You already know a significant portion of the population would wear that as a badge of pride.
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I’m not the that the political will exists; but the obscured-or-defaced license plate crowd has to park some time; and one would hope that they could be hunted down when those opportunities present themselves.
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I wish.
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I get what you are saying but I believe your example is flawed. The ‘we can’t be responsible for how people use the racing performance parts we sell’ strategy has been mooted for about 5 years now. Just ask the Diesel Brothers in UT or any number of vehicle tuners around the US who have been legislated or sued off the map by the Feds.
As well, there are very few cars rolling around these days with aftermarket tunes and illegal exhausts. In NY, DC, and most states with regular inspections or emissions tests, these vehicles are flagged during inspection and repairs are mandatory.
Virtually all of the loud exhaust noises, the pops and bangs, those are coming from completely stock vehicles that have passed applicable state and federal noise regulations. Just click the sport mode on any vehicle with performance intentions and the car switches from silent to extroverted noise maker. And it is legal.
If cars need to be quieter (and they do) that needs to be addressed at the Federal level. The EU, for example, rolled out Euro Cap 5 laws this year. Amongst other things like CO2 emissions caps, they lowered the db cap on automobile and trucks. This is how you legislate noise issues. Using detection tools coupled with flawed nuisance laws and poorly trained reviewers just creates revenue for the state and for lawyers.
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Do you know what a “Straight Pipe” is? Or a Catalytic Converter “Bypass” pipe is?
Perfectly LEGAL for “testing” your exhaust, but that’s not what they are actually used for.
They are installed with a cable and lever to switch back and forth between straight exhaust (no cat, no muffler) and stock. Or something to that effect. When they want a few extra HP, or they just feel like making a lot of noise, they enable the Straight Pipe part. If a cop shows up or they have to do emissions testing, they flip it back to stock.
Lots of these available for purchase. Are there really that many people “testing” their exhaust systems? Again, perfectly legal, but how they are actually used is not.
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So if the speed limit is 30mph and the driver of a brand new car goes 120mph through that area, that is something that needs to be addressed at the Federal Level?
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Is there something about this situation that makes it different, and more fundamentally inimical, to local regulation than, say, maximum volume on a stereo system or maximum speed on a vehicle?
I could definitely see the need for some consumer-protection related attention if a vender were in the business of selling vehicles that are incapable of meeting legal operating standards without suitably dire warnings to that effect; but that’s quite different from selling vehicles that can meet a given local standard but can also be configured in ways that don’t.
There’s nothing about the fact that cars capable of hitting 120MPH are legal that makes getting cited for not staying under 30 in a thickly settled school zone illegitimate; nor is there anything about selling stereo systems well suited to basement use on 20 acre rural plots being legally unproblematic that makes one any less deserving of getting a noise complaint when you decide to throw a little party in your apartment instead.
Unless one wants either a federal-level prohibition of anything that some local ordinance would forbid(which seems deeply unviable) or to require people to put up with literally anything that is legal in enough contexts that the feds can’t just ban it(also deeply problematic); you arrive at the (seemingly obvious and not overly troublesome) position that you can, in fact, buy things that can only be used in certain ways in some contexts; more or less as it has always been with more or less any class of good.
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I guess one could never know…
Even if the parts are DOT compliant, the noise level is regualted seperatly. Perhaps you could… I dunno… have a sound detetion device. Microphone might be the word I’m looking for…
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How can the cameras tell the difference between an illegally modified exhaust, one that is OEM stock, or an exhaust that has been modified legally with DOT compliant parts? Two of those situations, while some might not be happy with the noise, are perfectly legal.
No.
Not here, anyway.
WAC 173-62-030 In-use motor vehicle noise performance standards
Under 45 mph
• 78 dBA motorcycles
• 72 dBA vehicles < 10,000 lbs
• 86 dBA vehicles > 10,000 lbs
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This is a terrible false equivalence to constant noise pollution. Do you live next to an airport?
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I think it was more of a poem than a false equivalence.
