The Swiss law against avoidable road noise
Since 2025 Switzerland has introduced a specific provision into its Road Traffic Act targeting what it calls 'avoidable noise': engine noise that a driver produces unnecessarily through their driving behaviour.
The targeted behaviours include:
- Unnecessary revving at traffic lights or in car parks
- Aggressive acceleration or sudden starts
- Engine braking (downshifting sharply) in tunnels and residential areas
- Deliberate exhaust noise manoeuvres
Fines start at CHF 100 for minor infringements and can exceed CHF 1,000 for repeated or aggravated cases.
Why this concept does not exist in Italian law
The Italian Highway Code penalises vehicles whose noise exceeds the approved limits for the model, but has no provision for penalising driving behaviour that generates avoidable noise from a mechanically compliant vehicle. A car with a perfectly legal exhaust can be driven as noisily as its driver wishes without any specific penalty.
This reflects a fundamentally different approach to noise as a form of urban pollution: Switzerland treats it as a behavioural issue; Italy treats it almost exclusively as a mechanical compliance issue.
What Italy could learn from the Swiss model
Urban noise pollution is a documented public health problem. The World Health Organization links chronic exposure to traffic noise to cardiovascular disease, sleep disorders and reduced cognitive performance in children. The Swiss approach — targeting the behaviour that creates the noise rather than just the vehicle — could be an effective model for Italian cities too.