[HN Gopher] New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket...
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New York is using cameras with microphones to ticket loud cars
Author : KoftaBob
Score : 256 points
Date : 2022-02-16 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.roadandtrack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.roadandtrack.com)
| smm11 wrote:
| Good. Now target Harley Davidson motorcycles.
| pedalpete wrote:
| 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 to confirm it
| wasn't just a loud neighbour or something.
|
| I built a prototype, but when I started measuring how loud the
| motorcycles were, it was often within the legal limits (I think
| 80db or something).
|
| Partly, this is because it was inside my apartment, but they sure
| sounded loud.
|
| 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.
|
| Good to see NYC taking action on this. Hopefully more cities
| follow suit.
| tsomctl wrote:
| I had a neighbor with a Dodge Charger with no muffler. I talked
| to a police officer about it. He basically told me that he
| himself drove a loud car, and his neighbors complained to him
| about it because he leaves for work at 5:00 AM, and that's the
| nature of sports cars and you just have to get used to it.
| Shank wrote:
| > 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.
| intrasight wrote:
| Speeding should be enforced the same way. Police have better
| things to do.
| defterGoose wrote:
| I'd argue that life for everyone would be better if police were
| actually writing tickets for noise rather than just doing 80 on
| the freeway at 2am.
| shmageggy wrote:
| Great news, and I hope this catches on elsewhere. Our acoustic
| environment is a commons, and a particularly fragile one at that.
| Quiet surroundings are a boon to health and happiness, a fact
| that is not only immediately obvious to anyone with ears and a
| nervous system but also proven by scientific studies. However it
| can be destroyed so easily by one a-hole to the detriment of all.
| It's about time we start protecting it.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Apparently it's happening in Paris too:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/noise-radar-in...
| bandris wrote:
| and in London since 2020: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-
| england-london-54452835
| notyourday wrote:
| Good. They need to make fines so high that getting it twice means
| going to a poor house.
| habosa wrote:
| YES THANK YOU
|
| The vast majority of motorcyles in America are illegally modified
| to be louder than they should [0]. This crime is basically
| impossuble to police because you need an offer with a reliable
| sound meter device in the right place at the right time. I am
| glad NY is going to automate this.
|
| I used to live on a street (Guerrero St in SF) that had loud
| motorcycles ripping down in the middle of the night on a daily
| basis. Every time this happens I am sure multiple people wake up,
| causing loss of sleep and therefore loss of happiness and
| productivity. All so some selfish rider can have their loud toy.
|
| 0: https://rickeyholtsclaw.com/2016/03/10/the-truth-about-
| loud-...
| wallacoloo wrote:
| from your source:
|
| > Approximately 60-80% of the large displacement motorcycles
| operating on our public roadways at any given time in the
| United States have been illegally modified
|
| you're missing an important qualifier in your own text ("large
| displacement"). your source also repeatedly says that noise
| disruption in and of itself is domestic terrorism, which
| seems... a little ABSURD to me? really? are people TERRIFIED by
| loud motorcycles? no: it's a disturbance, an annoyance, a
| nuisance, many things. but TERRORISM it is not. i really
| wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in this source of yours.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| But why would anyone do that? What's the advantage of having a
| loud motorcycle?
| 0_____0 wrote:
| If the DMV enforced smog checks for motorcycles this problem
| would disappear within the year - the aftermarket exhausts
| delete the catalytic system and mean that the output of oxides
| is actually higher than most cars. It's trivial to swap an
| exhaust but most riders won't bother to keep around an extra
| muffler just to swap it on every few years.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Even factory stock NOx emissions from motorcycles are ~1000x
| higher under California rules compared to light-duty cars and
| trucks.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| From some brief googling it seems that catalytic systems
| haven't widely been implemented on motorcycles until fairly
| recently, so that ratio may be for motorcycles without any
| emissions equipment, even if left stock. That being said,
| my '05 BMW for sure had a cat. I haven't been able to find
| info on whether they're similarly effective compared to
| catalytics on modern cars.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I don't completely understand it but California laws seem
| to permit the sale of new motorcycles with very old
| designs. It appears that the laws come into force when a
| new model needs to be certified, or something like that.
| So you can buy a brand new XR650L from Honda, that still
| has a 1980s carbureted engine design and no catalytic
| converter, and that's a CARB-compliant bike for some
| reason.
| oyebenny wrote:
| I wonder what else they're listening to. I wonder if their data
| streams are as regulated as private firms.
| jmpman wrote:
| 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 door neighbor's cat, so
| unlikely to adapt their actions based upon my request. I'd
| happily pay for this device for my town. And yes, I've
| investigated soundproofing my bedroom. Quote was around $16k.
| Multiply that by the dozens of neighbors he wakes each night, and
| he forces everyone else to bare hundreds of thousands of dollars
| in upgrades so he can make noise at 3am. As much as I don't want
| to step on anyone's "freedoms", noise sucks.
| jiveturkey42 wrote:
| Have you tried confronting them about it?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Statistically, confronting a Harley rider who guns their bike
| in their neighbourhood at 3 am, tends to have a negative
| return on investment. Given the ops description as "they also
| shot another neighbour's cat", I feel it likely they will
| fall well within the normal bell curve.
|
| I agree in general that approaching your neighbours first is
| the theoretically right thing to do before escalating. That
| works out well far far less likely than I'd like it to.
| ilamont wrote:
| Not a car. He shot a _cat_.
|
| In our neighborhood, there is a family in the same vein
| whose kid insisted on honking the horn whenever he rounded
| a corner, no matter what time of day or night. Nice
| requests via email by the two nearest homeowners did
| nothing. Showing up at his house after one of the incidents
| antagonized the father. The only thing that got the kid to
| stop was exposing him (describing the car, which is unique)
| on the neighborhood FB group, and the father only
| reluctantly stopped his son after angrily criticizing the
| affected family and condemning the issue coming out on
| Facebook.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>Not a car. He shot a cat.
|
| Well... that's _still_ kinda bad, I think...?
|
| :)
|
| Corrected the typo, thx!
| bronson wrote:
| I have. Now he guns it when he passes my house.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > These are neighbors who had shot their next door neighbor's
| cat, so unlikely to adapt their actions based upon my
| request.
| ahthat wrote:
| Towels work pretty well apparently (sometimes better than foam
| acoustic panels): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eKwb58vvFI
| leephillips wrote:
| That video has nothing to do with soundproofing.
| bowmessage wrote:
| You could buy your neighbor an electric motorcycle for less
| than $16k! :-) Best of luck.
| iqanq wrote:
| I'm not an authoritarian kind of guy but there are people who
| are better removed from society entirely.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| Similar deal here. Some asshole at my apartment got an
| expensive new car that literally the entire building (with god
| knows how many units, it's big) hears every single time he
| enters or leaves. He revs his engine twice on every single
| floor of the parking garage and all along the street I'm
| situated on. He'll even do it for hours on end (he did on
| Monday!). I honestly think he's trying to harass someone in
| particular because it's obscene at this point.
|
| Literally one person. Always the same car. I am so sick of this
| shit. Management is sick of it but "can't do anything." I have
| yet to meet a neighbor who is not aware of this problem and
| sick of it.
|
| I'm honestly amazed at the audacity of these people.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's not that amazing: They do it because they can, and they
| know that everyone around them has learned to be helpless to
| stop it. Consequence-free belligerence is endemic here (I'm
| assuming USA), because it's usually not against the law and
| when it is, nobody is willing to stop it. And if _you_ take
| action against it, you 're the one in trouble. So the bullies
| get free rein.
| t8e56vd4ih wrote:
| yes, this. what do you think would be hypothetically an apt
| repercussion? maybe a few drops of butyric acid down a
| window pane?
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I've heard that anti-SUV activists somewhere in the
| Nordics would place a small stone under the air valve cap
| and the screw it back on causing the tire to slowly go
| empty over the course of a day. Inconvenient,
| nondestructive - but also not very kind.
| _jal wrote:
| If he does that enough, I wouldn't be surprised by someone
| taking some self-help measures.
|
| Gas tank donations are one common approach, as is helping
| aesthetics by removing those unsightly air valves on tires.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| Oil pan drain plug removal can help them change the oil on
| their car, but remember to remind them to refill the oil or
| else their engine might seize!
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| When I was growing up I had heard that a good use for old
| potatoes was to weather-seal the open end of exhaust pipes.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Nobody will do anything because the kind of people who are
| annoyed by this kind of behavior are generally well off and
| religiously law abiding. The kind of people who would do
| that a) aren't that bothered by it and b) have bigger
| problems than someone else's loud car
|
| This is fundamentally a conflict of class based social
| norms. The kind of people who have obnoxiously loud cars
| don't have a lot of the kind of people who complain about
| obnoxiously loud cars in their social circles.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| they killed a neighbor's pet, but were they punished by the
| law? that's insane. and it also should significantly lower the
| threshold to having them in trouble as assholes again.
| brimble wrote:
| This kind of thing isn't all that uncommon. Police don't do
| much about crime, really (no, not even in middle-class white
| suburbia), as far as investigating or trying to punish
| anything. If you tried to bring the issue to them, you'd
| likely end up in a nasty he-said-she-said thing with your
| neighbor, possibly inviting further attacks from them, or
| might even end up (one way or another) being the ones
| receiving fines or other punishment (say, if they started
| recording your every move so they can find something to take
| to the cops, HOA, et c).
|
| Even if you caught it clearly on camera and can get the cops
| to give a shit, what's going to happen is probably a fine or
| probation, and now your demonstrably-shitty neighbors have a
| serious grudge against you. You've "won, but also lost so
| badly that you may end up having to move. So your best likely
| outcome, after much effort and possibly some expense, is a
| very Pyrrhic victory.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| By 'Pyrrhic victory', you mean enforcement action carries
| risks? That's true for every society in human history...
| brimble wrote:
| Is that how that reads to you?
| brigade wrote:
| It's pretty typical for cops not to bother to pursue animal
| cruelty charges, especially if it's "just" a neighbor's pet.
