Noise cameras to be trialled in England to tackle ‘boy racers’ | Hacker News Reader

Noise cameras to be trialled in England to tackle ‘boy racers’

theguardian.com

48 pointssamizdis78 comments

It's a real shame, because we have a cultural problem of glorified ignorance. In a sense I feel sorry for these lads, because they are tinkerers, hackers of a kind like us, but with grossly curtailed opportunities for expression and exploration. When I was a kid, modding bikes and engines was everyday fun.

Wouldn't they potentially be great engineers with the right guidance and education? But today they all follow the same dumb formula, sawing of the exhaust pipe and catalytic convertor, mis-tuning the engine, jacking down the suspension, doing a really shit paint job... The culture beneath that is basically anti-social, not individualistic.

Sadly one has to wonder whether the days of 2-stroke scooters are also numbered in the UK. There are still lots of middle-aged Mods, you can find them by the hundreds at summer seaside town scooter rallies. But turning the air blue with the stench of two-stroke oil particulates seems less and less acceptable each year. Maybe I am growing long in the tooth.

Now, don't get me started on inappropriate use of emergency vehicle sirens, which is the REAL noise pollution issue in Britain today.

I think we’ve clamped down on the little people enough. There’s clearly a growing gap in freedom of expression between developing countries and us.

I'm afraid I can't see this as freedom of expression, what idea are they expressing? If this is about freedom of expression, isn't fly tipping a type of expression that should be protected?

In terms of general freedom, the question is does it disproportionately affect others? The answer couldn't be clearer - where I live a single person cruising around in their modified vehicle can ruin the sleep of thousands of people.

In terms of the law, this is already illegal, all that's happening is the law is being enforced.

I'm responding to this comment because I think a lot of people have a similar, erroneous, reaction - isn't this just another freedom being taken away? In a way yes, but the costs to individual liberty are vastly outweighed by the consequences for those who happen to be near by.

And, of course, you can always modify your car and drive round a private race track, no activity has been totally prohibited.

I actually agree with everything you say there Jimmy. They're anti-social toe-rags. But in the humanist tradition I'm digging a little deeper and asking what's going on for these kids?

Why would you spend hundreds of pounds and lots of time trying to make your car a bloody nuisance?

We ignore human psychology at our peril.

I think you might be forgetting what being a teenage boy is like! I think a noisy car is straightforward 'look at me' peacock tail behaviour.

>It's a real shame, because we have a cultural problem of glorified ignorance

And it goes high enough up the socioeconomic ladder that it should make everyone here uncomfortable. Seeing your own ignorance is like scratching the middle of your own back. You can't do it easily if at all.

>Wouldn't they potentially be great engineers with the right guidance and education? But today they all follow the same dumb formula, sawing of the exhaust pipe and catalytic convertor, mis-tuning the engine, jacking down the suspension, doing a really shit paint job... The culture beneath that is basically anti-social, not individualistic.

This is just the car exhaust version of Karen excusing her borderline alcoholic "wine mom" friends while complaining about people who sit around a burn barrel crushing bud light.

Decibels are decibels. Jumping over the expensive hurdles one must to output them the rich people way doe not make them any less loud.

>Sadly one has to wonder whether the days of 2-stroke scooters are also numbered in the UK.

Probably gonna be replaced by e-bikes.

I think we need to give them a place to do it that wont piss people off. The UK has a great history of motorsport but has hardly any resources for getting started with your own car.

I have seen in America where cops join in and mod their cars and race people on race tracks, it doesn't totally remove the anti-social behavior but by making these outlets cheap and easily accessible we can give people a new thing to focus on and get into without pissing off people.

> Probably gonna be replaced by e-bikes.

Two stroke scooters have already been replaced by four stroke scooters, which are a lot less dirty. Anybody still riding a two stroke is probably riding a vintage machine. GP refers to the mod subculture, one strand of which involves modifying and riding 60s Lambretta and Vespa scooters, often with extra headlights, mirrors, and other accessories. I'm not a part of the subculture, but I think the vintage nature of the machines is part of the appeal, so I can't see them getting phased out until they're banned by law.

relatively, i can't see someone a 50cc 2-stroke moped putting out more emissions than a huge 3-ton BMW X5 with a massive diesel engine, awd etc. which is carrying one person at any given time.

As a classic car owner with a (small) 1300cc engine who drives their car about 5 times a year I would apply the same argument :-) though maybe it'll be banned now because my car isn't as quiet as a sewing machine...

