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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> at least half of those vehicles are louder because the driver desires it

Motor cycles are the worst for this. It's not rare to have whole neighborhoods woken up because one of those passes through.

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I recently learned that (at least in the US) those loud motorcycles are actually illegal, and that it is near-standard practise that motorcycles are sold with cheap but compliant mufflers which everyone knows (wink wink) will be replaced with aftermarket loud (but illegal for road) mufflers.

I applaud the research of this young student, showing that noise pollution is not just a nuisance, but a real health concern. Young ears getting permanently damaged is one aspect. Entire neighborhoods losing nights of sleep is another.

Relevant article where police mention that they simply are not given a proper decibel meter: https://patch.com/california/berkeley/ask-a-cop-why-deafenin...

When a loud motorcycle [0] goes though a city at night, I wonder how many people it wakes up. It could easily pass thousands of people with just a few miles of driving. If 1% are woken up, it could still cost dozens of total hours of sleep.

Based on how much a loss of sleep lowers performance (and increases health risks), the total cost of that one motorcycle driving one night might be huge. The cost of the health damage and lost productivity might be about as much as stealing a car.

Since the cost is spread out over a lot of people, we don't tend to care as much about it.

[0] Likely with the muffler deleted. While technically illegal, no one enforces any laws related to the noise output.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted here. In Brooklyn and Queens, this happens a ton. If a loud motorcycle happens to rev when you're on the street, it's viscerally terrifying.

There is a reason for this. When car drivers stop pulling out in front of motorcyclists, motorcyclists will stop fitting loud exhausts.

This is the same tired excuse my friend made when he got a loud bike.

It’s just not true. He later told me he enjoys the feeling (vibrations) and that there was something primal about “taming” something that sounds powerful.

As for car drivers, you should be assuming they can’t see you. Driving defensively is the only way to stay alive and you can argue that it shouldn’t be that way but it doesn’t make it any less true.

Modern cars are so sound-insulated that the volume of the motorcycle isn't going to have that much of an impact in normal operation. Fit a louder horn to the bike if you need to draw attention in specific situations.

Loud exhausts are definitely not designed to make motorcycles more noticeable to cars.

Sure, that's why open pipes at three AM are run full throttle in second gear on a city street with thousands of houses. It's simply narcissism.

I had the pleasure of living on Overtoom in Amsterdam, which is a beautiful street but I'm a relatively light sleeper and even at the back part of the house you'd be woken up several times every night by some 'look at me' dude making as much noise as possible. Not a car pulling out in sight at that hour.

I ride and do "feel" the sentiment that loud pipes might help in some situations. But here's a rider-centric article that helps address the situation _and_ provide some actionable advice.

https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/stop-saying-loud-pipes...

Thanks, that article makes lots of good sense. I see more and more riders (on relatively quiet bikes) drive with high visibility gear, especially on the highway, which is great.

But those are rarely the 'loud' types, they're just people using their bikes as transport rather than as an attention seeking device.

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