Motorcycles too. Around here idiots revving and redlining their engine is a relatively regular occurrence. Much more so than cars, although that also happens from time to time.
Having been neighbors with a lot of these guys, it has been repeatedly explained to me that theh make their bikes louder to be heard for safety. The assumption here is car drivers are so engaged with their music/podcasts/whatever turned up that they don't pay attention to the traffic around them. They also tend to not look when switching lanes or, gods forbid, use their turn signal to show intent.
While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky. Motorcycles are loud by default, and using aftermarket parts to make them louder is just part of the self-affirming statement of ego. These guys need you to know how big and bad they believe themselves to be that they'll make other sacrifices in their lives to afford projecting that image.
It's really all very silly, to be honest.
It always felt like "a load of bullpucky", but the defining moment for me was one day riding down a quietish-street with a legal-but-still-obnoxious Akrapovic pipe. In front of me were two or three girls walking in the middle of the road, talking. They only realized I was there when I sounded the horn and seemed really surprised, judging by their jumpiness.
If someone walking in front of the bike can't hear that noise, I really don't see how someone inside a sound-insulated box, in a generally noisy environment, probably blasting the radio, is going to notice the loud pipe.
Many a street has been converted to such an area. But rules apply to everybody, and sometimes even an obnoxious biker can actually be in the right.
I don’t think your brain learned about one way streets and started fully trusting drivers to follow the law, certainly not the low-level parts that govern the “there’s something there you may need to pay attention to” mechanism.
I usually am aware that I'm in the middle of the street when I'm not supposed to be there (think when there's something blocking the sidewalk or similar). In this case, I'll absolutely pay a lot of attention to my surroundings. Hell, even when I cross the street at a green light, I'll look before I step off the sidewalk.
Because in my mental model of traffic, drivers are very likely to not follow the law.
I may very well be in the right and the guy running me over may very well be certain to get convicted, but what good does that do to me if my legs are broken or worse?
I think it's the same thing with the new electric cars, which have to make a noise because people can't hear them coming otherwise. This, to me, means that pedestrians are expected to pay at least some attention to their surroundings. Which, of course, doesn't mean you should run them over or otherwise put them at risk if they're careless.
But my overarching point is that enough people don't pay attention even when they are expected to, and no amount of noise is going to change that.
You are actually agreeing with your parent poster here. What you said is exactly why people look both ways even on a one-way street.
I don't think pedestrians are generally aware if a street is one-way or not.
Whenever I hear a douche nozzle with an extremely loud exhaust, I start crossing / walking obnoxiously slow. Two can play the game.
This was a Paris street, with two large sidewalks on either side of a narrowish one-way street. It's not like they had no other practical choice.
Do you not agree that noise pollution is a real problem that has grown to unacceptable levels?
Expect even more civil disobedience -- I've observed the same as you in my city, people started doing it on purpose to sabotage cars and bikes taking way too much space on iconic scenic streets.
But I very much doubt this was done on purpose. This was not an "iconic" street by any means, just a random street of no particular interest, with close to no traffic, pedestrian or vehicle. Such "iconic" streets do exist, and they usually have specific road rules where people are allowed to walk in the middle of street and cars are expected to avoid them (the streets) as much as possible. This was no such street.
Plus, they were already walking down the middle of the road much before I was close to them. I've also seen other people do the same even with no vehicle in sight, in this or other similar streets. This is also a problem for bicycles, which also have to ride in the street and aren't exactly a source of annoying noise.
Plus, Paris or not, with no setback for the buildings nobody wants to risk getting leftover washing liquid poured on them from a window.
Wtf, this is not backwater Russia we're talking about (aka the places where the Russian units originated that were caught looting washing machines). I've never seen someone be as intentionally rude as to dump out water from a window.
(I say "sort of" because I assume it's generally people watering plants, but the amount of water coming down seems excessive.)
And that a good portion of them may be paranoid about this type of thing due to their very real experiences elsewhere.
This is not an argument for noisier exhausts. It's an argument to reduce noise in general, from all sources. Then people will react better to the louder noises.
Maybe it’s my morbid search history, but I still look on in awe as people cross the intersection in front of me while deep on their phones. They don’t look up to check at all - not even at the start!
Hire some people to put that on TikTok, and it's problem solved.
My bike came with a Yoshimura and it is deafening to me even on a 372cc. I had to buy a baffle for it and wear earplugs. My watch warns me it’s still 90 to 100 dB.
I guess it kinda sounds cool for about a minute before being unhealthy. It was a surprise to me that anyone want such a thing when I first started out.
When living in a neighborhood where almost all of the houses were old and poorly insulated, the motorcycles which went up and down our street were loud enough that indoors, with the windows closed, we would have to stop conversations, pause tv shows, etc, and wait for them to pass, because one simply couldn't hear anything over them. This is a densely populated neighborhood; 4-8 apartments per building tens of buildings per side per block, so interrupting hundreds of people per block, and many thousands in the course of a ride seems a reasonable estimate. The motorcyclists would joyride in loops, so you would hear them multiple times, being disrupted each time. I think for this reason the disruption caused per ride is comparable to a streaker on the field of a major sports event that forces game play to be paused. For someone who disrupts whole neighborhoods in this way, on regular basis, to say it's "for safety" seems like a narcissistic delusion. If I drive a car on the highway, and there are large trucks with big blindspots and drivers who I know are struggling after having been at it for 12h, should I have a siren to make sure they know I'm there?