I don't know, run a full size modern diesel car in a garage for a few seconds then compare it to a 2 stroke running for the same amount of time. The 2 stroke will certainly smog up the place quicker.

those are just the visible gases - you can't see carbon monoxide etc.

Yep. The scooter might output less CO2, but due to the primitive nature of the 2-stroke engine, it's basically chucking a rich aerosol of unburned fuel and lubricating oil out the exhaust. The X5, by comparison, has a catalytic converter to get rid of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and unburned fuel, plus a particulate filter to get rid of soot; it will also have secondary emission control systems to stop fuel vapours escaping from the fuel tank and crankcase.

2-strokes have remarkable power-to-weight ratios and are pleasingly mechanically simple, but goodness me they're dirty.

> relatively, i can't see someone a 50cc 2-stroke moped putting out more emissions than a huge 3-ton BMW X5 with a massive diesel engine, awd etc. which is carrying one person at any given time.

Different kinds of emissions. CO2-wise, yes indeed the moped is less harmful.

But the other emissions... a modern car is essentially a chemical lab on wheels. At least one actively managed catalytic converter to remove NOx, another one for diesel engines to burn leftover carbon monoxide, and then a particulate matter filter to trap and burn-off soot and other micro particles.

A two-stroke engine usually only has a passive catalytic converter and that's it. It emits by design unburned fuel-oil mixture into the exhaust because the mixture is used as a lubricant, and beyond a muffler it has absolutely zero noise emission control.

i agree, and im not trying to undermine modern research and development on emissions, but my point is that perhaps larger cars should be discouraged as they are hugely overkill for most people's needs and exist as status symbols - if coming purely from an emissions standpoint they are terrible compared to an equivalent small car or motorbike etc yet people seem to blame 2 strokes and old cars when in reality they are not the sole cause of the problem

Ah, yeah, that's fair. Each individual vintage vehicle is terrible, but there really aren't that many of them, whereas there are millions of large cars/pickups being sold per year. I'd certainly support some sort of measure aimed at large vehicles which aren't used for some sort of large-vehicle-appropriate task.

Slap up some rolling truck scales on your existing toll roads and pro-rate tolls with the discount maxing out right at GVWR (which you got by looking up their vehicle with your existing ALPRs) and then spend a decade hammering out edge cases.

It will never fly because the demographics that are usually supportive of that kind of legislative action are almost exactly the same demographics who buy 3-row SUVs for 2-kid households and hand wring like it's the end of the world if you put four adults in a compact car or throw plywood on a roof (but a kayak is fine).

Yes I mean classic cars are dirty but there are very few of them, most being used only seldom. However there are 10s of millions of >2 ton hunks of metal being used to haul mostly 1 person around, with all the consequences that implies: pollution, noise, space for roads, space for parking, traffic fatalities, etc. That's a real problem.

>In a sense I feel sorry for these lads, because they are tinkerers, hackers of a kind like us, > [...] > Wouldn't they potentially be great engineers with the right guidance and education?

I think you are ready way too much into this. For the most part these are people who just want a loud motorbike/car and just go to a store and ask for an Akrapovic titanium exhaust. Those who can't swallow the price just buy the lower tier items.

That's it, job done.

There is no more engineering/hacking in that than kids cramming a pet bottle between the rear tire and the brake bridge of their bicycle and most of it is about copy/pasting what they saw other people do.

Give me a break. "Hacking" and tinkering with bikes doesn't mean they have to be loud. Nobody's opportunities are being curtailed by asking them to be considerate of others and socially responsible.

And anyway, in my experience, most owners of loud bikes are ratbags or deliberately looking to provoke, like the guy across the road who revs his bike at 1am and wakes up the whole street. I can assure you he's not a "hacker", just an inconsiderate dick.

> Nobody's opportunities are being curtailed by asking them to be considerate of others and socially responsible.

Nobody suggested their opportunities are being curtailed by being asked to consider others and be socially responsible.

But their opportunities are limited, which leads to infantile acting out, and that was the nub of my comment.

Sometimes ones opportunities are constrained by social factors. Like growing up in a chavvy estate with mates who are all total muppets. Or being peer-pressured into having a "smartphone" when you're 10 and wasting your life on TikTok or whatever.

Modern life gives the young less and less to work with.

Random factoid: Alexander the Great had conquered all of Asia by the time he was 23 - at that age most Barry boys are still living with their mum.

