TooLoud.org  

• Setting your Default Location:
  Set Default Location should be done at least once. We recommend you select the center of the area where you typically make noise reports. Your default location helps with noise reports (see below), and determines which statistics you see on the Statistics Table and Statistics Map pages. You can update your default location whenever you need to.
• Noise report using your camera:
  Click the Photo Sumbission button and take a photo of the vehicle's license plate, or select an existing photo. Then click Get Plate Information to run TooLoud's automatic license plate recognition. Confirm and correct (if needed) the plate number, jurisdiction, and vehicle type, then click Submit to register the noise report. If your photo file contains GPS information the photo's loction is assigned to the noise report. Otherwise your default location is assigned. If you are just seeing how things work, change the jurisdiction to the virtual 'Demonstration Jurisdiction' before submitting the report.
• Manually enter a noise report:
  Click the Manual Submission button and enter the vehicle information. Your default location is automatically assigned to the report. If you are just seeing how things work, change the jurisdiction to the virtual 'Demonstration Jurisdiction' before submitting the report.
• Statistics Table:
  Click here to view a table of noise report statistics centered at your default location.
• Statistics Map:
  Shows a grid map of noise report statistics centered at your default location. Click on any cell in the grid to view the statistics for that area.
• Statistics By Jurisdiction:
  This shows a table of noise report statistics by Country, Province, or State.
• Clink on any topics below to expeand it:
  The topics below to learn how to use crowdsourcing to get illegally loud vehicle off our streets.
• Clink on an expanded topic to colapse it:
  

Intentionally loud vehicles disturb millions of people every day, yet citizen lobbying has often had little success in reducing this unwanted noise pollution.

We know the issue is neither a lack of laws nor a lack of desire because most jurisdictions prohibit modifying an exhaust system to make it louder than the original equipment. Lack of enforcement is typically explained as insufficient police resources combined with an inefficient and expensive legal enforcement process. In other words, police have more important things to do.

In each jurisdiction there is typically a vehicle licensing agency or bureau that renews vehicle licenses annually. Common sense says these licensing agencies should not be licensing vehicles that have been illegally modified, yet they do, year over year. Why?

The TooLoud approach:

• The public, who are more than a little fed up with intentionally loud vehicles, can use an online crowdsourcing service such as app.tooloud.com to register the license plate numbers of loud vehicles.
• The local vehicle licensing agency can periodically requests the list of vehicles that have TooLoud noise reports registered against them. Data such as vehicle type and the total number of noise reports per vehicle is also provided.
• No personal information about the person who made the report is required or collected.
• The licensing agency can use the loud vehicle list to determine which vehicles must come in for a noise test either immediately (if there are a lot of noise reports) or before their annual vehicle registration will be renewed. The licensing agency has the option of prioritizing high report-count vehicles to start.
• Accurate noise testing performed in a controlled environment will greatly reduce the risk of successful legal challenges. Accuracy issues such as human judgement and uncontrolled roadside conditions are taken out of the equation.

Crowdsourcing works when enough people are motivated to participate. If you ask around you will probably find a lot of people who are fed up with intentionally load vehicles disturbing their sleep, family, work, and leisure time. The TooLoud approach is a simpl one, but it will take lobbying before those in authority understand just how effective and low cost this approach will be. Fortunately, the steps to raising awareness are straightforward:

