What do an Egyptian statue in Manchester, a BP refinery in Azerbaijan, and a BMW M3 in New York City have in common? All have had their noise or vibration levels measured by detection equipment sourced from English firm Intelligent Instruments. The situations in Manchester and Azerbaijan came to happy conclusions. The matter of the M3 is ongoing, and is probably not going to be good news for the owner. The details: Road & Track came across a posting on the Facebook page of Lowered Congress, devoted to “the sexiest and coolest lowered vehicles in and around New York City.” The posting was a picture of a second summons to the M3 owner, reading, in part, “[Y]our vehicle has been identified as having a muffler that is not in compliance with Section 386 of the Vehicle and Traffic Law, which prohibits excessive noise from motor vehicles. Your vehicle was recorded by a camera that takes a picture of the vehicle and the license plate. In addition, a sound meter records the decibel level as the vehicle approaches and passes the camera.”
That camera came from Intelligent Instruments, which appears to be a division of the company 24 Acoustics, which describes itself as “a multi-disciplinary acoustic consultancy providing a high quality and professional engineering noise consultancy.” In October of last year, company director Dave Coles explained the $25,000 camera to WATE ABC in Knoxville, Tennessee, thusly: “The noise camera system is a class 1 precision sound level meter at the heart of it, with a couple of high resolution cameras attached to it. It’s measuring video and audio and noise levels all the time. It’s waiting for a noisy vehicle, and when it detects one, it captures video, audio, noise levels, and uploads everything to a web server, where someone can review it and make a judgment as to whether it’s OK or not.”
The New York camera deployment is a pilot program being run by the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) that began last September and will run until June 30 of this year, then be evaluated. Responding to questions from R&T, the NY DEP confirmed the system is in operation at the location where the M3 was recorded.
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We’re not sure if the system in NYC puts a human in the ticket-issuing protocol chain, but there are humans in the compliance chain. The M3 owner was instructed to appear at a wastewater treatment plant in Brooklyn for noise testing. According to the pictured summons, if the owner does that — after not responding to the first DEP notice — the owner “will be given the opportunity to bring the vehicle into compliance with City and State law.” If the owner fails to show a second time, there’s another summons coming “which carries a maximum penalty of $875.”
The DEP site explains, “The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and the Police Department (NYPD) share the duties of enforcing the Noise Code.” The DEP told R&T this pilot program is separate from the recent vehicle noise pollution legislation signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul last year, called the Stop Loud and Excessive Exhaust Pollution (SLEEP) Act. Draft legislation had attempted to define “excessive or unusual” exhaust noise as above 60 dB for cars and 95 dB for motorcycles, but ended up sticking with “excessive and unusual.” The vague but enforceable provision carries fines up to $1,000, the highest in the nation, and senators were hoping to get decibel readers fitted to every vehicle used by police and sheriffs.
The New York City rule book reclassified its noise code in December 2005, calling any vehicle under 10,000 pounds too noisy if the exhaust is “plainly audible at a distance of 150 feet or more,” and for motorcycles, 200 feet or more. However, even though this is happening in NYC, we believe the DEP is working off Section 386 of New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law, which sets the allowable dB limit for cars at 76 dB under 35 miles per hour, 82 dB over 35 mph. For motorcycles, that’s 82 dB under 35 mph, 86 dB above 35 mph.
In November of last year, the DEP adopted a new measure to impose violations of Section 386, which are codified in the Rules of the City of New York, Title 15, Chapter 47. The three-tiered schedule of penalties and the default penalties — the latter are for not showing up when required — quickly hit four figures, starting at $220 as the penalty for a first offense and maxing out at $1,575 for not showing up to a summons after the third violation.
Before anyone starts with “It’s those big city politicians!”, know that this is headed for the heartland, too. The aforementioned Knoxville is installing a single Intelligent Instruments camera at a downtown intersection “for a trial run at no cost to the city.”
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Keyword: NYC using sound detection devices to ticket loud cars