Quote:
Originally Posted by extrashaky
In general, you don't. That's the whole point. The government should generally leave people alone when they're not creating a problem. There's absolutely no need to prove that every exhaust complies with the law.
You talk about annual checks. That assumes that everyone is guilty, and they're all required to come in annually and prove their innocence. That's not the way it's supposed to work in this country. State governments get some leeway because driving is a privilege rather than a right, but generally speaking they're not supposed to use that to harass and intimidate their citizens.
IF someone is driving around with excessively loud exhaust and a cop witnesses it or gets complaints from citizens, THEN a cop might pull the person over and test the loudness of it. There is such a thing as a decibel meter. Out of all the billions of tax dollars police departments spend on militarization, you'd think they could shell out the money to buy the tools to actually do the job. You can even download an app for that. Even that would be preferable to the cop just saying it's too loud based on the fact that he doesn't like it.
In this case, the cop had no legitimate grounds to accuse OP of anything. If he didn't have any real evidence, he shouldn't have written the ticket in the first place.
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So annual checks like vehicle inspections, smog checks, and other stuff are all assuming we're guilty until proven otherwise? I'm not implying that every exhaust needs to be tested, it was merely a rhetorical question about how to determine if someone is in violation.
If someone is driving around and an officer wants to test, how exactly do they test? On the side of a road? What about ambient noise? What about a properly calibrated test equipment? What about cross winds? What about noise reflecting off nearby surfaces?
Officers should not be the ones doing the testing... this part you bring up is the most absurd. Why is the officer supposed to be the standard of judgment on violations based on factual measurements? By that same reasoning, shouldn't an officer also be trained in DNA testing to determine if a suspect is at the scene of a crime? There are things law enforcement is good at, and that is law enforcement. They are executing the law, not judging it. Evidence should be collected by qualified individuals according to standards set in whatever law is drafted.
A lot of things you bring up can be thrown out in court because it is based on conditions that change and unpredictable, hence a standardized method of testing as listed in CA law.
I agree that there is no need to prove every exhaust complies with the law nor am I implying it be that way. My own experience tells me that no one really cares unless you stand out like a sore thumb.
-alex