Executive summary
Loud cars have never been more popular among car and motorcycle enthusiasts — or more unpopular among the general public.
Noise regulation in the traditional sense has failed. Cities are under increasing pressure to respond to widespread complaints.
Trials of noise cameras have begun to collect significant income from loud cars and bikes.
Noise camera technology is still in its infancy, but it appears to be on the verge of becoming commonplace. The market for automated noise enforcement is expected to reach $1 billion.
Noise cameras already enjoy a favourable public and political reception. The public's tolerance for noisy combustion engines will shrink as EVs become quieter. Politicians may be unable to resist the income generated by noise cameras, as well as the high levels of voter approval for such schemes.
The following research note is a 30-minute read, split into the following sections:
Part 1: Louder Lately: The Rise of Deliberately Noisy Cars & Bikes
The average vehicle may be quieter than ever, but deliberately noisy vehicles are louder than ever. They are prompting a global wave of noise complaints to police and local government. Noise harm is rising up the political and medical agenda. It is becoming “...the new second-hand smoke.”
It's helpful to know why there are more loud cars on the road now than ever before and why governments around the world can't do much about it. To sum up: deliberate exhaust noise is caused by effective commerce, imperfect law enforcement, and a global subculture that loves loud cars. All of these things are exaggerated by social media. Let's look at each one separately.
Noise sells
Making noise on purpose is a thriving business with a complex supply chain.
In the 1990s, car companies like Mercedes AMG and BMW M Division started to grow their specialised "sport" divisions - by a lot. These sub-brand cars are very loud. When they first came out, they were aimed at drivers with upper-middle-class incomes, so they only sold in small numbers. However, small sales add up over time, and now there are a lot of these "loud but affordable" cars on the road. The oldest cars in this fleet have lost value so much that younger drivers, who love noise and use it to show who they are, can now afford them.
Not only do exotic sports cars have a cultivated exhaust sound, but so do more ordinary cars. In the market for new cars, performance brands have been so popular and profitable that the companies that own them have "brand extended" their noise to less expensive cars in the range. Even a Mini Cooper S is programmed to make popping and banging sounds. Even a VW Golf has a loud variant, straight from the factory. There are many “manufacturer’s special” Golfs on the road, to name just one loud model from just one manufacturer.
Once these cars leave the factory, the owners often modify the engines to make them even louder. Selling these modifications is a big global business in its own right, and it takes place on the edge of the law and beyond. The resulting noise can now be heard in every city, day or night.
There is more noise to come: the market for sports cars is forecast to have grown by 6.9% CAGR between 2018-2022; the market for “tuner” parts is set to grow by 5.8% CAGR between now and 2031.
The extent of the problem is best illustrated on social media. YouTube influencers draw an astoundingly large audience for their “noise culture” videos, often depicting vehicles being driven recklessly on public roads.These videos are a form of entertainment, a way to sell loud gear, an invitation to illegal street racing events, and a free technical college for fans. It helps to normalise loud noise. It also shows what younger drivers will want in the future: some exhaust manufacturers expect to be in business beyond the 2050s.
Engine noise is boosted by ceaseless political lobbying from manufacturers. For years, German sports car manufacturers have relentlessly and successfully carved out legal exceptions for the extra noise made by their vehicles, on the grounds of supposedly being “low sales volume” products. To repeat our point, their sales volume might be low in any one year, but it all adds up over time. A used Porsche Boxster can be had for only £4k: by now there are nearly 30,000 Boxsters on UK roads, again to name just one noisy model by just one manufacturer, in just one country.
The quest for noise is partly a response to speed cameras and public dash-cams: a 200MPH car is now much more likely to land its owner in prison. This is forcing manufacturers to market theatrical acceleration instead of absolute top speed.
Consider the language used by Porsche when trying to upsell owners into spending a further $3,000 on an optional “sports” exhaust:
The Porsche Sound.
Powerful, throaty, sporty.
And the best thing about this: it can be further enhanced – with the sports exhaust systems and specially designed sports tailpipes from Porsche Tequipment.
You can recognise a Porsche by its sound. And thanks to our sports exhaust systems, the raucousness of the typical Porsche sound can be enhanced even further. In an instant.
When the sports exhaust system is switched off, the characteristic standard sound remains. When the system is activated, the sound becomes much more powerful, highlighting the athleticism of your model.
Goosebumps guaranteed.
These exhaust systems are being fed by engines that are more powerful than ever. More horsepower always means more noise. Manufacturers are locked in a "mine is bigger than yours" competition that makes horsepower output go up year after year. A sports car made 20 years ago with 300BHP might have a modern equivalent with 600BHP, especially if the owner breaks the law and uses an illegal exhaust.
After-market exhausts, competition exhausts and cheat devices
After-market exhausts are a global industry. Outwardly it’s a legitimate industry, because all exhausts wear out and replacement parts are needed. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the aftermarket industry has taken to selling deliberately noisy exhausts. The industry gets away with it thanks to legislation originally intended to stop manufacturers enjoying a monopoly on spare parts; this legislation is now being openly finessed.