"Please don't fulminate."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

In term of real noise pollution I would rank: 1) motorbikes, 2) modified cars/sport cars, 3) sirens 4) trucks

Depends on where you live I guess.

Trains, airplanes, helicopters & neighbours are my top 4.

I haven't ranked anything, so I'm not sure why you're responding with a ranking. I just said modded bikes and cars are bad, and that sirens in the UK are extremely loud and piercing.

The siren issue is real anywhere, at least in London. It affects me wherever I happen to be, which is not always where I live.

I have no idea why I replied to this post. Brain fart, I guess. I probably saw it as a reply to my other comment but clearly I was wrong.

Where I am it's seagulls, then owls.

Two-stroke engines are a scourge that needs to go now. It's not on par with lead fuel but it's close, and it's completely unnecessary, there's hardly no two-stroke engines that can't be replaced with electric motors.

I disagree with most of this post. Modded cars and motorbikes are horrendous. The behaviour of their owners is even worse. It's not acceptable to wake up everybody in a densely populated area because you want to "express yourself".

What I do agree with is that sirens are incredibly bad in this country. Not only the inappropriate use of them, but why are they so piercing and loud? Many times I nearly curled into a ball when walking on the pavement or cycling and one of those are suddenly activated next to me. I have nearly crashed my bike more than once.

Every other country I have lived in or visited don't seem to have a problem with less aggressive sirens.

Imagine sitting on your porch, some hundred feet or so away from the street.

A regular motorbike passing might clock in a good 70dB of noise on a decibel meter. You can easily talk over that.

A two-stroke enduro bike with an illegal exhaust, however, can put out over 110dB in the same setting. That is a 10,000 times more intense sound.

As someone with auditory sensory overload I'm always amazed how much noise people are able to tolerate, and perhaps even enjoy?

I don't even think the issue is custom exhausts or revving engines honestly, because it seems many stock motorbikes have incredibly loud exhausts already. Certainly loud enough to drown out speech. Yet no one seems to care. If I'm walking down the road having a conservation with someone then a noisy motorbike goes past people don't seem to react to the motorbike, instead they just instinctively start shouting at me so I can hear them over the bike as if that's a perfectly normal thing to do.

Same thing seems to happen when I go into shops and restaurants these days. I feel like I'm going into a club or something, yet no one seems to notice until I point it out. The music is always so loud that people are literally shouting over the noise, yet no one thinks this weird. In fact they think I'm weird because I can't handle the noise in these kinds of places.

I get I'm an outlier here, but I've always been amused by that. It seems to me people must actually like noise and shouting at each other because obviously no one is forcing anyone to buy really loud cars and bikes, nor is anyone forcing restaurants and shops to play music so loud you can't hear people speak. People seem to actually have a preference for loud exhausts and loud restaurants.

Stock motorbikes are actually pretty quiet these days, because there are laws about how loud legal exhausts can be. Even legendarily noisy Harley Davidsons come with quiet-ish exhausts by default. It's just that it's very common for people to swap them out, even if they're leaving the rest of the bike otherwise unmodified.

And yeah. Can't speak for restaurants, but people really like loud exhausts. For one, there's a saying within biker circles, 'loud pipes save lives' - as in, if your exhaust is loud, people can hear you coming and you're less likely to get flattened by an oblivious driver. Whether or not that's true is very debatable (studies seem to say it makes no difference), but people believe it. And secondly, people do just like loud things in general - there's something about being kicked in the chest by pressure waves that seems very enjoyable.

> 'loud pipes save lives' - as in, if your exhaust is loud, people can hear you coming and you're less likely to get flattened by an oblivious driver.

That's an interesting perspective, and not without merit. I've never been a biker, but I used to drive a customised classic vehicle (1958 Morris 1000 van) with atrocious rear visibility. Even in cold/wet weather, I'd keep my side widow rolled down just so that I could hear motorbikes, which the huge blindspots rendered invisible.

I ride, and used to commute exclusively by motorcycle. Trouble with this sentiment is that exhausts are pointed backwards, so they do nothing to alert the traffic in front of you. My anecdata anyway.

I agree, I ride a bicycle so I'm more aware than someone sealed in a car would be, and unless I'm not moving, I only hear loud motorcycles right as they're passing me. The headwind from cycling at 32 km/h is enough to overpower loud exhausts in my experience.

