Hitchcocks Forum

Just so that we're all aware, it looks like the police will be trialing camera/microphone combo thingies for detecting overly-loud vehicles in the coming months, motorcycles included.

This will be of concern to anyone with one of our hosts' Goldie loudeners fitted, though sports bike riders may be the main target. You might be aware the RE owners in India with ANY after-market silencers are already being targeted by police there.

https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/mot ... e-cameras/

I'm not sure where this leaves MOT-exempt classics, many of which had more lenient noise limits in force when they were built, but I shall make more enquires.

A.

And about time too! Noise is the curse of the modern world, every time I hear some pillock with a loud exhaust or radio I want to heave a brick at it.

Chris Grayling cost tax payers £50 million when he awarded a contract for cross channel ferries to a company without any ferries then had to cancel it.

It will take him a long time to get our money back.
He's probably quite desperate to prove himself capable of something or other.
Most of us would be walking down the road if we were as competent as he.

I think that the legal limit is 87DB - but its upto the cop / mot tester

The legal limit for cars is presently 74db in order to obtain type approval.

The limits have been frequently amended over the years and this presents a big enforcement problem. Set the limit too low and many cars complying with the type approval they originally met at the date they were manufactured will become illegal overnight. Cue judicial challenges.

As for my 1967 Continental, it has no grasp of the concept of type approval.

The noise regs are also really specific at what distance and at what rev speed the noise output is measured at. Even an MOT station isn't equipped to check this, they rely on the opinion of the tester and the markings on the exhaust.

I'm absolutely certain they can't tell if a vehicle is noise compliant with current regs from an overhead gantry and would have no legal basis to issue penalties based on them without a change in at least secondary legislation. I'd need to check that because I'm not even sure they have the power to issue fines regarding construction and use offences on the basis of anything other than a vehicle inspection, which would require primary legislation to allow use of cameras. It might give them an indication of which vehicles to go and inspect.

Anyway, the news articles seem to suggest no such camera even exists as yet? So it seems to me that this is a purely theoretical technology without any current basis in law.

Holds the same status as a TV detector van in my book. ie There's no such thing. They bolt a rotating colander to the roof of a van and drive it around to panic people into buying a licence, evidence from one has NEVER been used in a prosecution. Good propaganda really, release a couple of news articles, attach a silver funnel to couple of speed cameras and a certain percentage of boy racers will go and put their baffles back in.

Here's the Department of Transport bit:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... technology

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... ations.pdf

A.

Notwithstanding the forgoing trivia, can someone explain to this village idiot how a camera can record sound please.

Hi, I thought it biase to show only noisy bikes in the news bulletin when the bane is boyracers in their backfiring coupes going up the high street at 2am. Every gearchange accompanied by a bang! Vince.

Beezabryan,

as it said it's a combined microphone and camera installation thingy all linked up. Excess noise picked up triggers cameras, etc. If you look through the pdf document I linked to it shows pictures of different types.

A.