In the EU and other places, the general rule is that modern cars can't make more noise than their factory-built specification. So, an industry that openly sells exhausts that are louder than standard shouldn't exist, but the after-market exhaust industry is thriving - because after-market items items are allowed to be a few decibels louder than the original item. A few decibels might not seem a lot, but the decibel scale is logarithmic, not linear: a car making 110 decibels is not 10% louder than a car making 100 decibels, but roughly twice as loud to the human ear! This decibel tolerance loophole is openly exploited by firms that sell “… a more aggressive tone“.
Worse, only one after-market exhaust manufacturer in the UK has its products independently tested for technical compliance: all the other manufacturers are “self-assessing”, perhaps with a wink.
In addition to after-market exhausts that presume to be road legal, there is also a flourishing, consumer-facing supply chain for “competition” exhausts intended for racetrack use only. These are not designed to be road legal and so are monumentally loud, right off the shelf. A desilenced exhaust can give real race car drivers a little more power, but it also makes a lot more noise. It is not against the law to sell this extra noise, as long as the ad carries a fig-leaf disclaimer that the item is "not for road use
Farcially, road cars are probably the biggest market for competition exhausts now, because racetracks are becoming less tolerant of noise. Racetracks get so many complaints about noise that they now see modified exhausts an existential threat. On public track days, when road cars are allowed on the track, most venues will test the noise of every exhaust. If it's too loud, the driver is sent home. One racetrack reports:
“If we have trouble [with exhaust noise], it’s almost always something with a [modified] exhaust. With the exception of one or two Ferraris there are very, very few standard road cars that break [our] sound limits.” (Evo Magazine 2017).
In addition to "after-market" and "competition" exhausts, many car and bike exhaust systems come with "cheat devices" that are only there to trick the police. The worst offenders here are bikes. Most bikes have a baffle inside the outer exhaust pipe to reduce noise and meet noise laws. A kite mark will be on the outside of the exhaust to show that it has been approved for road use. The kite mark isn't often stamped on the baffle, which makes it easy to take off. If users take out the baffle, the exhaust will be a lot louder - and still appear to be legal.
The companies that make aftermarket exhausts aren't stupid. They know that bikers want loud bikes, so every ad says that the baffles can be taken off. Since it is against the law to take off a baffle and racetracks don't like loud pipes, a baffle that can be taken off serves only one purpose: to make more noise on the streets.
There are many other devices that are completely legal but do nothing but make noise. These include valves in the exhaust that open when the engine is revved, or software that makes loud "popping and banging" noises on purpose, or a "drift mode" that makes the vehicle intentionally lose control. They can be started by pressing a secret sequence of buttons on the steering wheel. Police have a hard time finding these devices at roadside inspections.
Owners largely disregard the law and reassure one another on social media that they will get away with it. They are mostly correct: the police will say privately that they are too busy dealing with other matters.
Ineffective enforcement
Police departments are frequently forced to manage the public's perception of an issue rather than addressing it head on. Officers frequently respond to local complaints by conducting one-time sweeps that are publicised in the local press: these sweeps catch very few drivers and appear to have no deterrent value.
Most cops and vehicle inspection officers want to do a good job. If they fail to do so in the case of noise, it is partly due to the difficulty of conducting noise inspections at the roadside. They require two officers and a safe and quiet space for the vehicle to be measured in static and drive-by tests, and they are more resource intensive and technically difficult than they appear. Suitable venues and police time are in short supply. The process begs for efficient, hands-off automation.
Police culture is also an issue. Traffic cops understandably focus on preventing fatalities, particularly speeding, but they frequently fail to recognise the obvious link between a love of engine noise and a love of speed. It doesn't help that more than one traffic officer is a fellow petrolhead.
In many jurisdictions, police have additional discretionary powers that allow them to pull over a loud exhaust simply because the officer considers it anti-social, regardless of whether the exhaust is legal or not. Unfortunately, these powers are seldom used.
Crime and no punishment
In most jurisdictions, a driver pulled over for noise is more likely to be lectured than fined. If they are fined, it will be a small fine – perhaps £50-£100 in the UK, which is not much in comparison to the £000s the driver may have spent on their modified exhaust, let alone the car. A UK driver will not receive points for making noise, so there is no cumulative penalty for being a repeat offender. Seizures of vehicles are uncommon and usually only temporary. UK drivers may receive a Section 59 notice, which warns of temporary seizure if caught again within the next 12 months; some drivers are willing to take that risk.
As the London Mayor’s Office put it:
“Limited resources mean that non-life-threatening [vehicle] construction and use offences are low on Metropolitan Police priorities for enforcement work. Many infringements are dealt with by verbal warning or advice”
Another statement, this time from the Federation of European Motorcyclist Associations, confirms what many enthusiasts and insomniacs already know:
“From information provided by our member organisations it becomes clear that in most countries there is not much enforcement. The police focus on popular areas like the Italian Alps and the river dykes in the Netherlands. Because roadside checks are almost impossible, the most common reaction of the police to clearly illegal exhausts is to summon the rider to get his bike inspected in a test centre.”