> For one, there's a saying within biker circles, 'loud pipes save lives'

It's a nice way to justify annoying everyone in a 1 km radius because you like things that go vroom

> For one, there's a saying within biker circles, 'loud pipes save lives'

And believing that then they start overtaking on the right, or between two cars, or not wearing a helmet or protective clothes, etc.

I don’t have a diagnosis of any sort that I’m aware. Personally I’d have motorcycles banned, I don’t see any (net) benefits of them, and the noise is ridiculous. I made it a top priority to live «far» from a main road when moving, after living too near one for a few years.

Shops - I don’t think I live anywhere near you. I haven’t had that experience.

I saw a bike with "Blood" and NHS signs zipping through stopped traffic the other day.

Just in case you wanted the one benefit anyway.

Thanks! Good engineers should recognize both pros and cons. I guess there are «police» ones, too.

Whether or not there's a net social benefit to motorcycles being on the road is a question that could be debated (extra fun for bikers, less space and fuel taken per person travelling, versus extra mortality and costs from crashes) but it seems like you'd want to ban them simply because you think that motorbikes are fundamentally loud.

As I mentioned above, motorcycles don't need to be loud. They're loud because people modify them to be so. Depending on where you are, there may already be laws about how loud they can legally be.

Like I mentioned a little higher up, I used to commute exclusively by motorcycle (a 600cc two cylinder from the late 90s). For me the net benefits were:

- Simple tech that I can maintain and repair myself without expensive tooling

- Very low tax

- When riding conservatively it has great fuel economy

- Filtering is legal here so backed up traffic had very little impact on my commute time

I run my bike with a legally approved exhaust that has a nice note but is not loud. All in all it has saved me a lot of time and money, and isn't that the point of owning a vehicle in the first place?

I know people who do the same. In winter they drive their cars, so I don’t see a big net win. Of course, in California I guess the snow is less of an issue.

The noise is not ridiculous on all of them.

I ride what they call a maxi scooter, my exhaust is bog standard and I try to ride calmly, not revving like a madman at every green light. I hate that people are mounting loud exhaust on similar bike, this is not even a sporty motorbike what is the point?

Having said that, Yamaha T-Max scooters should be banned. There is not a single decent human being riding them, I think they are just a close third at the bottom of the scale after the nazis and the feyenoord rotterdam fans...they are all riding like assholes.

Have you tried noise cancelling headphones? I know several people with sensory overload problems and they tell me noise cancelling headphones are transformative.

I never leave the house without them. It's difficult when with people though because it can look like I'm being rude.

I like earplugs too, but again that can look look rude in social situations. My girlfriend and close friends get it, but it depends on who I'm with what I'm doing.

I think Airpods might be changing things though, it's quite common to see people with those in 24/7. I haven't tried them myself, but I've heard really good things about their transparency mode.

You are talking about me, a 55 yo who got a pair of EarPods Pro from my kids only recently and man... the quality of life improvement is incomparable with anything I have ever experienced.

I have tried suppressing sound with more sound over the years but that is not even 20% as efficient (for me). Now may recipe for relaxation is EarPods in, Noice canceling on, a song on repeat and Bob's your uncle! Better than retalin even.

> I get I'm an outlier here

I do often wonder how much of an outlier that makes you (and me too by the way). The question really is how you define things. I would bet that the majority of people lose focus when exposed to sudden loud noises, causing them to lose their train of thought when for example discussing things in public.

At first seems like a silly idea. But in reality we really need much better enforcement here. The amount of badly tuned cars is insane in England. It's like the only purpose these drivers have, in modding their cars, is to cause annoyance.

If a broad cross section of society cared there would be enforcement. You don't see blatant drunk driving or insane speed get ignored. If a cop sees that they at the very least turn into Mr. Krabs with dollar signs for eyes and get to enforcing.

There's really not much societal appetite for that level of enforcement against people who are engaging in annoying but mostly harmless behavior that almost everyone will grow out of hence why dumb exhausts are mostly ignored except at the extremes.

People do care, it just doesn't kill anyone like drunk driving does.

How many people care? How much do they care? How much do they care about other stuff. This isn't high on most people's lists which is why they'll slap up a camera to make You People (I'm sure I'm dating myself with that reference) quit complaining and call it good. If it mattered a lot to a lot of people the average beat cop would have it on their KPIs every other quarter.

> average beat cop

Hahaha, average beat cop, in the UK. We defund all those years ago.

The police don’t have anywhere near enough time to deal with violent crime, never mind non-violent crime. The only way enforcement will work in the UK is with automated systems that let an officer review 100 cases an hour. Anything else costs too much time.