| Then if there's any potential "defense", like the pet
| entering their property, it's basically guaranteed it won't
| be pursued unless the victim has cop connections.
|
| They could be sued civilly, but the damages you'd win are
| basically the cost of a replacement pet, so super insulting.
| namlem wrote:
| Except in NY, IL, FL, and maybe TN, which have laws
| allowing recovery of damages beyond just the cost of
| replacement for a household pet.
| shtopointo wrote:
| 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
| bogwog wrote:
| Well if they go to work at 3am, that probably means they're
| asleep earlier in the day. All you gotta do is blast music at
| that time until they get the message.
|
| For extra fun, automate it to start playing music as early as
| you can to match their sleep schedule, even when you're out of
| the house. Say that it's to warm up your speakers for when you
| get home.
| alistairSH wrote:
| But loud pipes save lives! /s
|
| We have a similar problem. Replace "motorcycle" with "bro-
| dozer" and make it 4am.
|
| Noise sucks. And since the pandemic lockdowns have lifted, it's
| even more abrasive. Those few months of relative quiet were
| marvelous. Where I live, it's a lot of tire noise from a
| highway over a mile away - just a constant background "brrrrrr"
| that I didn't notice before and can't ignore today.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Curiously, Harley sounds don't raise my hackles the way a
| loud sport-bike does. What are they, Ducati's or something?
| There is just something just so shrill about their sound.
| ska wrote:
| Probably thinking inline 4 cylinders (so typically
| Japanese, not Italian).
|
| The high performance ones are are loud especially when
| they've opened the pipes a bit.
|
| Compared to the harleys, in general they are running more
| than twice the power out of less than half the displacement
| at more than double the RPM so it isn't really hard to see
| why/how the sound registers that way. Personally for street
| use I wish they'd take a 10% power hit for quieter bikes,
| but even the air intake is pretty loud at speed.
|
| Some of the aftermarket kits are obnoxiously loud _and_
| steal power, which is just stupid. Harley 's are
| particularly prone to this for some reason, though teens
| with R6's aren't immune either.
|
| If you do have a loud vehicle for track/whatever reasons I
| guess the main thing is not be an asshole about it.
| rabuse wrote:
| Most likely the Japanese bikes. A lot of Ducati's run in a
| parallel twin cylinder format, which doesn't rev as high as
| the inline 4's.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| > But loud pipes save lives! /s
|
| Bikers actually say that with a straight face. It drives me
| bonkers. If I look at any list on the internet about top 10
| ways to stay safe on a motorcycle, none of those lists will
| include "loud pipes". Yet, those same bikers will ignore
| other items on those safety lists like wearing brightly
| colored high visibility jacket/vest.
| screye wrote:
| > those same bikers will ignore other items on those safety
| lists like wearing brightly colored high visibility
| jacket/vest.
|
| If anything, the black leather jacket is practically a
| uniform.
|
| > But loud pipes save lives
|
| The argument falls flat on its face when you extrapolate it
| to any other medium. Cyclists and pedestrians should be
| going around with boomboxes attaches to their bodies.
|
| I love the sound of a good vehicle. But pump that sound in
| for the driver, not for the unconsenting bystander.
| ryandrake wrote:
| When I first heard of the new-ish trend where car makers
| are now playing fake engine noise through the car's
| speaker system[1], I thought "how stupid and phony". But,
| the more I think about it, it makes a whole lot of sense.
| Obnoxious engine noise is mostly for the benefit of vain
| drivers who need validation--so just play it at the
| driver, and keep it out of the community environment.
| It's a win-win. Driver gets to drive around hearing his
| loud vroom-vroom noises, and the public benefits from the
| quietness of modern engine design. There's no valid
| reason to deliberately project your vroom-vroom sounds at
| everyone else around you when you don't have to.
|
| 1: https://motorandwheels.com/cars-with-active-sound-
| design/
| asdfgasdfgasdgf wrote:
| Next time you are in a car driving next to a Harley, listen
| to it. It will be quiet even at a stoplight and inaudible
| at speed.
|
| The road is a noisy place. Cars are soundproofed to deal
| with that. A loud engine antagonizes everyone not driving
| but drivers won't even hear it.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| A _stock_ Harley is relatively quiet, although it 's
| still a bit louder than any modern car I've seen. The
| problem is that people regularly install aftermarket
| mufflers which do not muffle, even in states where this
| is theoretically illegal, and I've definitely heard them
| drown out my car radio in chk-chk-chk a few times.
| brimble wrote:
| > Next time you are in a car driving next to a Harley,
| listen to it. It will be quiet even at a stoplight and
| inaudible at speed.
|
| Do they make Harleys totally different where you're from?
| Serious question, maybe your country has noise
| regulations the US doesn't, or something, so they have to
| modify them for that market. This isn't at all true in
| the US.
| pandaman wrote:
| The post you're replying to is not about Harleys being
| silent in absolute sense but about their noise not
| standing out to _drivers_ over the noise of other cars,
| car 's own noise, and sound insulation.
| brimble wrote:
| Right, I haven't found that to be true at all. Some are
| louder than others (I assume they've been modded so?) but
| they're ~always quite loud and do not fade into the
| general background noise of the road.
| defterGoose wrote:
| It's not generally other drivers that are detrimentally
| impacted by loud cycles/vehicles (though there have been
| numerous times I got spooked by a rider gunning it to
| lane split next to me). The problem is for the people
| relaxing, trying to unwind in their homes being
| constantly assaulted by road noise.
|
| Edit: and the idea that a big Harley chopper idling at a
| stoplight isn't ridiculously loud is absurd. "FUD DUD DUD
| DUD DUD"
| dangerboysteve wrote:
| Maybe newer stock Harleys. When owners replace stock
| tailpipes with aftermarket ones, that's when the noise
| issue really comes in. Straight shotgun pipes are loud
| and have no baffles.
| Maximus9000 wrote:
| dekhn wrote:
| um... harleys have a wide range of sounds depending on
| accessories and aftermarket mods. I can definitely hear
| one idling if it's next to me.
| state_less wrote:
| While driving I-10 through Jacksonville, I witnessed a
| biker on a Harley splitting the lanes, riding on the
| dash. Hearing the rumble from well behind, I held my
| position in the lane as he passed but the next set of
| cars in front of me wasn't as prepared. When the biker
| slipped between the two cars in front, he decided to gun
| it, scaring the driver in front of me to swerve across
| the interstate, bouncing off both guardrails on each side
| of the interstate, like a pinball. Nearly caused a big
| pile up, while the biker motored off with his obnoxiously
| loud pipes. Granted most bikes aren't this loud, but
| there are plenty that will rattle your bones as they
| pass.
| WWLink wrote:
| > Cars are soundproofed to deal with that.
|
| That's why dodge charger owners always put the most loud
| obnoxious exhaust ever on them. I used to have a Chrysler
| 300 and it was THE QUIETEST car I've ever been in, by a
| longshot.
| rabuse wrote:
| Any evidence against this claim though?
| xkqd wrote:
| Historically, people just left for more rural parts rather than
| try and change behavior.
|
| I know your scenario is particularly egregious, but there's
| other stories in this thread that make me wonder how someone
| can live in Manhattan or along an interstate highway and still
| complain about noise.
| Sharlin wrote:
| We as a society should do everything we can to make cities
| nicer places to live because it's so much more sustainable
| than suburban lifestyle. This includes minimizing unnecessary
| noise.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > These are neighbors who had shot their next door neighbor's
| cat
|
| Jesus. At that point I'd go up to questionably legal methods to
| get these fuckers some justice. People who intentionally murder
| cats deserve everything that's coming for them.
| woah wrote:
| Hammershaft wrote:
| This is such an inane justification for intentionally
| killing a neighbor's pet.
|
| Children are intensely harmful to the environment over
| their lifespan. Had our conception of property rights
| legally permitted land owners to shoot people on their
| lawn, would you be chiding commenters for being angry that
| a neighbor had shot somebody's child for wandering on their
| lawn on the basis that that child was so harmful to the
| environment?
| chucksta wrote:
| Stand your ground laws exist, although i'm not sure how
| you would prove you were threatened by a child
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Where do you live that you can go around shooting cats in
| your yard? That's a felony where I live and I live in Texas
| which is a very gun friendly state.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| It's not legal to just shoot any animal because it's in
| your yard, come on
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> If they shot into someone 's house or even yard, they
| would be in jail._
|
| That's optimistmic.
|
| _> If they shot the cat when it was in their yard it was
| loose and their actions were probably completely legal._
|
| For domesticated animals like cats and dogs, this isn't
| true even on large personal tracts where shooting at
| nothing in particular is perfectly legal. You can't shoot
| someone's dog just because it's trespassing.
|
| And this _certainly_ isn 't generally legal to discharge a
| firearm at a non-threatening animal in most any suburb or
| city (OP has "dozens of neighbors").
|
| _> They are an invasive species. There are many operations
| to cull invasive species (including cats) on a much larger
| scale. Why aren 't you mad about those?_
|
| The comment about the cat is supposed to reflect on the
| character of the person driving loudly and abusing animals.
|
| Just because wildlife management sometimes requires culling
| doesn't mean that animal cruelty is no big deal.
| leephillips wrote:
| I'm with you. The problem is the people who let their cats
| outside, not the people who kill the cats. Why is a cat's
| life more important than the many wild birds that it will
| kill?
| jfk13 wrote:
| Why are the wild birds more important than all the
| insects they will kill? You should be grateful to the
| cats for helping to protect the bugs.
| leephillips wrote:
| They're not, intrinsically. But on an ecological level,
| domestic cats kill so many birds that they are
| responsible for severe reductions in some species
| populations. I happen to think that species preservation
| is important. So people's free-roaming domestic cats
| should be considered fair game.
| brimble wrote:
| > If they shot into someone's house or even yard, they
| would be in jail.
|
| Maybe over the weekend, _if_ they got caught and _if_ the
| cops could be convinced to care about it. Without some
| serious priors, I 'd expect probation and a fine to be the
| outcome. And now your neighbor, who was willing to shoot a
| cat, is very angry at you....
