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Comment by udfalkso | Hacker News Reader

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.

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There's a freeway about a mile from my house. Summer nights with the windows open, I can easily be awakened by a very loud motorcycle. The freeway is raised and I'm in a sort of canyon (no line of sight to freeway, though!!). Maybe the acoustics are just perfect for my bedroom, but I doubt it's just me. There are probably a million people within earshot of this noise.

Lest people think I'm a motorcycle hater: I owned one for years. I had a stock and quiet muffler on it, though.

Owned four Harleys, like you, mine were stock, quiet. People are surprised to find out Harleys sound almost like sewing machines when they are stock.

Almost.

On the rare occasion that I hear a HD with stock exhaust, it usually turns my head with me asking, "damn, what's that sweet-sounding thing?" Sadly, they're mostly owned by chuckleheads who fuck it up with open pipes.

Yup. Harleys with the stock exhaust have a beautiful sound. What a shame that people destroy that iconic engineering in the pursuit of "loud". I cringe every time I see a Harley modified like that.

On a motorcycle forum, someone asked whether they should upgrade their suspension or their exhaust. I suggested that an upgraded suspension affects your quality of life, an upgraded exhaust affects everyone else.

We don't need the windows open to hear the cars and such around here (and they're modern windows). We're near a freeway, but it's not the only culprit. The freeway is either silent or quite noisy depending on ambient weather conditions.

But when the cars open up, it sounds like a racetrack. We can hear them accelerating up the on ramp, up shifting as they go, and even when they hit the flyover to the other freeway.

The ratio of motorcycles to cars is actually quite low. Most of the offenders are the V8 pony cars.

To be fair, riding a quiet motorcycle is likely to get you sideswiped more if the people can't hear you at all. I've noticed the difference of head movements when changing the exhaust on my new motorcycle, from stock to a louder aftermarket. Prior, people would just veer into my lane without even checking. Anecdotal, but very noticeable difference for myself.

Maybe you just shouldn't ride a motorcycle if, in order to feel safe, you feel the need to unreasonably increase your level of noise pollution.

Anecdotally, over 25 years of riding in most every condition you can think, including several years of one-way 30 mile commute in to downtown LA, I have not noticed this.

As a corollary anecdote, I've seen (and heard), on several occasions, the rev bombing riders revving louder and longer since the person that's "in their way" is not moving out of it.

I've also, personally, jerked and swerved (a little) when startled by a loud exhaust "suddenly" appearing next to me. These events are typically followed by a crude exclamation that isn't worth sharing here.

At one point I did have a bike with a louder exhaust (I didn't keep the citation I got because of it). But the majority of my bikes are stock exhausts and quiet.

Cars swerve in to anything and everything. Especially today, the modern car cockpit is overwhelmed with distractions. But even pre-cell phones I've had to contend with kids, coffee, balloons, and animals apparently designed to convert the car drivers in to motorcycle seeking missiles.

Keep it on two, stay safe, they're not out to get you but they make a good show of it anyway.

I stopped riding two years ago after 30+ years. This was mostly based on my recent experience as a pedestrian- I just watched way too many people running stop signs while staring at their phone. Figured I'd have a good run of it and better to get out while the going was good.

If "loud pipes save(d) lives", your insurance company would give you a discount for your man-child exhaust. And if you want anecdata, I've ridden hundreds of thousands of miles in every U. S. state, most of Canada, and elsewhere. Most of those miles have been with the exhaust that came with the bike when it rolled out of the factory. I've never been sideswiped, nor even once considered that a loud exhaust would do anything to improve my safety.

I sure am glad for the riding classes I've taken, however, which probably do a lot more good than obnoxious exhaust systems.

> your man-child exhaust

Less of this, please

I haven’t even heard of my insurance giving me a discount for wearing a full face helmet instead of a bucket helmet.

Actually, is there a single thing that insurance gives you a discount for?

Like, I’m with GEICO and as far as I can tell, it’s only age of license without accident or ticket that counts.

Either every factor is a wash or insurance companies are keeping the spread as profit on their side or they have no means of enforcing.

Like, do you install a Termignoni and then call your insurance agent? “Hi, I got louder exhaust pipes installed. Also, I’ve decided to wear a nicer helmet. Also, I now keep my bike inside a garage. Just wanted to call about the discount”

They don't give you a discount for a better helmet because it's cheaper for them if you're dead vs paying the hospital bills for your injuries.

Actually, is there a single thing that insurance gives you a discount for?

ABS, having taken a Motorcycle Safety Foundation riding course (in the U. S.), and yes, for storing it in a garage. All of those are items for which Progressive gives a discount.

