New Brunswick, NJ Noise Ordinances: Vehicle Noise (2026)

New Brunswick Municipal Code § 8.28.070 lists the prohibited acts for motor vehicles and motorcycles. Under subsection (A), no person can operate a motor vehicle or motorcycle that lacks the original muffler and other components, or an equivalent replacement, in good working order and in constant operation, regardless of the sound level produced. Removing or rendering inoperative any muffler or other exhaust component is also barred, other than for maintenance, repair or replacement. The muffler rule applies with no decibel test, so a loud exhaust is not the trigger; a missing or disabled one is.

Subsection (D) covers stereos. No person can operate or play a radio, tape player or similar device in or on a motor vehicle on a public right-of-way or public space in a manner that creates a noise at fifty (50) feet (fifteen (15) meters) from the device. Subsection (B) bars sounding a horn or other auditory signaling device on any public right-of-way or public space except as a warning of danger, and any horn producing more than one hundred (100) dBA at twenty-five (25) feet. Section 8.28.080 separately permits an automobile horn only as a traffic signaling device by a moving vehicle or to draw attention to an actual emergency involving an imminent threat of harm to a person or property. Under subsection (C), a stationary vehicle cannot run, with any attached auxiliary equipment, longer than three minutes in any hour within one hundred fifty (150) feet of a residential area between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., other than for traffic congestion or emergency work.

Section 8.28.060 adds measured limits. Table II sets maximum levels in dBA at fifty feet from the center line of vehicle travel for motorcycles, heavy trucks and motor carrier vehicles, and an 80 dBA limit on the fast setting at fifteen feet from the edge of the lane for any vehicle or motorcycle under 10,000 pounds GVWR at a 35 MPH speed limit or less. Table III limits off-road recreational vehicles, measured at fifty feet on public space or across the real property line on private property: the table prints a sound level of 86 for motorcycles manufactured before 1975 and 84 after 1975, and 84 for any other vehicle manufactured before 1975 and 80 after.