this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 78 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Most motorists? Why is it only people who enjoy motoring that get a say in this? What about the rest of us?

I don't drive and I want them to crack down on those loud as feck vehicles, especially the dirt bike races they have regularly.

Loud as feckin hell.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Car brain headline / premise. Of course only the opinion of motorists is actually valid, you poor jaywalking peasant!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I think the point is to show that even amongst their peers, people who love loud pipes are a minority that the majority would gladly see being stopped.

I agree now but I once was young and had a loud pipe on my truck and on my motorcycle (always with a catalytic converter though!), I think it's just a natural phase in the car person's evolution... Then you've got a bunch of Harley riders and Dodge Ram drivers that never grow past that phase...

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I think they were assuming that ~100% of non-motorists agreed

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (12 children)

Intentionally loud exhausts are obnoxious and selfish. As much as I dislike it, however, I'd far rather deal with the noise than having yet more surveillance. We're already the #3 most surveilled country in the world, only the USA and China is worse.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Harley Davidson bikes are just noise pollution. Unlike cars they are build like this out of the factory.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Yea to me it's not the volume of the engine/exhaust. It's that it's intentionally obnoxious

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

We may be number 3 but we must be number 1 in terms of % of people monitored by some form of camera. The USA road network is nowhere near as heavily monitored as the UK.

Driving through France, Belgium and the Netherlands was very free compared to the UK.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A taxi driver in Singapore once told me that they hold this title, ahead of the UK. He then pointed out the cameras on almost every lamp post.

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[–] [email protected] 58 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Noise cameras? They're called MICROPHONES

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

But they need a camera to grab the license plate of the offending vehicle....

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

I’m not sure if this a joke. Noise cameras are a real thing. They use an array of microphones to show which parts of an image are emitting sound and at what level.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I read it as being a riff off of "speed" cameras, which are obviously cameras triggered by speed and not cameras that capture the concept of speed on film.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago

I live in a city center, and frequently have loud cars drive past. Some are substantially worse than others. The loudest of them are so loud that when they go past I can't hear my TV for 30 seconds or so, and that's with my windows all closed and listening via headphones.

Something really does need to be done to enforce the noise laws that are often being ignored.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never even considered that was an option. I figured loud jackasses was just something we'd have to live with.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Can we do this with mouths too?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm on the fence. Daft custom exhaust on a 1.5 turbo 3cyl is stupid, but there's no way I can agree to more surveillance.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I guess it depends what your comfort level for surveillance is.
In this case, it would likely be "camera activated at 96dBA, numberplate in view was BO55 MAN, NIP being sent to keepers address"

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

It would be brilliant if it was this isolated. But it seems like every step in surveillance always leads to more surveillance. It's always some innocent excuse, without ever drawing the full picture together with preexisting stuff.

There's now a generarion that has grown up without ever having experienced not being watched.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Some idiot is going to hang out near the camera with a boom box and play loud engine noises every time an electric vehicle drives by.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (18 children)

(Apologies for USA centric comment)

I think if that was proposed in the USA, people's heads might actually explode. When 2 roundabouts were put in nearby, some people acted like the UN new world order was on its way. I grew up in Basingstoke so I love roundabouts. Thankfully people have come around to the idea.

I'd support it just so my dog can walk near a road without some pickup gunning its engine as it flies past us. Any kind of traffic speed reduction is treated with fury over here.

People with loud pipes don't realize they look like a nobend and sound like this: https://youtube.com/shorts/s0xqopmjbSo?feature=share

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m American and love roundabouts. I think my fellow drivers hate them because they require a small amount of thought and planning, which is too much to ask from your average American driver.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'll take the loud cars if we can get some real fucking regulations on headlight brightness so I don't get blinded every time I drive at night.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is already the regulation in the Highway Code:

114: "You MUST NOT use any lights in a way which would dazzle or cause discomfort to other road users"

The "MUST NOT" indicates that this is a legal requirement and so it is a criminal offense to disobey it. Now if we could get the police to actually ENFORCE the legal requirements in the Highway Code, then maybe things might improve on the roads.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean if that's the case then they have to enforce it on the companies as well because in 2023 it's the default on many models on the road, not even with their brights or high beams on.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not really in favor of surveillance but it should be legal and socially acceptable to throw rocks at cars that have been straight piped. Fuck em. If you make your car louder on purpose you should be punished

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Its motorbikes round my way that are stupidly loud. Not even kidding you can hear some of them a mile away. I know this because I can see the road about a mile away and still hear them!

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

All motorists are loud. Cities aren't loud, cars are loud. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTV-wwszGw8

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (6 children)

some are a shit-ton louder than others though

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago

Do it! I hate loud cars. Noise pollution kills.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I've taken to muttering "There goes the Vroom Vroom Man in his vroom vroom" every time one of these pricks rumbles by. It solves nothing, but makes me laugh.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

I want headlight cameras to clamp down on idiots blinding other drivers with their brighter-than-the-Sun headlights.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

So, now I have to choose which I dislike more: government surveillance spooks or jerks with loud engines? Jeez, that's a tough call.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Please. I live on one of the busier streets in my town, right by an intersection. The amount of people driving by with cars that sound like someone's farting through a megaphone are insanely obnoxious. Fuck, most the time they're shit boxes that go slower than normal cars. People in my area buy cheap, shitty cars, pay to have a falsified safety, then make them loud and obnoxious while slowing down traffic because their cars can barely accelerate.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Yes, this is something that's unfortunately necessary

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Wouldn't it be cheaper to make it an MOT fail?

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The point is that most really loud cars are made to be loud. And usually equipped with a way to quickly undo that, if needed.

I've seen a TV report on some policemen hunting "tuned" cars. They were following an obnoxiously loud car in an unmarked police car, stopped them, and took measurements - suddenly, the car was "just normal". But they knew what they heard, and the measurements they had taken from a distance had been way louder than the measurements taken at a defined distance from the exhaust, so they impounded the car for further investigation. And found a switch in the glove compartment that changed the car from "normal" to "loud".

You've got to catch them red-handed. As long as they can disable or just quickly undo something like that before a MOT , it won't get a single idiot and his car off the road.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The camera records an image of the vehicle and its noise level, creating evidence that can be used by police to issue fines.

RAC head of policy Simon Williams said: "Our research with drivers shows there is a very strong desire to put an end to the scourge of excessively noisy vehicles that disturb the peace all around the country.

"It's plain wrong that those who have fitted their cars with modified exhausts, some motorbike riders and supercar owners can currently just get away with making an unacceptable amount of noise.

"There is no good reason why cars and motorbikes should make so much noise, so the sooner effective camera enforcement can be put in place the better."

Roads minister Richard Holden said: "Boy racers are an anti-social menace and we have extensively trialled noise camera technology in various parts of the country over the past year.

"We are currently analysing data from the trials and will update in due course on any future measures which will help bring peace and tranquillity back to our towns, cities and villages."


I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

On the bright side, at least you don't have coal-rollers...

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Can't they just deal with it at the MOT?

Plus I'm pretty sure it would be pointless recording the noisy bollock whizzing up and down my road on his motorbike, because apparently number plates are optional when there's fuck all police about.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You know at my old house there was an ice cream van that made my life mildly more irritating as his chimes were on ear splittingly loud (guy must have drove with earplugs), and frankly I'd have loved it if somebody would have actually enforced the law (there is actually a law for ice cream van chimes) and an automated system like this would be one way!

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