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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 ge

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.
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    If the police take my car and make loud noises with it, all that means is the police can potentially make loud noises with my car. Not that I personally made loud noises. The only provable noise polluter in that case is the police. I'm sure they could also put my car on a dyno and prove it could go 100mph on the 30mph street I was on too.
    - altairprime 9mo ago
      Presumably for a car to be sold from factory and registered by owner as street legal in Germany, it must not be able to make loud noises under reasonable operation — specifically, driven like someone would drive a car (up to 100% throttle, up to redline rpm) but not attempting to maliciously create problems (fuzzing the pedal inputs for backfire scenarios from factory). If the police are able to reasonably operate it on a dyno to create an illegal condition, then either it has a mechanical defect, an owner modification, or a design defect; and in all three cases, the vehicle would presumably therefore not be street legal, as proven on the roadside dyno. The loophole you’re describing wouldn’t hold up in front of a judge anywhere at first glance: “I don’t ever push the gas pedal that far down in my fancy sports car designed/modded to accelerate loudly when I push the gas pedal that far down” is not a particularly convincing argument when one is found to be operating said vehicle. A more convincing argument would be, “the pedal inputs by the police were improper for operation of a vehicle and do not conform to the training given to roadside dyno operators”; and, presumably dyno logs and body cam of the operator are available to defeat that as well. And arguing that the training itself is improperly having police operate the vehicle through all factory-provided regimes would almost certainly fail (even in the U.S. were such roadside dynos a thing here!), but if your case was that the training needs to be improved in a specific way rather than for termination of the roadside dyno program, you might get traction with that. One assumes this process is generally reserved for vehicles whose driving has earned them a dyno inspection, as it would induce mockery were they to e.g. dyno an old beaten-up Geo Metro without cause, and that the fines are directed towards either the vehicle owner and/or manufacturer, as circumstances require, as the responsible parties for its mechanical-design and/or aftermarket-modded violations of the law. (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
    - 9mo ago

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.
- mothballed 9mo ago
  If the police take my car and make loud noises with it, all that means is the police can potentially make loud noises with my car. Not that I personally made loud noises. The only provable noise polluter in that case is the police. I'm sure they could also put my car on a dyno and prove it could go 100mph on the 30mph street I was on too.
  - altairprime 9mo ago
    Presumably for a car to be sold from factory and registered by owner as street legal in Germany, it must not be able to make loud noises under reasonable operation — specifically, driven like someone would drive a car (up to 100% throttle, up to redline rpm) but not attempting to maliciously create problems (fuzzing the pedal inputs for backfire scenarios from factory). If the police are able to reasonably operate it on a dyno to create an illegal condition, then either it has a mechanical defect, an owner modification, or a design defect; and in all three cases, the vehicle would presumably therefore not be street legal, as proven on the roadside dyno. The loophole you’re describing wouldn’t hold up in front of a judge anywhere at first glance: “I don’t ever push the gas pedal that far down in my fancy sports car designed/modded to accelerate loudly when I push the gas pedal that far down” is not a particularly convincing argument when one is found to be operating said vehicle. A more convincing argument would be, “the pedal inputs by the police were improper for operation of a vehicle and do not conform to the training given to roadside dyno operators”; and, presumably dyno logs and body cam of the operator are available to defeat that as well. And arguing that the training itself is improperly having police operate the vehicle through all factory-provided regimes would almost certainly fail (even in the U.S. were such roadside dynos a thing here!), but if your case was that the training needs to be improved in a specific way rather than for termination of the roadside dyno program, you might get traction with that. One assumes this process is generally reserved for vehicles whose driving has earned them a dyno inspection, as it would induce mockery were they to e.g. dyno an old beaten-up Geo Metro without cause, and that the fines are directed towards either the vehicle owner and/or manufacturer, as circumstances require, as the responsible parties for its mechanical-design and/or aftermarket-modded violations of the law. (I am not your lawyer, this is not legal advice.)
  - 9mo ago