 Hi friends and subscribers, welcome back to my YouTube channel. My name is Daniel Rosil and this channel focuses on life on the ground in Jerusalem and Israel. As some of you may know I recently moved departments within Jerusalem. My wife and I moved from living in a neighborhood called Bakka to somewhere closer to the city center. And let's just say that wow I really forgot how noisy the city center of Jerusalem is. I was recently pleased to discover that I'm not the only person living in the city who thinks that noise pollution has turned into a major quality of life issue for the city and its residents. Between construction noise, road works, noise pollution from cars and people just being really unreasonable, living in Jerusalem can sometimes feel a bit like your eardrums are under a constant state of low grade assault. One of the most pervasive and classic Jerusalem noise menaces however is that of unnecessary honking from vehicles. Life like me you come from a country where people use their car horns mostly responsibly, you may be in for an unpleasant surprise when visiting Israel. Israelis use their car horns almost entirely inappropriately. A mic theory is that Jerusalem is among the worst cities for it in the country. In Jerusalem, sending your horn to express your frustration at being stuck at a red light is a pretty ubiquitous practice. Drivers also often honk their horns simply to let other drivers know that they're on the road. None of these are appropriate or even legal uses of the car horn. Because nuisance honking is such a pervasive menace in Israel, many are surprised to learn that it's technically illegal and that those who are found to have used their horn inappropriately are liable for fines. The prohibition in Israel derives from Takanot Lemenyat Mifgayim Menyot Raash 1999 Saifstein Bait which is part of a set of regulations against noise hazards. The law pretty unambiguously states that it's illegal to use a car horn unless you're in imminent danger. And imminent danger doesn't mean having to have a minor meltdown because you're stuck at a red light slightly longer than you wish to be. So if it's illegal, then why is honking in Israel so bad, especially in Jerusalem? Besides this being a cultural feature, the problem I've discovered is twofold. Firstly enforcement against this law is essentially non-existent, throughout the country and certainly in Jerusalem. Israel police once mounted a campaign to stamp out nuisance honking but only succeeded in ticketing a miniscule amount of drivers across the whole country. A huge problem with enforcing nuisance honking for law enforcement is gathering the evidence to prove that the honking was indeed unnecessary and in pinpointing the offending vehicles. The second problem is that Israel police and Mizrad Lahganat as FIVA, Israel's Ministry of the Environment, seem to be embroiled in a sort of turf war about who exactly is responsible for this particular noise nuisance. Technically, depending on the classification of the road, either of these two bodies can be responsible. Unfortunately, it seems like the police have no time or inclination to carry out this particular enforcement responsibility. And the government environmental body doesn't have enforcement powers against individual drivers. The result of this turf war created through bureaucracy is ultimately that the problem goes untackled. County noise campaigners have argued that local municipalities need to be empowered to tackle nuisance honking in the same way that they can hand out parking tickets. The situation in Jerusalem as it stands is immensely frustrating. Nuisance honking exists throughout the city. It's an auditory plague, startling pedestrians, damaging their hearing, and robbing local residents of much needed sleep. Compelling research also links noise pollution to hypertension and cardiovascular disease. So the sore of noise that Jerusalemites have become accustomed to living in is quite probably also literally killing people. It's pretty common in Jerusalem for cars stuck in a traffic light to create a sort of pointless cacophony of honking in which one car pointlessly honks at the other in a kind of chain reaction. This can happen at all hours of the morning and throughout the night. Our frustrated residents of the neighborhood of Rahavia launched a petition demanding that the city crack down on this. Besides better enforcement, its suggestions included erecting signs asking drivers to not honk in residential areas and focusing on educational efforts to inform drivers about appropriate use of the car horn. So among all this frustration and noise, is there any room for hope of a bit of peace and quiet? There is in my opinion and on two different fronts. The first is that local environmentalists are currently actively engaging with city officials to bring this issue to their attention. In particular, the Jerusalem Green Fund has been engaging recently with local politicians to try to get this issue the attention it deserves. This includes resolving the territorial dispute between Israel police and the ministry for the protection of the environment. The second reason for hope, in my opinion, is that Pizzakhtigfa last year became the first Israeli municipality to pilot a high-tech detection system intended to help local authorities enforce prohibitions against nuisance road noise. Such technologies are already being actively piloted in New York, London, Paris and Berlin, among other cities. The system typically consists of microphones coupled with cameras with licensed plate recognition technology and Israel tends to do AI tech pretty well. The combination is intended to allow authorities to pinpoint the sources of nuisance honking and then issue them with fines. There are a lot of things that I personally want for the future of Jerusalem. I want to see a more prosperous city with vastly more jobs than it currently offers, a city in which young couples can afford to get on the housing ladder through their own efforts and one in which young people don't feel compelled to leave because of lack of opportunity. But I also think that a quieter city would benefit all of Jerusalem's residents. While we may all have come to think of the sound of constant beeping as the city's never-ending soundtrack, I believe it's claimed that we stopped tolerating this daily onslaught of noise from frustrated motorists that simply doesn't need to exist and which inflicts harm on countless residents. Want to get more videos from me? Then please consider liking this video and subscribing to this YouTube channel.