Who’s game to take on Big Noise? Sure, it’s retail politics but such obvious retail politics that it’s a wonder our governments haven’t been game to act on behalf of civilised society. Michael Pascoe offers a solution:
In the admirable cause of keeping the peace, my Sydney neighbours are legally forbidden on the weekend from firing up their Victas after 8 pm or before 8 am. The lawn mowing curfew ends at 7 am on weekdays.
Other neighbours are required to turn down the music and TV at 10 pm Sunday to Thursday and midnight Friday and Saturday. It is not to be heard inside my home.
On the other hand, a couple of blocks away from me, the bloke who has an engine from a 747 on two wheels and a megaphone instead of a muffler is free to ride the streets at any time he fancies, rattling windows, waking kiddies and causing possums to fall from the trees. (OK, maybe not the possums, but the rest of it.)
Then there are the drug dealers, property developers and nepo babies (who else spends the thick end of a million on a supercar?) furiously compensating for personal inadequacy by revving the rivets out of their machines at traffic lights and between speed bumps, displaying not horsepower but the screech of a thousand cats being skinned alive. Not a problem, boys, you go for it.
Look at me
Of course you don’t need a Ferrari to shatter the night. Most of the screamers and roarers are far from it; their drivers just share the same desperate need to be noticed. “Look at me! I have machine that makes noise! That means I’m, I’m, I’m, er, something!”
Fair bet as school children they were the class clowns proud of loud farts. That would fit with the mentality of those with road cars pointlessly tuned to backfire, barking/farting their way to a stop.
Time to resurrect the 2007 NSW anti-speeding ad, “No one thinks big of you” with the young woman now wagging her pinky at motor farters.
Hilariously, it is specifically against the law for Ronnie Revhead to use “a vehicle on residential premises (other than for entering or leaving) that can be heard inside a neighbour’s residence, between 8 pm and 8 am on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday or between 8 pm and 7 am on any other day”.
Once Ron has his WRX on the street though, BYO ear plugs 24/7.
You recognise these characters and want more? Try the motorbikes merely very noisy individually but delighting in pack rides through city and suburban streets. Multiply “merely very noisy” by 20 and you can experience life smack up against the airport’s chain link fence with an A380 overhead.
Laws not enforced
Surely there are laws against obnoxious vehicle noise, you might think. Well, yes, and no, and up to a point, Minister.
There’s Protection of the Environment Operations (Noise Control) Regulation 2017, for example, with all manner of particular offences, but the rules and tests are fiddly and laws are not really laws if they are not enforced.
You are free to report noisy vehicles in NSW and in the 12 months to April 30 last year, there were indeed 4,455 such reports. And there were exactly zero penalties issued by police.
Over the previous five years there were 34,195 reports – and just 74 penalties issued.
It looks like the public received the message. Reporting is futile so fewer reports were made and even fewer penalties issued. Noisy vehicles are not a priority for the authorities. (I suspect a fair percentage of those earlier 74 penalties weren’t just about noise, either.)
Sleep murderers
In fairness to the police, catching the needlessly, annoyingly, stupidly revving tool isn’t easy.
A noisy midnight party doesn’t move. It will wait for the police to arrive to deal with it after being reported.
Driven normally and when and if any authority wants to test it, the V6 internal combustion engine of a particular Italian work of art I greatly admire is not at all antisocial, but if a goose wanted to be a goose, as a goose will, not only Macbeth does murder sleep.
It doesn’t have to be like this. In a crowded city, heck, in any city, nobody needs excessive, completely unnecessary noise, especially in the wee small hours.
Other great cities – New York, London, Paris – already have a partial solution: noise cameras. Just as speed cameras catch the speedster in the act, noise cameras catch the screamers, barkers and roarers when they’re screaming, barking and roaring.
The NSW Environmental Protection Agency is nearing the end of a 12-month trial of three such devices in the Bayside and Wollongong council areas.
That is more than Google tells me any other state is doing, but it takes 12 months? And then of course there will have to be careful assessment of the data before bureaucratic wheels move to move political wheels, if they are interested in moving and aren’t quietly owned by the anti-muffler lobby. There are no policy turbochargers here. Don’t retire your earplugs or put off double glazing.
For this sufferer of midnight road roar, more than enough was known by the trial’s half-way mark to justify wide use of the cameras.
EPA trials
In response to my enquiry, a spokesperson from the EPA said that by June the trial cameras had detected 2,500 “noise events”.
“A ‘noise event’ can be triggered by any loud noise source,” the spokesperson’s statement stated. “This includes a noisy car or motorbike but can also include thunder or garbage trucks. The EPA analyses each event to confirm its source.”
(Good idea. Hard to book either God or the BoM for thunder.)
The EPA said further data and analysis was needed before it drew conclusions but it did have some preliminary insights, to wit:
- There are certain days and times when noisy vehicles and driving behaviour increase. Night times and weekends produce the most noise events currently.
- Motorcycles are responsible for a majority of noisy events recorded so far in the trial, yet only make up around 4% of all registered motor vehicles, according to Transport for NSW data.
- A significant proportion of noise events are from repeat offenders.
That tells you all you really need to know and anyone with ears in prime locations already knew it.
The EPA is keeping the locations of the test cameras secret so as to not influence drivers’ behaviour during the trial. May we please start using them for enforcement and keep locations secret and mobile to absolutely influence drivers’ and riders’ behaviour everywhere.
Trial bikes
The motorcycle finding raises a further question: why should we permit excessively noisy bikes on our roads in the first place? Or at least impose a curfew on them, as we do on motor mowers.
Powerful bikes don’t need to be screamers. It’s only the sirens on police motorcycles that make a lot of noise.
Trail bikes you can hear coming from the other side of a thousand-acre paddock have no place on city streets, particularly at night. Whatever that machine is a couple of blocks away, shut it.
On top of the excessive danger they pose to riders – every rider knows that at some stage they will put it down, just hopefully not in the path of a bus – and therefore costs to society, the powered two-wheelers don’t need to make a nuisance of themselves with excessive noise.
You want to play hospital roulette while commuting on two wheels, buy an electric bike instead.
And I write as someone who is yet to go the EV route, who loves his internal combustion engine cars, enjoys the sound of a fine engine going through the gears and has no problem with the deep base of a Harley ridden reasonably.
But there is no reason other than political lack of will and tardiness for innocent bystanders at outdoor cafes and in their homes at night being persecuted by the aforementioned inadequates.
Bring on the noise cameras, now!
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.