Only four in 425 heavies illegally noisy
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• In main-road investigations into vehicle noise levels, Which? checked more than a thousand commercial vehicles — and found only four which were over the legal noise limit. Two of these were Belgian-registered Scanias, one a Scammell and the other unidentified.
The roadside checks encountered 262 light commercials, of which nine per cent were "noisy" but none were over the legal limit; 393 medium lorries of which over a third were reckoned to be noisy, but again none exceeded the limit; and 425 heavy lorries, of which over half were considered to be noisy but only four exceeded the 89 dBA legal limit.
Of 2337 cars encountered during the eight hours of roadside checking, 7 per cent were classified as noisy, but only three broke the law — one an MGB sports car which registered 94 dBA.
The investigation was part of a major study on traffic noise, and Which? suggests that, on the basis of its roadside tests, there are between 10,000 and 45,000 illegally noisy motor vehicles on British roads. It also suggests that the legal limits have little relationship to the nuisance value of noise. The report claims that the 87 dBA limit for cars is nearly double the level at which people generally think a car is noisy, while 92 dBA for lorries is a shade over the level that people think is excessively noisy.