And in those test centres, matters take a turn for the worse.
Testing, Testing: Far Too Free
Every country has a formal safety inspection programme for vehicles over a certain age, which is typically performed in a specialised test facility. This test is known as the MoT test in the United Kingdom. It is largely ineffective against noise, as are similar tests conducted around the world.
Most Brits are stunned to learn that the MoT test doesn’t even measure exhaust noise. No decibel meter is used. The tester will rev the engine (to only 50% throttle) and listen to the noise, but no decibel reading is taken.
A vehicle will be failed for excessive noise if, in the tester's subjective opinion, it "sounds" louder than its factory spec. However, because there is no single, comprehensive database of factory specs for all cars, no tester knows what the factory spec should sound like. Even if such a database existed, it could not be used unless the MoT tester used a decibel meter. Many MoT testers working on a loud vehicle simply err on the side of caution and issue a pass certificate under this lax regime.
The MoT test is even less effective on new cars. For the first three years, new cars are exempt from MoT. A new car can be fitted with an illegal aftermarket exhaust right away and driven for three years with little risk of prosecution. The owner is even notified of the MoT inspection date, allowing them to install a legal exhaust just for the MoT test and then re-fit it. This is common practise, especially for motorcycles, because illegal exhausts are less expensive than for cars and easier to swap out before the MoT.
The most hardcore enthusiasts will simply bribe the MoT garage. It’s far from unknown. In 2019 the UK Government struck off 45 garages and 111 testers for MoT fraud. More innocently, some MoT garages end up with an informal reputation for being softer on noise: enthusiasts share these garages online.
Even Japan’s vehicle inspection regime - said to be among the toughest - allows vehicles up to 10 years old to emit as much as 96 dB, equivalent to a jackhammer at 50 feet; older vehicles are allowed a truly staggering 103 dB, which approaches the level of a rock concert.
If wealthy and legalistic countries like Japan and the United Kingdom are ineffective at exhaust noise testing, it follows that less wealthy and legalistic countries are far worse off: Western visitors to poorer Asian countries frequently comment on the traffic noise.
The unexpected conclusion is that the authorities are mostly absent. Anyone who wants an illegally loud exhaust can get one without fear of repercussions. It's all made worse by the fact that noise culture is spreading like wildfire on social media.
A global sub-culture in love with vehicle noise
The internet has made it possible for buyers and sellers of loud exhausts to connect. This has established a global youth subculture centred on extreme vehicles.
Astonishingly, Fast and Furious is the 7th highest-grossing movie franchise ever, grossing almost as much as the James Bond franchise in only a fraction of the time. Bond needed 27 movies and 58 years to gross $7.5bn; Fast and Furious has made $6.6bn with just nine movies in 20 years. The movies are aimed at a young male audience and the message is always the same: a loud car catches villains, sex and money.
Little wonder then that exhaust noise is also massively popular on YouTube, where it sits somewhere between entertainment and an assertion of identity.
YouTube also helps drive the informal “car cruise” scene. These meetups are a global phenomenon. They are usually noisy, occasionally fatal and always a source of complaint to the police. Cruises even have their own celebrity influencers, such as AdamC, whose eye-opening YouTube channel is not untypical at 500k+ subscribers and over 300 million video views.
There are even phone apps that help fast drivers to secure bragging rights. These apps use social techniques found in video games, such as leader boards. The Dragy app, which uses GPS to measure a vehicle's performance, features leader boards across different countries, for those who want to know who has the fastest Ford in Sweden – as many fans do. Apps like Dragy are meant for legal motorsport but they are also popular on the illegal street racing scene, partly because they help young people feel part of a global community.
PART II: What’s the harm in a little noise?
Noise is a daily annoyance and a long-term health risk for the many who live near a road - and for a vulnerable few, noise is an especially cruel burden.
Noise harm is well-established in science
Per the World Health Organisation:
“Excessive noise seriously harms human health and interferes with people’s daily activities at school, at work, at home and during leisure time. It can disturb sleep, cause cardiovascular and psychophysiological effects, reduce performance and provoke annoyance responses and changes in social behaviour”.
There is evidence linking noise to a startling range of medical conditions, ranging from dementia and ischaemic disease to impaired child-learning.
A vulnerable few
Noise is especially difficult for people who suffer from noise-sensitive disorders such as autism, PTSD, and schizophrenia. According to the families of noise-sensitive autistic children, loud noises can cause a child to bolt, wander, hide, or self-harm.
Although advances in other areas of public policy may have benefited noise-sensitive groups, their susceptibility to noise is rarely discussed. Some sufferers are unable to speak for themselves: they may remain behind closed doors, their noise burden going unnoticed by politicians and passers-by.
Every living thing needs a peaceful home and decent sleep
Exhaust noise frequently ruins the enjoyment of the home.
Noise can be a constant torment to those who live within earshot of a road - which is most of us. The UK Government’s National Noise Attitude Survey reports that around 60% of UK households suffer with traffic noise daily.
