Hacker News Reader

"Why loud pipes then? Because it's so much fun to open the throttle wide and hear and feel the roar vibrating through the bike and myself! Makes me feel like I'm riding a rocket into space. "

Well you could use a vibrator then.

Quieter and more close to the body...

> "Loud pipes save lives" is nonsense. When a driver is concentrated on visual stimuli, has his windows up and music playing, there are no pipes loud enough to make him notice me.

As a former motoryclist with very loud pipes (and also an open air filter, which is just as bad or worse), I can tell you it‘s not just that. Exhaust noise emitted by a motorcycle is way louder behind the it than in front of it, especially when you and the bike are moving in the same direction. I have no hard numbers to back up this claim, but I once switched bikes with a buddy and while my bike was almost inaudible when I was driving in front of him, I was shocked how loud it was driving 200 m / 1/8 mile behind him.

As someone who lived next to a busy road for about 10 years, I’ve always wondered why people do this, so thanks for the perspective. The apartment was about 10 feet away, with no isolation, and a 65mph speed limit, so, surprisingly, it was worse when there were fewer cars because people would throttle harder. So because of this past living situation, I’ve grown to hate the noise of loud vehicles at any time of the day, and if I were given the opportunity to limit the amount of loud vehicles on the road, I’d always take it. Eventually I bought sound panels and put them in my road-facing windows, and then also in my rooms closest to the road, but eventually I decided it would be best to just move.

Is it the noise that makes it exhilarating though? If you had to use an electric motorcycle would your enjoyment be decreased that much? I'm sure you're right that it's a small amount of people riding obnoxiously, but those people make walking around a city stressful and unenjoyable for a far greater number of people.

What I'm saying is that although this will be a bit crap for you, to the average person that's probably worth the trade off.

I am dead against noisy bikes, but from having an old 1 litre 60bhp Peugeot 106 hatchback car many years ago, the noise of the full-open throttle with your accelerator pedal mashed into the floor with revs rising to a crescendo at the red line etc is certainly quite exhilarating, even if you were not actually going all that fast with 60bhp. (I am getting hairs down my back just typing this).

I would imagine you'd get a similar sensation from the whir/whine of an electric car picking up in pitch etc as you approach "the red line", but I don't know how well that is hushed away in modern EVs

This is the right question I think.

For me personally, not the person you replied to, it is the noise.

After years of soul-searching, and as a music lover, it’s about the noise. I will (or would) leave NYS over this. 76dB 50ft away under 35mph and over 35mph it’s 82dB - a joke. Once I found the perfect engine note, the rest is history. Speed is fun, but sound and steering are more character.

Currently the goal of purchasing this soul-rending, sonorous beast is sustaining me in life.

I’ll do my very best to be judicious with valves closing the exhaust around town and at night.

Making a financially foolish move and touring the country isn’t the worst mistake you could make in an awful mood.

> If they get banned, people like me will lose a part of their hobby and noisemakers will find another way to be obnoxious (burnouts? screechy braking? loud music?)

Like most things in New York, it comes down to what NYPD officers actually care about enforcing. Per the article:

> But the law doesn’t doesn’t compel law enforcement to issue tickets, nor does it require police cars to be equipped with decibel readers.

tldr: these laws won't do shit then. Officers won't enforce what they aren't required to, this just gets added to the list of offenses they can use to harass someone or tack onto a speeding ticket.