sites and other noise-emitters? As a fellow vehicle customization enthusiast you have the flexibility to do what you want for snaps, crackles and pops up to the limit of what is deemed acceptable by your locality. It's not like a blanket ban is going to fix the behavior of people that mod their cars. I don't personally add after-fire to ECU tunings but they are popular in the bimmer community - what harm are these people causing that motorcyclists aren't? I got the answer: it's easy to target car modders and sports/supercars because those who don't drive them are petty + jealous.
davidbanham 9mo ago
It’s a pretty solved problem. In NSW, Australia we have automated systems for heavy vehicle noise fines. (They could of course be used for regular vehicles as well, we just don’t) For all vehicles the police can issue a defect notice to anything that seems too loud. The owner then has to present to an inspection station and prove that they’re compliant. If they don’t show up or don’t test as compliant their registration is voided and they’re fined. Of course, they can remove the modification before visiting the induction station then reinstall it afterwards, but that gets pretty time consuming pretty fast and people largely stay within the bounds of reason as a result. The system isn’t perfect but it works fine.

phoronixrly 9mo ago

The notion of leafblowing is also mindboggling to me... You don't need a leafblower to clean up your driveway, and leaves on a lawn will turn into soil.

soco 9mo ago
My neighbour has a golf court style yard and constantly provides friendly suggestions how to better take care of my yard - with fruit trees and wild flowers. There are no mechanisms he could force his views around here, but boy would he love that.
BoneShard 9mo ago
More likely leaves on a lawn will destroy it and will create a dirt patch, at least this is what happens in PNW (Seattle & Portland). I have giant maple trees next to my house and I get 2 feet of leaves in my backyard every fall, if you don't remove them you get a breeding ground for rodents, you get mold and dirt everywhere (and clogged gutters, clogged street drains) and standing water. And it's not only leaves, I'm getting fir/cedar needles and maple seeds on my drive way, good luck removing it without a blower.

boringg 9mo ago

What I find interesting about this ban: probably mostly makes sense in the for city for low workloads however the electric blowers (even the good ones that I am sure the city isn't paying for) are underpowered for real work leaf workloads. They operate as a midlevel gas powered blower. As someone who is on board with electrify as much as possible - I still see where there are limitations and chokepoints. Though for noise pollution makes a lot of sense.

bryanlarsen 9mo ago
They shouldn't be underpowered. Small electric motors are way more powerful per mass/volume than small gas motors. You'd have to use a backpack mounted battery pack, but contractors are already doing that.
- boringg 9mo ago
  Have they started doing that? I haven't seen the backpack mounted version in use in the wild. I haven't seen any electric blowers get to the same capability in the contractor market segment. Prosumer -- for sure no problems there.
  - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
    Perhaps not. Businesses are way more conservative than consumers when adopting new tech, so there will be little demand at the beginning. And with little demand, there's little supply. Laws like the headline will break this chicken/egg problem.
quickthrowman 9mo ago
Leaf blowers with EC motors and backpack battery packs perform just as well as the gas versions.
- iamnothere 9mo ago
  Except that they require keeping lots of expensive extra batteries on hand—batteries with a limited lifespan—driving up overall operating costs. This is basically just a stealth tax on the already not very profitable landscaping industry. Prices for landscaping services are already getting out of hand, at least in my area. This will make things worse.

SirFatty 9mo ago

"I think that gas powered gardening and construction equipment is incredibly loud and annoying," Hence the ban.

cainxinth 9mo ago
There is another issue. The 2-stroke gas engines in backpack leaf blowers emit very toxic exhaust. Much worse than a 4-stroke. The landscapers are breathing that in all day.
- Gibbon1 9mo ago
  Worth also mentioning leaf blowers are terrible for air quality because they blow a lot of dust in the air.

arandomsapien 9mo ago

> there needs to be a serious reckoning about modified cars and road noise. At least 5-10x daily people drive through the city centre near my home with cars modified with unbelievably loud pop and bang ECU tunes and exhaust noise I live in Portland and we have the same issue all over the city. They are much louder and more frequent than gas power leaf blowers. There are supposedly laws against them, but they are not enforced.