Traffic noise: the vehicle regulations and their enforcement / report by a working group of the Council.

  • Great Britain. Noise Advisory Council.
Date:
1972
Catalogue details

Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: Traffic noise: the vehicle regulations and their enforcement / report by a working group of the Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/80 (page 10)
    Enforcement—The Present Situation 26. The pattern of police prosecutions under these regulations has not changed much in recent years, and it seems probable that the standard of driver behaviour has remained fairly constant. What has changed the situation is the growth in the total number of vehicles on the roads, espe- cially the number of heavy goods vehicles with large diesel engines. It will be seen from Table 3 that the great majority (94%) of the findings of guilt relate to noise caused by a faulty silencer. 27. To assist our work the Department of the Environment have under- taken a special roadside survey of nearly 4 million vehicles. It will be seen from the report of the survey (at Annex B) that 5,380 of these vehicles were considered to be so noisy as to suggest that they had defective or ineffective silencers. Despite some inconsistencies in the results of the survey, we think that the inference can reasonably be drawn that some 4 million of the more than 14 million vehicles currently on the road may be assumed at any given time to be operating with defective or ineffective silencers. Of these, the proportion whose owners will be prosecuted is evidently very small and, as Table 3 shows, those who are prosecuted and found guilty are likely to incur only a trivial fine. There is thus considerable justification for the widespread feeling that too many vehicle owners are able to ignore the noise regulations with impunity. 28. It will be noted in particular, from the last line of Table 3, that there has so far been no effective enforcement of the quantitative noise limits on vehicles in use described in paragraph 23 above—only a handful of prosecutions having been brought. We find that the difficulty here arises from the nature of the test procedure prescribed. This calls for equipment which is expensive both to buy and maintain and can be used only in conditions which are infrequently met with on British roads. In addition the procedure makes substantial demands on manpower and appears to offer the possibility of challenge in the courts on a number of technical grounds. In these circumstances it is hardly surprising that enforcement has been minimal. However, as we show in the next part of our report new noise testing techniques are emerging which offer a prospect of more effective enforcement by way of spot roadside checks as well as in associa- tion with periodic statutory vehicle tests.