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>In a sense I feel sorry for these lads, because they are tinkerers, hackers of a kind like us, > [...] > Wouldn't they potentially be great engineers with the right guidance and education?

I think you are ready way too much into this. For the most part these are people who just want a loud motorbike/car and just go to a store and ask for an Akrapovic titanium exhaust. Those who can't swallow the price just buy the lower tier items.

That's it, job done.

There is no more engineering/hacking in that than kids cramming a pet bottle between the rear tire and the brake bridge of their bicycle and most of it is about copy/pasting what they saw other people do.

I disagree with most of this post. Modded cars and motorbikes are horrendous. The behaviour of their owners is even worse. It's not acceptable to wake up everybody in a densely populated area because you want to "express yourself".

What I do agree with is that sirens are incredibly bad in this country. Not only the inappropriate use of them, but why are they so piercing and loud? Many times I nearly curled into a ball when walking on the pavement or cycling and one of those are suddenly activated next to me. I have nearly crashed my bike more than once.

Every other country I have lived in or visited don't seem to have a problem with less aggressive sirens.

>It's a real shame, because we have a cultural problem of glorified ignorance

And it goes high enough up the socioeconomic ladder that it should make everyone here uncomfortable. Seeing your own ignorance is like scratching the middle of your own back. You can't do it easily if at all.

>Wouldn't they potentially be great engineers with the right guidance and education? But today they all follow the same dumb formula, sawing of the exhaust pipe and catalytic convertor, mis-tuning the engine, jacking down the suspension, doing a really shit paint job... The culture beneath that is basically anti-social, not individualistic.

This is just the car exhaust version of Karen excusing her borderline alcoholic "wine mom" friends while complaining about people who sit around a burn barrel crushing bud light.

Decibels are decibels. Jumping over the expensive hurdles one must to output them the rich people way doe not make them any less loud.

>Sadly one has to wonder whether the days of 2-stroke scooters are also numbered in the UK.

Probably gonna be replaced by e-bikes.

I think we need to give them a place to do it that wont piss people off. The UK has a great history of motorsport but has hardly any resources for getting started with your own car.

I have seen in America where cops join in and mod their cars and race people on race tracks, it doesn't totally remove the anti-social behavior but by making these outlets cheap and easily accessible we can give people a new thing to focus on and get into without pissing off people.

> Probably gonna be replaced by e-bikes.

Two stroke scooters have already been replaced by four stroke scooters, which are a lot less dirty. Anybody still riding a two stroke is probably riding a vintage machine. GP refers to the mod subculture, one strand of which involves modifying and riding 60s Lambretta and Vespa scooters, often with extra headlights, mirrors, and other accessories. I'm not a part of the subculture, but I think the vintage nature of the machines is part of the appeal, so I can't see them getting phased out until they're banned by law.

Two-stroke engines are a scourge that needs to go now. It's not on par with lead fuel but it's close, and it's completely unnecessary, there's hardly no two-stroke engines that can't be replaced with electric motors.

In term of real noise pollution I would rank: 1) motorbikes, 2) modified cars/sport cars, 3) sirens 4) trucks

Depends on where you live I guess.

Trains, airplanes, helicopters & neighbours are my top 4.

I haven't ranked anything, so I'm not sure why you're responding with a ranking. I just said modded bikes and cars are bad, and that sirens in the UK are extremely loud and piercing.

The siren issue is real anywhere, at least in London. It affects me wherever I happen to be, which is not always where I live.

I have no idea why I replied to this post. Brain fart, I guess. I probably saw it as a reply to my other comment but clearly I was wrong.

Where I am it's seagulls, then owls.

Imagine sitting on your porch, some hundred feet or so away from the street.

A regular motorbike passing might clock in a good 70dB of noise on a decibel meter. You can easily talk over that.

A two-stroke enduro bike with an illegal exhaust, however, can put out over 110dB in the same setting. That is a 10,000 times more intense sound.

relatively, i can't see someone a 50cc 2-stroke moped putting out more emissions than a huge 3-ton BMW X5 with a massive diesel engine, awd etc. which is carrying one person at any given time.

As a classic car owner with a (small) 1300cc engine who drives their car about 5 times a year I would apply the same argument :-) though maybe it'll be banned now because my car isn't as quiet as a sewing machine...

I don't know, run a full size modern diesel car in a garage for a few seconds then compare it to a 2 stroke running for the same amount of time. The 2 stroke will certainly smog up the place quicker.

those are just the visible gases - you can't see carbon monoxide etc.