I must hasten to add that cyclists and pedestrians also have to deal with drivers in massive metal deathboxes, and we do it without disrupting the whole world around us.
Loud pipes save lives is bullshit. Defensive riding, good safety gear, and staying out of blind spots saves lives.
I'd think it's an outright self-defeating lie: they're so noisy you will hear them all over with no ability to see them (and most of the time they're irrelevant to you), so you just get listening fatigue, and you stop caring aside from being annoyed by the constant noise. And that's just as a driver, as a nearby resident it's infuriating.
Some people like loud exhaust, period. It's a cool sound. It makes you feel powerful. Safety aspect is a rationalization for others and possibly yourself. In busy traffic, to another moving vehicle, sound is neither going to be heard clearly nor will it provide directional or distance cues. If they're interested in safety (or would like to think they are), ask them about their full face helmet, which motorcycle course they're thinking of taking next, and what's their training routine in the spring. Maybe whether they're considering a high visibility outfit instead of black leather.
That is all it is. It lets you impose yourself on others without sufficient probability of retribution.
And you would be correct:
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/new-study-confirms-loud-pipes-s...
Very popular line of thinking with people who own (e.g.) Harley-Davidsons… which are loud out of the box. Go over to (say) /r/motorcycles where there's a larger variety of ownership, and not many folks really buy it.
The High Side, Low Side motorcycle podcast had an episode on moto-myths where they went over this:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1UlW-sfbBA&t=21m47
The MCRider moto-training channel covered it:
No they are not, at least not in the U. S. Thé EPA dictates a max dB sound output, and HDs must meet it, like everyone else. Stock HDs sound quite nice.
Of course, you might not know this because no real American leaves a HD dealer with the stock exhaust installed.
Every comment was "fuck that cyclist, they rode out in front of you!"
Apparently calculating from the video that they were doing 15+ mph over the speed limit, and proving from the video and math that the cyclist could not see him before they'd started into the crosswalk...was ban-worthy.
The guy even blurred out his speedometer to hide that he was speeding.
His comment/post history showed that the motorcycle, which was a very powerful model, was his first bike and he'd very recently bought it. He posted "new motorcycle day" pictures.
The guy was a textbook squid: recently acquired first bike was too powerful for him, no brains/skills, riding dangerously, putting himself and others at risk.
Pointed that out to the mods and was told I was being reported for "doxxing." For clicking on "posts" on his profile and seeing he'd recently posted a picture of the bike.
Fuck that subreddit and its mods.
One biker jumped to fight me once after I joked with him that he uses loud exhaust pipes to get a prostate massage while riding. People around him stopped him. I laughed my arse off. Apparently I hit a nerve.
But yeah, that's how much respect I have for these people. Whatever reasons they invent the fact of the matter is that noise pollution is already too much and everyone should be working on reducing it. Everyone. No exceptions. Including mothers with rattling strollers; having one with rubber wheels is not gonna bankrupt her family, I am pretty sure.
I'm trying to drive over here.
Me and others are inclined towards solutions that reduce noise.
It’s not, otherwise they’d get a discount on insurance…which they don’t. And it’s bullshit for a lot of reasons, including good ol’ physics.
Actuaries can tell us the exact relation between volume and deaths per mile, I bet, and it must be nearly zero.
I'm sure there are guys who want to be loud, just like the kids who put the noisy mufflers on their cars. For most bikers I don't think they see a better alternative.
It basically is. Most bike horns are going to be louder then stock or aftermarket exhausts, yet no one's gone around tapping the horn button down.
I always found that argument to be a bit of a red herring.
_Even if_ that was true and _even if_ the only way to safely ride a motorcycle was by disturbing every single person you pass by on the street, that still doesn't justify people riding loud bikes.
At that point, you are making a deliberate, selfish choice that your enjoyment of riding a bike is more important than other people's comfort.
It's like someone bringing smelly food on a plane and saying they're justified because it's the only way they can eat their favourite dish. We don't go "oh, they're right, the smell is necessary for them to enjoy their food." We go "just eat something else, you're being selfish".
If something can’t be safe for the operator without being a nuisance to thousands of people along their route, then it shouldn’t be on the road.
Bring on the fines for loud motorcycles. It’s ridiculous that we let this problem proliferate.
One particular bike owner literally just rides around in a rectangular pattern most evenings, over and over, revving only when he gets the junction in front of where the teens hang out - yes, I can hear his bike on all 4 sides of the pattern.
However, the most annoying motorist we get, is a middle aged woman who owns a white audi and sits arming/disarming and triggering her alarm whenever she sends her husband/partner into the shop, she performs this ritual 2-3 times a day usually. Very annoying hearing 'bip.... bip bip bip... bip. wuuuuwuuuuwuuu bip, bip bip bip...' and so on.