Random, loud, farting, belching, screaming, whining, burbling, popping, crackling, aggressive, angry, disturbing and harmful noises are assaulting us day and night. When a driver touches a button, presses the gas, or flicks their wrist to make a vehicle louder, they are assaulting people with noise. We can’t close our ears, and our bodies can’t stop listening.
Noise pollution research provides plenty of evidence of the dire impact on our nervous and cardiovascular systems, as well as the damage to cognitive functioning of everyone, from young to old.
The process of both reporting this (mostly) transient and intermittent pollution is broken and enforcing the laws for loud vehicles is currently resource intensive and ineffective.
Read on for a very high level overview of what NMNT’s current understanding of how we got here, what the problems are, some of our solutions (let’s think out of the box), and what you can do to build a quieter and healthier city..
For a much deeper dive, please see the video from Summer 2024 .
If you want to join this task force, please complete the sign up form.
Click the boxes below to hear the types of noises we are talking about:
Angry Audi
Annoyed at someone not liking their noisy loops through a residential neighbourhood, the noisemakers leave their mark.
Downtown (sounds like) Gunshots
A motorbike going through downtown Toronto backfiring repeatedly.
History
In 2018 Doug Ford Announced that he was ending the Drive Clean program for passenger vehicles, removing the last visual inspection of a vehicle. Now there is a new program called DriveON inspecting commercial vehicles, not passenger vehicles.
This trend of relaxing requirements is not limited just to Ontario. Also, auto manufacturers are marketing noise – exhaust notes on cars, distinctive sounds and active exhaust systems. We are losing control of our soundscape.
This is now a global problem. Cities all over the world are becoming more and more dense and more people are impacted by a single driver with a loud vehicle. Highways are bad, but arterial roads are worse, for creating peak noise events. On average, the 1.2 million people living on an arterial road will have over 150 noise spikes a day – even from high floors in condos.
In many places the reporting process is broken which leads to anger and frustration at being able to do nothing about something that is impacting your health. Below is an image of the workflow that exists in Toronto for reporting moving vehicles noise. How is it in your city?
The workflow of reporting moving vehicle noise where no matter what happens the person who got woken up has no resolution.
Laws & Regulations
This spring we had a Political Science Master’s student from University of Toronto take a deep dive into the federal, provincial and municipal laws regarding motor vehicle noise.
The laws can be divided up between the vehicle itself (the safety of the vehicle) and the drivers behaviour (driving in such a way to make it loud). The image shows how that plays out for the different levels of government.
At the links below you can see:
Enforcement
Let’s be clear, no one wants police to chase after a loud moving vehicle. We also understand that there are better activities that the police should be spending our valuable tax dollars on, and that more bodies will not solve this problem. NMNT has had a few meetings with the Toronto Police Services and when asked, “What would help?” the answer was: “Automated Enforcement”.
For the Toronto Police Service there is no mandatory training on identifying illegal mufflers and if a driver gets a ticket, they can challenge it in court to which they and the officer must attend. If you or I reported a loud muffler and it went to court, we would have to be present as well. And.. often the cases don’t even get that far as the courts are backlogged and tend to not prioritize equipment offenses.
There is more than one solution and some will deliver results sooner than others. We need to start working together to push for change on multiple levels of government and, if possible, in cities all across Ontario.
TPS and NMNT
We have had 3 separate conversations with members of the Toronto Police Services and also recorded a podcast.
TPS knows that vehicle noise is a problem, and that the current processes don’t work. They have suggested to us that we need to work from the bottom up and also from the top down.
Bottom Up
In order to be heard, residents need to reach out to their local division with their noise reports to let them know that it is a problem in your community. There is a Community Policing Liaison Committee , whose purpose is to provide advice and assistance to the local Unit Commander on matters of concern to the local community including crime and quality of life issues. This is where our concerns about vehicle noise will (eventually) be heard.
Community Partnerships & Engagement Unit is committed to providing an effective, efficient and economical support service to Service members in the practical application of Community Mobilization principles, as well as developing, enhancing and maintaining constructive community partnerships. The have an Engagement division where they are working to ensure that neighbourhoods are kept safe by preventing crime and identifying shared community values
Top Down
We have connected with the Dr. Dubi Kanengisser, the Executive Director of the Toronto Police Services Board. We have discussed noise cameras and how to make them an agenda item at a board meeting, but more pressure and contact needs to be applied.
We have a number of allies on the Board, Chair Councillor Shelley Carroll, Councillor Lily Cheng and Councillor Amber Morely are all supportive of NMNT’s work.
Lastly there is TPS Corporate Communications. We can reach out to them to advocate for them to educate the public about illegal muffler modifications and their fines.
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