California targets loud exhaust with sound activated cameras | Hacker News Reader

California targets loud exhaust with sound activated cameras

autoweek.com

203 pointst23239 comments

Yes please. All of the straight pipe truck idiots, “loud pipes save lives” motorcycles and other various inconsiderate morons just ruin quality of life in cities. In places like SF, it won’t discriminate (exclusively) by class either. One of the worst offenders in my old neighborhood was some deplorable in a modified Lamborghini SUV.

I've long wondered when somebody would make way for this use-case.

But still: Downvoted for the class-hate.

Why do people have to make it about political camps instead of just engaging with basic comapssion for those whose communities/homes are close to the roads?

You'd be amazed by the diversity of groups affected by it: Live in a "marginalized community"? It's probably a backup for traffic planners to divert cargo through (i.e. train lines, highways, airport close by). Live in a scenic area? Enjoy the exhaust pipes of road-trippers every weekend. etc.

The OP was saying that the people with loud cars aren't always driving a POS civic, his example was a personal experience with a Lambo.

His point was also literally the same thing you are saying.

Honestly I would pay to have an enforcement zone set up near me.

I used to live on a semi-busy street.

About once an hour a motorcycle would drive by so loud it would set off multiple car alarms that would then blare for ten to fifteen minutes.

This might sound very annoying.

But after countless months of this your mortal coil just dissolves into an entity of pure hatred and you completely transcend the material plane.

This, but despite my own noise sensitivity it’s how it torments my pup that really gets me. Poor girl is terrified of our busy road, tucks tail just at the hint of large loud vehicles. Sometimes we have to bail out and try to wait just so she can find a place to potty in peace. I absolutely hate that for her, and hate that it’s a daily occurrence that I have to coax her out to take care of normal bodily functions.

I stayed in Chicago for a short time in a 100-something year old building right next to one of the oldest sections of elevated rail in the city. I could glance out the window on the second floor and the wheels would be right there, seeming close enough to touch.

Within 2 days the screeching and grinding metal cacophony every few minutes had faded into the background and I had to mentally tune in to hear them again.

I don't have empathy for loud pipes on trucks, but for motorcycles I give 'em the benefit of the doubt. Speaking as somebody that rides a quiet motorcycle and has almost been hit by inattentive drivers. The people that complain about the noise are implicitly valuing their own comfort over another person's safety. Even if you say that riding a motorcycle is an unnecessary risk, the tradeoffs are still obvious to me.

When it comes to life and death on a motorcycle, the precautionary principle applies- anything that makes you more conspicuous is generally safer. I'd trust my own intuition over the unreliable state of scientific research on the matter.

> Id trust my own intuition over the internet liable state of scientific research on the matter

Sorry to call you out, but this is incredibly selfish. Your own intuition leads to negative externalities for others that you simply ignore, even when presented with evidence.

Riding a motorcycle is not a necessity and not a right. You should be more considerate of others and listen to the evidence that loud pipes do not save lives.

I can't understand why the enforced decibel level is 95 for cars and 80 for motorcycles. Motorcycles are probably, by percentage, the worst offenders for this, but it seems like a decibel from one vehicle is as loud as a decibel from another, so I wonder why there's a double standard.

The biggest argument against this seems to be the creeping surveillance state. I agree with that, and it would indeed be better if this was enforced by 'old-fashioned' police and their old-fashioned ears. But they don't, for whatever reason, and I wish they would. It's frustrating.

And it's not that I like being surveilled, but I think speed trap cameras and red light cameras are generally worse than this (because you can accidentally go over the speed limit, but you can't accidentally install a loud aftermarket exhaust pipe) so this isn't as much of a problem for me as it seems for some people.

At one level I'll even appreciate the sweet revenge on the inconsiderate people whose unnecessarily loud vehicles have been annoying me for decades.

Motorcycles are more fuel/emission/volumetrically efficient and their ownership is thus generally incentivized by policy in traffic-stricken California.

Not saying I agree or disagree that this should be applied to the sound thing, but this is the thinking.

If that were true, shouldn’t the decibel maximum be higher for motorcycles?

Derp, you are correct. I read backwards.

Think you have that backwards on emissions. Motorcycles pollute far more than cars. https://www.latimes.com/news/la-hy-throttle11-2008jun11-stor...

Motorcycles 'pollute' (particulates and other very harmful products) more than cars, but 'emit' less (carbon dioxide and other exhaust products).

Many larger, more powerful motorcycles actually emit more carbon dioxide than modern hybrid sedans.

My R1 had a cat, and that was way back in 2004. This definitely isn't some kind of absolute truth, CA-legal sportbikes have required cats and EFI for a while now. I'd have to check to see if there's a displacement threshold that excepts the small fry though.

Small engines are much less efficient. Especially if they are air-cooled and/or two-strokes.

First sentence is true. Second sentence is partially true. Air cooled engines are less efficient than water cooled ones, something about the combustion temperature and running rich. Two strokes are actually more efficient than 4 strokes. Overall though, a small air cooled 2 stroke will be less efficient than a large water cooled 4 stroke.

Seems especially weird considering motorcycles are naturally louder because the exhaust is shorter, the muffler is smaller, the engine’s exposed.

Maybe they went off of average engine size / power?

Funny thing is a smaller engine needs to rev higher to make any power. Small bikes are ridiculously loud in cities because they need so much throttle to go anywhere. A stock 50cc moped is way louder than a stock 1000cc adventure bike.

IIRC the decibel rating that is used in the official testing is done at a specific RPM, it isn’t the maximum sound level.

Ok but how would a street “camera” know your rating vs the noise you just made?

It wouldn’t, I’m just commenting on the origin of those sound regulations.

I think the limit should be the same for both, but I bet the difference is motivated by the pack behavior of motorcyclists. Loud cars usually travel alone, but loud motorcycles often travel in packs of dozens which may continue passing your house for a minute or two, which feels like an hour...

A group of 90 decibel bikes is not going to sound anywhere near like a bunch of straight piped Harleys inside you house. It will sound like you’re next to a hair salon. Hair dryers are 90 decibel.

As I said, 95 decibels seems like a reasonable enough limit for motorcycles. But I suspect lower limit for motorcycles is motivated by people getting fed up with motorcyclists particularly. The worst motorcyclists have earned a horrible reputation for all motorcyclists, I think this lower limit is a consequence of that.