1. (Re) Organize!
   A quick Internet search shows many 'get loud vehicles off our streets' initiatives, action groups, and non-profits all over the world. Almost all are focused (unsuccessfully) on increasing policing by local law enforcement. Where the focus belongs is on the vehicle licensing agencies that continue to knowingly license these illegally modified vehicles each year. What's needed is a single action group working at the state, province, or country level depending on how vehicles are licensed in your part of the world. Reach out to the existing local groups in your jurisdiction and start working together to focus your lobbying effort on a solution that works - crowdsourcing!
2. Change the message:
   When you focus on vehicle safety and licensing rather than vehicle operation, the 'police are busy' issue goes away because this new approach does not involve the police or the courts. What matters is whether or not the vehicle complies with environmental and safety regulations, not how the vehicle is being operated. In essentially all jurisdictions there are existing environmental regulations and vehicle safety regulations that require the vehicle's exhaust system to meet original specifications. No new laws or regulations are needed. To make these regulations enforcable, most juridictions alrady have a legal device often called 'Order to Inspect' that requires a vehicle owner to bring their vehicle in for testing at a designated vehicle inspection station. An exhaust system that has been modified to be intentially loud is not legal, and will not pass this inspection. It is actually that simple. No police, no courts, no roadside testing required.
3. Go Viral!
   People are painfully aware that the previous initiatives to eliminating loud vehicles from our streets have not worked. The 'we need more policing' demand fails to gain traction because of its impact on law enforcement resources and the inefficient legal process it requires. But with crowdsourcing, the discussion changes completely. All we are asking is that vehicle licensing agencies stop automatically renewing the registration of thousands of illegal vehicles each year.
4. Get data that proves the need for action:
   Use social media to get the word out. Encourage the public to go to app.tooloud.org and register every TooLoud vehicle they hear. As report volumes grow, use the noise report statistics (tables and maps) to prove to your regulator and vehicle licensing agency just how widespread the problem is, and how many people want it fixed.
5. Emphasis the solution's simplicity and cost effectiveness:
   • No requirement for increased police or bylaw resources.
   • No additional laws, regulations, or facilities required.
   • Less risk of successful legal challenges: no more roadside testing, no more personal judgement of noise level.
   • Crowdsourcing creates a robust and statistically meaningful list of known loud vehicles. The worst offenders will likely have multiple reports registered. The vehicle licensing agency can ramp up slowly, starting their noise testing by addressing the most offensive vehicles first.
   • Crowdsourced noise reports complement traditional noise enforcement such as bylaw officers and noise cameras by identify and inspecting the worst offenders first.
   • Licensing agencies already use vehicle testing facilities for many other purposes. Accurate inspection and testing of vehicles by trained staff in a controlled environment is something they do everyday.
   • Because TooLoud vehicles need only be called in for noise tested when their annual registration renewal is due, demand on the vehicle inspection facilities can managed, and ramped up slowly. Given the huge improvement in livability that eliminating loud vehicles will provide our society, any incremental investment in noise testing is money well spent.
6. Acknowledge that this will take time:
   It will eventually become clear that (finally) our society has enabled an effective deterent to loud vehicles. When that happens, the number of illegally loud vehicles roaming our streets will plument. Yes, a few diehards will probably attempt to game the system by temporarily swapping in a legitimate exhaust system each time they get called in for inspection. But with only a few loud vehicles left on the road it will be well within existing police resources to proactively pull these illegal vehicles off our streets. Because, when someone installs a loud exhaust system they are not trying to hide!

Neither the TooLoud browser-based app nor the TooLoud backend servers store personal information. No user name, no email address, no phone number, no cookies, no advertising.

We only release noise report data to the legally sanctioned vehicle licensing agency corresponding to the jurisdiction identified in the noise report.

TooLoud's servers and data storage are located in Canada. If a vehicle licensing agency legally requires reports corresponding to their jurisdiction to be processed and stored in a different country we will try to accommodate their requirements.

When you submit a photo for optical character recognition we temporarily store the photo. Information extracted from the photo may be stored along with the resulting report. We may send the photo to an external image processing service for optical character recognition. We do not release photos to the vehicle licensing agencies, or to third parties.

The aggregate report statistics available on the statistics pages of app.tooloud.org are used to raise awareness of the problem and to support local lobbying efforts. No individual vehicle information can be extracted from that data.

We use the Google Maps API to simplify setting the default location and overlaying statistics on a map. Google Maps API is NOT involved when you make a noise report or open a statistics table. The TooLoud webapp neither provides nor acquires user identification or personal information to/from Google. However, when using these embedded Google maps your web browser interacts directly with Google Maps. Therefore, Google's Privacy policy applies when using these Google maps.