NOISE ON THE ROADS

HC Deb 26 March 1959 vol 602 cc1567-77

2.25 p.m.

Mr. John Baldock (Harborough)

The very great increase in the volume of traffic on our roads at the present time is giving rise to some of the greatest problems with which we are faced. One readily agrees that a vast amount of thought and expenditure is being devoted to a great many aspects of dealing with the problems which arise from the very heavy increase in road traffic.

However, there is one aspect of the increasing volume of road traffic which has not been given sufficient thought. That is the noise level which is created in our cities and on our main roads, and even on country roads on some occasions, by some of the traffic. I hope that this is a point which will commend itself to the Government for action. It has one inestimable advantage over most solutions to problems in that it requires extremely little expenditure in order greatly to reduce the nuisance, disturbance and distress which a lot of noise on the roads undoubtedly causes.

I believe it is generally conceded by those who understand those matters that a great deal of nervous effort has to be expended by a person who is working in noisy conditions, whether it is done consciously or subconsciously. If the person is to concentrate on his work and there is a heavy background noise, it is an exhausting process.

In city streets, it is difficult—apart from improvements in building design, acoustic insulation, double glazing and so on—to eliminate the background noise, although I believe that great improvements can be effected by the way streets are laid out. If the streets consist simply of cliffs of buildings down each side of the roadway the noise reverberates and reechoes and rises up between the cliffs so that the noise level is almost as great at the top of the buildings as it is on the ground floor. If the blocks were broken up this noise would escape to a greater degree.

I want to draw the attention of the House to the acceptable level in the emission of noise by certain types of vehicle. As I have said, I do not consider that the general traffic background noise is something which can be entirely eliminated, certainly not from the road aspect—that is rather more a constructional and planning point—but I am asking that action should be taken to deal with the exceptional and intermittent noise which is the type which is really objectionable; it is not just the general hum of traffic but the particularly loud noise which every now and then breaks the rhythm. I believe that noise to be entirely unnecessary, and I think it could be eliminated at very little expense, as I shall suggest.

I consider that the noise emitted by some types of vehicle is, at the present time, entirely unacceptable. I would say that the chief offenders in this respect are certain types of motor bicycle, motor scooters, sports cars and some kinds of lorries. It is not unusual to hear a motor bicycle during the day or in the early hours of the morning going down the street making a noise which is entirely comparable with that of a machine gun, being almost as loud. I find it very difficult to understand why we have to tolerate that kind of thing.

Making that sort of noise is illegal now. The Motor Vehicle (Construction and Use) Regulations, 1955, stipulate that every vehicle propelled by an internal combustion engine shall be fitted with a silencer, expansion chamber or other sound-reducing device in order to keep at a reasonable level the noise caused by the escaping exhaust gases of the engine.

Undoubtedly, many vehicles are particularly obnoxious in this respect, especially motor cycles and sports cars. They probably do not make an excessive noise when they first come from the manufacturers, but, after having been purchased and when they have been improved, in the view of the owners, by the removal of the silencer or the knocking out of most of its insides, a hellish noise is created which is completely unnecessary.

While appreciating that it is a matter more for the Home Office than for the Ministry of Transport, I stress that the police could be a great deal more zealous in enforcing the law in this respect. It is laid down in the Motor Vehicle Regulations that excessive noise should not be emitted, and I do not think that the police enforce those Regulations sufficiently severely.

In reply to a Question which was asked recently, I was told that in the whole of 1957 there were only 4,300 prosecutions in the whole of England and Wales for execssive noise from motor vehicles. In order to get the problem under control, the police will have to exert themselves to a much greater extent than that. If there were a thorough determination to prevent this kind of nuisance, much of it would be stopped.

If the police argue that they cannot enforce the Regulations more zealously because they do not have time, in view of their many other duties, I refer them to a recent Adjournment debate when I suggested that traffic officers should be appointed to enforce road regulations, and with that specific duty and no other. If the police find that they cannot manage the traffic problems as well as their other and more urgent problems, they should agree to traffic officers being appointed to assist in this road problem as well as many others.