I think it was just because they generally made less noise when the regulation was enacted in 1972. Car design has changed a lot since then to make them a lot quieter. Bikes have changed relatively little.

If movies are a gauge of public interest, then people have been upset with motorcyclists since the 60s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_biker_films

I don’t think Hollywood stereotypes of biker gangs was a predominant motivator for the Noise Control Act of ‘72.

This is a regulation that generally regulates noise for all kinds of things, from appliances to airplanes.

Their stated rationale is: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/4901

I think Hollywood wasn't motivating anti-biker attitudes, just the opposite. Hollywood made these movies because the subject was of interest to the public. Motorcyclists were already notoriously antisocial by 1972, and that public sentiment probably informed the Noise Control Act of '72.

You're going to need more than 30 motorcyclists at 80db before they equate to the sound of one car at 95db. The size of the gap seems pretty arbitrary.

I've never seen a pack of dozens of motorcyclists, never mind seeing them "often", although I am aware that this is a thing. I imagine the lower DB limit is due to lawmakers dislike of noisy motorcyclists.

> The size of the gap seems pretty arbitrary.

I think the gap is vindictive, motivated by the general public's frustration with motorcyclists.

80dB times 30 equals 94.7dB. I imagine the fact that the motorcycles are spread out would affect it somewhat.

> often travel in packs of dozens which may continue passing your house for a minute or two, which feels like an hour

You're just describing a busy street of cars here. A slow car followed by a few dozen cars who wish they were going faster is so common that almost nobody thinks about them. Individual motorcycles probably go unnoticed 9/10 times.

> but it seems like a decibel from one vehicle is as loud as a decibel from another, so I wonder why there's a double standard

It could be due to differences in the frequency distribution in the spectrums of their emitted sounds. How sounds affect us depends on both the level of the sound and its spectrum.

Also affected by the spectrum is how well a sound propagates. As a sound wave propagates it loses energy to the atmosphere, and the rate of that energy loss is frequency dependent.

I think, but might have one or both of these reversed, is that we are more sensitive to midrange or higher frequencies than to lower frequencies, and that lower frequencies are attenuated slower.

Given these differences I'm not surprised that there is a difference in the legal limits, although I don't know if these differences are the actual reasons for those different limits.

The requirements might be based on what’s achievable with reasonable efforts. Intuitively, I would think motorcycles are louder, but I may just be wrong (they are smaller and do less work, after all).

This logic may seem strange but it isn’t unusual. Some jurisdictions have different fuel efficiency and pollution standards for diesel/gas vehicles or different sizes for example. In those cases, it’s the only way to improve without abolishing the less efficient classes outright.

Alternatively, one could reason that motorcycles are used recreationally more often than cars, and that such activities have less legitimacy to annoy people.

Unmodified motorcycles don't actually meet the 80 decibel limit in all situations, they just have to pass when ridden in the specific profile the test defines.

Making this limit 80 decibels in all situations would require major changes from manufacturers.

I'm really happy to see governments finally waking up to the problems caused by noise pollution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_from_noise).

Another thing that I have maintained for quite some time is that car horns should be at as loud inside the car as out. It's kinda crazy to me that we're ok with people making such loud noises while being completely isolated from them.

I guarantee that would cause hearing damage.

I get what you're trying to accomplish, disincentivize people against honking excessively, but it's a bit like trying to prevent stabbings by only selling knives without handles.

I think we should be looking into more effective ways for people to communicate among vehicles, honestly.

> I guarantee that would cause hearing damage.

You shouldn't be using your horn often enough to do that anyway, and if a single honk is loud enough to damage your hearing in this case, it's also loud enough to damage the hearing of a pedestrian walking near you.

I say do it. It'd be a strong disincentive to use your horn unnecessarily.

It'd be nice to see horn volume tied to speedometer or outside noise level (maybe some already are?). After all it's meant to be a safety device not a device you can stick your ear next to comfortably in any scenario.

If you're going 70 and want to signal to the guy left of you to not merge into you "it's too loud for a pedestrian to safely stand right next to" isn't very relevant (in both perspectives). At the same time if you're going <5 mph on a comparatively quiet backed up street there is no reason it has to be the same volume as the first case.

Maybe if drivers didn't want their hearing damaged they'd push for horns that were quieter outside the car too. After all the parent's comment merely says that horns should be as loud inside the car as outside — not louder. Currently, horns are externalized and so drivers don't care how loud they are. By internalizing the cost, they'd care enough to lower it. Or go deaf. Their choice. But at least it's a choice they'd care about.

What distance outside the car?

Loudness falls off pretty fast.

> After all the parent's comment merely says that horns should be as loud inside the car as outside — not louder

But this is precisely what makes no sense as the requirement for the high volume never came from how loud it was to the person that hit the horn in the first place. The driver you're trying to signal is going to be inside a vehicle therefore it needs to be loud enough to be heard from inside a vehicle.

> ... is going to be inside a vehicle

False

The ability of others to exist outside of a vehicle does not have any implication on whether the other driver is in one regardless of how convenient it would be if it did.

Something like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31309299 can be thought of to try to solve both problems instead of limiting good solutions to be only those for a single perspective.

> should be at as loud inside the car as out

Problem is, even if you make them so, they won't be as loud inside the other car as they are out.

Wasn't it once upon a time, you had to stop your car, stop your engine, get out and fire a gun before crossing a corner?

And further, there was a thing that in some mountain passes muleteers had to fire their gun before crossing, and there's a story of two muleteers that fired at the same time (this story ignored speed of sound) and met halfway in the pass, and at a coin flip, had to decide who had to drop his mule down the cliff so the other could pass. The story was told from the perspective of the flip loser.

Signals are hard.

I grew up in Colorado and I was always taught to beep the horn just before every blind corner on those one lane or barely two lane roads that wind through the mountain.

I still do this now that we live in SF. Anytime I'm on my bike and come across a blind corner I whistle loudly, it's saved me a few times.

20 years ago California installed sound walls on all freeways through residential areas when studies found severe health effects. Not sure this is really "waking up to the problems"...

My version of this is that horns should automatically activate the high beams while honking. Should be trivial to implement and it would allow anyone to identify who is honking on a busy road.

Unfortunately, high beams also risk blinding oncoming traffic, potentially causing a collision.