Huh. Guess I was wrong. I have the latter two (no ABS on my old Ducati Monster). Better go get my discount. Thank you!

I'd say I'm surprised that Geico didn't just come out and ask these things, as Progressive did when we signed on, but Geico has never done a lot to impress me. Probably depends a lot on the agent, I don't know. Anyway, doesn't cost anything to ask, and if that doesn't work, we've been on Progressive for the bikes for decades. Never filed a claim, but rates are reasonable and they give discounts for the stuff we were going to do anyway.

Please don’t use offensive demeaning language like “man-child” it makes you sound immature and pedantic.

What definition are you using for pedantic here? I’m a bit confused and might learn something today.

Yeah, if I rode around with speakers blasting at 130dB and flashing fog lights, people might look at me too.

But I don't do it because people would think I'm a selfish asshole.

I generally do not hear loud vehicles directly next to me while driving down the road. Not cars or motorcycles. My own radio, tire noise, and engine noise is enough to drown out all but the absolute loudest, except maybe when I'm going very slow.

How about the pedestrians and people eating outside at restaurants? Or people in old houses with poor insulation and single paned windows?

However, I don’t like the idea of automatically ticketing people with technology devices alone despite the obnoxiously loud noise pollution from these vehicles. Police can easily hear these vehicles and pull them over for a violation.

My point (I may not have explained it well) was that a motorcycle's loud exhaust isn't saving the rider's life from me, since I can't hear it. (I'm not going to run over motorcyclists in general, though). It really sucks for those on the outside who have to deal with it. If there was automatic ticketing, I would hope there's a high burden of proof. I'm not exactly sure what that would look like.

> ”Police can easily hear these vehicles and pull them over for a violation.”

In practice this doesn’t happen, however, at least here in the UK.

Police are not issued with equipment to measure noise levels, and on a busy road it can be difficult to identify (provably and conclusively) which vehicles are making the noise.

Which is exactly why technology like these “noise cameras” are needed!

> In practice this doesn’t happen, however, at least here in the UK

Especially in the nice areas of London you could probably drive for years without numberplates and nobody would ever stop you.

It very much _does_ happen in the UK, though rarer than it ought.

I've even seen the police crack out light meters to fine boy racers with overly tinted windows.

Wow that’s a loud car. What’s the decibel level inside at highway speed? My Forester is loud to sit in on the freeway but what you’re describing is crazy loud. Can’t even imagine it.

It's not overly loud. I just don't hear other loud vehicles without the radio off and the windows open, and I don't typically have the radio off and the windows open. This has always been the case for me in any vehicle at highway speeds.

I suppose it could be the opposite. A very quiet car. What make, model, and year? I’ve been looking for a quiet car. BMWs seem really quiet on the inside. My friend bought one because he wanted to shield his child from freeway homier when they were driving.

I have a 2000 Oldsmobile Intrigue and a 1999 Chevrolet Silverado 1500. They are not quiet on the inside. Lots of air leaks and stuff. I just don't understand how people hear other loud vehicles going 70MPH or so. I have good hearing (according to my latest hearing test) and unless the loud vehicle is extremely loud (like big truck with a jake brake) then I've never hear the neighboring vehicles in any vehicle, not just the two I currently have.

Edit: If I'm able to hear them, it's immediately after they have passed me.

In NYC most of the offenders are motorcycles with the occasional Lambo man-children.

Most of the offenders are people honking, especially when stuck in traffic.

Most of the offenders have a license plate that starts with a "T" and honk within a second of the light changing to green.

That's happening to you because sound is refracted by the atmosphere at night and bounced back toward the ground.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43154773

> "What we managed to show is the combination of the crosswind and the temperature gradient can cause sound that's going to go vertically (to) get refracted back down," he said. "The sound was literally bent back downwards."

> The effect often happens at dawn and dusk because sound bends from hotter air into cooler air. During the day, the ground is hotter than the air above it so sound bends vertically upward.

> "Its only when the sun stops falling on the ground that the ground cools down. Then the air gets hotter above," he said. "That's when sound can bend towards the ground and become trapped."

Acoustics play a big role. I used to live a mile from a freeway but the ground sloped gently up towards my house and, being San Diego, there weren't a lot of trees to absorb the noise. On many nights it was about as loud as standing a block from the freeway. It varied based on temp, humidity and wind direction.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2_E1ap9d4

This comes to mind for this thread.

We live down the street from a biker club clubhouse. Even one of them riding by wakes us up (we'll often hear them well after midnight), scares our cats, and sometimes sets off car alarms. My faith in the police ever doing anything about this is effectively nil.

