KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — The City of Knoxville has decided to move its noise camera from downtown to Cumberland Avenue.

Knoxville is one of a few places a UK-based company tested its camera. Following a test in February on Gay Street, the city decided to buy one. The cameras are similar to red light cameras but triggered by sound, mainly from loud cars.

“Back to when we first deployed the noise cameras, it was initially to collect data to better understand the noise issue downtown, to be able to say what times of day do we see that these loud noise events from vehicles are happening most often. See if we could get an understanding of what kind of vehicles were making these loud noise events and what actually noise levels are we talking about,” said Carter Hall, Knoxville policy and business innovation manager.

Hall added that the data collected from the camera on Gay Street was able to give the city a good picture of what noise violations were happening downtown.

They decided to move the camera on Sept. 27 to the corner of Cumberland and 18th to get a greater picture of the noise violations sound like across the city. The city told WATE the plan is to leave the camera there for several months and compare the data from both locations.

Hall said the data collected will be used to find solutions to noise in commercial corridors across Knoxville and find ways to better enforce the city’s noise ordinance.

“Are there ways that we could potentially use the camera to issue citations, even though we aren’t currently doing that? And then, we really want to on deterrence in the first place, whether that’s kind of more on the educational side of things, if there are engineering solutions, things like that. Our first place is wanting to work on deterrence and not have sounds, that would be really the initial goal,” Hall said.

The company behind the camera, Intelligent Instruments Ltd, has seven permanent systems around the world.

According to the company’s director, the device is constantly recording, but also constantly deleting. Knoxville officials add that the cameras do not pick up conversations, no matter how loud they may be.