| lanamo wrote:
| this is a case for John Wick.
| Sharlin wrote:
| > As much as I don't want to step on anyone's "freedoms", noise
| sucks.
|
| I definitely want to step on anyone's "freedoms" if those
| freedoms egregiously infringe on other people's freedoms.
| megablast wrote:
| Do you drive??
|
| I find it hypocritical for someone to drive and complain about
| noise from a major road.
|
| And it's why people choose not to live near major roads.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| They said that they don't have a problem with 999 out of 1000
| cars. That's not being hypocritical.
| mastercheif wrote:
| There is a huge difference between the amount of noise
| generated by a Toyota Camry vs a car or motorcycle with a
| purposefully modified exhaust.
|
| I lived on a road with light-medium traffic recently. I
| couldn't tell you if 10 or 100 passenger cars went by the
| house.
|
| My blood pressure would shoot up whenever I heard a car with
| a "Burble Tune" go by:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY
| Gigachad wrote:
| Normal cars do not produce noise issues. I live in the city
| and it's basically _only_ motorbikes and modded cars I can
| hear.
| fallingknife wrote:
| How do you not go to jail for shooting the neighbor's cat?
| There is no possible claim of self defense like there would be
| with a dog.
| JackFr wrote:
| My children grew up from birth till they went to college on the
| second floor of a New York City apartment with their bedroom
| facing a relatively busy street (110th Street by Broadway)
|
| It is _astonishing_ what they can sleep through. My wife and I
| are in the back bedroom and street noise that wakes me up they
| just sleep right through.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Due process requires an accuser to take the stand at a hearing
| for cross-examination if requested by the defendant. All
| defendants have this right. Good luck getting the entire
| development team to explain the code, line by line, in front of a
| judge, explaining how the audio is always in-sync with the
| vehicle on screen.
| causalmodels wrote:
| It seems like it would just be a better idea to have meter maids
| do this manually rather seeding cameras and microphones with
| direct feeds to the state.
| humanistbot wrote:
| On the one hand, I think red light cameras and automated speed
| traps are unconstitutional and there have been shady companies
| caught fixing them. I hate the idea of putting super sensitive
| microphones in public spaces and connecting them directly to
| police departments.
|
| But on the other hand, fuck loud cars and motorcycles, they are a
| menace to society, and they are the only thing that makes my
| blood boil, when they wake me up at 2am.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Oh, that's fine, we'll just limit cars at the speed limit. They
| all ship with GPS for 20+ years, it's time to use it. Nobody
| needs to pay, nobody needs to simulate a PID controller.
| zanderz wrote:
| There have been microphone arrays in many neighborhoods for
| years: "ShotSpotter has been in operation for 25 years, serves
| more than 120 cities..." https://www.shotspotter.com/
| humanistbot wrote:
| That is terrifying, I had no idea.
| drsnow wrote:
| how are they unconstitutional?
| margalabargala wrote:
| To be clear, their constitutionality status is a matter of
| opinion.
|
| In my opinion, they should be deemed unconstitutional via a
| violation of rights against search and seizure, and rights
| for a proper trial. It's impossible to face your accuser in
| court, it's impossible to actually check the software used to
| identify whether you were speeding, and asymmetrically
| automating enforcement of something where it's in the
| enforcer's interest to find violations is a perverse
| incentive we should not allow in our legal system.
| barbazoo wrote:
| In the case of red light cameras, aren't there pictures to
| prove the violation?
| SilasX wrote:
| Right to trial, I could see the issue there. Right to
| inspect the evidence used against you, sure.
|
| But where on earth do you get an expectation of privacy in
| deafening sounds you blast in public, which people can't
| ignore even if they want to? And audible inside others'
| private areas?
| humanistbot wrote:
| You have no ability to question your accuser, because your
| accuser is a machine. The source code is proprietary. The
| data chain is secret. You have no ability to meaningfully
| audit it to see if it actually works or is making a lot of
| false positives.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| What shitty red light cameras are these where the data is
| all secret? In my city, tickets from red light cameras
| include a video of the incident, which clearly shows the
| car and traffic light.
|
| Is that really how it works elsewhere, they just send you a
| ticket saying "we caught you running a red light, please
| pay fine"? What happens if you show up to court to contest,
| can't you just point out they have literally no evidence?
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| it is extremely easy to edit a green light to a red
| light, just partially delay the feed. Data is
| meaningless.
| clusterfish wrote:
| If they actually did it at scale they would run into
| conflicting dashcam footage very quickly, and the whole
| conspiracy would go belly up before bearing any fruit.
|
| If you think data is meaningless we should also remove
| police cruisers' dashcams and stop the rollout of body
| cams, I guess? Those aren't conspiracy-proof either.
| sodality2 wrote:
| That implies malicious intent rather than a bug causing a
| false positive.
| amf12 wrote:
| > it is extremely easy to edit a green light to a red
| light, just partially delay the feed. Data is
| meaningless.
|
| It is extremely easy to tamper with most evidence, and
| there are ways to detect tampering.
| causalmodels wrote:
| I'm not aware of governments just asking one to pay a
| fine. The thing that really bothers me is that it allows
| the state to perform legal action at scale. If a city,
| let's say Chicago, just started sending people ticket how
| many would just pay it? From what I've seen [0], my guess
| would be a lot.
|
| [0] https://chicago.cbslocal.com/2021/07/29/chicago-
| speed-camera...
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| I agree red light cameras are problematic for other
| reasons, but parent's claim specifically was that they
| were unconstitutional because the evidence can't be
| inspected.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| Regular speed-guns have the same issues, though.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You can face your accuser (the traffic cop) and you can
| challenge the calibration/accuracy of their radar/lidar
| gun.
|
| If you challenge the accuracy they have to prove it was
| tuned recently (usually 6 months~) prior to issuing the
| ticket and tested the day of (usually).
|
| There IS an audit trail for of certificates and logs of
| tuning for radar guns so they can prove it in court if
| challenged.
|
| There is NOT an audit trail for traffic cams because the
| companies don't expose enough information to audit.
|
| If you challenge a traffic ticket from a red light
| camera, you will usually win because they can't prove you
| guilty.
| daenz wrote:
| Not OP and can't speak to constitutionality, but red light
| cameras drive some perverse incentives. There have been a
| number of verified reports[0] that cities with red light
| cameras shorten the length of the yellow light in order to
| get more tickets, and therefore revenue.
|
| 0. https://time.com/3505994/red-light-camera-problems-
| tickets/
| rbanffy wrote:
| Does any agency have the authority to enact a rule that
| mandates a minimum duration for the yellow light?
| ensignavenger wrote:
| The legality of them is largely in the implementation. For
| example, many red-light/speeding cameras don't prove who was
| driving the vehicle. There have also been issues with shady
| companies operating them and cities deliberately timing
| lights to increase ticket revenue.
| namlem wrote:
| They arguably violate the right to confront one's accuser in
| court. Not sure if I buy that argument personally, since
| there's probably a technician who operates the camera system
| who could show up to court.
| pizzabearman wrote:
| Kind of off topic. But we need to find a way to reduce the noise
| of squeaking subway trains.
| aqme28 wrote:
| YES. I have lived on some incredibly busy streets in New York.
| Cities aren't loud. Cars are loud.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| It's remarkable how much more pleasant a city is on streets
| that are closed down to cars. If your city hosts Ciclovias, go
| and check them out if only to sit at a restaurant outside and
| eat lunch in near total serenity.
| lamontcg wrote:
| This is an excellent example for people concerned with privacy
| rights.
|
| In order to have nice things the population really needs to
| culturally understand that "with great power comes great
| responsibility".
|
| Instead we have a culture of entirely selfish individualism, so
| the popular backlash is that damn near everyone is this thread
| (including myself) applauds the erosion of privacy rights because
| we're fed up and sick of living in a society with assholes.
|
| If we can't govern ourselves voluntarily, we'll be governed by
| machines that we build.
|
| We do desperately need to have income and wealth-adjusted tickets
| for these things though. A $20 slap on the wrist might be more
| than some people who are on the edge of homelessness can afford
| while a CEO might need a minimum of a $10k fine to even register
| for their attention.
| kmlx wrote:
| i think what you're looking for are called day fines. they're
| used in a lot of nordic countries.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine
| tqi wrote:
| > Instead we have a culture of entirely selfish individualism,
| so the popular backlash is that damn near everyone is this
| thread (including myself) applauds the erosion of privacy
| rights because we're fed up and sick of living in a society
| with assholes.
|
| I dunno, I find this framing by "Privacy Advocates" to be a
| bit... hyperbolic. When every little thing is the first step to
| complete tyranny, nothing is. To me at least these things are
| tradeoffs, and in this case it seems worth it?
| trgn wrote:
| Noise pollution is just one of the many reasons we should have
| never allowed cars to be the default mode of personal
| transportation.
|
| In practice, it is more quiet and peaceful at night in a dense
| walkable city neighborhood, than it is in the supposed bucolic
| suburbs or countryside. Purely because the first does not have
| cars.
|
| This enforcement is a great step, but the it's dabbling in the
| margins. Cars, and especially ICE cars, are fundamentally
| incompatible with a healthy and safe city life.
| antiterra wrote:
| > Purely because the first does not have cars.
|
| Not here in my suburb. The bulk of the noise comes almost
| entirely from katydids, crickets, cicadas, etc. There was
| plenty of car/truck noise at night in Manhattan, and it was
| particularly jarring when not among the hum of busier traffic.
| koolba wrote:
| I bet Trudeau wishes they had this in place in Ottawa.
|
| I understand the desire to curb excessive noise, but anything
| that involves a faceless machine dishing out summons is a hard
| no. One errant ticket is hours of wasted time where you're guilty
| until proven innocent.
|
| If they really want to do this, pay for some plain clothes
| officer with body cams to wander through the city. That would
| likely be cheaper and prevent all kinds of other crime as well.