In addition, I wonder if the blinking would be distracting, calling attention away from the problem (at least when the horn is being used as intended, not just by someone complaining about slow traffic).

It could do a quick pulse at night, and a longer one during the day.

Can you describe such a situation? As far as my thought process goes, the horn is meant to attract attention, and lights only help that purpose.

If you are driving on a dark road with traffic coming on the opposite lane (the only situation I can conceive where high beam blinding is a problem), why would you sit on the horn for more than 1/2 a second?

If you make the horns quiet enough for the nearby pedestrians, they'll be too quiet for other drivers to hear (since they're further away and the car is blocking a lot of the sound). And the driver might have the radio on, or even if not it's got to overcome the road noise.

If you make it the painful for the driver to use the horn, they just won't (which would maybe be better overall in cities, but then just remove the horn entirely). Or the sudden loud noise will surprise the driver, or make them instinctively cover their ears (i.e., remove both hands from the wheel). Neither of those would be good for safety.

So, unfortunately, not an easy problem.

In suburban and especially rural areas, the horn needs to carry further and there a few pedestrians. But I guess you could adjust volume by GPS location.

Maybe as well as an audiable signal a radio signal can be emitted. Cars hear this radio signal and play a horn inside to the driver. Eventually when this is supported by all cars the outside horn can be made quieter (just for nearby pedestrians) as penetration through a different car that is playing loud music is no longer an issue.

Of course the depreciation period for this is enormous.

I hope this tech catches on, we have a ton people who like to tear around my neighborhood at 4AM in cars with exhaust mods.

A few times it’s been loud enough to wake up my infant, at which point I’d probably vote to upgrade it a capital crime…

I hope you're joking. because otherwise, neo-surveillance fascism here we come.

I’m pretty sure there is no stopping it at this point. People give up the rights not just for security but for a minor increase in comfort at this point.

What right is being given up? They're already committing a crime in a public area, this is just enforcing it.

What about the citizens of a neighbourhoods right to quiet enjoyment of their property?

>What right is being given up?

Any reasonable expectation of privacy. Not all cars are committing a crime when driving past, but every car driving-by will be logged. At least that is already a status quo in most of Europe, unfortunately.

ALPR is a completely different technology that exists completely separately than traffic enforcement cameras. It’s completely possible to ban widespread ALPR usage and maintain automatic enforcement with speed / noise cameras.

There is no expectation of privacy in public in the US.

I mean, yeah, but having your movement constantly tracked by government is still unsettling.

I feel the right way to handle that(and traffic infractions in general) is through culture, not surveillance.

> I feel the right way to handle that(and traffic infractions in general) is through culture, not surveillance.

We’re well past a polite society as a solution. Regulation and governance around collected data, with accountability for transgressions, is the path to success.

So, like Chinese social credit system? Thanks, but no thanks, I'd like to avoid living in a literal dystopia for as long as I possibly can.

> We’re well past a polite society as a solution.

Isn't that a bit fatalist? Perhaps our society has degenerated, but who's to say things can't get better? Things have gotten better before. Society used to be very rude and brutish, but then got better. It could get better again, without having to build a techno-surveillance authoritarian monster with capabilities the Stasi could only dream of...

> Isn't that a bit fatalist?

I call it like I see it. Hope for the best, plan for the worst. Hoping people will be better does not make it so, in my experience. Some encouragement is occasionally required.

I agree the correct way to handle this would be to change our culture to be less selfish and obnoxious.

That doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

The richest man in the world is currently an emotional infant that makes 69/420 jokes every other day and everyone applauds.

We are living in a Troll society. The result is policies like this to try to put some kind of a lid on it.

There’s literally no expectation, promise, or protection of privacy in public. That’s why I’m more than entitled to hang a camera on my front door and record everyone walking down the street, or for that matter take a photograph in public that might capture other people. There are literally no rights infringed, and if police were stationed and handing out tickets manually it would be entirely equivalent. The only difference is the automated solution never tires and doesn’t give tickets to people of color only.

There has never been any expectation of privacy on a public motorway in my lifetime. Cops could always literally pull you over and peer into your vehicle with a flashlight on the vague grounds of being suspicious. Nowadays there's the rising popularity of things like dash cams.

Public roads are an area where safety absolutely pummelled privacy in the war between the two values.

These are “rights” I and many will be glad to give up, just as I’m glad to surrender my “right” to park in public parks, my “right” to pee in a public pool, and so forth. The airspace/sound space is a common good and should be protected.

It will be worth it. I would also accept banning internal combustion engines instead.

I’m absolutely joking about the death penalty.

I’m not at all joking about the auto ticket. If we won’t enforce it why make it illegal? And with a nuisance violation, what’s the difference between sticking a cop there and a camera?

I’m not in favor of camera tickets for anything serious or judgement based, but sounds like a nice minor deterrent for nuisance.

because it’s the same path to speed cameras and a bunch of other stuff watching you all the time. why not just give out “average speed” tickets like the uk does? it’s illegal to go over the speed limit. if we won’t enforce it, why make it illegal?

Honestly "average speed" tickets are a great idea, and I'm not sure why you speak as if it's bad. These "bunches of stuff" aren't watching you "all the time," they're watching you when you are on a public road, paid for by other taxpayers.

If anyone's upset that the government is enforcing traffic rules, they're free to build or rent a private circuit and drive there in whatever way they please. Capitalism for the win.

The only thing that makes the vast landscape of laws palatable is that they are not all enforced, all the time, without fail.

I seriously doubt you’d be able to get through a single day without breaking the law.

While I’d prefer to have fewer laws on the books, I’ll settle for having limited enforcement.

Not everything that’s illegal is immoral, unsafe, or harmful to others. The context and specifics of a situation often matters.

Your dystopian authoritarian ideals admit no room for autonomy — individual or otherwise — to apply situational context.

You're conflating "all laws" with "one specific, concrete, obviously meaningful law with tons of research behind it and for which violations can be almost perfectly reliably classified."

Situational context doesn’t matter for average speed?

This safety-culture driven need to build a surveillance state demonstrates a disturbingly ignorant view of history.

Not really, no. If you're being chased by a dragon that is obeying the speed limit and you need to go slightly faster to outrun the flames, you can make that case in court.

