Engine braking puts families on edge

A Tauranga family is sick and tired of truckies regularly flouting engine braking restrictions at night.
But despite a host of signs telling drivers to avoid the noisy brakes, neither the Tauranga City Council nor the police say they are prepared to punish those who ignore them.
The Verran family, who live on Kinloch Drive, says truck drivers braking at night are disruptive to their sleep and can be particularly tough on the children.
Cody, 12, said his sleep was often disturbed by the loud brakes.
"It's annoying. Sometimes I get woken at like midnight or 1am."
Dad Mike, a truck driver himself with 26 years' experience, said what was most annoying was that there were only a few drivers who were ruining it for the rest of the industry.
"They're just doing it for the hell of it. They're just being dickheads. It's just laziness.
"It's the odd ones out there that just give us all a bad name."
He said that in lieu of official policing, he was happy to report other drivers' engine braking infractions to their bosses.
"I don't mind dobbing them in because it's ridiculous."
Tauranga City Council senior traffic engineer Wayne Thompson said truck drivers could ignore the signs because the council's restrictions were only intended as a courtesy.
"They are only advisory, they have no enforcement capabilities whatsoever - they are a bluff act."
And while the council received two to three complaints a week about engine braking, he said the only thing they could do was to contact local trucking companies to ask that they obey the restrictions.
Senior Sergeant Ian Campion, officer-in-charge of road policing in Western Bay of Plenty, said that while the police had the power to ticket offenders, it was not considered critical.
"They don't get the same priority as those events that cause trauma, that cause crashes, and cause deaths on the roads.
"And that's simply a matter of having to prioritise."
But while not being policed, he acknowledged the braking could interrupt people's lives.
"It is a nuisance-type offence that does prevent people from getting a good night's sleep."
Priority Logistics owner Aaron Forster said he and his management tried to ensure their drivers obeyed the rules.
"I'd like to think they probably are behaving themselves."
However, like Mr Verran, he thinks there are truck drivers out there who are happy to be a nuisance.
"Every industry's got some cowboys amongst it - probably ours more than most."
Alan Allport, branch manager of Mainfreight in Tauranga, also agreed that it was a matter of certain drivers being inconsiderate.
"It would be a hard one for the police because they'd basically have to catch the guy physically with his exhaust brakes on."
But Lloyd Harding, another Bay of Plenty truck driver, said the problem would be simple to fix.
"If they want to stop [it], go and park a cop down the bottom of the hill where these complaints are coming from.
"You've only got to give a couple of guys a ticket and it gets around."
Noise pollution
A recent World Health Organisation study in Europe has found noise pollution to be a major health threat.
It states that traffic-related noise from roads, railways and airports causes or contributes not only to annoyance and sleep disturbance but also heart attacks, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases.
Learning disabilities and tinnitus were also found to be higher among people living near busy roads and airports.
Alarmingly, a recent Australian study found that proximity to noisy roads could also induce premature births in pregnant women.