The police can enforce the Regulations only as they stand, and my second point is that the Regulations require much more amplification and definition. Simply to say that a suitable and efficient silencer should be fitted does not fit the bill. It is not sufficient to say that the silencer should not be tampered with so that excessive noise is emitted. What is now required is a permissible emission of noise by a particular class of motor vehicles, and that level should be laid down quite definitely. I understand that that can be done in concise and scientific terms. There should be a standard of so many decibels at a distance of so many feet for each class of vehicle. This is a measurement which can be made easily by an instrument called a decibel meter which costs about £140, not a very large sum. The installation of some of these instruments is the total expenditure involved in any of my proposals this afternoon.

Regulations should be made about the number of decibels for different types of vehicles. That would give the manufacturers a guide and it would be up to them to see that vehicles which they made came within that range. I am sure that motor manufacturers are anxious to co-operate in this respect and many have done much experimental work to reduce the noise of vehicles which they make. There would be no resistance to the idea from that quarter.

The next question would be the subsequent enforcement of those standards. Presumably, the police would not find it difficult to detect vehicles whose silencers had been tampered with, and which made a great deal more noise than when they were originally issued by the manufacturers. It might be said that the police would find it difficult to take the numbers of offending vehicles, but most of them will use the same road day after day. They will have to stop at traffic lights, where there always seem to be large concentrations of police. There would be no difficulty in enforcing these provisions if there were a determination to do so.

Another source of noise due to a vehicle not being maintained in the condition it was in on leaving the manufacturers, a noise which can be quite unnerving, is that which comes from a vehicle which regularly backfires, something which is entirely due to lack of maintenance. This is something which the police should follow up.

The matter can be taken a stage further. When annual vehicle tests are carried out, a procedure which I understand is to start in the autumn for vehicles which are 10 years old or more, it will not be difficult, when the vehicles are taken through their mechanical tests for brakes and other appliances, to see that their silencers are also tested and not emitting more than the permitted amount of noise. That could be part of the requirement of the annual test. When that test is eventually applied to all vehicles every year, we should get an assurance that all vehicles were efficient in this respect and that their silencing equipment had not been tampered with.

The principle of the measurement of noise in decibels is already accepted in some byelaws where the permitted noise of a road drill, measured in decibels, is given statutory force. I believe that a road drill must not make more than 90 decibels at a distance of six feet if it is to conform with the law. Presumably, it would be equally possible to lay down the amount of noise which a vehicle should make at a given distance.

This is a growing source of nuisance, not because of the new vehicles being manufactured, although certain types of two-stroke engined scooters make a great deal of noise, but mainly because of neglect of maintenance and deliberate tampering with the exhaust system. On the roads there is too high a proportion of vehicles, especially motor cycles and sports cars, which make a distressing noise and which cause great disturbance by day and night. I have had complaints from people who have been regularly awakened at night by vehicles of this kind. The complaints have come from people living in cities or near main roads in the countryside.

It is not in the general interests of the community that people should be obliged to tolerate the nuisance of excessive noise when it would be simple and inexpensive to prevent it. I appeal to my hon. Friend to give this matter serious thought. If he takes the two simple steps which I have suggested, it will be possible to reduce this nuisance considerably and to eliminate one of the great sources of strain and irritation which has become part of the development of road transport in this country.

2.40 p.m.

Mr. Ronald Russell (Wembley, South)

I should like to support my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Baldock) in the appeal which he has made. I do not think that sufficient attention has been paid to this problem, particularly, as my hon. Friend pointed out, to the nuisance caused by some motor cycles and sports cars.

There is one aspect which my hon. Friend did not mention, and that is the noise of gears, especially of heavy lorries. I know that we have made a great deal of progress in recent years, especially in connection with buses. Twenty or thirty years ago, buses probably made much more noise than they do today, but I do not think that quite the same progress has been made with heavy lorries. As there are new systems of automatic transmission now available which avoid not only the actual changing of gears but the noise of lower gears, I wonder if my hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary can tell the House whether there has been any progress in this direction, with a view to heavy lorries being fitted with automatic transmission, as some motor cars are at the moment.

I am fortunate enough to possess a motor car which has automatic transmission, and the only noise which it makes in the equivalent of low gear is a swishing noise. There is not the normal grinding noise of low gears. If transmission systems like that could be applied to heavy lorries, it would greatly reduce the amount of noise which these vehicles make, particularly when going up hill and when heavily laden, and we get many of such vehicles on the roads today.

