Apache: Renault's secret weapon to combat road noise

© Renault

With more and more electric cars on our roads, the noise volume should logically decrease, until reaching total quietness. But in reality, the sound of engines, so pleasant to the ears of some, only represents a fifth of the noise caused by a car.

The overwhelming majority of noise pollution from a vehicle comes from the friction of tires on the road. So to improve this data, the French manufacturer Renault had an idea. It decided to integrate a box listing the noisiest roads in France. This system, called APACHE, analyzes the roughness of the road in the manner of a seismograph.

This data will then be transmitted (or sold) by Renault to local authorities to help them “make the right decisions”. In the words of Thomas Antoine, an engineer for the French firm, with this new system “everyone wins.”

The correlation between noise and pollution

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The first beneficiaries of this new technology are obviously the residents of noisy roads . They will be able to find some silence with new, much softer asphalt. But the other big winner in this affair is the planet.

< p>Indeed, the smoother a road is, the less fuel the cars using it consume. According to Bruitparif, the noise observatory in Paris, the renovation of the Paris ring road would thus be a “blank operation” after 3.5 years.

In other words, the carbon emitted into the atmosphere to resurface the roads would be “offset” by lower fuel consumption by cars using this road in the following 3.5 years. The observatory estimates that the carbon savings would be 1,600 tons of CO2 per year.

Noise, a pollution in itself

Finally, the third and final big winner of a reduction in noise on the roads is the user. Noise pollution is not harmless for the human body and the term “noise pollution” does not exist for nothing.

In a report on the subject, the WHO points out that 20 million Europeans complain about various noises. Nearly half say they have problems sleeping and noise has a lasting and significant impact on their mental health.

In the Île-de-France region, 80% of residents are affected by noise pollution of varying severity. Not all of them are related to car traffic, but it is one of the main reasons.

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