I, too, am not a motorcycle hater. While I don't own one, I'm licensed to operate one, and have several friends who are avid riders. They have stock, quiet exhaust on their bikes, like normal people who actually care about people around them.

I live on a little sidestreet next to a highway. The highway is raised (due to being on a steep hill directly behind our place) and has noise barriers installed.

By and large, highway traffic is a low, background static, somewhat like the ebb and flow of a more mechanical wind.

But, because our sidestreet skips a single traffic light on a parallel street, mororbikes live roaring through it, easily louder that anything from the literal highway. At this point, I'd support a ban on motorbikes over 80db.

I was looking to see if 80db made sense or not as a limit. Looking at these sources: https://alexonautos.com/cabin-noise/

https://hearinglosshelp.com/blog/exactly-how-quiet-are-cars-...

It looks as though 80db would be significantly above the max for a stock car. Although I would probably like to see a tax on any cars sold with over 75db of sound as it's a significant burden on society.

European type certification rules set a noise limit of 72 dB(A) for new passenger cars. This will reduce to 68 dB(A) by 2026. [1]

It’s also illegal to modify a car exhaust system in such a way that makes it louder than stock, however in practice it seems there is very limited enforcement of this.

Motorcycles are allowed to emit far higher noise levels than cars, unfortunately!

[1] https://www.vehicle-certification-agency.gov.uk/fuel-consump...

One of the first things taught in the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) course is that "Loud Pipes Save Lives" is a myth: cars can't hear your loud bike until it's too late, and defensive riding is infinitely more effective than relying on other drivers to hear you. The majority of motorcycle accidents are multi-vehicle. I have been riding for many years on everything from sport bikes, dual sport, all with stock exhaust, even no exhaust on an electric bike, and I have never been involved in an accident- defensive riding works. Loud pipes should have been made illegal decades ago.

I believe reaching millions of people with their sound is exactly what some people like to do. Never understood it but there are always some people like that. Especially mopeds are often severe offenders.

Not a fan of camera surveillance for such infractions though.

I don't know what it's like where you live, but in California it increasingly looks like our law enforcement organizations are either dreadfully understaffed or failing miserably at enforcing basic traffic laws.

I just drove to San Diego and back from the Bay Area and counted zero cops on the way down and two on the way back, and I returned on Super Bowl eve. In the south Bay Area, I regularly see folks intentionally disregard basic traffic safety laws. I never see anyone pulled over and generally never see any cops.

My niece works in public safety in WA state and says that morale is in the gutter as police have been told to back off in all but the most imminent situations. The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police.

I'm not typically pro-law enforcement but I am definitely not pro-no-law enforcement.

On an unrelated note, I'm now about to get front window tinting on my vehicles because, why not, it's not like any traffic or vehicle laws are being enforced now.

> The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police.

It’s not true but it makes more sense if they’re saying that as a negotiating tactic: the police are banking that if the media coverage is dominated by stories about crime rising there will be a big reduction in support for police accountability.

What inside knowledge do you have that indicates it's not true? You can't just assume something is false because it contradicts what you want to be true.

What knowledge do you have that it is true other than a thirdhand account by someone on a web forum?

None, that's why I haven't made a statement claiming it's true or not, unlike the person I'm responding to. That's what you do when you have no information.

Yet, you didn't apply that level of criticism to the parent post either. Some person's niece saying the police chief said it? Like that wouldn't be news worthy? Like the police chief wouldn't immediately raise that to the press because "look what these liberals are telling me now"? Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty serious.

Seneca didn't say it was true. They simply questioned acdha's claim that it was false. This is fair to question. But I suspect based on the rest of acdha's post that "it's not true" was shorthand for the more reasonable "I'm not convinced that it's true".

Sure. But senaca wasn't upset how 01100011 got from "My best friends sisters boyfriend" to "That sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police."

I can guarantee you that if a school in my particular municipality is under threat, police are going to roll in and roll deep. Morale or no morale.

I think people are confused as to the types of crime police are backing off of policing. Shooting up Walmarts, schools, or churches will absolutely evoke a robust response here.

Of course, I can't speak for municipalities outside of this particular county here in flyover country. But knowing police and firefighters the way that I do, I find it difficult to believe that any school under threat would be ignored.

If you're genuinely curious, ask LEO you're friends with in your municipality, or LEO among your own family and friends to get an idea how professional LE is in your area. But you shouldn't believe everything you see on the internet. My assertions included.

I notice that you didn’t demand a citation for the original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to be true: did California pass a law treating police officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely given that they still have resource officers assigned to schools and there’s no way that wouldn’t be a major national news story. Now, given our national obsession with gun rights it may be that they couldn’t stop someone white with a gun from walking near a school[1] but there’s a 0% chance they couldn’t monitor the situation and make their presence known the way they do every day for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on their clothes.