| emadabdulrahim wrote:
| This should be implemented in every major city. Loud and modified
| motorcycles cause so much nuisance it's actually insane how they
| get away with it.
| hailmac wrote:
| Singapore has a major problem in this regard, with loud sometimes
| expensive cars revving up to the allowed speed limit (50-90km/h)
| on very short stretches of road.
|
| Particularly irksome given the high population density within
| earshot, and all the stranger given the fairly strict laws in
| Singapore which only recently outlawed electric scooters on the
| roads among other immediate effect measures.
|
| Wonder if they'll follow suit with this, though the prevalence of
| the modded/sports car culture for showing off and the fact that
| having a car at all is rightfully seen as a privilege given the
| sky-high costs of ownership probably make it harder to do so.
| aaron695 wrote:
| gameswithgo wrote:
| I hope this spreads everywhere. Even performance enthusiasts can
| get what they want without the car being loud all the time. It is
| purely obnoxious.
| [deleted]
| chadrs wrote:
| Can we ban car alarms next? I can't believe we allow such an
| obnoxious feature with basically a 100% false positive rate.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Good grief. The number of comments that unequivocally praise the
| police placing autonomous systems to fine people for annoyances.
|
| Last year, all this stuff was racist and explicitly targeting
| minorites, and ACAB. Now, hail the new surveillance state! Go get
| those people who personally annoy me! This certainly will have no
| unintended side effects!
| clusterfish wrote:
| Maybe last year was _a bit_ bullshit.
| francisofascii wrote:
| If the side effects end up being worse, than the law can be
| changed back, right? I would argue it is a major annoyance for
| many, and for what, so a few people can get off on being loud.
| jordanpg wrote:
| What a wonderful thread to watch.
|
| Is there a brave soul out there who will defend the right of cars
| and motorcycles to be ultra-loud?? I've recall seeing "safety"
| invoked as the reason on Reddit once.
| kmlx wrote:
| yes, i remember reading about this in london.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-54452835.amp
|
| >> 7 October 2020
|
| >> More than a hundred people have been threatened with fines
| after London's first noise cameras were set up to combat
| antisocial supercar drivers.
|
| >> The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea set up the cameras
| to tackle drivers using Knightsbridge streets as "racetracks".
|
| >> The cameras intercept when a 74 decibel noise threshold is
| exceeded and records the offending vehicle.
| wavefunction wrote:
| I'd be more interested in seeing this used for violators like
| construction projects and renovations. Not to disregard loud cars
| but they are a transient problem usually. Meanwhile someone else
| is grinding concrete and impact hammering for 8 hours straight
| for a week. And that's assuming they're not "starting early" or
| "going late."
| throwaway5371 wrote:
| hopefully this goes away with push to EV
| jalgos_eminator wrote:
| There's big demand for loud cars. You really only need a couple
| assholes per 100,000 population to buy them and hoon around
| late at night for it to be a public nuisance. This isn't going
| away until the government bans gas cars completely or cracks
| down hard on existing noise regulations.
| papito wrote:
| There is a new iteration of an old car (was it the Camaro?) and
| the engineers had to hack the motor to make it louder because
| customers were complaining the car was not as loud as it used
| to be.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| This will become a tax on the poor. Plenty of poor people in
| rough neighborhoods will get their catalytic converter stolen,
| will lack the money to fix it, and then will get a ticket in the
| mail. Taking the human factor out of police work here is a bad
| idea. Why can't they up just ramp up enforcement of egregious
| offenders that are running straight pipes to be dickheads
| instead?
| jsiaajdsdaa wrote:
| A better solution for everyone is less dense living, and a
| culture of respect for not engaging in anti social behavior.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Loud vehicles are just as much of a problem in rural areas as
| in cities. Nothing spoils a country road like a load, speeding
| vehicle. I agree people should have a better sense of respect,
| but here we are.
| thephyber wrote:
| Would need to know more about the details, but I agree with the
| intent while being slightly fearful of police/prosecutions being
| automated.
|
| As many have posted, loud motor vehicles are a quality of life
| issue for me (live on a busy street, near an intersection, and
| not far from a freeway). I am frustrated that obnoxiously loud
| vehicles are not policed. And, yes, I went through the "loud car
| stereo" phase of my own youth, including one ticket for volume.
|
| My biggest fear is that police/prosecutors will become efficient
| at automating/scaling their prosecutions. Yes, consistency of
| prosecution is very important for encouraging compliance.
| Automated systems are less likely to be corrupted than human-
| centric systems where officers can choose to use their discretion
| for their friends/family or just people they are more likely to
| like.
|
| However, we have _soooo_ many laws, the more they are enforced,
| the more we will see how big of a burden the totality of law will
| become increasingly visible and painful to the average person.
|
| That said, I'm not a fan of slippery slope arguments. So long as
| we continue to evaluate each of these automated systems as they
| roll out, I'm a fan of increasing quality of life through
| enforcing laws that are already on the books in a mostly fair
| way.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I mean these seems like the lowest bar for enforcing a
| violation...I believe we should do something similar with
| parking violations, speeding violations, and others. The only
| one type of violation I generally dislike is red light
| violations given the predatory misuse we have seen and the
| contextual challenges of interpreting WHY a car goes or doesn't
| go during a yellow-red light.
| xwdv wrote:
| Everyone hates loud cars until their child is crushed under the
| wheels of whisper quiet Tesla that zooms by at 70mph+ in a 25mph
| zone without any warning.
| ahoy wrote:
| Exactly, it would be much better if my kid was crushed under a
| loud-ass F250.
| julius_deane wrote:
| yes, the solution to fast cars is to insist they also have to
| be loud
| bronson wrote:
| woodruffw wrote:
| This is a very silly dichotomy: you'd need to show that cars
| that are _intentionally_ modified to make more than the legal
| noise limit are actually _saving_ lives.
|
| The opposite is probably true, given that that's probably a
| relationship between wanting to illegally modify your car and
| disregarding other automotive laws and norms.
| post_break wrote:
| So shot spotter but for cars. We know how well that system
| works... My biggest gripe isn't loud cars, but loud motorcycles.
| Yes there are loud cars here, but 9/10 it's a harley.
| papito wrote:
| In case some people confuse "freedom" with just being a
| douchebag.
|
| Living in the calm and quiet East Flushing, I now put my noise
| cancelling headphones on without anything playing, just to walk
| through the morning Manhattan.
|
| The mosaic of noises is so jarring that I would come to my desk
| already all riled up, before I even sat down.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Worse than motorcycles are cars with a "pop and bang tune". I can
| hear these things literally for miles, and they run all day and
| all night. It's extremely annoying.
|
| Here's an example of what I mean:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DChy9sKVhEo
|
| Somehow the police do almost nothing about this stuff (except
| what NY is apparently going to do), but the federal government
| has the time to force tesla to remove the "make fart noise after
| horn" option from my car.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| The only reason to get a mod like that is because you're a
| psychopath that likes to piss people off for entertainment.
|
| Pop and bang tunes sound like utter shit. They make your car
| sound broken, and offer zero performance benefit.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Fantastic! I live in south Queens next to the Brooklyn border and
| good lord the idiots here with their loud cars. Every night it's
| a cacophony of revving engines, tires screeching and exhaust
| bangs. You hear the same bullshit sound repeatedly every god damn
| day. Usually a slammed mustang, infinity or BMW with a two step
| or whatever that noise making exhaust mod is and either an
| instagram tag or car club name. And its not just a few cars but a
| culture around here. You see these clown cars parked all over the
| neighborhood and I know a few spots where they congregate and
| street race. The city's response so far has been to install speed
| trap cameras all over the damn place and nothing else. And people
| are complaining, loudly, but no one has been seemingly listening.
|
| Though my gripe about this is: Many of those cars have
| questionable registrations with mostly PA and FL plates. Those
| guys purposefully gun it for the speed cameras as the tickets go
| nowhere. The city installed a speed camera the block before me
| and one night walking home from the store I saw a supra speed
| down the block, a residential street, at 50+ mph with middle
| fingers out both windows for the camera. I want these people to
| die.
| zanderz wrote:
| Speaking of NYC, we've enjoyed some amazingly effective
| soundproof windows in many spaces, it seems like a thing there,
| but when we ask window salesmen in the Bay Area about
| soundproof windows like that, they kind of shrug and say "
| double pane is pretty much all you can do". Why can NYC do this
| but not SF? Or have we just not called the right store?
| ericmcer wrote:
| This is great, I am all for enforcing more quality of life
| measures over things like street sweeping. Ticket people who take
| two parking spots by not pulling all the way forward, loud cars,
| loud subs, etc. All the things that make living in a city that
| much harder. If you want to live in tight proximity with tons of
| people it is reasonable that you need to have a higher level of
| consideration.
| oversocialized wrote:
| Illegal. One has a right to face their accuser per the
| Constitution. I also knew a guy where the toll booth reader sent
| him a ticket for a car from another state with the same license
| plate digits. Took him forever to prove it wasn't him. More
| draconian AI computer police is not the answer to this problem.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Did you read the article? It's not an instant ticket. The
| offender gets summoned for testing and if the vehicle is loud
| at the point of testing, then you get a ticket. You have the
| ability to face your accuser, go to the testing site and prove
| your car is quiet.
| bogwog wrote:
| Yeah this is a slippery slope.
|
| But if the system instead forwards the videos to like the
| police department where a human reviews it before writing a
| ticket, it'd take the AI dystopia down a few notches. At that
| point it's just an AI-assisted security camera.
|
| There's still the question of the integrity of the system. How
| do we know the microphone was working properly at the time of
| the recording? Or that the video wasn't tampered with, etc.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Anh. The "testimony" is the recording. A lawyer cross-examining
| the computer would simply be met by the computer continuing to
| replay the recording over and over. Obviously verbiage from the
| 18th century isn't going to be able to deal with the concept of
| a modern digital computer, and needs to be updated as such.
| Computers are here to stay; old crufty ideas about semantics
| are rather more ephemeral.
