ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – Residents are all too familiar with loud cars and traffic noise in Albuquerque. But that noise sparked an idea for University of New Mexico (UNM) Assistant Professor Nick Ferenchak.
“I do a lot of traffic safety research so I know about speed camera programs, and I just thought, ‘Well, if we can catch vehicles speeding, why can’t we catch vehicles that are making noise?’,” Ferenchak said in a press release.
“It’s an important issue, there’s lots of literature out there connecting noise pollution, specifically road noise pollution, to health issues, stress if you’re waking up multiple times in the middle of the night,” he said. “Then there’s also the economic impact of it – if you own a business right on a busy road that’s really loud, people might want to go to a different business.”
Ferenchak works in the Gerald May Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering at UNM, but has taken the idea of addressing noise to the private sector. He is the president of Not-A-Loud, a company which patented technology to address road noise.
Ferenchak has been testing the sound-triggered cameras around Albuquerque and Santa Fe. He says so far, they have worked to pick up the sounds of modified sports cars.
This isn’t the first time the idea of using microphone-connected cameras to crack down on too-loud vehicles. In 2022, Albuquerque enacted an ordinance to run a pilot program on automated noise traffic cameras.