Yep. The scooter might output less CO2, but due to the primitive nature of the 2-stroke engine, it's basically chucking a rich aerosol of unburned fuel and lubricating oil out the exhaust. The X5, by comparison, has a catalytic converter to get rid of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and unburned fuel, plus a particulate filter to get rid of soot; it will also have secondary emission control systems to stop fuel vapours escaping from the fuel tank and crankcase.

2-strokes have remarkable power-to-weight ratios and are pleasingly mechanically simple, but goodness me they're dirty.

> relatively, i can't see someone a 50cc 2-stroke moped putting out more emissions than a huge 3-ton BMW X5 with a massive diesel engine, awd etc. which is carrying one person at any given time.

Different kinds of emissions. CO2-wise, yes indeed the moped is less harmful.

But the other emissions... a modern car is essentially a chemical lab on wheels. At least one actively managed catalytic converter to remove NOx, another one for diesel engines to burn leftover carbon monoxide, and then a particulate matter filter to trap and burn-off soot and other micro particles.

A two-stroke engine usually only has a passive catalytic converter and that's it. It emits by design unburned fuel-oil mixture into the exhaust because the mixture is used as a lubricant, and beyond a muffler it has absolutely zero noise emission control.

i agree, and im not trying to undermine modern research and development on emissions, but my point is that perhaps larger cars should be discouraged as they are hugely overkill for most people's needs and exist as status symbols - if coming purely from an emissions standpoint they are terrible compared to an equivalent small car or motorbike etc yet people seem to blame 2 strokes and old cars when in reality they are not the sole cause of the problem

Ah, yeah, that's fair. Each individual vintage vehicle is terrible, but there really aren't that many of them, whereas there are millions of large cars/pickups being sold per year. I'd certainly support some sort of measure aimed at large vehicles which aren't used for some sort of large-vehicle-appropriate task.

Slap up some rolling truck scales on your existing toll roads and pro-rate tolls with the discount maxing out right at GVWR (which you got by looking up their vehicle with your existing ALPRs) and then spend a decade hammering out edge cases.

It will never fly because the demographics that are usually supportive of that kind of legislative action are almost exactly the same demographics who buy 3-row SUVs for 2-kid households and hand wring like it's the end of the world if you put four adults in a compact car or throw plywood on a roof (but a kayak is fine).

Yes I mean classic cars are dirty but there are very few of them, most being used only seldom. However there are 10s of millions of >2 ton hunks of metal being used to haul mostly 1 person around, with all the consequences that implies: pollution, noise, space for roads, space for parking, traffic fatalities, etc. That's a real problem.

Give me a break. "Hacking" and tinkering with bikes doesn't mean they have to be loud. Nobody's opportunities are being curtailed by asking them to be considerate of others and socially responsible.

And anyway, in my experience, most owners of loud bikes are ratbags or deliberately looking to provoke, like the guy across the road who revs his bike at 1am and wakes up the whole street. I can assure you he's not a "hacker", just an inconsiderate dick.

> Nobody's opportunities are being curtailed by asking them to be considerate of others and socially responsible.

Nobody suggested their opportunities are being curtailed by being asked to consider others and be socially responsible.

But their opportunities are limited, which leads to infantile acting out, and that was the nub of my comment.

Sometimes ones opportunities are constrained by social factors. Like growing up in a chavvy estate with mates who are all total muppets. Or being peer-pressured into having a "smartphone" when you're 10 and wasting your life on TikTok or whatever.

Modern life gives the young less and less to work with.

Random factoid: Alexander the Great had conquered all of Asia by the time he was 23 - at that age most Barry boys are still living with their mum.

"Please don't fulminate."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think we’ve clamped down on the little people enough. There’s clearly a growing gap in freedom of expression between developing countries and us.

I'm afraid I can't see this as freedom of expression, what idea are they expressing? If this is about freedom of expression, isn't fly tipping a type of expression that should be protected?

In terms of general freedom, the question is does it disproportionately affect others? The answer couldn't be clearer - where I live a single person cruising around in their modified vehicle can ruin the sleep of thousands of people.

In terms of the law, this is already illegal, all that's happening is the law is being enforced.

I'm responding to this comment because I think a lot of people have a similar, erroneous, reaction - isn't this just another freedom being taken away? In a way yes, but the costs to individual liberty are vastly outweighed by the consequences for those who happen to be near by.

And, of course, you can always modify your car and drive round a private race track, no activity has been totally prohibited.

I actually agree with everything you say there Jimmy. They're anti-social toe-rags. But in the humanist tradition I'm digging a little deeper and asking what's going on for these kids?

Why would you spend hundreds of pounds and lots of time trying to make your car a bloody nuisance?

We ignore human psychology at our peril.

I think you might be forgetting what being a teenage boy is like! I think a noisy car is straightforward 'look at me' peacock tail behaviour.