"Acceleration zones" are the worst: junctions, roundabouts, sharp curves, long straights, overtaking zones, slip roads, tunnels. Drivers going through these acceleration zones typically rev excessively for fun, without considering neighbouring residents. The noise can be demoralising when repeated every few minutes day and night. It's a home invasion, one that also affects our bodies and minds. Little wonder so many residents are angry and demanding a solution.
Consider the following victim impact statements provided to various authorities all over the world. The settings couldn't be more dissimilar, but they all sound the same:
New York City: “As a new parent these [expletive] drive by waking up my daughter after we just finished our night-time routine and then I don’t know how I am going to get her to sleep. When I hear the revving from these roving motorcycle gangs barrelling down the streets who often ride up on sidewalks, I frantically grab my daughter and find somewhere we might be safe, like by a streetlight pole where they can’t hit us, and I think to myself, ‘this can’t be normal, right? Around the clock, it sounds like I have a front seat at Daytona Raceway. The noise is unbearable”
Rhondda, Wales:
#1 “In the summer we have to keep all the windows closed and have music playing but you can still hear it. It's just so loud, it's insane. Every time someone even mentions the cars on local hubs the people involved, and their parents get quite aggressive and will not acknowledge that it is affecting people, or they just simply don't care. In the last four years it has become unbearable. You can't sleep with the windows open, you would never be able to sleep. We even have to sleep with a fan on to drown out the noise.”
#2 “I feel broken inside, I suffer with anxiety and depression like some of my neighbours and it's really getting us down. My neighbours are afraid to talk because they fear the reaction. No-one can walk their dogs past a certain point at night because the dogs are scared by the noise.”
Croydon, UK: “It’s very very draining, every week you dread it. When your child is falling asleep in the classroom because he couldn’t sleep at night, and teachers are coming saying your child is sleeping in school, what is happening, you have to tell them we have no choice. …You have no idea the amount of distress, from the youngest to the oldest, we suffer.”
Doha: “Every time we call the police, they just never give it enough attention; bikers just keep racing up and down the main street…Thousands of hard-working people, children, and elders cannot enjoy their homes”
Rotterdam: “The cars are a problem because we have so many cyclists. It makes you feel unsafe when someone is revving his engine”
Scotland: “You can hear some vehicles three miles away”.
This BBC interview features startling testimony from a ringleader of an illegal street racing gang in the USA:
"Our main focus is we go into minority neighbourhoods, low-income neighbourhoods, where kids don't usually see these high-powered cars - Dodge SRTs, fellts - and we'll go through with 100, 200 cars and we'll stop. We'll close off intersections [by blocking them with stationary cars], and we'll do doughnuts, burnouts and stuff in the middle of the intersection. We call them takeovers 'cos we're usually taking over different neighbourhoods in different cities.
"We want it to be spontaneous and give it to people who're not expecting it. Kids going by, the kids will be seeing all the cars, all amazed and going 'do a burnout!' or something like that, and that'll kind of get us going.
"We make sure we go to areas that's kind of forgotten by law enforcement, the government, the city… they don't pay these areas any mind. So when we go there it's like… someone acknowledges us. Someone knows that we're here."
The police don't tend to see it that way, he concedes with a laugh.
"It depends who's on that day! In general, no they're not fans. But I've done events before where you have police there and they cheer you on or they don't make a big deal of what you're doing. If they do give you a ticket they'll give you a reckless driving ticket, or maybe running a red light."
Smoke adds that a lot of people on his team are professional men and women. He lists nurses, business owners, mechanics - and police officers."
Studies suggest that just one noisy motorbike on a 30-minute ride through Paris can disturb over 10,000 homes. Municipal authorities know that each noisy vehicle is evidence of their failure, broadcast to literally thousands of irate voters every night.
It's not just humans. Noise hits the animal population too. Per Science.org:
“…Noise can affect an animal’s ability to hear or make it difficult for it to find food, locate mates and avoid predators. This can result in the animals, spending more time sourcing food, limiting their ability to thrive and in turn leading to their decline. Studies have also shown that loud noises can cause birds to have fewer chicks.”
The impact on animals is felt most acutely in the world's national parks, many of which are constantly plagued by noise pollution from "thrill craft" such as jet skis, snowmobiles, drones, and especially road vehicles. Porsche recently published a smartphone app designed specifically to guide Porsche owners onto scenic roads.
Part III - Cities fight back
Who’s complaining?
There are complaints about noise wherever there is a road. The examples below help to quantify the global nature and scope of the problem. Remember that official complaints are only the tip of the iceberg, as only a small percentage of those affected will go to the trouble of filing a formal written/phone complaint with the local government.
New York City:
“According to data from BetaNYC, there were more than 99,000 noise complaints related to vehicles made between August 2020-2021 – accounting for a 50% increase when compared to the same time period from 2019 to 2020.” Ben Kallos, NYC City Council.
