They?ve got cameras to catch you speeding, running red lights and borrowing bus lanes? and now, they?re getting noise cameras to prosecute you for having a noisy bike (or car). Welcome to Big Brother Britain.

Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary, reckons it?s about time the government put a stop to ?unbearable revving engines and noisy exhausts?, so with the help of Atkins-Jacobs Joint Venture, he?s trialing a new technology, worth £300,000, across four areas of England and Wales. These ?listening cameras? will be able to detect when a vehicle is making too much noise and, in the future, automatically issue fines to offending motorists.

Exactly how loud a vehicle can be, according to the law, is fairly vague, so I can see this being a difficult one to police. But the law does say that exhausts and silencers must be in good condition, and not altered to increase noise; breaking that particular law (and getting caught, obviously) could land you with a £50 fine.
The tech is still very much in the design stages, so I don?t think we all need to rush out and fit baffles to our exhausts, but this news may well be a sign of things to come.

Irritate

I don?t really know how I feel about it to be honest. I understand that boy (or girl) racers, or people with ridiculously loud cars and bikes are pretty annoying. The bloke a few doors down from me is a perfect example; on more than one occasion, I?ve felt like pouring a bag of sugar into his fuel tank. But I ne...