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Fair enough. This literally hits close to home, and I guess I have very little chill or humor about it left.
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Cars commonly are sold at legal emissions level, but eventually fail emissions. Not the car manufacturer’s problem. Similarly, you can get your windows tinted dark enough that it gets you a ticket, or doesn’t pass inspection. Not the window tinters problem.
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I live a block away from a Harley dealership in Sonoma County, and those guys get together and ride on weekends and it’s like THUNDER. (Cue: Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild”) The house shakes. And the organized rides seem to have 300 guys at least. Shit goes on for about 20 minutes, as they leave the dealership in what I think of as “packs.”
The state of CA is enormously tolerant of these guys, and I don’t know the politics of it, but suspect that a lot of these dudes are “weekend warriors” who are professionals who make bank and have some political clout.
As a bicyclist, I have been startled by far-too-quiet EVs. They pull up behind me and beep. WTF? Wow: I never heard them coming. And hell yea: I’m always listening.
My undying beef re: noise: is leaf blowers. My gawd, is there any REASON why these infernal devices exist? (I’m well into Old Man Yells At Clouds Mode now, ya notice.) Not only are leaf blowers LOUD but they just kick up dust and move the leaves and other detritus from here…to over there, or where “the property line of the guy who’s paying me ends.” (Must be the thinking?)
And yea, in my day I was in bands and cranked my Marshall Stack and no doubt did some irreversible ear damage, performing copies of Thin Lizzy and Judas Priest tunes over and over. Certainly the neighbors called the cops on us, who tended to be nice about it: check out these metal dudes with hair down to their asses. And we were stoned sweetness to the cops, who we assumed would probably kill us one day. Just not today.
I regret being a bad neighbor in the LA 'burbs in the 1980s. If some kid is playing music WAY too loud, I cannot in any decent conscience do anything about it. 'Cuz hypocrisy.
And I do crawl into bed stoned these days, put on the headphones and crank…well, last night it was Mendelssohn’s Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But it’s all self-inflicted. A lot of jazz. I have no case with all this, it seems.
'Cept leaf blowers. Damn them all to hell!
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Those numbers only mean something when you test using the exact parameters outlined elsewhere in those regulations. I looked a little further and it explains that those measurements need to be taken at 50ft behind the vehicle from the center of the road. If the police enforcement measurement isn’t in that exact location, those dB’s don’t mean anything. 78db at 50ft is likely in the 80s at 25ft.
All I’m saying across my posts in this thread is that this is a fruitless endeavour, as most nuisance policing tends to be.
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Blares! Blares! Blares!
Alright, I’ll do it…
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We have fun here, don’t we!
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These loud cars are also dangerous to pedestrians-- particularly in underpasses (and probably tunnels).
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Is this going to be separate from the red light camera? I’m not understanding how an intersection mounted camera is going to be able to accurately detect which car is violating the noise ordinance. Or is it only going to check for noise if the red light has been triggered?
Perhaps on a two lane road you could get a good level of accuracy, but at an intersection with multiple lanes (including turn lanes) I’m not sure how you’d do it without multiple microphones.
It seems like a clunky way to “automate” policing. I also haven’t come across a red light camera in NC in almost a decade (but then again I don’t visit the RDU area much any more either).
Those numbers only mean something when you test using the exact parameters outlined elsewhere in those regulations. I looked a little further and it explains that those measurements need to be taken at 50ft behind the vehicle from the center of the road. If the police enforcement measurement isn’t in that exact location, those dB’s don’t mean anything. 78db at 50ft is likely in the 80s at 25ft.
All I’m saying across my posts in this thread is that this is a fruitless endeavour, as most nuisance policing tends to be.
What are you talking about? Those measurements are instructions! Placing a microphone 50 ft away isn’t some kind of impossible mission, that’s just the process.
Nuisance policing? You feel that people with absurdly loud cars aren’t a real problem? How nice that you don’t have the same problems many of the rest of us do. What are the odds this also has something to do with what you drive?
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