London: Circa 6500 official complaints relating to vehicle noise were received by London municipalities in 2020, for a population of 8.9m (data via a Freedom of Information Request)
DEFRA’s National Noise Attitude Survey 2012 : Road traffic noise disrupts tranquil or restful pursuits. Around one-fifth of respondents reported road traffic noise interfering with their sleep (21%) and with having the windows or doors open (20%), while 10-15 percent reported road traffic noise interfering with resting (16%), spending time in the garden or on the balcony/terrace (13%) and concentrating (13%). (11 percent ). 27 percent of the public said traffic noise was getting worse during the past five years, and only 11% said it's improving.
Making political capital out of a noisy few
Politicians have noticed that noise cameras are popular and profitable.
Noise cameras fit EVs' vibe. Governments must promote electric automobiles to a wary public, many of whom can't charge at home. How to convert? Currently, politicians use EV tax advantages as a "carrot," but they'll need a "stick" someday - conceivably noise cameras. Mayors would love to give their voters peaceful yet car-friendly neighbourhoods.
1st generation noise cameras: buyer beware
Noise cameras of the first generation are essentially microphones mounted on a street pole and linked to a licence plate camera. If a car makes more than the trigger level of noise, the identifying information and any accompanying evidence are sent to the sponsoring authority, who may choose to ignore, warn, or prosecute the listed owner.
However, all of these first-generation cameras have a major flaw: they struggle to identify an offender in dense, noisy traffic. This limits them to quieter roads, where they struggle to generate enough revenue to cover their costs (£25-£75k for early designs).
In 2021, a joint venture formed by engineering giants Atkins & Jacob published an in-depth technical study of a first-generation camera, commissioned by the UK Govt. Their camera couldn't accurately distinguish noisy vehicles less than 10 seconds away. The problem is that microphones aren't directionally accurate; sound waves from other automobiles bounce and corrupt the reading. Some police officers privately worry that 1st-gen noise cameras can be consistently "evidential" in court. Nonetheless, the Atkins Jacob trial determined that noise cameras are unquestionably in demand, and that first-generation designs are at least partially viable.
PART IV - Noise enforcement trials around the world
A growing number of forward-thinking cities around the world have begun exploratory trials of noise cameras - in fact over 20 locations as of May 2022, up from zero two years ago. All of these trials use first-generation camera technology, which, as we've seen, has limited capabilities. Nonetheless, the trials show that noise will create an entirely new category of traffic enforcement and a new revenue stream for cities. Camera trials in Kensington and Taipei have yielded the most data. In both cities, more than 85% of local voters approved of their local noise camera scheme; most of them “strongly approved”.
Both London and Taipei have declared their trials a success and have begun rolling out more cameras. Taiwan is rolling out a national network, possibly as a result of its legal system choosing to ignore the technical shortcomings of existing designs.
(In the embedded links below, we refer to the revenue arising from police sweep operations in addition to that from automated noise cameras).
Taipei
In 2021 Taipei's noise camera trial issued 700 tickets to mid Sept; fines ranged from US$65 to US$130, with a potential additional fine of between US$100 and US$1000 for illegally modified vehicles. The scheme aims to deploy 100 cameras by the end of the year, adding to the 50 cameras already set up in 20 cities and counties. Each device costs US$30,000 out of a budget of US$1.7m million for the project. A budget of about US$3m has been earmarked to create 100 new cameras from 2021 to 2027.
Kensington
Kensington council paid £74,340 for its camera. In ≈3 months, the camera was “triggered” 1,948 times, leading to 163 fixed penalty notices and 69 letters of warning. Nonpayment leads to £2500 fine and/or vehicle confiscation. The decibel trigger was set to a lenient 75dba (other jurisdictions are tougher, at 65dba).
Note that only 13% of camera activations produced a ticket, presumably owing to unclear readings and false positives. PR photos from Kensington Council showed noisy cars being apprehended in light-traffic conditions only. Nevertheless, 163 fines at £100 = £16,300 gross revenue in ≈3 months of operation, a potential breakeven per camera in 13 months. Again, 85% voter approval.
Don't be fooled by Kensington's reputation as a wealthy neighbourhood with a plethora of supercars: anecdotally, many residents report that the majority of noise comes from inexpensive modified cars from out of town, with Kensington as their destination. These convoys of noise drive from – and through – far less prosperous boroughs to get there. The poorer boroughs are likely to be as concerned about noise enforcement as Kensington. According to UK research, Redbridge, one of London's poorest boroughs, has the second highest number of vehicle noise complaints in the entire city, just behind Kensington.
New York City
In November 2021, legislators in New York State authorised the SLEEP Act, which allows fines for illegal exhausts to rise from $150 dollars to $1000. The Act also provides for garage owners to lose their operating licence if found to have fitted an illegal exhaust. The city is now assessing options for noise cameras.
The NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) tested a noise camera pilot program at 4 locations around the city from June 2021-June 2022 to ticket excessively loud vehicles that registered at or above 85 decibels.
The cameras captured 2,071 loud "events" but had major limitations in identifying offenders. 38% of the footage was too blurry to read license plates. Another 402 vehicles had no plates at all, 35 had plate blockers, and at least 68 more could not be specifically identified, leaving only 243 offenders actually ticketed.