Note to the deleted comment: note that I'm not saying that it's definitely untrue but simply that we have no way of evaluating it without something like a reference to a specific law or policy document, public comment from a named spokesperson, etc. There are enough levels of removal that the potential for misunderstanding would be high even if this wasn't touching on several of the hottest political issues at the moment, and that lack of context also affects how a lot of people might feel about it. For example, if this is true as written is that because there was a legal restriction passed setting a burden of proof for a police officer to interact with members of the public or was it something like the local sheriff not wanting to have an incident when a provocative local gun owner is insisting on their rights to free carry anywhere? A lot of people might have different opinions on the appropriate course of action based on context like that.

1. I realize some people might find this provocative but I'm thinking about how at two of the high schools I went to I had at least one classmate who'd brought a gun to school, and the second one had a mass shooting a few years after I graduated when some warning signs were apparently ignored. It's quite the contrast with the way hispanic students were “randomly” searched, and really didn't want to be found to have anything even as dangerous as a Swiss Army knife.

This is happening in my major metro, as well. A kind of flippant attitude toward even the most basic of compliance seems to be taking root. Cars are running Stop signs and red lights without even slowing, the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise and all of this seems to be happening at a time when enforcement is virtually non-existent. Even more alarming is that property crime (theft, particularly) is through the roof.

While I place a lot of the blame at the feet of the police for failing to enforce law, I also understand that at least in my city, even repeat offenders are being released back into the wild with no skin in the game - a "personal recognizance" bond.

I'm a left of center kind of guy, but this idea that we can totally kid-glove criminals (especially repeat ones) with peace and love and respect and whatever new-agey shenanigans that's helped us get to where our social order is falling apart doesn't fly with me.

> the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all is on the rise

I have noticed this too, and am curious if it is:

- DMVs being slow/understaffed or plates aren't available, but people need to drive

- conscious negligence of simply not registering your car and betting it won't be enforced

DMVs have been easily accessible and you can even make online appointments in my state since before pandemic, but I see plenty of cars driving without license plates or without paying the annual car taxes (i.e. registration fees seen via sticker).

Every city cop I know is checked out and counting the days to retirement. They have families and don’t want their lives ruined because an encounter with a person of the wrong race went bad.

Who is allegedly telling the police they "cannot intervene"? And why would they say it?

I can't find the stat, but it was in an SF Chronicle article on police not doing anything about a homeless person tearing down a parklet, but in San Francisco, the number of traffic violations ticketed has gone from 10K+ to <1K in the same period... it is really astonishing how lax it has become and it looks like traffic and property crime is the least enforced.

> I don't know what it's like [in NYC]…

It's hilarious. Our biggest traffic offenders are the cops themselves. They speed, run reds on a whim, park in the middle of sidewalks, it's totally cool and we love it. It’s so great that there's a twitter account (@placardabuse) that tracks public officials who flout the law and has no shortage of content.

As for enforcement: they don't. The explanation I've heard is, "We don't like being the bad guy." They join the force to become CSI detectives or terrarism-fighting SWAT soldiers, not to be that shithead who ruined your commute home.

I'm definitely sure that our new police-chief-mayor — who just cancelled a widely-loved car-free-street program in Clinton Hill because one of his cronies thought it was annoying — will be right on top of things.

[edit] Oh, and regarding these noise cameras… the very vocal minority of New Yorkers who have cars fight tooth and nail against camera speeding enforcement. The rest of us don't speak up because we don't have cars so we don't feel as affected. Also we don't even have control over our own laws, that’s all in the hands of the state gov't. So I have little faith that this will plan will survive, but hey, fingers crossed X,,

Check it out, same NY court officer

https://twitter.com/_elkue/status/1494021798924623872?s=21 https://twitter.com/nycbikelanes/status/1494022728185270277?...

Since we are sharing anecdata, CHP are camped out on southbound 280 by 85 almost every morning. They usually have someone pulled over.

More broadly, I think it makes sense to automate some law enforcement activities by using speed cameras, etc. Cameras remove problems with bias and escalation. They also free up LEOs to focus on activities that can't be automated.

The alternative is hire more officers and pay them more. That's not something that voters appear willing to do, even in the affluent Bay Area. (...or to do anything about homelessness in the South Bay; apparently we have collectively decided that the answer is to just ignore the problem and look the other way as people slowly die on the street)

A licensed gun owner can have a gun near a school in Washington, so why would you expect police to be able to intervene when someone is merely approaching a school?

Police could ask the person what they are doing, but unless they have probable cause that the person is committing a crime they can't arrest them.

