Aspects of road traffic noise legislation in Italy involved by new European Directive

In this paper the aspects of the current Italian regulation, concerning the environmental noise involved in the process of harmonization defined by new European framework directive, are exposed; these aspects are manifold and above all they concern the problems of road traffic noise and acoustic mapping of territory. Road traffic noise represents the most important contribution to acoustic pollution of the territory and therefore the relative legislation has to be such to be assured a suitable protection of the people and environment. The actual Italian legislation concerning traffic noise, also being exhaustive about evaluation criteria and metrologies, nevertheless it is not completed yet as it regards both to extension of the pertinence areas of the roads and allows noise limits inside such areas. As a result, in some civil suit concerning road noise evaluation, this has brought to use non congruent criteria of evaluation and sometimes also divergent from current legislation. With enaction of European framework directive, concerning protection from acoustic pollution of health and environment, elaborate to purpose to make comparable pollution levels data surveyed from the State members, new unified describers and evaluation methods of environmental noise have been definite . Therefore, States members have to use unified describers and methods to determine by acoustic mapping people’s noise exposure and to program actions directed towards noise reduction, where it is necessary; it remains for State members to define the limits of sound levels.