 Hello, friends and subscribers. Welcome back to my YouTube channel. Daniel Rosal here, bringing this video today from Jerusalem. I got a message in a WhatsApp group I'm involved in on Friday from an organization called Yerushalayim Shakyta, which means Quiet Jerusalem. This is an organization that has been set up in the last couple of months as a sub-organization within Keren, the Jerusalem Green Fund, which has been advocating for quite a while now for environmental causes in Jerusalem. I've joined the committee of the Quiet Jerusalem sub-organization and our objective is to raise awareness within the city of noise pollution. Now this was formed before the outbreak of the war and we had a meeting scheduled with the parties leading their campaigns for the municipal elections, which have now been deferred and they were supposed to have happened already. So everything's kind of been put on pause because clearly the war is a much bigger national priority for everyone. Nevertheless, we're still meeting periodically and it's a good organization and we're looking to, as I said, raise awareness of a few issues in the city regarding noise pollution. One of them is this very pervasive honking, the unnecessary use of car horns, which I did a couple of videos about probably months or two ago now pointed out that it is technically illegal but there's no enforcement and that's really been because it's very difficult to enforce nuisance honking on a human basis. There just isn't the willingness it seems among the local municipalities to do it, but there's been one municipality which has bucked the trend and has been piloting this advanced system for the detection of nuisance honking and this I should just point out is a trend we're seeing actually happening across the world in cities like New York, London and others. They have been piloting systems like this and in Israel, which is kind of in, you know, I describe it really as the commuter town to Tel Aviv has taken the lead in the pilot. So this was posted on their Facebook page of the municipality. A message for the quality of life of the resident in the city for the first time in Israel, Petah Tikva municipality will be enforcing noise from vehicles and motorcycles. I'm just reading the automatic English translation on the left, but if you read Hebrew, you have the original post on the right of the screen. So this, the constitutional committee in the Knesset had to approve this system of giving out fines for noise nuisances produced by vehicles. And it's my understanding that honking is one of the key noise nuisances encompassed in that as well as stuff like noise from motorcycles, you know, fitted with things that make their noise lighter than the legal limit will be targeted as well. With the publication of the fines and record soon it will come into force and the appropriate powers will be given to the municipal inspectors to enforce enforcement. And so the fines have yet to be announced. The enforcement is launched by the entrepreneur Shachar Kenan, and his company is called noise limited noise spelt with AZ. I haven't succeeded in getting if there was a way to get in touch with this individual or his company, I would like to know about it because I've tried and I couldn't find so much as a website for them. But perhaps as this pilot, well now it's passed a pilot as this technology picks up steam, I'll be able to get some response from Petah Tikva and from this company. And in the director of the noise prevention division in the office that supervise the pilot that was held. So that's the announcement. This came out in Hebrew in Wynes a little bit ago. It was published on 15th of September 2023. This was the article announcing that they're beginning the pilot. So I guess the pilot's been running from about September through to now and now it's being elevated to a practical scheme. And I just highlighted in my previous video about nuisance honking in Jerusalem that there have been some efforts. The reason I got interested in this whole subject is because when we, my wife and I moved to a more central apartment in Jerusalem in the summer when we viewed it, it was quite quiet. But very soon after moving in, it became transparent that there was a serious issue with honking because we're near a big road intersection and there's just like constant certain hours of the day between let's say eight and 10 a.m. There's just loud honking that gets in that, you know, we can hear from our bedroom and it's very, very unpleasant. And technically it's illegal. It just hasn't been, as they said enforced, yes, anywhere in Israel. And to any appreciable extent, I'll just show you some figures I got from the Israel police. So this was, there was a petition in Rechavia, which is a relatively central neighborhood in Jerusalem. And they had basically the same problem as we experience in the city center where by traffic ground to a halt on this road as a street or well-known street in Rechavia. And drivers who would just honk their horns in frustration because they were stuck in traffic and without seemingly realizing or caring, as in my situation, that they're doing so literally right outside the front door of people trying to just enjoy their homes or perhaps sleep. So this was a petition, but it went nowhere. I did manage to hear sort of the inside story about this from people involved in it. And the same experience I had by which we knocked on the doors of the municipality and got told really, you know, to bugger off that there was nothing they were willing to do. But they did attract something