| macksd wrote:
| If it needs to be updated, you actually have to update it,
| though. You can't just pretend it isn't the law anymore.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| For the unfamiliar, in addition to 'loud pipes' motorcycles, the
| biggest thing this is for are 'fart cars'. They're all over NYC.
| These are generally BMW 3 series, Infiniti, etc that are tuned
| and have specific exhausts to sound like they have more
| performance than they do, and to backfire after revving and then
| spooling down a bit... aka fart. They try to achieve the loudest
| possible rev and backfire, sometimes sounds like gunshots. They
| drive up and down residential streets in the outer boroughs
| mostly at night, revving and farting over and over. Residents
| here in NYC despise them.
| mastercheif wrote:
| Here's a decent example of a "fart car"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZugoUx_sgrY
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Why do they do that, is it basically sadism, i.e. deriving
| pleasure from others undergoing discomfort or pain?
| Unklejoe wrote:
| The term in the community is "burble tune" and, yes, it's
| extremely annoying and lame.
| shtopointo wrote:
| This sounds like such a good idea - more cities should do it.
|
| Win for the city budget, win for the people living in the city.
|
| There's no place for loud cars in cities. One could argue no
| place for cars at all, but that's a separate story.
| waiseristy wrote:
| 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
| treesknees wrote:
| >this new system uses a strategically placed sound meter to
| record decibel levels on the road, matching it to a license plate
| using a camera.
|
| Are there more details as to how this works and how it prevents
| false positives? Would the rumble or crack of thunder and
| lightning trigger a microphone to incorrectly mark a vehicle as
| loud? Or are there algorithms processing the recorded sound
| beyond just pure dB/volume to determine if it's actually a
| muffler?
| acid__ wrote:
| One option could be to use an array of microphones to detect
| the source of the loud noise
| TheDudeMan wrote:
| omg. Please bring this to LA.
| olivermarks wrote:
| I wonder legally how 'loud' is assessed. A microphone is subject
| to a number of environmental anomalies- wind direction, a box
| truck next to a vehicle reflecting sound back to the mic etc.
|
| A camera is a good visual representation of a vehicle being over
| a line, visual location speeding evidence accompanying data etc.
| This pilot project seems dangerously arbitrary. (Not a fan of
| overly loud vehicles but I am of civil liberties).
| Gigachad wrote:
| One acceptable method would be that getting caught subjects you
| to having an inspection done to test your vehicle. With enough
| cameras, it would become too difficult to keep swapping parts
| for tests.
| udfalkso wrote:
| 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.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I moved to the city for peace and quiet! I didn't know there
| would be so many people around!
| Gigachad wrote:
| There would be peace and quiet if it wasn't for people with
| modded cars and motorbikes. A very tiny % of people are
| responsible for almost all the noise.
| [deleted]
| prions wrote:
| I'll write a charitable response to your flippant comment.
|
| Living in a city has more noise than outside of cities, but
| that doesn't mean that people deserve to be exposed to noise
| levels that are harmful to their health. This also ignores
| people who are born in the city, and can't leave it for
| various reasons.
|
| Various laws on noise levels have been laws in NYC for
| decades at this point because it's a public health and
| quality of life problem.
| grujicd wrote:
| 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?
| tqi wrote:
| Not that strange. Sirens in NYC are largely directional, and
| you can hear the noise diminish dramatically once you are no
| longer in the path of the vehicle. The same is not true of
| loud cars/motorcycles. Also sirens (mostly) serve a necessary
| purpose for society, while motorcycle noise serve to stroke
| their owners selfish egos.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| I lived in the upper west side 7th fl and sirens are
| absolutely excessive. Deafeningly loud even in my
| apartment.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I wonder if the problem is that modern cars are too
| soundproof. Perhaps they should be regulated to have some
| kind of transparency mode like with modern headphones so
| they will hear much quieter sirens.
| potatoz2 wrote:
| 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.
| anitil wrote:
| 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
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Where I live it's just like you described in AUS. Policies
| on this stuff varies city by city.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > Cops ignore loud honking and loud cars when its right in
| front of them.
|
| It allows for discretionary law enforcement. Cops love it.
|
| They can ignore it you if they like you, or fine you if they
| don't.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Good ol American rule by law
| Spivak wrote:
| It's single-handedly the best perk of being white in the
| US. I hate it, it's straight up dystopian, but you can't
| argue with the benefits of being above the law for anything
| less than like murder. Being white means I do things like
| speed, do drugs at parties and concerts, jaywalk, be drunk
| in public, trespass -- err sorry urban explore, set of
| fireworks on the 4th without so much as a second glance.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Go on a ridealong. You'll be arresting white people all
| day.
| SauciestGNU wrote:
| Yeah it's certainly more nuanced than just race. There
| has to be the right intersection of race, class, and
| social network to be above the law in the United States.
| But I'd essentially guarantee those white people being
| arrested all day are poor white people and generally not
| middle- or upper-class white people.
| dijonman2 wrote:
| This is an incredibly ignorant statement. Why does
| everything need to be about race all day?
| kelnos wrote:
| I think it would be pretty weird if comments about race
| _didn 't_ come up in a post about policing. Scanning
| through things, clearly it's not "everything" either.
| Maybe dial down your knee-jerk sensitivity a notch?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >They can ignore it you if they like you, or fine you if they
| don't
|
| Or ignore everyone if their approval rating is in the toilet,
| which is what they're doing as much as they can right now.
|
| HN screeches a lot about it but the meatspace people I talk
| to don't seem to mind.
| bequanna wrote:
| But, this system does kinda work and allows for police to
| charge antisocial assholes with a crime while letting normal,
| reasonable people who made a simple mistake off with a
| warning.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| And to charge black people and not charge white people.
|
| Noise is noise. There's no need to be discretionary.
| bequanna wrote:
| Ugh. This is so tiresome
|
| Why do some people find it necessary to turn every
| discussion into some racism witch-hunt?
| klyrs wrote:
| The Stop and Frisk policy was a racist witch hunt. This
| isn't a hypothetical about policing in general, or even
| NYC cops in specific. And yeah, I'm sick of racism too.
| But blaming the messengers isn't doing any good.
| organsnyder wrote:
| Who defines what a "normal, reasonable" person looks like?
| nosianu wrote:
| At some point you have to let _people_ make decisions.
| You can 't "logic" your way out of everything.
|
| But... the mistakes! Yeah, so what? What about the
| mistakes of the rules that a human at the scene is not
| allowed to overrule?
|
| We have that at quite a few workplaces, where employees
| are not allowed to make any decisions, only work through
| an algorithm. It's not pretty. Think customer support of
| very large companies. Or the mistakes of algorithms and
| "AI", which we already have too, e.g. when we read
| stories about insurance "automating" decisions with ML?
| kelnos wrote:
| Except it's usually not "mistakes", it's intentional
| bias. A "normal, reasonable" person is someone who has a
| "donated to the police officer's association" sticker in
| their car window, and "assholes" are everyone else.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| To be clear, what is the advantage of discretionary
| enforcement for traffic offenses? Letting certain people
| off with a warning even though they broke the law? Why is
| that a feature and not a bug?
|
| Anyway, we _do_ have a way to let humans make these
| decisions. You can go to court and challenge the ticket.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| The problem is that to a cop, "normal" and "reasonable" is
| code for anyone with a police placard [1]. And if you give
| them discretion, "antisocial assholes" will end up largely
| meaning Black people.
|
| Why not have the automated system issue a warning instead
| of a citation for the first offense?
|
| [1] Check out this Twitter account, which documents NYPD
| traffic lawbreaking https://twitter.com/placardabuse. It's
| often really egregious stuff, like parking right in front
| of a fire hydrant or ticketing every illegally parked car
| on a street except for one with a police placard.
| strangesongs wrote:
| placardabuse really shows you how many of the most
| egregious traffic violations are done by unrepentant,
| repeat offenders. I think there was a story recently
| about an SUV who ran the curb and killed an 18-month old
| in Manhattan -- the driver had thousands of dollars of
| unpaid fines for blowing red lights, speeding, double-
| parking etc.
|
| I think people should be at a much higher risk of losing
| their license or driving privileges permanently for this
| stuff, not to mention offenses like repeat DUIs.
| jrockway wrote:
| Most interesting to me are how many tickets police and
| politicians rack up with traffic enforcement cameras. "Do
| you know who I am!?" works on people, but doesn't work on
| robots. That's a good thing.
| Taywee wrote:
| While I agree with the premise of discouraging people from
| being antisocial assholes, that sort of system is built for
| bias. Discouraging antisocial behavior is one thing, but
| other biases might be more destructive then helpful. I
| think maybe the job of discouraging antisocial behavior
| might be more suited to something else than law
| enforcement, where it's more likely to actually work
| without becoming destructive. I couldn't give you a
| specific shape of what I mean, because it's a hard problem
| and I don't have a solution (otherwise I'd be campaigning
| for it).
| 01100011 wrote:
| I don't know what it's like where you live, but in California
| it increasingly looks like our law enforcement organizations
| are either dreadfully understaffed or failing miserably at
| enforcing basic traffic laws.
|
| I just drove to San Diego and back from the Bay Area and
| counted zero cops on the way down and two on the way back, and
| I returned on Super Bowl eve. In the south Bay Area, I
| regularly see folks intentionally disregard basic traffic
| safety laws. I never see anyone pulled over and generally never
| see any cops.
|
| My niece works in public safety in WA state and says that
| morale is in the gutter as police have been told to back off in
| all but the most imminent situations. The example she gave is
| that police now cannot intervene if they see an armed
| individual approaching a school. That sounds unbelievable but
| that's straight from the mouth of the local chief of police.
|
| I'm not typically pro-law enforcement but I am definitely not
| pro-no-law enforcement.
|
| On an unrelated note, I'm now about to get front window tinting
| on my vehicles because, why not, it's not like any traffic or
| vehicle laws are being enforced now.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| > I don't know what it's like [in NYC]...