Police are everywhere in Manhattan. Pre-pandemic, it would be odd not to see several per day on patrol on a normal day to day. In SoCal, I can go days without seeing one.

Having said that, they don't have the best rep for enforcing traffic violations here.

The lack of enforcement appears to be causing an increase in bad driving[1]. Anyhow I view this as a good thing. The people spoke loudly that they wanted less policing and they got what they asked for. This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened. Now I personally don’t want depolicing, but I accept that in a democracy I won’t always get my way.

[1] https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/usdot-releases-...

> This isn’t sarcasm either, but I am genuinely surprised that government actually listened.

Are you aware of any changes in (local) government policies in these affected areas? My cynical take is that this is an intentional play by police to allow things to deteriorate so that the public begs for the police to step up and rollback the loss of support since the high profile police-instigated incidents that culminated in George Floyd's killing. I don't think it's going to shake out that way, at least not as quickly as they'd hope.

Many district attorneys who ran on a leniency platform were elected. Every arrest involves risks to both the officer and the suspect. If the DA isn’t going to file charges why would a rational officer take those risks?

I'm not sure what it's like in the USA, but in Australia it's rare to see police on freeways, because traffic enforcement is done with cameras these days.

When I drove from Melbourne to Brisbane and back, a 3,500 km round trip on mostly dual carriageway freeways, I didn't see a single cop outside of built up areas.

> Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them.

It allows for discretionary law enforcement. Cops love it.

They can ignore it you if they like you, or fine you if they don't.

Good ol American rule by law

It's single-handedly the best perk of being white in the US. I hate it, it's straight up dystopian, but you can't argue with the benefits of being above the law for anything less than like murder. Being white means I do things like speed, do drugs at parties and concerts, jaywalk, be drunk in public, trespass -- err sorry urban explore, set of fireworks on the 4th without so much as a second glance.

Go on a ridealong. You'll be arresting white people all day.

Yeah it's certainly more nuanced than just race. There has to be the right intersection of race, class, and social network to be above the law in the United States. But I'd essentially guarantee those white people being arrested all day are poor white people and generally not middle- or upper-class white people.

Exactly this. Obama's kid isn't being arrested when she drives through Martha's Vinyard in her Mercedes. Your chance of being arrested and spending time in prison is far more closely correlated with your income (or lack thereof) than your skin tone.

This is an incredibly ignorant statement. Why does everything need to be about race all day?

I think it would be pretty weird if comments about race didn't come up in a post about policing. Scanning through things, clearly it's not "everything" either. Maybe dial down your knee-jerk sensitivity a notch?

But, this system does kinda work and allows for police to charge antisocial assholes with a crime while letting normal, reasonable people who made a simple mistake off with a warning.

And to charge black people and not charge white people.

Noise is noise. There's no need to be discretionary.

Ugh. This is so tiresome

Why do some people find it necessary to turn every discussion into some racism witch-hunt?

The Stop and Frisk policy was a racist witch hunt. This isn't a hypothetical about policing in general, or even NYC cops in specific. And yeah, I'm sick of racism too. But blaming the messengers isn't doing any good.

Unfortunately its the lens many people have been conditioned to see everything through.

Who defines what a "normal, reasonable" person looks like?

At some point you have to let people make decisions. You can't "logic" your way out of everything.

But... the mistakes! Yeah, so what? What about the mistakes of the rules that a human at the scene is not allowed to overrule?

We have that at quite a few workplaces, where employees are not allowed to make any decisions, only work through an algorithm. It's not pretty. Think customer support of very large companies. Or the mistakes of algorithms and "AI", which we already have too, e.g. when we read stories about insurance "automating" decisions with ML?

Except it's usually not "mistakes", it's intentional bias. A "normal, reasonable" person is someone who has a "donated to the police officer's association" sticker in their car window, and "assholes" are everyone else.

To be clear, what is the advantage of discretionary enforcement for traffic offenses? Letting certain people off with a warning even though they broke the law? Why is that a feature and not a bug?

Anyway, we do have a way to let humans make these decisions. You can go to court and challenge the ticket.

>Why is that a feature and not a bug?

Because the law and the punishments for breaking it do not reflect how socially acceptable breaking said law tastefully is.

It's easier to just randomly hand out small tickets a few people who are egregious and a few who are unlucky than it is to amass the political capital to find a more consistent solution.

The problem is that to a cop, "normal" and "reasonable" is code for anyone with a police placard [1]. And if you give them discretion, "antisocial assholes" will end up largely meaning Black people.

Why not have the automated system issue a warning instead of a citation for the first offense?