Why would average speed be a bad way to enforce a law? We already have red light cameras. We already have armed government personnel taking speedgun readings and pulling you over. Enforcing that if you travel between two toll booths and average more than 5 mph over the speed limit, you were consistently speeding. And it's very unambiguous and non-intrusive measurement as compared to light guns.

Especially since there’s no potential for automatic tickets to escalate into physical altercations or gender/race discrimination. If there’s a black and white law that you’re breaking, you’ll get a ticket. It’s much less likely to “slide to fascism” than trusting the police famous for scandal after scandal to enforce.

So speed cameras are fascist?

They make lots of mistakes that hurt innocent people, and you have to go to court and prove your innocence. Also they don't consider any situational context. Sounds pretty fascist to me.

At least in most jurisdictions they're required to send you the photo now, so when it's clearly not you driving it's a lot easier to get them thrown out by the judge. Still pretty shitty to have to take time off to go to court for something you didn't do.

I’m not sure you’re using fascism appropriately here. I think you’re meaning “bad and I disagree with it,” but fascism does have an actual political meaning. Sorry to nitpick, but over using fascism as a word dilutes the actual meaning which is limited, an actual movement, and very scary stuff.

> fascism does have an actual political meaning

Is it anything like "tracks my plate and toll RFID chip all around town without any suspicion of crime"?

>Sounds pretty fascist to me.

Dude, "fascist" does not mean "something I think is bad."

> when it's clearly not you driving

In this case, don't you just tell the police who is driving? "This is my wife/son/carsharing-app-renter"

That is the case in the UK, anyway. You must either confirm you were driving, or say who else was driving.

(Example: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6298333/spee... )

They might be fascist if there was private company running them writing the tickets and then the state enforcing and taking part of the fine... Otherwise not so much.

What kind of problems are you predicting? Have they appeared in England, which is a fairly similar country to the US, but is much more open to using mass CCTV infrastructure?

I can’t have an open trash fire in my yard either, we need rules about pollution when we live together

We're already on camera all the time in public. There will only be more cameras in the future.

Given that, I see no reason to not use the cameras for something good.

A police or bylaw officer could also do their job and enforce the rules. It doesn't need some kind of automated enforcement to solve it, and doesn't come with the same dystopian automated surveillance and ticketing.

The automated solution is objective (versus the well known subjective application of law enforcement) and efficient (no breaks, no sleep, no pensions). No law breaking, no ticket.

Our law enforcement system was not designed to be automated. It works (because of how it has evolved, not by explicit design) on the threat of enforcement. So people "breaking the law" - and I'm thinking here of traffic laws and other minor offenses - are basically free to weigh their own risk tolerance for the penalty against the chances of being caught. This has flaws, but it preserves some notion of freedom while generally pushing people in the "right" direction to control behaviors society doesn't want. Laws and penalties are commensurate with that, ie there are countless traffic laws all drivers break every day, because they are there to guide and penalties are rare.

That is much different than mandatory automated enforcement that would or could penalize everyone every time they broke a law. If we went there, all laws would have to be revisited to understand what is an appropriate threshold and penalty so that we could preserve some kind of personal autonomy. But what would happen in practice is that everyone would get the fines.

Then there is the whole question of discretion and personalization.

For most people here, I'm sure this falls on deaf ears, but I hope you see my point. I don't believe in technocracy and a world where our behavior is enforced that way is horrifying. Anyone who likes that idea could move to China or Singapore to try it out

I agree with your point in general it would be borderline tyrannical to track and punish every harmless violation of traffic laws, but in the case of vehicle modifications its not a momentary behavior, its a choice to permanently install something. I love motorsports and high power bikes and cars but would love to see these annoying loud exhausts off the public streets.

Automated solutions are only objective on the surface. There are often baked-in-biases born from ignorance, privilege, or history. The classic recent example is facial recognition that functions poorly with people of color.

Somewhere in the nuance of programming this system will be the (known or unknown) subjective values of the programmer or those that are directing them.

Noise is quite objective. And these systems don’t just instantly hand out a fine. They usually mean you have to bring your vehicle in for inspection. If hoons have to constantly swap out the exhaust on their vehicles it would likely be enough to get the to stop doing it. Or to avoid all areas with automated detection.

What happens if four motorcyclists with legal 75db motorcycles travel together and create 81db of noise?

It's not the bike that's a public nuisance, it's the noise produced by the bike. Making the noise as a collaborative effort doesn't make it any less of a nuisance.

Then they won't have to switch their exhaust system back to something legal before getting inspected.

Death penalty.

I don't see the problem. Are you opposed to automation more generally?

The police in San Francisco have had multiple major discrimination scandals. How is automatic enforcement and ticketing more dystopian than letting those jokers continue to decide which laws to enforce on which populations?

The second we did anything based on race, positive or negative, it was a bad idea.

I actually find automated ticketing, such as speed cameras, less intrusive than police. But they have to be visible. I've only dealt with them in Europe where everyone knows where they are. And I find them effective.

Unlike always-on cameras I like that they're not recording unless you break the law, and I like that they're objective unlike a police officer might be.

I think it would be neat if we place these at each street corner and fine every dog owner whose dog barks louder than the sound limit at the time.

> Some cars and many motorcycles, depending on the road and driving style, will easily exceed the 95 and 80 decibel limits straight from the factory. Based on Car and Driver testing, examples include the 2016 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (108 decibels) and the 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and 2019 McLaren 720S Spider, both at 99 decibels.

Seems crazy to me that manufacturers are selling cars that are basically designed to be a nuisance.

With the exception (arguably) of the vette, those are uncommon high end sportscars. Much like with the speed limit, the owners are expected to be a little more cognizant of law abiding.

I expect them to treat fines like fees.

Making fines matter to the people paying them is a separate problem. Finland scales then by your reported income for example.

Depending on where you go they can be very common. Drive around Beverly Hills or any of the nice parts of LA and you will see 911's and other high end cars more often than you would a Honda Civic.

Cars generally aren’t even that loud when compared to some Harley Davidsons. They’re literally continuous fireworks in the street and will trigger anti theft systems.

People tend to modify their motorcycles to be louder. A legitimate reason to do this is for highway safety, but you can do that and be able to drive quiet where it will bother people... lots of people like the noise and drive obnoxiously because it's fun and don't care about the neighbors.

