jueves, 22 de octubre de 2015

London's supercar crackdown

Authorities in London are considering tough measures on noisy supercars around the exclusive district of Knightsbridge.

Self-study activity:
Watch the video and complete the gaps in the transcript with the missing words. The activity is suitable for Intermediate 2 students.



Authorities in London are considering a crackdown on noisy supercars in and around the exclusive district of Knightsbridge. Every summer (1) ... car owners from the Middle East descend on affluent parts of the city with their prized motors but residents here say they're being driven to distraction by the revving engines and late-night (2) ... .
The noise that they create is an enormous problem. It's not so bad during the day although I do know that some of the (3) ... residents find it very difficult, but the real problem for us at night when they race up and down Sloane Street amongst other places, revving their cars at high speed and making really horrific noise and it’s quite impossible to sleep.
Now the local council is considering amending the law to ban revving engines, (4) ... and sudden acceleration.
There’s very (5) ... people, particularly from the (6) ... states, but possibly from other places as well in the UK and beyond, who drive these sports cars, these very, very upmarket models which have the facility to (7) ... into sports mode, which means that they can make an incredible amount of noise even when they’re (8) ... just by revving the engine and we know that people are racing the cars, they’re driving in convoy, very often there’s loud music attached and generally it's creating enormous (9) ... in the highly populated, highly residential streets.
But some drivers feel the criticisms levelled against them are unfair.
We come from a lot of different countries (10) ... there are local people here, there are super cars as well. Whenever you’re in a country that is not yours, you gotta respect the (11) ... in the end, so drive carefully, respect the people who live here, don't try to rev a lot, to make a lot of sound, in the end you don’t gonna be in their place. So… it’s not always Arabs who do this. A lot of Europeans do this as well.
Any (12) ... that are introduced for noisy drivers are likely to be too late to stop this summer's supercar assault. The proposed changes are under consultation and will (13) ... so until the autumn.

KEY:
1 wealthy 2 racing 3 elderly 4 racing 5 wealthy 6 Gulf  7 switch  8 stationary 9 disturbance 10 plus 11 rules 12 penalties 13 remain