Forsyth County, GA Noise Ordinances: Vehicle Noise (2026)

Section 34-153(8) prohibits operating any motor vehicle, including cars, trucks, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, motor driven cycles and mopeds, in a manner that creates excessive noise, expressly naming the continuous riding of a vehicle past, around or near an inhabited dwelling so as to disturb or unduly annoy residents. Subsection (9) separately bans using an engine brake, compression brake or mechanical exhaust device, the kind commonly called a "Jake brake," "exhaust brake" or "engine brake," whenever it produces excessive, loud, unusual or explosive noise, unless the driver needs it to avoid imminent danger.

The county may post signs along county or state rights-of-way warning drivers of the compression-brake ban, but subsection (9)(a) makes clear the prohibition stands even where no sign exists. § 15-10-60 allows. Emergency vehicles are the only vehicles subsection (9)(c) exempts from the compression-brake rule; the general excessive-noise ban in (8) carries no listed exemption at all, so a vehicle circling a neighborhood or gunning an engine near a dwelling can be cited regardless of vehicle type. Because both paragraphs sit inside the article's numeric decibel framework, subsection (11) also lets the § 34-153(10) sound-level thresholds control where a vehicle-noise complaint could instead be measured against them.