Wednesday 22nd October 2008

The Art Of Noise

Yet another camera for the roadside

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With not much happening between BBQs, Australian politicians are worse than our lot when it comes to dreaming up ways to harass their sun-struck motorists.

Not content with blazing the global trail for speed cameras, the Aussie PC brigade are now poised to deploy noise cameras across their road network – begging the obvious question, when will they arrive here?

The fully automated systems have been in development for the last three years and are now set to be rolled out in several states and territories down under. According to a report in Australia’s The Newspaper, the camera-based system utilises a set of microphones to record noise levels and, when the set threshold is exceeded, a ten second video is stored and a ticket automatically generated. Apparently the machine can hold data for up to 10,000 tickets before it needs to be reset.

There’s one crumb of comfort for fellow fans of a sporty exhaust note – the current technology is apparently only reliable between 41F and 104 degrees so may not yet be suited to many European environments. But you can bet the system developer Acoustic Research Labs of New South Wales will be working to fix that.

[craigmscott]

that is ridiculous!