The most successful location averaged 287 loud events per month, but had many false positives from street parties. Another location had to be moved due to vandalism fears after its location was posted online. One surveyed too many lanes of traffic to effectively ticket vehicles. The least successful location initiated by the NYPD only captured 25 loud events per month on average.
In summary, while the noise cameras did reduce noise in areas where deployed, major technology flaws prevented most offenders from being identified and ticketed. Only 29 summons had been delivered as of August 2022, with 40 more being processed. Still, the DEP aims to purchase more cameras pending city budget approval - up to 100 cameras, according to one report.
Knoxville, TN USA
This single, $27k noise camera took less than six months to pick up over 1300 vehicles exceeding the city's 82db limit on 35MPH streets. The two most common times for detection were 8pm Saturday nights and - very anti-socially - 2am Sunday mornings.
Elkhart IN, USA
This city backs up its regulations against “loud and raucous sounds” with stiff fines. First violation $250; then $500, then $1,000, thereafter $1,500. City has collected $1.6 million from noise fines and used it to buy four new police cars and other items. NB: that $1.6m is from a population of just 52,000!
Edmonton, CA
This noise camera pilot cost taxpayers $192,000 for equipment rentals, installations, monitoring, maintenance and software use; fines generated $98,000 from circa 320 tickets, including tickets issued manually. Notably, some motorists appeared to have successfully argued that the microphone-based camera could not pinpoint the sound to their specific vehicle.
California, USA
Six Californian cities will participate in a trial program beginning January 1, 2023 and running until December 31, 2027.
Paris, France
The French government has now concluded its two-year trial of noise camera technology. Noise tickets are now being issued in six locations, with more to come.
Genk, Belgium
Camera pilot project collaboration with Nokia, myCSN and G4S.
Rotterdam
This 2-month pilot project detected over 16,000 incidents of vehicles exceeding 80 decibels. (Had Rotterdam applied New York’s tariff, the fine tally would have exceeded £16m).
Moscow
Camera pilot project underway, fines currently out of project scope. So, politicians all over the world have begun to capitalise on punishing loud vehicles. They are unlikely to stop: they have too much public support. In 2020, a Kantar research study for the UK Department of Transport, which investigated public attitudes toward traffic and road use in England, discovered that 75 percent of respondents "overwhelmingly agreed" that the government should take action to reduce traffic noise. Only 16% of those polled disagreed.
Civil vs criminal fines
Noise law allows for two bites at the revenue cherry in many jurisdictions, as it is enforced not only by police but also by local government acting under its "environmental protection" brief. This is likely to be a major driver of demand for noise enforcement technology.
Although local governments frequently have the legal authority to enforce against vehicle noise, they have lacked the technology to do so on a large scale. Where a local government can easily enforce against vehicle noise, it almost certainly will – not least because the the revenue does not always have to be channelled into national coffers. Your local sheriff or mayor is frequently free to keep the penalty revenue to pay for local schools and hospitals.
Local governments have always been hesitant to raise traditional taxes, but most are now cash-strapped as a result of Covid. As a result, some have turned to making large sums of money from minor traffic offences.
Traffic fines in the USA
In 2019, researchers at Clemson University found that more than 580 municipalities received at least 10 percent of their budget from fines, fees, and other court revenue; eighty municipalities attributed more than half of their budget to criminal justice revenue. Example #1: Valley Brook, Oklahoma collects roughly $1 million each year from traffic cases, in a town of 870 people; offenders are often from out of town or out of state visitors i.e. non-voters.
Example #2: In 2019, Henderson, La, a town of 2,000, collected $1.7 million in fines, 89 percent of their general revenue.
The US federal government subsidises this activity. Per a recent New York Times report: “Windsor is one of nearly 100 Virginia communities to receive federal grants encouraging tickets. The annual grants, ranged from $900 to the village of Exmore for nabbing seat belt scofflaws to $1 million to Fairfax County for drunken-driving enforcement. Windsor got $15,750 to target speeders. Roughly $600 million is sent by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to states each year. A review of state grant applications found that the number of traffic stops is a common performance measure. In Arkansas, for instance, the goal was “three vehicle stops per hour” during grant-funded patrols, while in Madison, S.D., officers were required to “obtain two citations per grant hour.” New York Times This approach is controversial. It often attracts accusation of racism – accusations that automated technology might help to address.
Traffic stops and racial discord
According to the NYT article, some police officers tasked with raising revenue will disproportionately target disadvantaged racial minorities. As a result, in some parts of the United States there is now a backlash against traffic stops. For example, politicians in Richmond, VA cited racial concerns in a recent debate about whether to ban traffic stops if the officer’s only justification was to smell marijuana coming from the vehicle. Automation has a positive contribution to make here, as emphasised by a recent Australian study that showed automated speed cameras give out fewer speeding tickets to Aboriginal drivers than officerinitiated traffic stops. Aboriginal drivers received 3.2 times more fines from being pulled over by police than non-Aboriginal drivers - but when tickets were issued by traffic cameras, Aboriginal drivers received slightly fewer penalties on average than non-Aboriginal drivers. It may be overly simplistic to say that technology is unconcerned about race, but it is undeniably true that a noise camera does not assess a driver's racial profile. Municipalities may thus welcome increased automation for social as well as economic reasons.
