[jimmytidey]

In suburban London and the surrounding countryside, so much of the noise is caused by a handful of motorbikes that have been made deliberately, I think usually illegally, noisy.

Stopping noisy vehicles would improve millions of people's lives and moderately upset a few thousand bikers.

I have no idea why it isn't a more popular cause.

One person doing laps of a built up area in their modified car is likely waking up tens of thousands of people. The police do nothing. If you had a party that caused equivalent nuisance it would be shut down instantly.

[ricardobayes]

Many "grown-up" countries do care about this. This problem is non-existant in Austria, or Germany for the most part. Roadside police checks consist of decibel metering, which they are trained to use. They will impound the vehicle on the spot if its over the legal limit. Even race tracks have strict sound limits, the scrutineering process has a sound measurement part.

[mikub]

I can tell you this problem does exist(and is getting worse) in germany, and it's terrible. Calling the cops doesn't help, because they really don't care, I mean they even don't care anymore if cars are parking on the sidewalk. I live in a small "town" of around 10.000 people, I really can't imagine how bad it must be in bigger citys.

[Metus]

> This problem is non-existant in Austria, or Germany for the most part.

This is highly dependent on where in Germany you are talking about. In some parts the police don't care at all.

[vmfunction]

can imagine that in Berlin, but a city with 10.000 people?

[victornomad]

Living in Berlin, I disagree with you. Noisy motorbikes and cars with techno full volume is the bread and butter in my hood.

[jimmytidey]

This makes so much sense. I wish the UK would take the same approach.

[driekwartappel]

A lot of cities already have a communication channel in place to notify authorities about noise (like sending them an email about the culprit).

But its difficult to gather evidence of noisy vehicles, and could be a nuisance to notify authorities.

I wonder if a "NoisyVehicleRecorder" app/device would be able to capture the evidence from the comfort of our apartments or yard?

The device and app should be able to - Take accurate(ish?) noise levels, and start recording above a certain decibel - Store the recording somewhere -- AI_Vision can then spot if there is a car in the video, if not then delete the video -- AI_Vision can then extract the number plate from the video, if no number plate then delete the video - At the end of the week the app should send yourself a report of the culprits in descending order of most infringements per license plate - The user then decides to forward these to the authorities (this email address could be pre-stored in the app somewhere as well per city) - Would be great if this app could be open source so it can be tweaked per country according to their laws

Possible issues: * Recording cars without permission might be an issue * The device might be too expensive, as it might need to be waterproof / burglarproof

[globular-toast]

Not just London. I've written about this on here before. Last time I was in the Peaks all I could hear were revving engines coming from somewhere miles away. It's getting really hard to get away from these bastards now.

The worst part of cars and motorbikes is they can't hear it. Motorbikes helmets are ear defenders too. The cabins of cars protect users from the engine noise. It's just everyone else that has to put up with it.

[ycombinete]

Been in the Cotswolds for a week and the arseholes revving their modified shitty old cars as they ride through these small towns is quite horrible.

[dan-robertson]

I think there’s often a belief that louder motorcycles are safer because cars will be more likely to notice them.

Though I think the small cheap engines in scoters or small bikes are loud because making them quieter would be more expensive.

[jimmytidey]

I've heard the safety argument before and I find it astonishing. If you can't drive safely without making a noise audible from miles away, your vehicle isn't fit for the road. However this argument does hint at what bikers are often doing, which is racing on public roads and massively breaking speed limits.

I think modern scooters are also held to strict noise standards, the noisy ones have been made noisy deliberately.

[dan-robertson]

I think if you talk to responsible motorbike riders, you’ll easily find people who have had near or actual collisions because because a car didn’t see them and the driver wasn’t trying hard enough to check for the places a motorbike might be. It’s easy for a motorbike to be hidden behind the A-pillar of a car if that car is entering a roundabout and the bike is going round, for example, so if a driver isn’t paying enough attention and moving their head to see round blind spots, they can hit a bike. Similarly for any manoeuvre that involves crossing lanes: drivers often don’t notice smaller motorcycles or scooters (or cyclists).