In reply to a Question, my hon. Friend told me about different organisations carrying out research into this problem, not only the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, but the many research organisations in the motor industry as well. I wonder if my hon. Friend could give us, if not now at some future time, more details of the amount of research work going on in connection with this problem, and perhaps could tell us whether it is being given all the support it possibly can have, with a view eventually to reducing to the absolute minimum the nuisance from this kind of noise.

2.42 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (Mr. G. R. H. Nugent)

I must congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Baldock) on securing a place in today's Adjournment debates in order to discuss this very important matter of noise on the roads. I confirm that he correctly recited Regulation 20 of the Motor Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations, 1955, which is the usual one used to control noisy vehicles.

There are, however, other Regulations as well, which I might mention in order to fill in the picture as to what the law is in this matter. Regulation 77 makes it an offence to use a cut-out or to alter the silencer to make it more noisy, or to keep the silencer in other than good and efficient working order. Regulations 81 and 82 make it an offence to cause excessive noise through mechanical defects or lack or reasonable care on the part of the driver. Regulation 106 enables the police and Ministry officials to test vehicles' silencers in spot checks. This is not often used.

Obviously, in the main these Regulations are qualitative and not at all easy to enforce. I have consulted my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department on the question of enforcement, and I am told that the police usually use Regulation 77, which is concerned with defective silencers and is the most specific of the Regulations to prove, if the matter comes before a court. Even that is not without difficulty, because when a noisy vehicle comes along, unless the police officer is pretty quick, it is soon out of sight before he can take its number and apprehend it.

Again, Regulations 81 and 82 concerning excessive noise are very much more difficult. They would cover the case, with which we are all familiar, of the sports car in the early hours of the morning doing a very violent acceleration in low gear and disturbing the peace of the whole neighbourhood. Because of the qualitative nature of the Regulations, it is not at all easy to obtain convictions on them. My hon. Friend gave figures of prosecutions in 1957 for the whole country, which were 4,354, with 2,405 written warnings, and he asked for stricter enforcement. He neatly produced an argument that he could offer the Home Office a way out of its manpower difficulties in that it might engage traffic officers to deal with some of these traffic offences, so that there would be more police officers free to deal with other offences. I will pass on his constructive suggestion to my hon. and learned Friend.

I was also asked whether we could go further. I think we can, but I think it would be right to explain to the House that the difficulties are very considerable. This is a most complex subject. My hon. Friend suggested three points with which he thought we ought to deal. First of all, he wanted a regulation for a maximum noise level for each type of vehicle which would be measured in decibels. He also wanted all new vehicles to be constructed to conform to that level and old ones to be checked at the annual vehicle tests which we are about to start this summer. If all that were possible, it would produce a very satisfactory result. We are moving in this direction, and I think we are moving the right way by means of voluntary agreements with the manufacturers.

The first voluntary agreement is now in existence. It is with the motor-cycle manufacturers, and covers what is probably the field of the greatest offence. The noise limits for different sizes of machines, the acceleration tests and the nature and conditions of the tests have been agreed with the motor-cycle manufacturers' association, and were recommended to the individlual manufacturers last autumn.

I should say straight away that, on the whole, manufacturers are most co-operative and should be given credit for their initiative in trying to meet the growing public opinion which wants to see the general noise level limited. I think the fact that they have made this voluntary agreement among themselves is good evidence to show how co-operative they are.

I should here like to interpose, for the information of my hon. Friend, that the problem of testing the volume of noise is a very difficult one. There is now a machine which is thought to be reasonably satisfactory, but even that is not finally proved. This is only the beginning of the problem. Then we have to decide under what physical conditions we are to carry out the tests. There is the problem of what is called ambient noise—noise from other things happening or noise reflected from certain buildings. Therefore, it is necessary to define the size of the area in which the tests should take place to ensure that ambient noise does not interfere and give an inaccurate result.

With regard to the example which my hon. Friend gave, that of a regulation for the road drill of 90 decibels, we have all suffered from that machine. If ever there was a hellish noise, it is that of a road drill working outside one's house. My ambition would be to have a regulation to control that noise at a level far lower than it is at present. The actual measurement of noise has not reached the precision at which it can be satisfactorily drafted into regulations. I think that it will be overcome, but it has not been overcome yet.

