From the outside, it looks like two large birdhouses, suspended one below the other, 4.5 meters above the ground. In reality, the two gray boxes hung on a street lamp in the rue d’Avron, in the 20and district of Paris, are not used to feed the sparrows or blackbirds so that they sing more, but to identify the noisiest vehicles… and silence them. Inaugurated on Monday February 14, this sound radar is the first of its kind installed in the capital, on an experimental basis. A second must be on Tuesday, rue Cardinet (17and).
In both cases, the same objective: to identify cars, trucks, but especially motorcycles and scooters so noisy that they undermine the lives of Parisians, and to fine their drivers in an automated way. The principle is exactly the same as for speed cameras. “If you do stupid things, it flashes you”, summarizes a passer-by, rue d’Avron, showing his five-year-old son the gray boxes between which cameras are fixed.
“With the confinements, everyone has become accustomed to a quieter city, explains David Belliard, the assistant ecologist in charge of transport. Today, there is a very strong expectation from Parisians for us to fight against noise, in particular that caused by motorcycles and scooters. In Paris, an unbridled motorbike alone can wake up 10,000 people! » Stress, sleep disorders, increased cardiovascular problems… The consequences of this noise are not negligible. “It can take away up to eight months of healthy life expectancy,” according to Dan Lert, the ecological transition assistant.
Right and left combined, the Parisian elected officials therefore unanimously validated, Wednesday, February 9, the experimentation with sound radars. With Nice, Toulouse, Bron (metropolis of Lyon), Rueil-Malmaison (Hauts-de-Seine), Villeneuve-le-Roi (Val-de-Marne) and the community of communes of the Chevreuse valley (Yvelines), Paris is one of the first communities to take advantage of the mobility orientation law voted in December 2019 and decree of January 3, 2022 which authorize this type of device.
A substantial cost
The experiment will take place in two stages. For three months, the two Parisian radars will operate “blank”, without fine. It is a question of verifying that the system associating rue d’Avron eight microphones and three cameras measures the noise with precision, links it without error to the vehicle which is at the origin, and photographs the license plate. “We have started testing in the Chevreuse valley, on the “road of 17 turns”, which some bikers love, and it works, welcomes Fanny Mietlicki, the director of Bruitparif, one of the three manufacturers in the race, with Microdb and Acoem. On site, we measured peaks at 110 decibels, while the limit for a truck is more like 85 decibels. »
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