Silent EVs: galvanising the demand for noise cameras
With the rise of EVs, it appears that the time for loud cars is coming to an end. Once a significant minority of cars emit no exhaust noise, noisy petrol cars will appear even more intrusive - and likely more stigmatised as a result. That much seems self-evident. The much more difficult question is: when?
It's easy to say that gasoline power is in steep decline, but trends can be misleading. Consider smoking: many people in the West believe it is on the decline, but the world now has more smokers than ever before, because efforts to reduce the habit have been outpaced by global population growth. The same population growth is driving an increase in car use, particularly in countries where mass EV adoption is even further off than in the West. Rising wealth and population leads inexorably to an increase in vehicle miles driven per capita. Every day, India builds 22 miles of new motorway, partly for the benefit of the 45% of Indians who don’t drive, many of whom are priced out of car ownership - for now. Indian workers' wages are rising at a 6% annual rate, and millions of Indian cyclists and bus passengers will soon purchase their first car. Some may opt for expensive EVs, but many more will be forced to buy an old gasoline vehicle and keep it on the road for years, with all the associated noise. This pattern will be repeated in every populous country undergoing rapid growth. Look at leaded gasoline and steam power for other examples of new transportation technology's unpredictable path. Leaded gasoline was first identified as a health hazard in 1924, but it took until the 1970s for the Western world to begin switching to unleaded; the rest of the world will not be lead free until 2021. That's 97 years between diagnosis and cure (and leaded gasoline is still used in aviation!) Steam power went into steep decline over a century ago, but every year the Great Dorset Steam Fair attracts 200,000+ visitors across 600 acres: steam nostalgia today, petrol nostalgia tomorrow.
Nostalgia and the effects of the “culture war” are also likely to keep petrol popular. Some drivers want to pollute, as demonstrated by the phenomenon of rolling coal, where diesel engines are altered to belch thick clouds of smoke as a gesture of defiance to what they view as “woke” environmentalism. After-market exhausts carry brand names like Black Widow, Jekill and Hyde and Scorpion: presumably their owners sincerely wish to startle and intimidate pedestrians. These instances may be exaggerated, but they show how car aficionados feel about 20th-century transit aspirations. Many car aficionados feel uncomfortable in a world moving toward electric vehicles. Instead, they value their gasoline-powered old cars.
Despite the excitement over EVs, it may be decades before cities are free of combustion engine noise pollution. EVs aren't an existential threat to noise cameras; in fact, the two seem to be creating each other.
This graph of EV adoption in Germany shows how far we still have to go before noise cameras might become obsolete.
Loud car enthusiasts are probably at the very bottom of the chart above: they'll be the last to fall silent.
Introducing SoundShot: a 2nd-generation noise camera
SoundShot is a proprietary system and method developed by General Noise for a second generation noise camera.
SoundShot overcomes the limitations of microphone-based noise cameras, specifically sound contamination from nearby vehicles. With development, SoundShot will measure noise intensity on a moving vehicle to within 2 dB(A) for multiple vehicles travelling in close formation at freeway speeds.
Some conventional microphone-based cameras require a 10-second gap between vehicles; SoundShot, on the other hand, can acquire and measure a target in milliseconds, using techniques honed by scientific military research.
In addition to being able to process a much greater throughput of cars, SoundShot may mean that just one sensor could enforce against noise and speed simultaneously, from fixed locations or mobile hand-held devices.
PART V: Sizing the market for noise cameras
It is never easy to estimate a new technology's total addressable market (TAM). The exercise frequently comes down to following one's instincts when choosing between competing sets of assumptions. Nonetheless, we will attempt to size the TAM for noise cameras by comparing two opposing approaches, each of which results in very different revenue figures. To summarise each approach:
i) If we consider the TAM for speed cameras and then model a given % of speed camera customers going on to buy noise cameras, we find a noise camera TAM of £78m. ii) Alternatively, if we consider real-world expenditure on noise cameras to date and scale it according to global city population, we find a noise TAM well in excess of £600m. Here's our reasoning for those numbers..
