With new special cameras Federal government wants to take action against noisy car-posers

Noisy vehicles on the roads regularly trigger discussions. Now the federal government wants to take action.

The federal government wants to make it easier and more stringent to penalize excessive road traffic noise. In an initial pilot test in Geneva, a system for recording the noise of vehicles in traffic was tested.

The Hydre noise radar that was tested has a very high level of technical performance, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) told the Keystone-SDA news agency in response to an inquiry. The noise radar works like a speed trap for speed monitoring. The device measures the volume of the vehicles and triggers a photo if a certain limit value is exceeded.

The pilot project took place last summer in Geneva in an urban environment with maximum speeds of between 30 and 60 kilometers per hour. Tests were carried out on four stretches of road. Every day, 100 to 200 vehicles fell into the radar trap, as reported by the CH-Media newspapers. The noise limit was 80 decibels.

70 percent of the noisy vehicles were motorcycles. Every tenth motorcyclist was flashed, the report continued. This was followed by cars with 17 percent and trucks and buses with 13 percent.

Noise limit value must be defined

There is currently no limit value for unnecessary noise that must be complied with by vehicles in traffic. According to the FOEN, complaints about excessively loud vehicles have certainly increased in recent years. In addition, the maximum noise levels measured are becoming ever higher. In the test carried out in Geneva, the maximum value for a car was 117 decibels and for a motorcycle 110 decibels.

The threshold for pain and direct hearing damage is 120 decibels. The danger threshold is already at 90 decibels. The study recommends a threshold of 82 decibels, which would make around one in 200 vehicles in urban areas too loud, the newspapers wrote.

Lack of a legal basis

The use of noise radar traps could make police forces more efficient and save on personnel costs. The FOEN wrote that checking vehicles that are too loud requires a large task force with which relatively few vehicles are checked. As with a speed radar, there would also be subsequent checks of the recorded data so that no false fines are handed out.

There is currently no legal basis for this in Switzerland. Once the pilot tests have been completed, the federal government will decide how to proceed, the FOEN added.