[1] Check out this Twitter account, which documents NYPD traffic lawbreaking https://twitter.com/placardabuse. It's often really egregious stuff, like parking right in front of a fire hydrant or ticketing every illegally parked car on a street except for one with a police placard.

placardabuse really shows you how many of the most egregious traffic violations are done by unrepentant, repeat offenders. I think there was a story recently about an SUV who ran the curb and killed an 18-month old in Manhattan -- the driver had thousands of dollars of unpaid fines for blowing red lights, speeding, double-parking etc.

I think people should be at a much higher risk of losing their license or driving privileges permanently for this stuff, not to mention offenses like repeat DUIs.

Most interesting to me are how many tickets police and politicians rack up with traffic enforcement cameras. "Do you know who I am!?" works on people, but doesn't work on robots. That's a good thing.

In Australia, rich people have their cars registered to companies so they are not responsible for the demerit points.

If the only punishment is a fine then it's only a rule for poor people.

edit: Just googled and they may have closed that loophole, I have no idea if any of it is actually enforced though. My point about fines only affecting poor people still stands.

Given how prevalent and regressive fines are I really don't understand why there isn't more noise about changing them. A $350 fine could be trivial for one person and life crushing for another. Something like mandatory community service would actually cause rich assholes some pain.

Of course there are probably plenty of ways to game community service so there would need to be strict requirments, or maybe there's a totally different system that would be more fair.

Some countries use day fines, which are proportional to one’s income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine

As to why we don’t switch to a system like that: the people with the power to change it are the ones who benefit from the inequitable status quo.

While I agree with the premise of discouraging people from being antisocial assholes, that sort of system is built for bias. Discouraging antisocial behavior is one thing, but other biases might be more destructive then helpful. I think maybe the job of discouraging antisocial behavior might be more suited to something else than law enforcement, where it's more likely to actually work without becoming destructive. I couldn't give you a specific shape of what I mean, because it's a hard problem and I don't have a solution (otherwise I'd be campaigning for it).

Discretion can be abused. "Normal, reasonable people," can be anyone with an 11-99 Foundation license plate holder. Apparently those things actually work, at least in the Bay Area. Otherwise there wouldn't be fakes and people wouldn't "donate" $500+ in order to acquire a real one.

>They can ignore it you if they like you, or fine you if they don't

Or ignore everyone if their approval rating is in the toilet, which is what they're doing as much as they can right now.

HN screeches a lot about it but the meatspace people I talk to don't seem to mind.

There is one car that drives by my neighborhood on a regular basis that sets off multiple car alarms as it goes by. Some times it's in the middle of the day, some times it's in the middle of the night. If I can hear it in the house through walls / windows etc from a distance I can't imagine how loud it'll be in the car itself.

Putting aside consideration for others around you, what is even the appeal of hearing damage levels of car noise?

The cops in NYC more or less ignore everything (unless your black), I've seen people walk right past them smoking weed and they didn't even turn their heads. Every once in a while they'll set up a table in the subway to search backpacks, but they don't dare stop anyone, instead they just stand around comparing their benefit plans for 2.5 hours and counting down until they can retire with pension. Same topic every time. Amazing to hear them rattle off the precise number of years, months, and days until they get their pension. They probably know their HMO handbook better than the HMO does.

> I've seen people walk right past them smoking weed and they didn't even turn their heads.

It's legal, why would they turn their heads?

They stopped me at one of those tables once and I'm not black.

On the other hand, a purely technological solution isn't so much open to accusations of bias, whether justified or otherwise, as are officers using their judgment to decide who to stop and ticket for excess noise.

I think it's a matter of time before someone deploys tiny quadcopters with with a steel body and db meter and camera. The drones sit and listen for a very large sound and then when they hear it they fly as fast as they can to the source of the audio and kamikaze right into the wheel where the steel body will destabilize the bike causing an accident.

No need to ram the driver and spend the drone. It could just spray some paint onto the helmet and clothes. The paint should be easy to wash out, but it should stick for enough time to cause the driver to stop.

I wouldn't recommend anyone go anywhere near creating such a thing.

IANAL, but I think it goes waaayy over the line of setting a trap, which is very illegal (even to trap ppl repeatedly doing highly illegal things), and will most definitely get you sued for all you're worth if you manage to cause any injuries, and probably face criminal charges [0][1][2].

Just because you can does not mean that you should... (now having the drone catch up to them and cover them in glitter, maybe)

[0] https://www.sfinelaw.com/blog/2019/october/how-setting-a-boo...

[1] https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/

[2] https://www.halt.org/booby-traps-and-the-law-defend-your-pro...

The apologists always scream about how "cars will run us over if we're not loud enough to shake the teeth out of your skull!" but I've searched and not found one single study that supports that claim.

