Some Georgia lawmakers want to try to take on loud cars -- an issue many city dwellers and suburbanites understand all too well. HB 1219 could put up cameras and noise detectors, automatically identifying offenders.
Normal traffic is often loud enough. Add in the occasional motorist behind the wheel of a car souped-up for added sonic enjoyment and your layers of traffic noise.
Anne McKillips lives in Buckhead and has had it up to her eardrums with cars deliberately tweaked for maximum volume.
She said she would welcome a bill that would introduce into Georgia stationary traffic noise detectors paired with cameras, that can identify the license plates of cars filling the air with the rumble of their motors.
"I would love to have a good night’s sleep without being woken up by cars. That would be amazing," McKillips said.
A company in England called Intelligent Instruments has produced such a system. Cars scream past cameras, get flagged by noise detectors and their license plates are photographed for police to manage as the law allows.
"It’s about improving quality of life," the company's spokesman, Reuben Peckham, said. "Our system can detect certain sounds and discard others. It doesn’t always. It’s not a hundred percent infallible, but it’s about 90% there."
McKillips said she hopes the bill gets traction in the legislature before it adjourns at the end of March. She figures lawmakers from across the state, working at the state capitol, frequently get an earful.
"It’s just totally disruptive. It’s unnecessary. It’s like, why do it," she questioned.
McKillips said Georgia law doesn’t have an effective legal deterrent to mere noise and hopes the passage of this bill will open the door to creating one.