Most states have laws that you can't modify an exhaust to be louder than the stock exhaust.
Yet in every urban area you can hear some percentage of drivers that modify their cars to be 10x louder than everyone else, often with "crackle and pop" tunes to intentionally defeat emissions controls to leave unburnt gasoline to detonate in the exhaust every time they lift off the gas.
It used to just be motorcycles and sports cars. But it's now the most basic pickup trucks, family sedans, SUVs, and anything else that explodes fuel to move.
The total and complete lack of enforcement of existing noise pollution laws is the number one cause of the spread of this.
> The total and complete lack of enforcement of existing noise pollution laws
This is the problem, 100%. I moved from Atlanta to a medium sized Dutch town and my noise pollution problems went away.
Though, now that I think about it, the depths of New York City will be both very expensive and very loud.
A lot of it is the surrounding areas have been surrendered to the noise makers and residents in my town are friends with them and they come and go as they please at all hours, unhindered by law enforcement.
But dismayingly, more of the residents are getting louder themselves for whatever reason. The worst part is they by and large follow the speed limit but are still insanely loud so the police just look at it like I'm just annoyed and need to get over it.
It's truly the easiest thing to catch. I can't fathom why there's so little interest at any level of government to tackle this problem.
Since lawmakers live in places where they have their own police officer at the entrance to the street and can afford triple pane windows.
And the Venn-diagram of police officers and people that think loud exhausts are cool has substantial overlap.
I am in Europe and an opposite problem is that the emission control systems of recent (gasoline) cars are not noise insulated... After you stop a car, it is random artillery for two hours (apparently as they cool down from temperatures of many hundreds degrees).
(Edit: I just replaced 'the opposite problem' with 'an opposite problem'... Former form was misleading.)
- motorbikes (with modified exhausts or not, at high speeds the engine itself is loud enough to disturb sleep of thousands of people)
- 'sport' car abominations with intentionally loud exhaust and engine noises
- some diesel cars (old vans etc) are very loud, in this case it's just the nature of the diesel engine.
The city is now investing tens of millions of euros to retrofit a noise barrier to protect our neighborhood. I think our house surfers the most from the noise. Yet - if it only wasn't for those loud motorcycles I would think the noise barrier is unnecessary. It would be much more cost effective to set and enforce noise pollution rules than to build expensive noise protection infrastructure everywhere where people live close to roads.
It will probably also depend on the make.
But look, if you are trying to understand which noise I was referring to: stop some gasoline cars, from euro-5 on, after the engine has been on for a good number of miles, and after a few minutes you will hear like a "loud bang on metal" (very distinct from the usual crackles from the cooling metal), like a coiled spring loudly released, then after more minutes another one... Even after an hour, or more, it will randomly go on... Silent for a long time, then "bang".
From my experience even reasonably priced cars have decent enough noise insulation. Exhaust pipes face back. Inverse square law means the radio has to do very little work to be louder. All this added up you'll only hear the noise terrorist as they're lane splitting next to you.
Only effective way to prevent it is a once off "fix it or it get's crushed" notice. And crush it the second time to a tiny tin box.
Not the big ones. California only limits to 95db, regardless of what stock was. And what is "stock"? Like new? Mufflers start to wear out, getting louder, the moment a car is first started. Not everyone can afford to drive a new car, or even keep replacing the muffler every couple years to maintain some notion of "stock" tailpipe sound. Some of the loudest cars/trucks are simply those old enough to have broken mufflers.
And people with deliberately loud cars want loud cars. If it wasnt mufflers it would be loud sound systems. If not those then it would be loud horns.