like a thousand signatures to that petition. So this is a problem. Technically, and I'm just reiterating some of the stuff I pointed out in my video on the subject, it is illegal under Israeli road traffic law to use your horn unnecessarily. The actual language in Hebrew says that basically it's illegal to use your horn unless you're in imminent danger. And there's no other way. There's no other way for you to to do that. So as I'm recording this video, I can just hear people honking. Hopefully it won't come through because I've got a bit of a better microphone setup than I did recently. But, you know, they're just honking because they're stuck in traffic and that is technically illegal. So I actually sent in before the war when all this stuff was much more front of mind. I was experimenting with sending in freedom of information requests. And I did one to the Jerusalem municipality about how many language speakers are. And I did one as well to Israel Police, Mr. God, Israel, regarding the number of. So I said, if it's illegal, and they're the body responsible for prosecution, how many fines did you give out? And it took them a couple of weeks to come back to me. But I did get a response. And that was that in 2022, they handed out 197 fines. And that was actually down from 2021 when they handed out 262 fines. Now, this is across the entire country. So basically, in 2022, last year, less than one fine day was handed out. You can do the sum, you know, how much is it? It's not quite once every two days, but less frequently than once a day. Less than 200 fines handed out in the whole country because of unnecessary use of the car horn by the traffic police, which is a division within Israel Police. So clearly, the national police are have no inclination or ability or willingness to really take this seriously. I sent this, the letter I got from the police to her friends, and he said you could probably issue 200 fines every minute if they set their minds to. So there's really not really, there's not really a willingness on the part of the police to actually do this enforcement. So the Petah Tikvah municipality states and just reading a little bit more. I'm reading from a news piece that picked this development up in just when it was announced, which was on the 22nd of November. So I'm a little bit late coming to this, but better late than ever. This story appeared in my rave about the fact that this system is going to go operational. And just again, translating automatically into English for my convenience and that of readers, the Petah Tikvah municipality states that the enforcement project was developed by the entrepreneur Shah Kharkinan, the company Noise Limited in collaboration with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, which is mischad lahagenat asfiwa in English. The noise system has been deployed in a number of main roads and central intersections throughout the city was the goal of expanding the deployment in the future. This is an innovative system. The first of its kind in Israel equipped with a sensor with dozens of small microphones that alert in real time about noise hazards, noise hazards on the roads. The identification process is done visually so that you can see the source of the noise and the factor that produces it both with a photo and with the help of photography and video. And upon detection of the event, the system performs real time checks on the details of the vehicles and forwards the data to the inspector for manual examination and upon examination of the findings by the inspector and confirmation of the offense. According to the noise hazard regulations, the system issues a report, which is then automatically sent to the vehicle owner and the mayor of Petah Tikvah says that and this is in line with what I've observed that this problem seems to be getting a lot worse in the past few years. In recent years, the phenomenon of noise hazards on the roads has been increasing in accordance with the increase in the number of vehicles. And this is a phenomenon that harms the quality of life of the residents, especially those who live close to main roads, like people like me. And I can really attest to how true this is that if you live in a quiet part of the city, you're like, well, this really isn't an issue. If you happen to live near a busy road, this suddenly becomes a really severe issue that does affect your quality of life and has been linked to especially high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease in particular. So these this pattern or cause and effect is pretty well established as part of the municipality's efforts to reduce noise hazards. We take a variety of measures in the field of enforcement and of course, also an information and together with the Ministry of Environmental Protection, we promoted a technological system that will help us enforce noise caused by vehicles and motor motorcycles. When the approval of the fines order and its publication on the record soon allows the system to start operational activity. So hopefully as they get the system rolling in Petah Tikva, we'll see sort of information about what the fines exactly are going to be. It sounds like they haven't quite determined that yet. And hopefully we will see this innovation that Petah Tikva has started being replicated in other cities in Israel, like Tel Aviv itself and Jerusalem, where because we're also struggling with this problem. Thanks for watching today's video and to get more videos about life on the ground in Jerusalem and Israel, do consider subscribing to this YouTube channel.