Or we could fund our police properly, but given the current situation, it’s more likely they’ll see further cuts in the near future.

There are actually more police per capita now than at times over the past 70 years when there were much lower numbers of both police and crime, but those periods also had much higher numbers of police on foot patrol.

I think that's the point. People are starting to care about this a lot more, so are pressing for enforcement. I believe it's a combination of the problem getting worse, studies coming out showing how many health problems are caused by noise, and the Dutch example that we really can have quiet cities.

> the problem getting worse

Where's your data?

As a sort of petrolhead-lite with a penchant for 80s and 90s Japanese performance cars what I'm mostly aware of nowadays is how few substantially modified (badly or otherwise) cars there are around relative to the 90s and noughties.

There used to be a website called barryboys.co.uk that was literally devoted to pouring mockery on badly modified cars, but it was closed down in 2019 due to a lack of new material: http://www.barryboys.co.uk/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?f=7&p=134856.... There simply aren't as many badly modified cars around as there used to be. I used to see hilarious shitboxes on a day to day basis, but they're mostly gone nowadays. This culture peaked in the era of the first few Fast & Furious films, also coinciding with the time when games involving modification and tuning like Gran Turismo 1 - 4 and Need For Speed: Underground 1 & 2 were popular, and has been on the decline for at least a decade. I highly recommend a browse of this site, particularly the older posts, to see how bad it got. Shed of the Week is particularly entertaining: http://www.barryboys.co.uk/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=12.

Sure, you do still see young people meeting in cars in supermarket car parks on a Saturday night, and places like the Starbucks at the roundabout on the north orbital just across the M25 from Watford are certainly gathering grounds for cruisers, and people do still modify cars, but with nowhere near the ubiquity that you'd see 15 or 20 years ago. Not one of these people has ever given me the slightest bit of trouble (and no, it's not because I look like an aging boy racer - my last 3 cars have been a Rover 75, the ultimate Werthers Original sucking old-man-mobile, a Saab estate, and a Volvo estate; I definitely don't look like "one of them" these days).

I wish that was the case, but look at skateboarding. Back when I was still in the UK, I picked up a surf-skate to mess around on while there were no waves and quickly found out how much hate there was for skateboarders.

It was almost comical, because people would tell us we don't look like "typical skateboarders", but we need to fuck off. Luckily some real skateboarders saw and gave us some tips on where to go. It was pretty eye opening, I had no clue that there was such disdain for skateboarders.

Personally I rather people skateboarded than had those stupid cars.

Not sure when you were last in the UK but almost every village[1] has a skate park now.*

1. https://www.skateparks.co.uk/park-finder/

* slight exaggeration

> You don't see blatant drunk driving or insane speed get ignored.

I see the very same people who have ridiculously loud cars also drive far too fast for the road they are on about as often as I hear their stupid cars. So yes, insane speed does get ignored just as much as the noise, at least from my perspective.

> You don't see blatant drunk driving

I do see blatant drunk driving, quite a lot actually. Every time my local pub closes.

I’d love for my city’s government to do something similar. Peeps reving their engines and playing cool for no good reason in the middle of the night is such an asocial and egoistic behavior and ruins the quality of life for whole neighborhoods. Not to mention the terror it entails for the animals in the city.

Now let's play a game before reading the article, do we think these cameras are going to be installed in Knightsbridge where Russian, Middle Eastern and Indian billionaires' children hang around revving the bollocks off their Ferraris, or are these going to be installed on the outskirts of Grimsby trying to find a way of locking up that kid who's revving a 2003 Skoda Fabia?

Drum roll please... Ah yes, it's Bradford.

Yeah, that's right, they're spending thousands of pounds on noise cameras to address the real issue challenging Bradford- noise pollution. Good thing they didn't get distracted by any trivial issues like 30% of the children in Bradford living in poverty. I'm really glad they're tackling these noisy vehicles, because as we know, they've already solved all the other crime in Bradford. Let me go look that up a second. Ah yes, Bradford, ranked number 1 in the country for violent crime[1]. Hang on a second... that means it's got the most violent crime, not the least. Weird. Guess we need to spend some more time cracking down on those loud exhausts.

[1] https://www.plumplot.co.uk/Bradford-violent-crime-statistics...

They should just ban all ICE vehicles in cities. Problem solved, and far less air pollution too.

> Problem solved