Bangladesh permits vehicle horn volumes that are globally regarded harmful to human health, raising serious public health concerns.
In a country, where traffic rules are often violated, motorists heavily use honks that far exceed Bangladesh’s already harmful volume limits, while navigating congested streets in densely populated cities and towns.
The volumes of horns are seldom checked in the country while statistics on how many vehicles now run with harmful horns are not available either.
The near-constant blaring of horns often creates an atmosphere that residents compare to battlefield noises.
In Dhaka, for instance, the car horn is generally not used as a tool of warning but as a weapon of competition, where automobiles vie for inches of roads swarmed by customised electric three wheelers using horns that are never regulated.
But behind the chaotic cacophony on roads lies a systemic failure.
Under schedule 3 of the country’s Noise Pollution (Control) Rules 2025, the government permits motor vehicle horn volume to reach between 85 and 100 decibels (dB).
The World Health Organization defines 50 dB as a safe, moderate sound volume. The WHO warns that prolonged exposure to anything above 85 dB causes irreversible hearing damage.
‘Noise pollution would not ultimately go away even if the current law is strictly implemented,’ says professor Ahmad Kamruzzaman Majumder, dean of science at Stamford University Bangladesh.
‘Our regulations are simply not consistent with international standards,’ he added.
After allowing the import of 100-decibel horns, Kamruzzaman said, the government is telling drivers not to use them in residential zones.
‘You can’t blow a horn at half-volume. Can you? Instead of dictating where someone should blow a horn at a limited volume, the ban should be on the import of loud horns,’ he said.
Dhaka has frequently emerged as a global epicentre of acoustic trauma.
A United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report ranked Dhaka as the noisiest city on earth in 2022, recording its peak noise level at 119 dB.
Researchers painted even a grimmer picture.
In 2017, a study by the Department of Environment at and around 70 major intersections found noise levels regularly breaching 120 to 130 dB.
The studied areas included Shyamoli, Tajmahal Road, Azimpur, New Market, Shahjahanpur, Nikunja, Dhanmondi, Farmgate crossing, Karwan Bazar, Gulshan, Gulistan, Eskaton, Moghbazar crossing, Shantinagar, and Jatrabari.
Even in designated ‘silent zones’ -- near hospitals, offices, and schools -- the noise is much beyond tolerable limits.
The crisis has worsened significantly in recent years, fuelled by a flooding of hundreds of thousands of unregistered, unauthorised battery-powered three-wheelers competing with cars, buses, and motorcycles on gridlocked roads.
For the tens of lakhs of residents trapped in this horrendous soundscape, the consequences are devastating.
Human ears have a natural tolerance limit of 60 to 80 dB, experts noted.
Professor Mani Lal Aich Litu, a leading ear, nose, and throat surgeon, warns that Dhaka’s street noise is destroying the inner cells of ears.
Continuous exposure to noise above 70 dB causes chronic and systemic health failures, he said, listing health issues that could follow from the exposure as chronic tinnitus, a constant ringing in the ears, gradual hearing loss, dizziness.
A sudden blast from a hydraulic horn can cause immediate, permanent deafness. The banned hydraulic horns can produce sound as much as 140 dB.
While chronic exposure causes gradual loss, he cautioned, the sudden blast of a hydraulic horn can cause immediate and sudden hearing loss.
Acoustic trauma can also be linked to high blood pressure, chronic gastric distress, severe anxiety, and a significantly elevated risk of heart attacks, experts warned.
Traffic police, commuters, children, and the elderly are the worst affected.
‘Sound pollution has severe long-term effects on pregnant mothers and unborn children,’ Mani Lal warned, pointing to highly elevated rates of premature births, miscarriages, and children being born deaf.
The High Court banned high-powered hydraulic horns in 2017 because they easily reached a deafening 120 to 140 dB sound.
In 2016, the Dhaka Metropolitan Police banned the use of hooters, hydraulic horns, and beacon lights in private vehicles following frequent use of these horns.
Yet, they remain in wide use by commercial trucks and buses.
Nurus Samad, a senior road traffic analyst with the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, said that officers regularly fined violators and dumped illegal battery-run auto-rickshaws.
An account of actions taken against people, honking their horns unnecessarily, however, was not available from the traffic police department.
‘The police enforcement drives are mostly “token” style operations,’ says professor Md Shamsul Hoque of the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.
Shamsul argues that the crisis must be choked at the source.
The Bangladesh Road Transport Authority has ample opportunity to inspect and seize illegal horns during mandatory annual vehicle registration and fitness tests, he added.
Until the regulatory bodies stop issuing fitness certificates to vehicles equipped with tools of acoustic damage, Dhaka residents will remain trapped in an invisible, deafening state of cacophony, according to experts.
