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New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

roadandtrack.com

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Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#172
Meh, it's not motorcycles & cars that are the problem in my neck of the woods. It's quarries and logging companies that don't maintain their trucks & have unmuffled compression brakes.

I can 100% guarantee a big rig running an unmuffled jake brake down a 50mph road is 10x louder than any motorcycle you have ever heard

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#173

About 7 years ago I was toying with making an open-source raspberry pi with a decibel meter you could stick to your window and it would listen for loud noises and tweet the police department to say that a loud noise (likely motorcycle groups that ride up and down my street) had been located at X location. I had a few friends who said they would also put them in their windows, so we could have a few devices coordinate…

> I spoke to a police officer friend about what to do, and he said the police just didn't care. I pointed out how easily they could use a decibel meter on their phone to measure how loud, but it was a complete non-interest for them.

Ostensibly this is because the incentives aren't aligned properly. The reason why many areas over-enforce traffic violations is because of quotas and incentive structures that encourage people to hand-out tickets. If you did the same thing with noise, you could actually encourage departments to try to enforce this.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#174
post #57
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

There's a freeway about a mile from my house. Summer nights with the windows open, I can easily be awakened by a very loud motorcycle. The freeway is raised and I'm in a sort of canyon (no line of sight to freeway, though!!). Maybe the acoustics are just perfect for my bedroom, but I doubt it's just me. There are probably a million people within earshot of this noise. Lest people think I'm a motorcycle hater: I owned…

That's happening to you because sound is refracted by the atmosphere at night and bounced back toward the ground.

https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna43154773

> "What we managed to show is the combination of the crosswind and the temperature gradient can cause sound that's going to go vertically (to) get refracted back down," he said. "The sound was literally bent back downwards."

> The effect often happens at dawn and dusk because sound bends from hotter air into cooler air. During the day, the ground is hotter than the air above it so sound bends vertically upward.

> "Its only when the sun stops falling on the ground that the ground cools down. Then the air gets hotter above," he said. "That's when sound can bend towards the ground and become trapped."

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#175
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

It’s strange to complain about occasional motorcycle noise when emergency sirens could be heard all the time on Manhattan. Orders of magnitude more than in any other city I’ve been to. Or you New Yorkers tune that out?

I hear way more honking than sirens.

But even granting that sirens are louder, they serve an explicit purpose. Loud cars and motorcycles do not.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why this is getting downvoted, increasing exposure to police increases number of shootings, especially for minorities. And don’t ask for citations, this is and has been all over everywhere for years.

Only 13 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...

What about armed Black men? Having a gun is not grounds to shoot someone. Remember, we have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#178
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

It’s strange to complain about occasional motorcycle noise when emergency sirens could be heard all the time on Manhattan. Orders of magnitude more than in any other city I’ve been to. Or you New Yorkers tune that out?

This is something I noticed when I was in the US - It seemed that emergency vehicles leave their sirens on the whole time. Here in Aus they'll leave them off and only turn them on when coming up to an intersection that they don't have traditional right of way on, then back off again (lights on the whole time).

Am I wrong about this? I was only in a couple of cities but it was stark how I could always hear sirens

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#179
post #2

Good. I look forward to this enforcement in my city. I currently live against a major road. During the night, the traffic noise isn’t disturbing, except for about one vehicle in a thousand. And that motorcycle wakes me at 3am. For weeks on end. My neighbor’s kid’s motorcycle. On his way to work at 3am, has to gun it when turning out of the neighborhood, waking everyone. These are neighbors who had shot their next doo…

You may have seen numerous videos, but just thought I'd share another one that I saw recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2TaWG4aeEU

Re: New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars

#180
post #4

One egregiously loud motorcycle rolling through manhattan can be a nuisance to literally millions of people. This is unreasonable and a ticketing system like this makes a ton of sense. Police enforcement could probably solve the issue just as effectively. Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in front of them. If they would just stop ignoring such things the frequency would surely go down as well.

There is one car that drives by my neighborhood on a regular basis that sets off multiple car alarms as it goes by. Some times it's in the middle of the day, some times it's in the middle of the night. If I can hear it in the house through walls / windows etc from a distance I can't imagine how loud it'll be in the car itself.

Putting aside consideration for others around you, what is even the appeal of hearing damage levels of car noise?

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