Chinese Cities Deploy Acoustic Cameras to Detect Honking Cars

Cameras, which have been rolled out in 40 Chinese cities, work by capturing a two-second film of a honking car. The police analyze the footage to determine whether drivers who honked had a fair reason to do so, if not, they could receive a $16 fine.

This may be the first step to link car honking with further penalties for drivers. According to the Business Insider, congestion in Beijing can be unbearable. With more than 5 million registered cars, traffic can crawl at half the speed it does in New York City. And aside from toxic air pollution, the noise pollution from constant honking has made Beijing the sixth-noisiest city in the



world.

But the government, which at one point created a noise map of the city, wants that to change. After a pilot project last year, Beijing’s Traffic Management Bureau has installed 20 acoustic cameras designed to identify honking cars, according to the news website Inkstone.

The cameras, installed near schools and hospitals in Beijing, use 32 microphones and an HD camera to film a two-second video and capture the license plate of each honking car. But noise pollution isn’t limited to Beijing’s streets. Roughly 40 cities, including Shenzhen, have installed acoustic cameras that can catch honking drivers with an accuracy rate of 92 percent to 95 percent.