Vroom, vroom! Watch out! The police have you in their sights

Shanghai is cracking down on vehicle noise, with motorcycles and souped-up cars the prime targets. From Sunday, noise limits on vehicles will come into effect for the first time in the city.

Vehicles with fewer than nine seats and used to carry passengers will be restricted to a maximum noise level of 80 decibels. Violators, with the exception of those driving on expressways, will be fined 200 yuan (US$29), with 3 points deducted from their driver’s licenses.

So how loud is 80 decibels?

The sound is equal to a typical alarm clock. By comparison, emergency vehicle sirens register 120 decibels, according to the World Health Organization. Prolonged exposure to sounds 85 decibels or higher can cause hearing loss and other problems.

Under the new regulations, motorcycles noisier than 80 decibels are banned from the roads between 9pm and 7am every day.

The new rules were introduced by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau and the Shanghai Environmental Protection Bureau.

A traffic police spokesman said law enforcement will be using special equipment to test the sound volumes of vehicles but didn’t specify any other measures that may be taken to enforce the new rules.

Shanghai is following in the footsteps of overseas locales. The European Union capped maximum noise limits for passenger vehicles at 80 decibels in 2013. 

In the United States, noise limits vary from city to city. In Seattle, for example, the passenger vehicle limit is 95 decibels.

From 2013 to 2017, daily traffic noise measured about 70 decibels in Shanghai, dropping to about 65 at night, according to the environmental protection bureau. 

The bureau sets different standards for measuring sound volume on a street. It classes 72.1 decibels or more as “bad” or “quite bad” for day, and 62.1 decibels or more as “bad” or “quite bad” for night. Last year, 14.5 percent of all streets in Shanghai ranked as “bad” or “quite bad” during the daytime, but at night 68.9 percent.

Motorcycle noise at night particularly annoys local residents. One of them is Liu Jie, a white-collar worker who lives in an apartment that faces the street near Xujiahui.

“I often hear loud noise from motorcycles at midnight and sometimes at 2am or 3am in the morning,” she said. “A motorcycle playing loud music once stopped on the street below my windows and just stayed there with the music playing on.”

Liu said she welcomes the new rules from the government, contending that a city should be peaceful at night.

Some motorists said the new rules target cars and motorcycles that are modified to produce noises that are considered “cool.”

Zheng Chunbin, a motorcycle enthusiast, said the new rules are tricky because any motorcycle with engine displacement of over 800cc “definitely can be noisier than 80 decibels.”

“Some luxury motorcycles have exhaust pipes already modified and can produce noise of 150 decibels,” he added.

The same goes for some upmarket cars, with flexible controls on the pressure relief valve that enable drivers to produce louder noises. “It’s not necessary to use equipment to tell if a motor vehicle makes a noise louder than 80 decibels, because ordinary vehicles can’t do that,” Zheng said.

He said the government seems to be sending mixed messages to people who modify their vehicles to produce more noise. 

“It’s illegal to modify a motor vehicle after purchase, but large exhibitions of modified cars are held every year, and businesses advertise car modification services with no consequences,” he said.

Along with the new decibel limits, police announced that motorists found to have modified the turbocharger, exhaust pipe or silencer on their motor vehicles will be fined 500 yuan and required to remove the modifications.

Previously, traffic police cracked down on such offenses by setting up roadblocks at night on roads where drivers of modified cars or motorcycles often gathered for fun racing. 

The police encourage residents who hear irregular street noise to call the police or report it on the official app of the city’s traffic police, Shanghai Jiaojing.