Rapides Parish, LA Noise Ordinances: Vehicle Noise (2026)

Section 19-54 targets one specific vehicle-noise source: unmuffled compression, or jake, brakes used by trucks to slow down without their service brakes. The ordinance, adopted January 12, 2015, prohibits operating unmuffled compression brakes in a designated stretch of road and names that stretch by name, Louisiana Highway 113 running from East River Road to the corporate limits of the Town of Glenmora. Unlike the general noise catch-all at § 19-52, which lists a defective or overloaded vehicle's grating, grinding, rattling or other noise as one example among several kinds of unnecessary noise, § 19-54 is a standalone, location-specific ban aimed squarely at compression-brake noise on that one highway segment.

The Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office enforces the ban, since the Police Jury has no traffic-enforcement officers of its own; a trucker using an unmuffled jake brake on that stretch of LA 113 can be cited on the spot. The section does not extend the same brake ban to every parish road, so a driver using a jake brake elsewhere in unincorporated Rapides Parish is instead judged under the general defect-in-vehicle-or-load language of § 19-52(5), which covers loud or poorly-maintained vehicles more broadly rather than compression brakes by name.