It's not that they don't care about the neighbors... actively harming the neighbors is the entire reason it's fun. It's the school bully who grows up and can't keep punching people willy-nilly, but they can aggravate everyone in sight, and if someone says something to them they and their biker friends will beat them up. It's a way to feel powerful -- the ability to harm others with impunity -- and is observed in all kinds of people from bikers to gossips to dictators.

> A legitimate reason to do this is for highway safety

This seems like first-order thinking. Sure, it makes people more likely to notice the motorcycles. But it also makes people a lot more likely to hate motorcyclists and be unsympathetic to their plight when considering legislation, court cases, their own behavior on the road, etc. I bet loud pipes have done much more harm than good to motorcyclists as a whole.

Cyclists in general get a bad rap. You can't tell me the baseball cards in my spokes are loud enough to warrant bottles being thrown, or remarks, but here we are.

Despite the two-wheel connection, I think the ire cyclists and motorcyclists get is actually completely unrelated. I have a lot of thoughts on why cyclists get so much mostly undeserved hate, but I don't think it's relevant to the discussion about motorcycles.

let's hear it

For cars, it mostly boils down to people's disgust at the mere thought of being even momentarily mildly inconvenienced by someone going slower than they want to go.

For pedestrians... Some people seem to feel threatened or indignant when they can detect that someone is going faster than them.

Anyone going slower than me is an idiot and anyone going faster is an asshole.

The discussion is dead anyway now, so sure. To make this fun for you, I've written two lists and mixed them together. I'll let you sort out the sometimes justified from the broadly unjustified . I believe cyclists are hated for the following reasons:

    Cyclists are physically fit.

    Cyclists like to run redlights.

    Cyclists are too poor to own cars.

    Cyclists are yuppies with expensive toys.

    Cyclists are drunks who lost their license.

    Cyclists use the road for leisure, holding up people trying to work.

    Cyclists ride on roads which are for cars.

    Cyclists ride on sidewalks which are for pedestrians.

    Cyclists lobby for bike lanes.

    Cyclists moralize at gas burners.

    Cyclists look dumb in spandex.

    Cyclists act like they never do anything wrong.

Reasons I don't believe belong in that list (I don't believe anybody really thinks these):

    Cyclists are too loud.

    Cyclists are bad because bicycles have two wheels.

I'm not into word games, I was just asking. I'll just let it go.

I'm slightly sympathetic to the road safety argument -- it's at least plausible [1] -- but it's weird how it only applies to motorcycles. Taking the logic seriously, everyone should make more noise for safety? Bicyclists are at least as vulnerable as motorcyclists, yet they're silent -- should they be blasting some sound, like a siren or whatever? And why stop there -- maybe all cars should make noise -- just honk their horns continuously for safety? It starts to get absurd.

[1] However, it seems it's not true: https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a35952569/loud-p...

This may be a "lying with statistics" deal, I'm sure many of those vehicles are that loud only when you really open the throttle which would be really reckless in neighborhoods and city streets where this kind of thing matters the most. The quoted cars are only possible to enjoy to their full potential on a track unless you're driving like an extreme asshole.

I'm sure you can make a car that's quieter than these limits no matter how you drive them; they were designed to be loud because some people think it's cool.

EDIT: Not sure why this is getting downvoted. Look at the ad copy of some of these cars. https://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/ Literally the first line is "Hear the roar of a Mustang..."

These cars being /performance/ oriented might be a hint. For a car to go fast it needs air, like a lot of air, air that engine needs to dispose of quickly in order to get a fresh batch, and adding complex muffler systems limits how much airflow you can have.

Add to that ecological requirements and you have a very tight margin that car manufacturer can tweak in.

Also just because car can sound loud when driven in full throttle, doesn't mean it has to. It is on the driver if he chooses to be a nuisance, not manufacturer(Straight piping an old beater car is dirt cheap, having a hole in exhaust is even 'cheaper' and is much louder than any of the expensive, performance oriented cars in question.

Turbo makes a car faster and increases air intake -- yet make an engine quieter, not louder https://www.torque.com.sg/features/turbocharged-cars-why-qui...

This is true, but when we talk about performance oriented vehicles my initial point still stands. All turbo does is put more air into intake, that air still has to leave somehow.

Exhaust back-pressure is beneficial to a degree. You know not what you talk about.

Building cars is my hobby so I do know that it is more nuanced, but once again, this does not refute my initial point.

You do need some back-pressure to siphon back, but the amount is very limited, especially when we compare it to the sheer amount of air mass that those cars are moving.

Just so it doesn’t get lost — my point is, sports cars being loud when they’re full throttle is not a problem and never was, realistically you wouldn’t drive them that way outside of a racing track anyway. The fact that people still do it and annoy everyone else is a people problem, not a car problem.

>Seems crazy to me that manufacturers are selling cars that are basically designed to be a nuisance.

This is a really odd take.

The noise in that case is a by-product of how the car's powertrain is designed.

That doesn't really conflict with what GP said.

You're saying the mufflers are optimized to be as quiet as possible for the given powertrain?

Anyway, why the focus on the "powertrain"? I can understand wanting to accelerate quickly. Are you saying there's a relationship between acceleration and noise level? Clearly that's not true for electric cars, but is it even true for ICE cars? Turbo increases acceleration and yet lowers sound levels.

To be fair, if people drive them responsibly then they shouldn't be hitting that level on a 25-35 mph street. Or really anywhere other than an on ramp or highway passing, etc.

Also, I'm curious about the testing specs. I assume it has to be a specific pressure adjusted for things like altitude, temperature, and other environmental features. How do the cameras handle those variances so not to ticket someone with a legal car that goes over the limit due to an environmental factor?

> To be fair, if people drive them responsibly then they shouldn't be hitting that level on a 25-35 mph street. Or really anywhere other than an on ramp or highway passing, etc.

You can easily go full throttle in 1st or 2nd gear and make a ton of noise under 30MPH.

"You can easily go full throttle in 1st or 2nd gear"

And doing so would not be considered driving "responsibly". Hence my use of the word.

You can also drive irresponsibly and make a ton of noise in other cars by doing things like dumping the clutch.

The question is, why is the federal government allowing these vehicles to be sold / why are states allowing them to be registered?

If they don't meet federal standards, they're not legal to operate on US roads. They weren't even legal to import, which means they should be confiscated and destroyed.

