1984 …
George Orwell really did get it right back in 1948, didn’t he? The latest is from Down Under, where a firm called Acoustic Research Laboratories in New South Wales is selling noise-activated cameras to several of Australia’s state governments.
ARL specializes in "the design of environmental noise and vibration monitoring instrumentation," according to their website.
The system apparently uses microphones that activate video cameras beyond a certain vehicle sound level (some sort of algorithm is supposed to filter out other sounds), which then take a 10-second vid & sound clip using number plate ID recognition to nail offenders.
So far it’s been apparently targeted toward heavy trucks in its sole installation in Mount Ousley (a suburb of Woolongong, the home town of hard-ass 1987 500 cc world champion Wayne Gardner), but ARL says the system could easily be expanded to include horns, loud exhausts, whatever.
The next prospective world champ from Woolongong may have to do his practicing well out in the countryside.
right on!
Why is it that some bikers still consider it their God-given right to act like obnoxious assholes when it comes to pissing off the neighbours with their noisy bikes? If “Big Brother” finds it necessary to depend on noise-activated cameras to deter this selfish behaviour, then we have no-one to blame but ourselves.
And lets hope that the “next prospective world champ from Woolongong” does his (her?) practising on the track, not on the public roads?
Can I get one of these put up around where I live to nail all the assorted rice-boys, boom box cars, muscle cars and trucks with “free flowing” exhausts, and straight-pipe cruisers? And then maybe one on the highway near my place to snag the truckers who think it’s cool (or whatever) to put pipes with no mufflers on their rigs and then use their engine brakes.