Driving into New Haven this August, I met the northeast in half a dozen unmuffled and shiny BMWs. Each in turn roared down the on-ramp and merged with a jerking motion; they began to weave haphazardly between all three lanes of traffic, brake-checking semi-trucks and terrorizing all the sleepy Saturday-evening-road-trippers they could find.

To call it a culture shock would be an understatement.

My home is Ann Arbor, Mich., a college town much like New Haven, only midwestern, around half as big, and essentially without violent crime or sadistically reckless motorists.

Above all else, Ann Arbor is quiet. I’ve lived on a campus there before, sleeping in a dorm room with the window open, and it’s eminently possible to go weeks without waking at 4 am to the sound of a tricked-out, entirely-unoiled Dodge Challenger tearing through downtown.

There’s a special joy one can only feel in the silent suburban night: that of staying up for hours listening to a lone woodpecker pecking wood somewhere out in the night; of falling asleep to the uninterrupted, rhythmic pitter-patter of rain on roof.

This kind of joy is not to be found in New Haven.

Every night, my Elm Street–facing window in the corner of Durfee Hall rattles nearly out of its frame to the sound of joyriders whooshing by. When my mom called to wish me a happy birthday earlier this week, I had to step out into the common room to hear her over the roar — and even then, a couple of particularly loud ne’er-do-wells managed to interrupt our short ten-minute chat.

To most Yalies, the sound is nothing more than an idle irritation — especially to those with childhood big-city bona fides. They shrug their shoulders and say, “Jesus Christ, Ari, you’ve been complaining about this non-stop for four weeks, please get over it already.”

But we who know the pleasures of quiet suburbia can see New Haven’s sound problem for what it is: a quality of life concern; a heart health hazard; a threat to the constant and uncountable conversations and discourses which make Yale the humming factory of knowledge, innovation, and discovery that it is — a slap in the face of all which is good, peaceful, and pleasant.

I tend to be pretty allergic to the misuse of state power; as offended by the overpolicing of minor, victimless crimes as anyone — but noisiness is far from victimless. Really, I can think of few clearer examples in which one individual’s low-cost act — driving around with a large and unmuffled engine — can so totally and forcibly pollute the shared environment. “Burning coal,” “peeing in the reservoir,” end of list.

Noisemaking is cheap to do, but it imposes large external costs. Economists have a prescription for such issues: We internalize the externalities! Levy a tax on the act in proportion to its burden on the rest of society, and redistribute the proceeds to those affected.

These taxes are called “Pigouvian” and they Pareto-efficiently — that is, perfectly and magically — deter harmful acts, while justly compensating anyone still harmed. For our sake, the same purpose can be served by a noise ordinance carrying heavy fines for violators.

New Haven does have such an ordinance, with, as of recently, appropriately severe penalties. Section 18-79 (c) of Title III of the New Haven Code of Ordinances prohibits any sound emitted from a motor vehicle “which is plainly audible at a distance of one hundred (100) feet from such vehicles by a person of normal hearing.” And Section 18-82 (b) assesses fines of  up to $2,000 for repeat offenses.

This is wonderful! But as any student of criminal law enforcement will tell you, the deterrent effect of a punishment’s severity is vanishingly small in comparison to that of its enforcement rate.

And, usually, by the time a loud and speeding car’s been reported to New Haven authorities, it’s already loudly sped away. A 2024 article in the News reports that while the New Haven Police Department received more than 2,600 noise complaints that year, few violators received citations.

I don’t expect this to change much. Though the Connecticut legislature passed a law just last year permitting cities to enforce their ordinances with noise-detecting cameras, New Haven’s been hesitant to install them. And besides, for violations caught on camera, the legislature limited maximum penalties to about a tenth the size of those found on New Haven’s books.

As it stands, the only realistic way to quiet the New Haven night is to step up nuisance-policing. But as the NHPD struggles to hire cops and focuses its resources on more serious crimes, we find ourselves facing the depressing reality that a couple dozen unapologetic sadists can, with total impunity, degrade the lives of hundreds, even thousands, of law-abiding New Haveners and Yalies.

Someday soon, though, the hiring shortages will resolve. And on that day, there will be a reckoning for the noisemakers.

When finally the noise ordinances are enforced, it will be as if a holy declaration has rung out: That beauty and civilization must and will prevail; that, here in New Haven, we must and will act well to one another.

ARI SHTEIN is a first year in Saybrook College. He can be reached at ari.shtein@yale.edu.