Customs was fond of doing this for illegally imported Skylines and Land Rovers...why not brand new Porsches?

> Based on Car and Driver testing, examples include the 2016 Porsche 911 GT3 RS (108 decibels) and the 2019 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 and 2019 McLaren 720S Spider, both at 99 decibels.

At which speed and mode of operation? Is that during hard acceleration or during cruise? What range from the car?

That's most likely the peak, so whenever the car is going full throttle.

NYC too: https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/2/24/22949795/new-york-rolling-...

I know Paris is doing something similar as well, which is definitely in line with their recent efforts to cut back on cars in the city

I can only hope it goes into effect in my neighborhood. It's pretty hard to go a day without wearing headphones throughout just to think straight

I really wish human enforcement would happen instead of robotic police state starter edition.

There really aren't that many violators and it's not like speeding where anybody does it, just revoke the registration of any car caught going a certain amount over and make them tow it on the spot and pass an inspection before it can be legally back on the road.

It's usually just one dude in the neighborhood that has an obnoxious car.

Revoking registration seems excessive. Also, I'd expect someone who modifies the exhaust pipe to be able to pass an inspection and revert the modification immediately after.

People get killed all the time in having in-person police interactions. No one has ever been killed by speed camera enforcement.

This is so offensive. The idea that we should be ruled by unseen masters who enforce their desires through machines because actuall personal interaction would be dangerous for us. Anyone who subscribes to this needs to take a good look at their values system and understanding of what it means to be part of humanity.

I’d personally rather deal with the unforeseen masters instead of the armed guy with 6 months training and an anger problem

And in many jurisdictions, qualified immunity to shield them from murder charges!

+1 social credit

This is very, very rare in western countries outside of the US.

I like automated enforcement because it doesn’t seem like a problem worth creating more traffic stops for…

It seems like the reality of modern life is more automation and why shouldn't the police use it to accomplish more with less manpower?

I wish we'd do something like a revenue neutral noise pollution registration fee, where the top 25% loudest things on the road pay a higher fee which is used to give a discount to the bottom 49%... creating an incentive to drive noise pollution levels continually down.

It's hard to measure loudness that way. Many cars seem to be capable of being quiet or loud. Which way do you think they'll be during certification?

That wouldn't be fatal: if you bring down the typical levels it becomes easier to lower the bannable levels.

The noise pollution we experience doesn't just come from the loudest cars at their loudest times-- though that has an outsized effect-- it comes from all but the absolute quietest.

It's simply a matter of the testing specification. Eg testing on a dynometer at full throttle.

Ideally vehicles would monitor their own loudness and reject driver commands that would be too loud.

That only really makes sense where there's a tradeoff: with carbon taxes, you can at least understand why carbon-based energy sources are being used. With loud cars, there's no benefit to tradeoff against! IMO, bans make more sense. That said, your proposal is better than nothing, and I would be in favor of anything that reduces the amount of noise pollution.

The benefits are whatever is causing the noise.

Not following.

Revenue-neutral taxes are great! But it's better to simply give back the revenue as uniform credits to all taxpayers.

My thought on taxes that compensate the best of is that you get an incentive on two sides: Both to not be the nosiest and an incentive to be among the quietest-- so for a given amount of money moved you get twice the incentive.

... or give it back to residents in the areas that have the most noise pollution? If the motivation of the tax is that this behavior is harmful, shouldn't the people that are most harmed be first in line to receive any benefit?

I don't want rich people to be able to buy their way into making an infernal racket.

We shouldn't let a fear of someone enjoying a benefit we feel they don't deserve get in the way of improving noise levels for others.

The high/low tax I propose isn't about preventing the worst offenders: it's about pulling the overall fleet noise levels down. The noise pollution we suffer from isn't exclusively from a few infernal racket makers -- other measures (like the articles cameras) are needed for nuisance cars.

Even if you're only concerned about the worst of the worst, lowering the average levels should make it easier to act against the worst of the worse through lower limits and harsher penalties because they'll be more separated from ordinary vehicles.

Yes, "both" is a good idea. A tax + a progressive penalty.

Near me in Southern California, it’s cameros/corvettes (I call these cheap sports cars) and trucks with out of state plates. Generally not the modified Nissans/Hondas. Bring it on with these rules! Sick of walking down the street and hearing a car going 40 sound like a race car going 150. Loud exhaust is nothing more than people trying to compensate for not getting the attention they crave in other venues in life. Same with trucks with massive/unpractical lifts. You don’t get any off road benefits above a few inches and the lift just becomes about looking intimidating which is not a part of American culture I enjoy having to deal with

I personally know three people who have had their catalytic converters stolen in the last two months. I hope there's an exception for trying to get back home after some degenerate has stolen $600 of palladium off your exhaust system!

That said, I still 100% support this bill. Noise pollution is a real thing, and it sucks. "Cities aren't loud, cars are loud."

Every time I hear a prius like that I feel so bad, because you just know someone sawed their cat off.

As common decency dilapidates, I wonder if we will just use technology to find and shame.

The ‘war on noise’ is probably just the beginning. Why wouldn’t you deploy this technology to stop littering, etc.?

The end result might be Singapore and beyond:)

Who gets the ticket if a law abiding driver is in frame with a scofflaw?

Exhaust noise regulations are generally based on a specific distance and orientation at ground level. How are they going to prove that they met those conditions?

95dB for cars but only 80dB for motorcycles. I doubt my 15 year old bike meets that with its stock exhaust. Regardless, now a car can trip the camera and the blame falls on someone driving a quieter vehicle.

I can imagine that they'd take multiple samples. E.g. do you see the same car in the same sound-triggered photo N number of times? An abiding car would have to be exceptionally unlucky to get confused with the loud vehicle.

This. Your car only gets flagged if it is recorded on multiple occasions. And even then, it is not a fine, but is required to visit a testing station.

From how I see it, if your bike is loud enough that it is in violation of noise ordinances then you should take it to a shop and mod it if you expect to be driving around other people.

Also, if I had to guess, the reasoning for the limit for cars being higher is that past about 20(?)mph the tire noise makes up for the majority of the noise (which is proportional to weight)

Vehicles in stock configuration can't be forced to comply with newer laws. That's why you can drive without seatbelts in a car that's old enough. Same with tire pressure monitoring and backup cameras.