[thunfischbrot]

This happens regardless of the noise the motorcycle is emitting though. In slow traffic, the advantages of noise are low. At speed, you can't hear the engine of the bike before its too late. Cars are way too well isolated nowadays for the noise to be a major factor in collisions with bikes in my experience.

[dan-robertson]

I’m not trying to claim that the loudness theory is correct. If I try to imagine what it’s like to be a biker who has had one or several near-misses/accidents due to careless drivers, whose biker friends espouse the loudness theory, it’s pretty easy for me to see that person feeling a louder bike would be better.

[citrin_ru]

And yet cyclists don't install loudspeakers so cars would notice them. A motorbike is more visible than a bicycle and can go with the flow speed so unless one drives dangerously it should be safer than cycling even without loud engine.

[dan-robertson]

Cyclists are slower and plenty of cyclists will have had actual collisions or near-misses with eg car doors being suddenly opened into the bike line, cars cutting across the bike lane without looking, and so on.

[citrin_ru]

Both riding a bicycle and driving a motorbike is less safe than driving a car because they are harder to notice and less protected but there should be some compromise between safety for a biker and noise pollution or a large are around the road.

As to cyclists to be slower: 1. a motorbike driver can choose to go below speed limit is the situation / road configuration makes it unsafe to go fast. 2. low speed is not always safer - on a straight road outside intersections speed of the flow (or just below) is safer.

[nicbou]

This would hold more ground if the people who say that wore full gear and full face helmets. They tend not to.

[thomastjeffery]

In practice, even a loud engine is practically silent until it passes in front of you.

[mathieuh]

I ride a pushbike a lot and I only hear those stupid motorbikes right as they go past me. Even the headwind from cycling at a moderate speed like 30 km/h is enough to completely drown the motorbikes out. Usually all they do is scare the shit out of me as they come flying past.

I imagine inside modern cars that completely seal you off from the outside you wouldn't be able to hear them at all.

[simonebrunozzi]

And police sirens at 3am. One of the reasons I left San Francisco, and now live in Venice, Italy.

[mise_en_place]

Engine noise is due to fuel injection. Not sure how that’s illegal.

[CrampusDestrus]

We have been able to make very quiet engines for decades, noisy ones only exist to please people who need to feel the power of their car

[oblak]

I'd bet these sort of people derive their pleasure almost exclusively by knowingly annoying others. Power and speed are just bonuses. The main thing is annoying everyone else.

[tombert]

Sure but weren't mufflers invented specifically to address this? I think the OP is trying to talk about people who modify or remove mufflers in order to actively make their car louder.

Pretty much every car for the last thirty years has had fuel injection, but most of them aren't very loud.

[ycombinete]

He’s not talking about engine noise. He’s talking about illegally modified exhaust mufflers etc. that are much louder than they should be.

[jimmytidey]

No doubt engine noise is caused by lots of factors. You can modify they exhaust to make it louder or quieter. I understand a lot of bikers modify their exhaust to make it louder.

As I understand it, there is a legal limit on noise emissions some for vehicles. To get round this bikes are supplied with a quiet exhaust and a second loud exhaust. They tell customers the loud exhaust is for use on private race tracks but obviously this is widely ignored.

[RivieraKid]

You missed the point.

[mise_en_place]

You can call out hooliganism or whatever the bad behavior is without making ridiculous claims about how engine noise is somehow illegal. That not only detracts from the point, it makes the poster look sort of ridiculous.

[jimmytidey]

There are legal standards for both vehicle noise and vehicle emissions, at least in the UK. When owners modify their exhaust to make them noisier, they are likely breaching one or both standards. It is specifically illegal. https://www.gov.uk/noise-pollution-road-train-plane#:~:text=....

[ricardobayes]

People like you are the real destroyers of communities. You're doing nothing against the guidelines, but arguing "just because" and trolling. Your comments have added nothing of value to the discussion.

[2-718-281-828]

why would fuel injection cause noise?