|
| It's hilarious. Our biggest traffic offenders are the cops
| themselves. They speed, run reds on a whim, park _in the
| middle of sidewalks_ , it's totally cool and we love it. It's
| so great that there's a twitter account (@placardabuse) that
| tracks public officials who flout the law and has no shortage
| of content.
|
| As for enforcement: they don't. The explanation I've heard
| is, "We don't like being the bad guy." They join the force to
| become CSI detectives or terrarism-fighting SWAT soldiers,
| not to be that shithead who ruined your commute home.
|
| I'm definitely sure that our new police-chief-mayor -- who
| just cancelled a widely-loved car-free-street program in
| Clinton Hill because one of his cronies thought it was
| annoying -- will be right on top of things.
|
| [edit] Oh, and regarding these noise cameras... the very
| vocal minority of New Yorkers who have cars fight tooth and
| nail against camera speeding enforcement. The rest of us
| don't speak up because we don't have cars so we don't feel as
| affected. Also we don't even have control over our own laws,
| that's all in the hands of the state gov't. So I have little
| faith that this will plan will survive, but hey, fingers
| crossed X,,
| acdha wrote:
| > The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if
| they see an armed individual approaching a school. That
| sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the
| local chief of police.
|
| It's not true but it makes more sense if they're saying that
| as a negotiating tactic: the police are banking that if the
| media coverage is dominated by stories about crime rising
| there will be a big reduction in support for police
| accountability.
| seneca wrote:
| What inside knowledge do you have that indicates it's not
| true? You can't just assume something is false because it
| contradicts what you want to be true.
| acdha wrote:
| I notice that you didn't demand a citation for the
| original anecdote. Consider what it would take for it to
| be true: did California pass a law treating police
| officers like sex offenders, prohibiting them from being
| within a certain distance of a school? Seems unlikely
| given that they still have resource officers assigned to
| schools and there's no way that wouldn't be a major
| national news story. Now, given our national obsession
| with gun rights it may be that they couldn't _stop_
| someone white with a gun from walking near a school but
| there's a 0% chance they couldn't monitor the situation
| and make their presence known the way they do every day
| for teenagers with skateboards or the wrong colors on
| their clothes.
| jonas21 wrote:
| There's a citation right in the original anecdote:
|
| > _My niece works in public safety in WA state and says
| that morale is in the gutter as police have been told to
| back off in all but the most imminent situations. The
| example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if
| they see an armed individual approaching a school. That
| sounds unbelievable but that 's straight from the mouth
| of the local chief of police._
|
| Now, you can argue that's a second-hand account, and
| therefore less reliable. But it's still more than just
| claiming "it's not true"
| kevinh wrote:
| What knowledge do you have that it is true other than a
| thirdhand account by someone on a web forum?
| seneca wrote:
| None, that's why I haven't made a statement claiming it's
| true or not, unlike the person I'm responding to. That's
| what you do when you have no information.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Yet, you didn't apply that level of criticism to the
| parent post either. Some person's niece saying the police
| chief said it? Like that wouldn't be news worthy? Like
| the police chief wouldn't immediately raise that to the
| press because "look what these liberals are telling me
| now"? Um, he's sick. My best friend's sister's
| boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who
| knows this kid who's going with the girl who saw Ferris
| pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it's pretty
| serious.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| I can guarantee you that if a school in my particular
| municipality is under threat, police are going to roll in
| and roll deep. Morale or no morale.
|
| I think people are confused as to the types of crime
| police are backing off of policing. Shooting up Walmarts,
| schools, or churches will absolutely evoke a robust
| response here.
|
| Of course, I can't speak for municipalities outside of
| this particular county here in flyover country. But
| knowing police and firefighters the way that I do, I find
| it difficult to believe that any school under threat
| would be ignored.
|
| If you're genuinely curious, ask LEO you're friends with
| in your municipality, or LEO among your own family and
| friends to get an idea how professional LE is in your
| area. But you shouldn't believe everything you see on the
| internet. My assertions included.
| zucked wrote:
| This is happening in my major metro, as well. A kind of
| flippant attitude toward even the most basic of compliance
| seems to be taking root. Cars are running Stop signs and red
| lights without even slowing, the number of cars with no
| license plate displayed at all is on the rise and all of this
| seems to be happening at a time when enforcement is virtually
| non-existent. Even more alarming is that property crime
| (theft, particularly) is through the roof.
|
| While I place a lot of the blame at the feet of the police
| for failing to enforce law, I also understand that at least
| in my city, even repeat offenders are being released back
| into the wild with no skin in the game - a "personal
| recognizance" bond.
|
| I'm a left of center kind of guy, but this idea that we can
| totally kid-glove criminals (especially repeat ones) with
| peace and love and respect and whatever new-agey shenanigans
| that's helped us get to where our social order is falling
| apart doesn't fly with me.
| asciimike wrote:
| > the number of cars with no license plate displayed at all
| is on the rise
|
| I have noticed this too, and am curious if it is:
|
| - DMVs being slow/understaffed or plates aren't available,
| but people need to drive
|
| - conscious negligence of simply not registering your car
| and betting it won't be enforced
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| DMVs have been easily accessible and you can even make
| online appointments in my state since before pandemic,
| but I see plenty of cars driving without license plates
| or without paying the annual car taxes (i.e. registration
| fees seen via sticker).
| matthewmcg wrote:
| Who is allegedly telling the police they "cannot intervene"?
| And why would they say it?
| whyenot wrote:
| Since we are sharing anecdata, CHP are camped out on
| southbound 280 by 85 almost every morning. They usually have
| someone pulled over.
|
| More broadly, I think it makes sense to automate some law
| enforcement activities by using speed cameras, etc. Cameras
| remove problems with bias and escalation. They also free up
| LEOs to focus on activities that can't be automated.
|
| The alternative is hire more officers and pay them more.
| That's not something that voters appear willing to do, even
| in the affluent Bay Area. (...or to do anything about
| homelessness in the South Bay; apparently we have
| collectively decided that the answer is to just ignore the
| problem and look the other way as people slowly die on the
| street)
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| I can't find the stat, but it was in an SF Chronicle article
| on police not doing anything about a homeless person tearing
| down a parklet, but in San Francisco, the number of traffic
| violations ticketed has gone from 10K+ to <1K in the same
| period... it is really astonishing how lax it has become and
| it looks like traffic and property crime is the least
| enforced.
| tzs wrote:
| > The example she gave is that police now cannot intervene if
| they see an armed individual approaching a school. That
| sounds unbelievable but that's straight from the mouth of the
| local chief of police.
|
| A licensed gun owner can have a gun near a school in
| Washington, so why would you expect police to be able to
| intervene when someone is merely approaching a school?
|
| Police could ask the person what they are doing, but unless
| they have probable cause that the person is committing a
| crime they can't arrest them.
| moogleii wrote:
| Police are everywhere in Manhattan. Pre-pandemic, it would be
| odd not to see several per day on patrol on a normal day to
| day. In SoCal, I can go days without seeing one.
|
| Having said that, they don't have the best rep for enforcing
| traffic violations here.
| cassac wrote:
| That's because the last thing anyone wants is a loud noise
| complaint to escalate into a shooting.
| hellisothers wrote:
| 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.
| someguydave wrote:
| Only 13 unarmed black men were shot by police in 2019 https
| ://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/23/fac...
| ChefboyOG wrote:
| ...Did you read the article you linked to? The bulk of
| the article is dedicated to discussing why that number is
| misleading, and how it reflects our lack of
| data/transparency when it comes to policing, particularly
| when it comes to police involvement in homicide.
| someguydave wrote:
| Yep, and I am not persuaded by their special pleading.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| Well as long as only 13 innocent unarmed people were
| unloaded on by law enforcement everything is fine
| someguydave wrote:
| 1. unarmed does not mean they were not a threat or
| innocent
|
| 2. No human endeavor is perfect. I am willing to accept
| some tragic mistakes in exchange for the prevention of
| crimes and the dissuasion of criminals.
| [deleted]
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I am willing to accept some tragic mistakes in
| exchange for the prevention of crimes and the dissuasion
| of criminals._
|
| I mostly agree with this, but there needs to be an effort
| to hold people accountable when mistakes are made, and to
| change processes to help ensure that these mistakes don't
| happen again, or at least happen less often. Police
| departments across the US seem near-violently resistant
| to this.
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| 1. True, but neither one was shown here, so you can
| choose any assumption you want, and mine was innocence
| (the law requires the same assumption until proven
| otherwise)
|
| 2. There is no evidence that any prevention of crime was
| gained in exchange for the deaths of these innocent
| unarmed people. If anything it created an environment
| where the law is respected less.
| someguydave wrote:
| 1. true 2. false
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| 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.
| SilasX wrote:
| Okay, I'll bite. I downvoted it because, even if true, it's
| irrelevant and promotes a toxic (and I use that term
| advisedly) narrative.
|
| Yes, when you enforce laws, some people are a-holes and
| escalate to unlawful violence. Sometimes cops, sometimes
| civilians.
|
| The appropriate reaction to make sure _that_ isn 't
| tolerated either, to improve police-community relations, to
| train police better, and to review whether we need to
| update laws to match consensus on expected human behavior.
|
| The appropriate reaction is not in a hundred miles of "oh,
| well, gosh, do we _really_ need to enforce laws anymore?
| Someone might get hurt! ", and the forum is a worse place
| for tolerating that mentality.
|
| Now, to be sure, there are many laws that fit the last
| category above and should probably be scaled back for being
| petty and kafkaesque. But, "don't wake up a million people
| around you for your own personal thrills" does not make the
| list.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Without definitively having some stat that proves or
| disproves this, the way this opinion was expressed feels a
| lot like survivor bias because you're reacting to the
| relatively small number of negative police interactions
| that are hyped up by the media (because they play on
| emotions well) and mentioning nothing of the millions and
| millions of police interactions that go positively or times
| that police presence prevented a crime.
| rozenmd wrote:
| In one particular country perhaps, not a phenomenon
| worldwide.