Yup, and the law applies to vehicles built after 1985. Also the law isn't new, the only thing new introduced here is automated enforcement

They can definitely be forced to comply. In fact there's already a precedent in California for banning existing cars that emit too much smog.

It’s ok, it’s California so they’ll just tack the fee onto your registration and force you to pay it if you want to drive legally.

At one point I got a ticket for my car for parking without a permit at a college. The college was in a city that I had never been to, and the make/model of my car did not match the report, so it was obviously a mistake taking down the license. Should be easy to clear up, right?

Apparently no. I didn’t find out about that ticket until I got a renewal notice that was way, way more expensive than normal. I spent the next two months making daily calls to try to get this fixed, unsuccessfully. The advice I got was to take it to court, which would have been about ten hours of round trip driving.

I eventually just paid the ticket so I could renew my registration without incurring a late fee.

I have a very high level of distrust in this system, I hate that another automated crap shoot may be upcoming. I would like the asshole noise machines to stop, but this is not the way.

What makes you think this ticket had anything to do with automation, and wasn't just an incompetent traffic cop?

The ticket I got was almost certainly a manual accident in writing down a license plate, but the story serves to illustrate how incredibly difficult it can be to clear up mistakes and how tying it to registration places increased limits on timeframes.

Automated systems are going to get it wrong, and it’s not worth the risk.

There are far more annoying leaf blowers than loud cars.

You'll be glad to know then that California is banning the sale of new gas powered leaf blowers in 2024.

https://www.route-fifty.com/public-safety/2021/11/california...

Well you'll be thrilled to know that those are illegal in California as well.

DC banned gas powered leaf blowers, that finally went onto effect over the new year. It's great!! Your city can to. It's super.

Someone woke me up this week with a gas leaf blower & I didnt quite drag myself dowm there to give him a verbal warning. But I will be doing that soon, I think!

I wish DC would enforce noise pollution against cars. I live on a particilarly bad street, to the point where I somewhat deserve it, but it's still a tiny residential street. People just love tearing up the streets & dosrupting neighbors after a long long night. I dont even know if we have laws against it, but there's definitely no enforcement. Automated systems sound lovely.

They dont tend to be super late night, but DC also has swarms of dirtbikes/atv's, loud as heck, and the police officially are not to respond, are told to do nothing, for passerby & rider safety. We should definitely do something about the cars but, & we do nothing, but it's notable to me that civil behavior is generally unenforceable, at least as it appears now.

What prevents someone with a horn-in-a-can or a portable loudspeaker from abusing this system, causing random passing motorists to receive citations?

The article specifies that citations are only sent after multiple infractions. You’d have to Track the same “random motorist” over multiple days and enforcement zones. Not going to happen.

In my city, there was a big criminal operation stealing catalytic converters from cars parked on the street during lockdown. A lot of cars are still missing them and we all know who drives those cars: poor people living paycheck to paycheck.

As long as we have so much poverty and wealth inequality, I will aggressively oppose brutal laws with such out-of-touch priorities as noise pollution.

Driving without a catalytic converter is already illegal and for good reasons. It makes more sense to crack down on theft than to allow people to drive around pumping out cancer causing pollution and huge amounts of noise.

I personally think it makes more sense to crack down on poverty, but by your own logic you should start by cracking down on theft instead of punishing those living in poverty.

Down here if it rides, it rides. Cat or not.

I like the sound of a properly built V8. They should be exempt from that law. If it's a 4 cylinder machine with a fart exhaust, those should be banned. 12 cylinder Ferraris should also be worshiped, not fined.

An air-cooled VW Bug with a stinger exhaust should get a special exemption, too, just for being California cool.

What I want is a sound activated rotten-egg launcher or paintball gun for the obnoxious cars on my street.

I live on a hill by a major state highway intersection in an area where jake brakes are allowed. This is also within olfactory distance of the water treatment plant.

It's great because none of the people who cheer on this sort of dystopian "use the state's monopoly on violence to enforce the pettiest of petty laws" wind up living here.

Edit: Since apparently these things need to be said, because HN, imagine your living situation isn't stable and you don't get the fine because it was mailed to your last apartment or you simply fail to pay it, what happens then, and how is that different than if you had stiffed anyone other than the state?

If you get a bill in the mail, how does "monopoly on violence" come into play?

It’s just a buzzword phrase free marketers use for every situation where the government does something.

I do wonder what the alternative they would prefer be though. Would they rather an individual be able to hire a private gang to collect the noise violation payment at gunpoint?

Can you choose to ignore the bill without any threat of state sponsored violence? If no, thats your monopoly on violence right there.

Never heard of violence upon someone for not paying a ticket. They might have their credit affected, their wages garnished, their vehicle registration suspended, and so on, if they continue to ignore bills. That isn't violence, but it is consequences.

But I'm curious how you'd prefer it be handled.

What if I don't pay rent? Should I be allowed to live there forever, simply because no one, not even the police, is allowed to physically remove me from the property if I refuse to pay and refuse to leave? I wonder how this ideal world you imagine actually works.

Bubb Rubb and Lil Sis would disapprove. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUXow3d3-b0

It's always seemed very odd to me that California is known both for its hot-rodding culture that encourages vehicle modifications, and at the same time has extremely strict emissions laws.

That said, as an enthusiast of vehicle performance improvements myself, there's a huge variance in how exhaust sounds are perceived even if they're the same volume. To me, high-pitched screaming is far more obnoxious than low-frequency rumbling.

High frequency sounds will bounce off your walls and windows though. Especially if you have double glazed windows, it’s only the low rumbles that get through.

Different pavements have different noise characteristics, and poor pavement decisions probably contribute the most to noise.

Will the state fine itself for loud pavement? Do they even have a standard they would hold themselves to for loud pavement?

I'm all in favor of reducing exhaust noise, but without going after loud pavement, it is a waste of time.

Sometimes around here, a B-17 will fly over (I know the sound). They're loud, but I love every decibel.

Pasadena?

Seattle area.

I look forward to tens of thousands of fines being sent out whenever an aircraft goes by.

My dream come true!

What about loud music blasting from cars? To the level that makes the car alarms go off?

What about overly sensitive car alarms? IME those tend to be the worst offenders.

A much better way of handling this issue in CA is just to add a sound test when getting a smog check. Pretty much all cars get smogged and while it won't stop everyone, it will deter many from installing such systems.

