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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

As is true for all traffic laws, they are going to “target” minorities as yet another excuse to over police.

https://www.nyclu.org/en/stop-and-frisk-data

I’m pretty sure it is just going to go by decibel level, it is a lot of added complexity to make the devices not just listen for noise but to also identify skin color.

> But the law doesn’t doesn’t compel law enforcement to issue tickets, nor does it require police cars to be equipped with decibel readers.

According to TFA, the law wasn't written to ensure that. It's selective enforcement, with cops making judgement calls both about how loud is loud and who looks like they deserve a ticket.

They are going to target offenders. Minorities happen to have higher rates of offense. These are not the same things.

> Minorities happen to have higher rates of offense

Anecdotally, in midtown, this isn’t true. (The Jersey plate correlation is.)

Keep in mind that making one’s vehicle flatulate isn't cheap.

Since minorities are more likely to buy old used cars that make more noise in general they will have higher rates of offense.

It’s called “selective enforcement”.

Read the act[1]. It's targeting modifications like ripping the baffles out of motorcycle exhaust or having open headers. I had a friend back in college that did this to a street motorcycle and it was audible for over 3 miles at night in the suburbs, absolutely absurdly loud.

Rusted out exhaust pipes from road salt in NYC on cars will make them louder but nothing like what I'm describing. Basically makes them have an annoying low pitched rumble similar to what those stupid $40 ricer 'fart can' modifications would. Few orders of magnitude of a difference between loudness.

[1] https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2021/S784B

I have a "noisy" unmodified car, and my neighbour has an Abarth with a modified exhaust. I haven't measured the noise difference for an exact number, but I'd wager his car is about 15x louder than mine. _No_ old unmodified cars are going to be caught by any laws that are aiming to capture nuisance laws.

so what? a noisy car is a noisy car.

You did notice from the article how many minorities are stopped by police and then not even ticketed compared to non minorities?

I understand a lot of people here are saying "but it's only about noise level", but I think they are all forgetting that it's a judgement call from police and involves selective enforcement. Laws will be ignored for people who "look honest" and enforced for those who look "likely to cause trouble".

Being a minority doesn't give you the right to be an asshole

According to many officers being white does give you the right to be an asshole, and laws like these are just selectively enforced.

give me a break... they are enforcing this for by triggering a sound barrier. Just because that may be true for some things doesn't mean its true for all laws

Are there different police involved?

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