Legislation will be drawn up which will make it an offence to alter an exhaust on a car or motorbike to make it noisier and to drive a vehicle above a decibel limit yet to be stipulated.
Environment & Infrastructure and Home Affairs initially proposed that the law should include only exhaust alterations while further consideration was given to a decibel limit, but the two committees successfully amended their own policy letter after pushback from some deputies who wanted more decisive action on measuring vehicle noise.
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E&I vice-president Adrian Gabriel, who had submitted an amendment to include a decibel limit in the law before the committees took that idea into their own proposals, believed that targeting exhaust alterations was not the way to tackle the problem of noisy vehicles.
‘From my observations, and many of those in the industry, while well-meaning and seeming to address the problem of excessively noisy vehicles, it is totally unworkable and completely over the top,’ he said.
‘The subjective nature to me is unworkable. How would any inspection by a police officer or technician ascertain if a vehicle is noisier than the original manufacturer intended?
‘Giving powers to E&I to set a decibel limit will set the way that the public are expected to behave with defined limits, not subjectivity or guesswork, about whether an exhaust might be noisier or even a replacement.’
Deputy John Dyke claimed that the committees were focusing on ‘the wrong issue’ of exhaust alterations and should concentrate on the decibel limit only.
The States has debated nuisance exhausts numerous times since 2007, when the late Deputy Dave Jones led a successful requete directing action. Difficulty defining excessive noise has been among the reasons for delay.
E&I and Home Affairs want to carry out trials before deciding what the decibel limit should be and how to apply it, but some members, including Deputy Gabriel, believed the committees were complicating a straightforward issue.
‘There was absolutely no need for most of this stuff. It just needed a little bit of common sense,’ said Deputy Mark Helyar.
‘We don’t need to do any monitoring. We don’t need to understand what a noisy bike is. Everybody knows. A cursory search on Google in 10 seconds would give you half a dozen countries’ decibel limits and how they are measured. This is not complicated. It should have taken five minutes at the beginning of the term.’
Deputies Lindsay de Sausmarez and Rob Prow, the presidents of the committees putting forward the proposals, insisted that it was necessary to tackle both exhaust alterations and the decibel limit and that the latter was far from straightforward.
‘A trial is necessary, not to establish whether there is a problem with excessive vehicle noise, but to determine the practical, pragmatic mechanisms to make a decibel limit or limits realistic and enforceable,’ said Deputy de Sausmarez.
‘There isn’t a standardised methodology so we don’t know what will work best in the Guernsey context. The trial would also consider the role of periodic vehicle testing and involve consultation with industry, again to determine what will work best at a practical level.’
The committees also want to use a trial to examine further measures which they believe could help address the problem of noisy vehicles, including the introduction of acoustic cameras which have also been trialled in the UK.
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