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Comment by wwweston | Hacker News Reader

I’m at the point where I don’t just want ticketing and other enforcement on this front, I want yanked licenses for this after a warning, and I might even want it legal to shoot vehicles guilty of noise violations and their drivers with paintballs to mark them for further enforcement and shame.

Smoking is the atmospheric equivalent of peeing in the pool; noise pollution is something between that and opting everyone into your dumb M80 party. It’s antisocial, it causes health problems on top of discomfort, and it should stop.

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Sure, but as long as they're allowed to paintball you and sick draconian enforcement on you for whatever trivial things you do they deem to be slights against society.

Like FFS, it's just fucking noise. It's a small minority of people. Can we just ignore them? There's so much bigger problems. Most people grow out of it after one car like that.

"Like FFS, it's just fucking noise"

Okay, let me blast 110dB into your ears and you tell me how the fuck you like it.

110dB once a week isn't really a big deal. I don't really care if someone rips it down the highway assuming they aren't being completely reckless.

Its not "just noise" when its preventing people from actually sleeping.

I don't think you'd like it if people played deafeningly loud noises outside your bedroom window at all hours of the night every night forever.

I live just uphill of a state highway junction so I get to hear everything accelerating leaving that intersection.

It's really not bad. You don't even notice it after awhile unless it's something that sounds funny like a semi trailer with an out of round tire or like a cluster of motorcyles or a mazda rotary or a nat-gas powered heavy truck.

What you mean is "it's really not bad for me".

Noise pollution is horrible. It is jarring and causes stress (health issues), and poor sleep (health issues).

This isn't just a vague immaterial thing, this is a genuine negative impact on people's health and by extension life expectation. If people could "just ignore it", obviously they would, right? Some of us can't. Luckily I moved away from most noise and live in a quiet area now, but nothing is stopping some arsehole with a modified exhaust driving down my road every night. It could start happening at any point. At which point, I'd want laws to stop it happening.

May you be cursed with chaotic noise til the end of your days

> It's a small minority of people

So are serial killers. A small minority of people can affect the lives and health of a lot more. A handful of people roaring through a neighborhood at night like this can mean nobody ever gets a proper night's sleep.

If someone plays with a laser in your eye, being told "it's just light, it's one guy, can you just ignore him, he'll grow out of it", won't be a consolation. You'll want him stopped.

> Most people grow out of it after one car like that.

Someone else grows into it.

If we could ignore them, this thread would not exist.

and I support extra legal measures against these people. They do it for the attention and they deserve the attention they will have coming to them.

In Seattle they had a guy in Belltown being a nuisance with a loud charger at all hours of the night in an urban setting. They knew who he was and he lived with his mom (lol). I never understood why the community didn’t deal with it when the police would not. Lack of enforcement is what leads to vigilantism.

>I never understood why the community didn’t deal with it when the police would not.

Because if you are the one who actually has to do the violence rather than outsourcing it to the state it becomes clear this isn't a subject worth that violence.

Put yourself in the shoes of the guy who has to do the pistol whipping. Unless you've got a badge and a state paycheck and can just blindly live with your actions as "it's muh job" and know that just about everyone will agree it's just not worth it.

Hence why only the state ever applies violence over such subjects.

I think it’s cameras. I used to know people who took these matters into their own hands with baseball bats to the offending vehicle at 3 in the morning. But that was many years ago where if there were any witnesses they’d be glad some blue collar kind of guy got fed up with the noise making nuisance of a car.

When you say enforcement isn't worth it, you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society.

It's also pretty likely that the state violence will be a threat rather than a literal pistol whipping. Harder for the vigilante to make that work.

>you end up letting the most inconsiderate people with some of the worst decision making set the tone for society.

How's that different than letting complainers send state violence enforce stuff that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?

"that's not a problem worth thinking about to most people?"

Begs the question.

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