We have not advanced quite so far with motor cars, in that we have not reached a formal voluntary agreement, but there is no problem with the average motor car. It is usually well designed, and the manufacturers take great care to see that the noise level is low. Only very rarely does it cause a nuisance. The sports car is the main trouble, but there again the manufacturers have been co-operative. I recall one type of sports car which was rather noisy. We discussed this with the manufacturers, and they quickly improved the silencing arrangements. In due course it would be quite possible to proceed to a voluntary agreement on lines similar to those of the agreement we have reached with the motor-cycle manufacturers.

Mr. Baldock

Are these voluntary arrangements based upon a certain number of decibels, or is it just a question of personal judgment whether the noise is excessive?

Mr. Nugent

They are based on a certain number of decibels. I believe that they were set at 85 and 80, which is rather lower than my hon. Friend's figures. I will give him the full details. They are set at a precise level, to be measured by a noise machine.

There is also the question of the heavy commercial vehicle, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell). Some of these vehicles undoubtedly are noisy on occasion, and they must also be dealt with. My hon. Friend mentioned the question of gears. The gear noise trouble will be overtaken with the progressive improvement of mechanical devices. More and more commercial vehicles will be fitted with automatic transmission, in the same way that London omnibuses now are, and as time goes on that factor will probably be eliminated.

When these voluntary agreements are working, and have been modified by experience—because we shall certainly meet difficulties—we can start framing regulations, and I think that we shall do so. I should like to see them made reasonably progressive. We should set the noise level at a certain height, with the intention of reaching a lower level in due course, but we must be reasonable, because the lower we set the limit the more power is taken out of the vehicle and the less is available for pushing it along. Even the ubiquitous moped, which can make a filthy noise, sometimes makes no noise at all. The elimination of noise can be achieved if the intention is there.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough asked whether silencer testing could be included in the annual vehicle testing which we are going to start this summer. I will go as far as to say that we shall consider the point, but we certainly cannot introduce it to start with. We must limit testing to the three points that we have already declared. Great difficulties are involved in bringing the scheme into effect and it would horrify me to have to introduce another aspect of test at this time. We may be able to do so in the future. It will not be easy, because in order to ascertain whether a silencer is in good order it would be necessary to disconnect the exhaust pipe and put some kind of a rod into the silencer. This will take some time and cost a certain amount of money. It may be possible to do it in future, and we shall certainly bear the fact in mind.

In the nature of things, these developments will take some time to mature, but I hope that I have said enough to convince the House, and especially my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, that we are moving in the right direction, although it will take time to reach the point at which we are aiming.

Regulations of themselves do not cure noise. I am not familiar with motoring in all the European countries, but my impression is that countries such as France, Switzerland, Holland, Western Germany and Sweden, which have such regulations, are, on the whole, noisier than we are. I would give Italy the accolade, but it is only fair to say that she has no such regulations.

The kind of noise is sometimes more significant than its intensity. That is another aspect of the matter that we must bear in mind. In addition, we cannot get away from the fact that the heavy flow of traffic alone—the tyre noises on the road—can become very troublesome if it goes on continuously and can be heard in houses by the roadside. That happens very often nowadays. I am also inclined to think that in this difficult problem of the control of noise the disposition of individual citizens is a decisive factor. As a nation we compare very favourably with our neighbours. Generally speaking, people here try to avoid making noise, and certainly the restraint with which motor car horns are used here is in marked contrast to the situation in most neighbouring countries.

Nevertheless, I agree with my hon. Friend that noise is the enemy of mankind. It causes a strain on the nerves, it is extremely trying and tiresome, and how much it adds to ill-health is quite beyond me to predict, although I am certain that it causes additional strain in the high-speed world in which we live. Traditionally, noise was a weapon of war. One of the ways of frightening one's enemy was to make as much noise as possible. In this connection I was thinking of the Biblical reference to the siege of Jericho. The besiegers had only to go round the city seven times, making sufficient noise, and down would come the walls. I would think that if a modern vehicle had run only three or four times round the walls of Jericho they would have fallen down. There is no doubting that noise is the enemy of mankind, and in the world in which we live, with our civilisation becoming increasingly mechanised, the problem of controlling noise is a very serious one.

I accept the Ministry of Transport's share of responsibility in doing what it can to limit, and, if possible, to reduce noise. My personal feeling is strongly in sympathy with that of my hon. Friends, and such additional impetus as I can give to the developments that I have been describing I have given, and I shall certainly continue to do so. I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this interesting subject before us.