The issue is that people can just swap out an exhaust before the smog test. I only smogged my car once having lived there for 9 years. Maybe twice? But still, whoever has the skills to install an aftermarket exhaust also has the skill to reinstall it, probably.

Will not work. All 49 state legal mods come off before smog and go right back on after. Some exhausts have a removable insert in the tip that restricts flow but also dampers the noise. Also the penalty for modification when I got pulled over and hood popped back in high school was a $400 state referee ticket. I could take my car to a state ref to get signed off or pay the fine. The motor was swapped and 100% illegal per California of course I just paid. It's just lip service with a racket on top.

Quick edit: the swapped engine actually blew cleaner than the original engine before anyone chimes in there. If California cared about emissions they would only judge a car on what it blows out the tailpipe, not what is in it.

Tests like that happen in the UK, but any illegal modifications are removed or disabled before testing.

I wish this applied to fire trucks. I’ve been woken up too many times by a fire truck blasting their horn at 2am when there’s no traffic in the street, waking up 200+ people in the process.

please do this in miami, everytime I hear revving my heartrate goes up 9 bpm

I’m glad I live in a rural area where we don’t need to worry about getting random tickets mailed to us.

They’re not random.

Noise is much, much different in a rural area.

An old friend of mine was in a 'biker gang' of sorts and when I visited his farm, the bikes were loud, but didn't really seem to bother me.

First time I went to Chicago, walking around downtown, a few bikers came by and I can only describe the noise as head pounding, ear piercingly loud.

Acoustics are weird in that way.

That’s a good point. When I haven’t been into a city in a while, it’s always jarring. I suppose some of the acoustics are related to the sounds hitting buildings and doing the canyon effect. I live in the high desert and the incredibly dry air (usually <15% humidity) doesn’t propagate sound much.

In my small rural village, there's an idiot with a noisy car who's bellowing exhaust wakes everyone, every morning at 6:00am. The noise literally carries for miles.

Curious- do you live some place wet/humid? I was just noting to another reply that in the high desert where I am, we are normally <=15% humidity and sound doesn’t really carry much and the local explanation is the low moisture content.

I would rather California work harder on enforcement against smoking tobacco everywhere.

In my city it's illegal to smoke in city parks, yet people do it inside my neighborhood parks nearly every day. Many times when young families with children are around and inhaling it second-hand.

That's a different problem with different possible solutions. Just because we work on one thing doesn't mean we have to stop working on another.

Presumably this one is a lot easier to address inexpensively with a bit of tech. Smoking not so much. For one thing, people don't wear license plates.

They do wear their face, however, and governments seem to be all-in on using that too.

Ok, well, they aren't doing it for this, so what are we complaining about again?

The issue of loud vehicles can be addressed without resorting to things like facial recognition. Facial recognition, due to the obvious privacy concerns, should probably be reserved for much more serious things, such as catching fugitives or detecting violations of restraining orders and the like. Not people smoking outside. Maybe it shouldn't be used at all.

So I don't understand the complaint.

I'm merely pointing out that the lack of human license plate isn't much of a barrier.

The office space near campus here has some expensive business suites, and by casual chat one day, I found that not one or two, but a whole corner of one floor was rented out to a company making automated traffic cameras, and most of the people in the office were speaking some Slavic language I had never heard before .. this is California. It is obviously a profit center.

whoever owns the right to these automated systems, owns a money-printing machine and everyone involved knows it.

Well, let's just limit cars to the speed limit automatically then. They have had GPS for 20 years, it seems about time. No surveillance, no dollars. Same as we can and should set strict sound limits at homologation.

I dunno, seems reasonable to let people pay to violate some ordinances. Maybe one day you're in a hurry and you don't mind paying the speeding tax.

> dunno, seems reasonable to let people pay to violate some ordinances

That's literally what a zoning variance or an oversize load permit is.

It's not a tax, it's the law.

One of the reasons for speed limits is to prevent death. Deciding to pay a fine isn't an acceptable reason to speed.

And if we slowed down even more, we'd have even less death.

It may sound crass. But-- fundamentally, society is making an economic tradeoff between the economic cost of a certain amount of death and the economic cost of taking longer to get places in your car.

No, there is no need for someone to go 80mph in a city and hit and kill someone else. Just as there is no need for 300kW engines and the like. That's not a tradeoff with anything; we can very simply do without.

> there is no need for someone to go 80mph in a city and hit and kill someone else.

Hyperbole is not awesome. I don't think anyone was advocating to go 80MPH in a city and to hit and kill someone else.

I don't believe there's some bright line where going 25.001MPH is completely unsafe and reckless and 24.999MPH is completely OK. In the end, the limit is an arbitrary value providing a tradeoff between economics and safety, and people obey that particular exact value to avoid getting fined.

> limit cars to the speed limit automatically then

the contract between society and an individual can be intermediated with required technology, administered by courts and local enforcement? you want that?

What do you mean? I have a contract to pay Spotify some dollars and receive music in return, yet they sure as fuck use "required technology" to check I actually paid them. It seems infinitely more important to do that on public roads where public law mandates a speed limit, yet speeding kills thousands - and often those who 1) were not in a car and 2) certainly weren't speeding.

On the topic of driving legislature and enforcement in general, I hate the sentiment of speed limits. It's a mishmash of trying to reduce fatalities by making person-and-vehicle collisions happen at a slower speed that is for some reason applied to the motorway.

For anyone that has gone 155mph on the Autobahns unlimited section, it becomes blatantly obvious that modern high end cars are meant to do that sort of speed, and there's nothing that scary about it when you have 6 lanes and keep a few hundred meters of braking distance. The fact that 90mph would get your license taken away in the U.K. makes me sick considering that almost all little crapbox cars sold in Europe happily break that limit (even if they're screaming in 5th gear).

Yes, let's let evolution take its natural course and rid society of such drivers.

Rhetoric. No significant link between deaths and the unlimited speed on the Autobahns exists (and such data would be subject to scrutiny immediately, given that deaths on the motorway go up with socioeconomic factors, the amount of sun in a given year etc).

You are, however, wasting your life behind a wheel for longer than you need to be. Really senseless, and it puts you on the level of those who deny the efficacy of vaccines for the sake of satisfying their fear.

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