|
| edit: misread the title, assumed this was about them doing
| this in Paris (also recently announced)
| lghh wrote:
| But we're talking about that country right now.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I haven't actually seen normalized statistics with respect
| to police density, 'exposure' or time on patrol. Do you
| know who publishes such numbers?
| [deleted]
| google234123 wrote:
| Well, the current approach of decreasing exposure to police
| has increased crime
| Zak wrote:
| It seems to me most traffic citations ought to be issued by
| mail based on dashcam footage now that the technology to do
| so is widespread. It would also reduce traffic stops as a
| pretext for searches, which act as an end-run around legal
| protections from unreasonable search.
|
| Traffic stops could then be relegated to imminent dangers
| like drunk or otherwise reckless drivers, and serious crimes.
| stefan_ wrote:
| That's a good start but people in New York _literally
| deface_ their license plate and nobody gives a fuck -
| because half of them are cops or driving government
| vehicles.
| 01100011 wrote:
| They used to do this when red light cameras were popular in
| California. You could just write a letter saying the person
| in the pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a
| driver you can basically get away with it via this route.
|
| If the ticket is for the vehicle owner then yes I could see
| this working. Perfect for emissions violations and vehicle
| code violations. You could also double-check for stolen
| license plates as it should be fairly easy to automate the
| detection of most car makes/models as long as the car
| hasn't been heavily modified.
| zucked wrote:
| >You could just write a letter saying the person in the
| pic wasn't you. As long as the ticket is tied to a driver
| you can basically get away with it via this route.
|
| That seems like an asinine way to apply that law. If the
| vehicle is registered to you, it's your responsibility.
| Lent it to your uncle and he rolled a stop? Well, the
| car's registered to an owner, that's their problem to
| sort out.
| kelnos wrote:
| Yeah, I think this makes more sense, as long as you limit
| it to automated-fine infractions (and not things like
| vehicular manslaughter), and these infractions don't
| affect the car owner's driving record or insurance
| premiums.
|
| I think it would only take one instance of a friend
| borrowing my car, getting a fine, and that friend
| refusing to pay the fine, for me to stop lending them my
| car -- lesson learned. Or hell, why would I even want to
| be friends with someone who would do that to me?
| missedthecue wrote:
| Don't worry, we have ShotSpotter for that
| Spivak wrote:
| And since legislation to have unarmed officers handle non-
| violent citations has gone nowhere in the last decade the
| push is now for just eliminating all the minor citations
| that, historically, have selective enforcement against the
| already vulnerable and tackling them differently.
|
| Jaywalking is a good example, it doesn't get enforced
| basically ever and when it does it's overwhelmingly poor
| minorities. So the city has just been adding pedestrian
| crossings in areas where people where people jaywalk to
| reduce the incentive.
| [deleted]
| WheatM wrote:
| yibg wrote:
| 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?
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| The cops in NYC more or less ignore everything (unless your
| black), I've seen people walk right past them smoking weed and
| they didn't even turn their heads. Every once in a while
| they'll set up a table in the subway to search backpacks, but
| they don't dare stop anyone, instead they just stand around
| comparing their benefit plans for 2.5 hours and counting down
| until they can retire with pension. Same topic every time.
| Amazing to hear them rattle off the precise number of years,
| months, and days until they get their pension. They probably
| know their HMO handbook better than the HMO does.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| > I've seen people walk right past them smoking weed and they
| didn't even turn their heads.
|
| It's legal, why would they turn their heads?
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I really don't get why motorcycles are legal at all - loud,
| terrible emissions, used for crimes, huge fatality rate,
| usually driven by a psychopath who loves revving his toy at 5AM
| at a residential neighbourhood.
| kojeovo wrote:
| Those things you listed are pretty much already illegal: Loud
| motorcycles with poor emissions. As for the fatality rate,
| it's mainly only impacting the driver. Forcing them to a car
| is arguably worse.
| driverdan wrote:
| I really don't get why computers are legal at all - create
| excess emissions from all the power use, used for crimes,
| generate hard to process waste, usually used by a psychopath
| who loves Tweeting about hatred for people not like them.
| rabuse wrote:
| "Used for crimes!". This sounds like that standard argument
| against crypto, when cash (cars) have done that since their
| inception.
| ddoolin wrote:
| > used for crimes
|
| This gave me a chuckle. I have absolutely no data but I'm
| quite certain cars are "used for crimes" at a much higher
| rate than motorcycles.
|
| Motorcycles are almost all manual, nearly invisible to other
| drivers, and prone to issues with the smallest of road
| hazards/obstacles, making them really risky to use as a
| getaway vehicle seeing as you'd need to be outpacing law
| enforcement much of the time. Add the adrenaline of "doing a
| crime" on top of that of high-speed motorcycle riding and
| you've really got a recipe for disaster in most cases. There
| was a stolen bike in LA being chased by the cops last month
| who collided with a car and the rider died. https://www.latim
| es.com/california/newsletter/2022-01-24/mot...
|
| Maybe being "used for crimes" would be better since you're
| less likely to actually get away on them!
| zucked wrote:
| I think the OP is a little hyperbolic, but I wouldn't be so
| dismissive of the idea. My metro has a no-chase policy for
| motorcycles. Sure, it's a heck of a dangerous way to make a
| getaway, but as long as you can shake the first guy, a
| rider is pretty well free to make a getaway as long as
| there is no helicopter in pursuit.
| throwanem wrote:
| On the other hand, a purely technological solution isn't so
| much open to accusations of implicit bias, whether justified or
| otherwise, as are officers using their judgment to decide who
| to stop and ticket for excess noise.
| e40 wrote:
| 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 one for
| years. I had a stock and quiet muffler on it, though.
| StockHuman wrote:
| I live on a little sidestreet next to a highway. The highway
| is raised (due to being on a steep hill directly behind our
| place) and has noise barriers installed.
|
| By and large, highway traffic is a low, background static,
| somewhat like the ebb and flow of a more mechanical wind.
|
| But, because our sidestreet skips a single traffic light on a
| parallel street, mororbikes live roaring through it, easily
| louder that anything from the literal highway. At this point,
| I'd support a ban on motorbikes over 80db.
| vgeek wrote:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2_E1ap9d4
|
| This comes to mind for this thread.
| kelnos wrote:
| We live down the street from a biker club clubhouse. Even one
| of them riding by wakes us up (we'll often hear them well
| after midnight), scares our cats, and sometimes sets off car
| alarms. My faith in the police ever doing anything about this
| is effectively nil.
|
| I, too, am not a motorcycle hater. While I don't own one, I'm
| licensed to operate one, and have several friends who are
| avid riders. They have stock, quiet exhaust on their bikes,
| like normal people who actually care about people around
| them.
| plushpuffin wrote:
| 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."
| 01100011 wrote:
| Acoustics play a big role. I used to live a mile from a
| freeway but the ground sloped gently up towards my house and,
| being San Diego, there weren't a lot of trees to absorb the
| noise. On many nights it was about as loud as standing a
| block from the freeway. It varied based on temp, humidity and
| wind direction.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Owned four Harleys, like you, mine were stock, quiet. People
| are surprised to find out Harleys sound almost like sewing
| machines when they are stock.
|
| Almost.
| mikestew wrote:
| On the rare occasion that I hear a HD with stock exhaust,
| it usually turns my head with me asking, "damn, what's that
| sweet-sounding thing?" Sadly, they're mostly owned by
| chuckleheads who fuck it up with open pipes.
| whartung wrote:
| On a motorcycle forum, someone asked whether they should
| upgrade their suspension or their exhaust. I suggested that
| an upgraded suspension affects your quality of life, an
| upgraded exhaust affects everyone else.
|
| We don't need the windows open to hear the cars and such
| around here (and they're modern windows). We're near a
| freeway, but it's not the only culprit. The freeway is either
| silent or quite noisy depending on ambient weather
| conditions.
|
| But when the cars open up, it sounds like a racetrack. We can
| hear them accelerating up the on ramp, up shifting as they
| go, and even when they hit the flyover to the other freeway.
|
| The ratio of motorcycles to cars is actually quite low. Most
| of the offenders are the V8 pony cars.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| In NYC most of the offenders are motorcycles with the
| occasional Lambo man-children.
| ryan_lane wrote:
| Most of the offenders are people honking, especially when
| stuck in traffic.
| rabuse wrote:
| To be fair, riding a quiet motorcycle is likely to get you
| sideswiped more if the people can't hear you at all. I've
| noticed the difference of head movements when changing the
| exhaust on my new motorcycle, from stock to a louder
| aftermarket. Prior, people would just veer into my lane
| without even checking. Anecdotal, but very noticeable
| difference for myself.
| kelnos wrote:
| Maybe you just shouldn't ride a motorcycle if, in order
| to feel safe, you feel the need to unreasonably increase
| your level of noise pollution.
| whartung wrote:
| Anecdotally, over 25 years of riding in most every
| condition you can think, including several years of one-
| way 30 mile commute in to downtown LA, I have not noticed
| this.
|
| As a corollary anecdote, I've seen (and heard), on
| several occasions, the rev bombing riders revving louder
| and longer since the person that's "in their way" is not
| moving out of it.
|
| I've also, personally, jerked and swerved (a little) when
| startled by a loud exhaust "suddenly" appearing next to
| me. These events are typically followed by a crude
| exclamation that isn't worth sharing here.
|
| At one point I did have a bike with a louder exhaust (I
| didn't keep the citation I got because of it). But the
| majority of my bikes are stock exhausts and quiet.
|
| Cars swerve in to anything and everything. Especially
| today, the modern car cockpit is overwhelmed with
| distractions. But even pre-cell phones I've had to
| contend with kids, coffee, balloons, and animals
| apparently designed to convert the car drivers in to
| motorcycle seeking missiles.
|
| Keep it on two, stay safe, they're not out to get you but
| they make a good show of it anyway.