Estimating noise camera TAM from speed camera TAM
Here we used the website SCDB.info to estimate the TAM for speed cameras. SCDB is a commercial database of speed camera locations. It reports 103,523 fixed-position speed camera installations worldwide, though SCDB likely under-reports by a large margin because it only covers 104 countries, relies on user-generated data, and excludes mobile speed cameras. Reports vary as to the cost of speed camera installation, but at an average of £12,000 per camera, SCDB suggests a speed TAM of circa £1.24bn (£12k x 103,523). This omits maintenance fees. That £1.24bn should be increased by a given multiplier, to cover the 91 countries omitted by SCDB, albeit mostly smaller and less wealthy countries. To include them, we add a modest 10% to the TAM, or £1.36bn. A further multiplier is needed for SCDB’s omission of mobile speed cameras. These are a significant category, as noise cameras might eventually go mobile too. By this report, the mobile speed gun market was $1.05 billion USD in 2019, forecast to reach $1.71 billion USD in 2025. The report therefore suggests the mobile market is larger than the fixed camera market, which seems a bold claim, so we take only a small multiplier from it, at 15%. That gives a speed camera TAM of £1.56bn (£1.36bn x 15% = £1.56bn). We further assume the noise camera TAM will be a subset of the speed TAM. Conservatively, we assume one noise camera sold for every 20 speed cameras sold, or 5% of the speed camera market. This suggests a noise camera TAM of £78m (5% of £1.56bn). That £78m may have its own logic, but it seems too conservative next to real-world sales revenue from early trials. Data for noise camera trials are sparse, but if we use such data as there are, the TAM seems closer to $1bn. Here's why.
Real-world noise revenue and city population size: toward a $1bn TAM
London and Taipei are typical cities in that the majority of residents live near a road. Because noise cameras are likely to be installed first in major cities, the global city population may indicate a global market for noise cameras. • Globally, 4.4bn people live in cities of more than 500k inhabitants. • Kensington is just a London borough, not the whole city. Despite a population of a mere 150k, Kensington’s local government has already spent or earmarked circa £100k on noise cameras. Kensington is just one of 32 boroughs in London (total pop 8.9m). We conservatively assume that London is worth at least £1m in noise camera sales. • Taiwan has earmarked the equivalent of £3.4m on noise cameras between now and 2027. We conservatively attribute 15% of Taiwan’s national noise camera expenditure to the city of Taipei, or £510k. • Population: Taipei 2.6m + London 8.9m = a sample of 11.7 million city dwellers. • Expenditure on noise cameras: Taipei £510k + London £1m = £1.51m. Taipei and London are likely to account for a tiny share of global demand, being a tiny share of global city population – in fact these two pioneering cities are a mere 0.26% of the 4.4bn city dwellers worldwide. If 0.26% of the global city population results in £1.5m in noise camera revenue, we might infer a global market of £600m. This figure too is likely to be conservative, as it omits demand from smaller towns - recall Valley Brook, Oklahoma and its $1 million in traffic fines from a population of 870. For an alternative take, let’s assess noise camera demand by looking at share of GDP.
Taiwan’s % share of global GDP
Demonstrably, a country as wealthy as Taiwan can afford to spend £3.4m on noise cameras.
Taiwan is responsible for somewhere between half to one per cent of the world economy. When a country worth 1% of global GDP spends £3.4m on noise cameras, it hints at a global market worth £340m, or certainly in the hundreds of millions.
Much depends on how many cars and how many miles are driven per country. There, Taiwan is again an underperformer. Cars per capita is probably a better proxy for noise camera demand, along with miles driven per capita. Taiwan has approximately 1 car for every three people: the USA is nearer to one car per person. Taiwan is a comparatively small country and journeys are shorter, whereas the average American is obliged to drive 37 miles per day. The average American commute drive past more homes than in any other nation. Thus, by these measures, the global outlook for noise cameras is better than the £600m suggested by Taiwan.
Other revenue sources
Our calculations also omit a number of other positive factors: - Revenue sharing agreements and transaction processing fees, both of which are commonly used in ITS projects. - Handheld noise guns: the technology does not exist yet, but at General Noise development work is underway that could well see noise and speed enforced by the same handheld device: some reports put the handheld speed gun market at $1bn+. Taking all these factors together, it is likely that Kensington and Taiwan’s expenditure on noise cameras underplays global demand. The correct order of magnitude seems to be hundreds of millions of dollars; it is not difficult to imagine $1bn+.
Summary
Vehicle noise enforcement is still in its early stages, but citizens and politicians appear to be ready. Loud vehicles have become commonplace; noise regulation has failed; voters want peaceful homes; and governments require new and popular taxation methods.
Despite struggling to process everyday traffic, the first generation of noise enforcement technology received 90 percent voter approval. A second generation of technology is being developed that will be capable of operating in all traffic conditions and from fixed or handheld devices, allowing it to pay for itself much sooner, potentially acting as a catalyst for the entire sector.
In the noise enforcement market, there are no established market leaders. None of the major ITS firms have yet entered, but it is only a matter of time. A large company that enters the market with a dominant technology could expect to have a dominant market share.
About General Noise Ltd
General Noise is a technology start-up based in California and the UK. We design, patent and license noise technology for established firms in the traffic enforcement sector. General Noise has a technical and managerial background in significant projects for governments and private companies, including the US & UK military, NASA and consumer electronics. Cofounders Robert and Jason welcome enquiries from executives, legislators and journalists seeking to gather and share ideas about noise enforcement.
Professor Robert G.W. Brown
Co-Founder, Scientist and Engineer General Noise Ltd Tustin, California
Robert@generalnoise.co.uk
Jason Dunne
Co-Founder and Business Development General Noise Ltd Based in East Sussex, UK jason@generalnoise.co.uk
+44 7734 856 901 (GMT)
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