Individual driver behaviour is a significant determinant of noise emissions from specific vehicles. Activities such as deliberate modification of vehicle exhaust systems, lack of maintenance, and aggressive acceleration and deceleration can lead to peak noise events that cause annoyance or disturbance.

Driver education can either be general or site specific. General education approaches may involve driver education and training as part of driver licensing and ongoing training. Site specific approaches may involve signage, noisy vehicle enforcement programmes, and traffic calming. Of these, signage is a useful mechanism to reduce some types of vehicle noise, particularly by encouraging the use of alternative routes and less noisy braking systems on some heavy vehicles.

Overall, driver education complements other solutions, rather than being a stand-alone solution that gives measurable short-term results.