| mikestew wrote:
| If "loud pipes save(d) lives", your insurance company
| would give you a discount for your man-child exhaust. And
| if you want anecdata, I've ridden hundreds of thousands
| of miles in every U. S. state, most of Canada, and
| elsewhere. Most of those miles have been with the exhaust
| that came with the bike when it rolled out of the
| factory. I've never been sideswiped, nor even once
| considered that a loud exhaust would do anything to
| improve my safety.
|
| I sure am glad for the riding classes I've taken,
| however, which probably do a lot more good than obnoxious
| exhaust systems.
| brokenmachine wrote:
| Yeah, if I rode around with speakers blasting at 130dB
| and flashing fog lights, people might look at me too.
|
| But I don't do it because people would think I'm a
| selfish asshole.
| myself248 wrote:
| Oh my god, how can I get two of these? I want one facing each way
| down the street.
|
| I would love to somehow take the ticket money from people who
| deliberately make their cars obnoxious, and use it to help people
| with shitboxes fix their mufflers.
| defterGoose wrote:
| Shit, I'd gladly donate the money to city coffers. Just make
| these idiot drivers' actions hurt them more than they hurt me,
| which is currently not the case.
| ghostly_s wrote:
| Good riddance.
| scsilver wrote:
| Anyone know of any plug and play ai cameras that I can put
| outside and program to yell at the people who don't clean up
| after their dog goes on the sidewalk. It's gotta be like one or
| two people In each neighborhood who need to be lightly scolded by
| a robo voice to pick up after that pet.
| dqpb wrote:
| I despise everything about cars. The noise, the fumes, the
| constant threat to pedestrians, the concrete desertification of
| our land.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Desperately need these in San Francisco. These cars and
| motorcycles that have been modified to be super loud are a
| menace.
|
| If you want to modify your vehicle for performance on the
| racetrack, fine. But when you leave the racetrack, make it
| compliant again.
| et-al wrote:
| Unfortunately we won't even allow speed enforcement cameras, so
| this seems unlikely.
|
| https://cal.streetsblog.org/2021/05/21/california-wont-be-ge...
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Public opinion is changing. Someone ran a red light at the
| intersection of Franklin and Union and killed a teacher right
| in front of a school recently.
|
| In New York City, speed cameras started in school zones. I
| think that's an excellent place to start.
| tommoor wrote:
| Agreed, let's say all intersections within a mile of a
| school? ;-)
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| I wouldn't be so sure. The interest group of speeders may be
| much larger than the interest group of loud pipes.
| et-al wrote:
| You're right. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the
| right direction.
| bitminers wrote:
| joshu wrote:
| i can appreciate loud cars (i race cars and some of them are
| pretty loud; they only get run at the appropriate time and place)
| but my neighbor's subaru with some sort of rattley muffler delete
| wakes me up every fucking time.
| urmish wrote:
| In NYC and across the river in jersey, the culprits also include
| emergency vehicles. You can hear them blocks away when people
| have no business knowing about them.
| jdprgm wrote:
| Tangent: We should outlaw leaf blowers in cities while at it.
| It's february and freezing out and for some reason the idiotic
| management in the apartment across the street has contracted some
| crew to do daily leaf blowers on nearly completely clean
| sidewalks disturbing probably hundreds of people WFH. Not to even
| mention how particularly awful leaf blowers are for the
| environment.
| 2arrs2ells wrote:
| Gas powered leaf blowers are horrible - noise and air
| pollution. Electric ones aren't bad.
| valenaut wrote:
| It's still a lot of energy to push leaves around for no good
| reason. But yes, much better than gas.
| Gigachad wrote:
| It's not a whole lot of energy really. They run for ages on
| tiny little batteries.
| kccqzy wrote:
| James Fallows, a pretty influential journalist, did just that
| in the District of Columbia.
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/james-f...
| jdprgm wrote:
| Oh wow, thanks for the article. I'm right across the river --
| perhaps Arlington will follow suit!
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| The worst part about the noise is the constant cycling. Whirr
| WHIRRR whirr WHIRR whirr. For me, at least, it is dramatically
| more annoying than just a constant hum.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Have you ever spent a day landscaping?
| jdprgm wrote:
| Sure plenty of times growing up. Not sure the point of this
| question?
|
| Ignoring the environmental aspect I think limited use in
| suburban settings is reasonable. I'm particularly focused on
| egregious use in urban settings when we aren't talking fall
| leaf collection but constant "cleaning". Obviously it's not
| the workers fault... it's a matter of mis-priced negative
| externalities. Napkin math say the noise makes 100 people WFH
| 10% less effective for an hour at say $50hr wage average it
| certainly makes more sense to just pay workers to work twice
| as long with brooms (if the work is even necessary in the
| first place).
| blululu wrote:
| Like most people in the suburbs the OP could probably answer
| in the affirmative. My brother does this professionally and
| he gets by just fine without any such machines. It's kind of
| a selling point for people who don't want fumes, dust and
| chemicals in their gardens.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| How are you getting "fumes" in your garden, which is
| outdoors?
|
| This just seems like such an obvious class divide thing to
| me. Those guys out there with the leaf blowers are working
| their ass off, sorry it's loud for a few minutes per day.
| strangesongs wrote:
| California just did this!
| https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a38004981/california-ban-g...
|
| I don't think it phases in fast enough, tbh, but it's a start.
| Someone the next block over from me runs their leaf blower
| around 7 AM everyday and it is godawful noise -- the sound
| carries at least 2 or 3 blocks in every direction
| blululu wrote:
| Hard agree. One of the most shockingly rude inventions. High
| CO2 emissions, particulates, dust and noise. And it only really
| works for one person until their neighbors blow all the debris
| back over the fence. Fortunately California already too steps
| to phase them out: https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/law-and-
| life/california-s...
| denimnerd42 wrote:
| this is my #1 public nuisance
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Years ago, I lived in an apartment complex that would have
| landscapers come once a week.
|
| And of course, they'd begin their work promptly at 8 AM, and it
| always felt like they would spend extra time blowing leaves
| right outside my window.
| errantmind wrote:
| Noise pollution is a major consideration of mine (now) when
| choosing where to live. Having lived 'downtown' in a major city,
| in an older building, it was near the top of my 'list' of
| nuisances and materially impacted my quality of life. Cops also
| never did anything about it.
| tempfs wrote:
| Death to the burble-tunes and the idiots that acquire them, then
| use them to assault the neighborhood.
| gataca wrote:
| These should be placed along every major artery in NYC with
| enormous fines for violators. If people want to behave like
| selfish children they should be treated as such.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Cars that make a lot of noise are one in 10,000 where I live.
| Motorcycles every second one.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Ah just couple more steps away from Demolition man and receiving
| on the spot tickets for cursing after you stub a toe. I want to
| like Democrats and I prefer their take on sexual and societal
| freedom, but they are always doubling down on taking away our
| rights to privacy just like the police state (violence) loving
| right wing people in the USA.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| What privacy are they taking away? You're in a registered
| vehicle in the most populous city in the US on a public road,
| there's absolute nothing private about that situation.
| XorNot wrote:
| I'm down with this, though I honestly don't know why this isn't
| handled at yearly road worthiness checks - around where I live
| the problem is essentially the same 2 or 3 people who have done
| the standard oversized exhaust mod to their cars.
|
| Just ban the stupid things on public roads and stop letting
| people register them.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| What assurances are there that cameras with microphones won't be
| turned into devices of mass surveillance of the population at
| large? It isn't exactly out of the realm of New York's track
| record, given their propensity towards "Stop and Frisk".
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| There are no such assurances.
|
| It took a very minor annoyance for people to not only accept
| these surveillance tools, but to actually cheer them on.
| Gigachad wrote:
| "Very minor annoyances" like being woken up multiple times
| every night. I'll accept a lot of surveillance to sleep well.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I find towns and cities to be unbearably noisy now and almost all
| of that noise is from cars and other motor vehicles. Certain
| people, of course, need to stand out from the crowd and have
| responded by making even more noise. Some of those cars and
| motorbikes are obnoxiously loud, but I think something like the
| top 20% are louder than they have to be. It needs to stop. There
| are studies showing the bad effects of noise pollution on
| people's health. Electric cars should reduce the overall noise
| level but the outliers definitely need to be targeted.
| holografix wrote:
| This is so amazing so so amazing. I live next to a popular road
| that leads to a beach and there are often imbeciles craving
| attention on their toxic-fume-spewing man-baby toys making insane
| amounts of noise.
| imnotlost wrote:
| Another way to deal with this in addition to vehicle related
| pollution and safety issues is a good technical vehicle
| inspection program through the state DMV to get or renew the
| vehicle registration.
| defterGoose wrote:
| I would mind less smogging my car every two years if I thought
| it actually made an impact on this at all. I just wish police
| would actually crack down on these sorts of crimes. But I get
| the feeling that a lot of them are the same ones driving
| Harleys and Chargers.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Can we start using something like this with light meters to
| ticket obnoxious LED beams that have not been properly
| retrofitted into older cars?
|
| It's extremely obvious which cars these are when you're driving
| at night. That these people are endangering dozens of other cars
| on the road is lunacy.
| collegeburner wrote:
| Honestly. Loud motorcycles is annoying but the LED shit is
| actually dangerous. If theres 1 coming the otherway I legit
| can't see the road in front of me until its passed. Im kind of
| considering getting some though, because its kinda a positional
| arms race about "who can have the brightest lights to see the
| best at everybody else's expense". Its mean but I don't wanna
| be the guy who gets fucked over and blinded then found at
| fault.
| et-al wrote:
| So this doesn't solve all the shoddy DIY HID mods out there,
| but adaptive headlights are finally coming to the States:
| https://www.autonews.com/regulation-safety/nhtsa-
| finalizes-r...
| [deleted]
| indymike wrote:
| In most states those are actually illegal to turn on when
| driving on a street or highway. Source: owned a 4x4 for off-
| roading that had a bunch of KC lights on top. I was advised by
| the installer to keep the covers on them because it's illegal
| to have them on the street in an uncovered state. Other source:
| got pulled over for something, and the cop let me go because
| someone drove by in what looked like a UFO landing sight.
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