I've searched and cannot find one single apologist that screams "cars will run us over if we're not loud enough to shake the teeth out of your skull!"

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22cars+will+run+us+over+if+we%27r...

That’s because the last thing anyone wants is a loud noise complaint to escalate into a shooting.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, increasing exposure to police increases number of shootings, especially for minorities. And don’t ask for citations, this is and has been all over everywhere for years.

In one particular country perhaps, not a phenomenon worldwide.

edit: misread the title, assumed this was about them doing this in Paris (also recently announced)

But we're talking about that country right now.

I haven’t actually seen normalized statistics with respect to police density, ‘exposure’ or time on patrol. Do you know who publishes such numbers?

Well, the current approach of decreasing exposure to police has increased crime

Only 13 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...

Well as long as only 13 innocent unarmed people were unloaded on by law enforcement everything is fine

1. unarmed does not mean they were not a threat or innocent

2. No human endeavor is perfect. I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

1. True, but neither one was shown here, so you can choose any assumption you want, and mine was innocence (the law requires the same assumption until proven otherwise)

2. There is no evidence that any prevention of crime was gained in exchange for the deaths of these innocent unarmed people. If anything it created an environment where the law is respected less.

1. true 2. false

> I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.

I mostly agree with this, but there needs to be an effort to hold people accountable when mistakes are made, and to change processes to help ensure that these mistakes don't happen again, or at least happen less often. Police departments across the US seem near-violently resistant to this.

I think that irresponsibly spreading propaganda which implies “police are more dangerous than criminals” while simultaneously demanding “accountability” is unlikely to convince the police that any “accountability process” is going to be carried out in good faith.

I also think the existing criminal courts and prosecutors hold police reasonably accountable. They could do better.

What about armed Black men? Having a gun is not grounds to shoot someone. Remember, we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

...Did you read the article you linked to? The bulk of the article is dedicated to discussing why that number is misleading, and how it reflects our lack of data/transparency when it comes to policing, particularly when it comes to police involvement in homicide.

Yep, and I am not persuaded by their special pleading.

Without definitively having some stat that proves or disproves this, the way this opinion was expressed feels a lot like survivor bias because you're reacting to the relatively small number of negative police interactions that are hyped up by the media (because they play on emotions well) and mentioning nothing of the millions and millions of police interactions that go positively or times that police presence prevented a crime.

Okay, I'll bite. I downvoted it because, even if true, it's irrelevant and promotes a toxic (and I use that term advisedly) narrative.

Yes, when you enforce laws, some people are a-holes and escalate to unlawful violence. Sometimes cops, sometimes civilians.

The appropriate reaction to make sure that isn't tolerated either, to improve police-community relations, to train police better, and to review whether we need to update laws to match consensus on expected human behavior.

The appropriate reaction is not in a hundred miles of "oh, well, gosh, do we really need to enforce laws anymore? Someone might get hurt!", and the forum is a worse place for tolerating that mentality.

Now, to be sure, there are many laws that fit the last category above and should probably be scaled back for being petty and kafkaesque. But, "don't wake up a million people around you for your own personal thrills" does not make the list.

Agreed that the solution is not to _not_ enforce laws but the article is about enforcing the law without using Police “on the ground” to do so which helps alleviate the issue of possible escalation. The parent of my comment calls out that issue in response to their parent saying “let’s just get police involved” so in that regard this is a totally reasonable point to make in response to it and on topic for HN as it’s about automation of enforcement vs alternatives.

Don't worry, we have ShotSpotter for that

And since legislation to have unarmed officers handle non-violent citations has gone nowhere in the last decade the push is now for just eliminating all the minor citations that, historically, have selective enforcement against the already vulnerable and tackling them differently.

Jaywalking is a good example, it doesn't get enforced basically ever and when it does it's overwhelmingly poor minorities. So the city has just been adding pedestrian crossings in areas where people where people jaywalk to reduce the incentive.

It seems to me most traffic citations ought to be issued by mail based on dashcam footage now that the technology to do so is widespread. It would also reduce traffic stops as a pretext for searches, which act as an end-run around legal protections from unreasonable search.

Traffic stops could then be relegated to imminent dangers like drunk or otherwise reckless drivers, and serious crimes.

They used to do this when red light cameras were popular in California. You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

If the ticket is for the vehicle owner then yes I could see this working. Perfect for emissions violations and vehicle code violations. You could also double-check for stolen license plates as it should be fairly easy to automate the detection of most car makes/models as long as the car hasn't been heavily modified.

>You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver you can basically get away with it via this route.

That seems like an asinine way to apply that law. If the vehicle is registered to you, it's your responsibility. Lent it to your uncle and he rolled a stop? Well, the car's registered to an owner, that's their problem to sort out.

Yeah, I think this makes more sense, as long as you limit it to automated-fine infractions (and not things like vehicular manslaughter), and these infractions don't affect the car owner's driving record or insurance premiums.

I think it would only take one instance of a friend borrowing my car, getting a fine, and that friend refusing to pay the fine, for me to stop lending them my car -- lesson learned. Or hell, why would I even want to be friends with someone who would do that to me?

The vehicle is my responsibility, but that's not proof that I committed the crime.

> You could just write a letter saying the person in the pic wasn't you.

In Australia its still your problem. If someone else was borrowing the car you have to get them to admit they were using it at the time. The only way I think you will get off is if you report the car as stolen at the time.

That's a good start but people in New York literally deface their license plate and nobody gives a fuck - because half of them are cops or driving government vehicles.

If they're not willing to do the job then they need to get a different job.

I moved to the city for peace and quiet! I didn't know there would be so many people around!

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.

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.

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.

There are fart cars everywhere all over NYC now. Definitely annoying millions.

It’s strange to complain about occasional motorcycle noise when emergency sirens could be heard all the time on Manhattan. Orders of magnitude more than in any other city I’ve been to. Or you New Yorkers tune that out?

I hear way more honking than sirens.

But even granting that sirens are louder, they serve an explicit purpose. Loud cars and motorcycles do not.

This is something I noticed when I was in the US - It seemed that emergency vehicles leave their sirens on the whole time. Here in Aus they'll leave them off and only turn them on when coming up to an intersection that they don't have traditional right of way on, then back off again (lights on the whole time).

Am I wrong about this? I was only in a couple of cities but it was stark how I could always hear sirens

Where I live it's just like you described in AUS. Policies on this stuff varies city by city.

Ah ok, I didn't realise. I've mostly been within ~5km of Sydney CBD.

Not that strange. Sirens in NYC are largely directional, and you can hear the noise diminish dramatically once you are no longer in the path of the vehicle. The same is not true of loud cars/motorcycles. Also sirens (mostly) serve a necessary purpose for society, while motorcycle noise serve to stroke their owners selfish egos.

I lived in the upper west side 7th fl and sirens are absolutely excessive. Deafeningly loud even in my apartment.

I wonder if the problem is that modern cars are too soundproof. Perhaps they should be regulated to have some kind of transparency mode like with modern headphones so they will hear much quieter sirens.

Loud honking? As opposed to what?

I really don't get why motorcycles are legal at all - loud, terrible emissions, used for crimes, huge fatality rate, usually driven by a psychopath who loves revving his toy at 5AM at a residential neighbourhood.

Those things you listed are pretty much already illegal: Loud motorcycles with poor emissions. As for the fatality rate, it's mainly only impacting the driver. Forcing them to a car is arguably worse.

> Those things you listed are pretty much already illegal: Loud motorcycles with poor emissions.

Good luck getting police to enforce that, though.

Yeah enforcement is usually the issue. We are commenting on an article about a new way to enforce though

"Used for crimes!". This sounds like that standard argument against crypto, when cash (cars) have done that since their inception.

> used for crimes

This gave me a chuckle. I have absolutely no data but I'm quite certain cars are "used for crimes" at a much higher rate than motorcycles.

Motorcycles are almost all manual, nearly invisible to other drivers, and prone to issues with the smallest of road hazards/obstacles, making them really risky to use as a getaway vehicle seeing as you'd need to be outpacing law enforcement much of the time. Add the adrenaline of "doing a crime" on top of that of high-speed motorcycle riding and you've really got a recipe for disaster in most cases. There was a stolen bike in LA being chased by the cops last month who collided with a car and the rider died. https://www.latimes.com/california/newsletter/2022-01-24/mot...

Maybe being "used for crimes" would be better since you're less likely to actually get away on them!

I think the OP is a little hyperbolic, but I wouldn't be so dismissive of the idea. My metro has a no-chase policy for motorcycles. Sure, it's a heck of a dangerous way to make a getaway, but as long as you can shake the first guy, a rider is pretty well free to make a getaway as long as there is no helicopter in pursuit.

Touché, I remember hearing about such a policy for the first time recently. That certainly could change the value proposition quite a bit!

> recipe for disaster in most cases.

hence why it wouldn't be legal if invented now (well probably most things won't)

good comparison would be passenger drones - super useful, universally hated, regulated to death.

I really don't get why computers are legal at all - create excess emissions from all the power use, used for crimes, generate hard to process waste, usually used by a psychopath who loves Tweeting about hatred for people not like them.

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