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I live in a motorcycle-heavy US town (blue collar, lots of guys who wish they were 1%ers - the biker outlaw variety, not the rich people variety). It sounds like a warzone during shift change around the industrial districts.

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.

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As a motorcyclist, if I had a penny for every time I've heard the "loud pipes save lives" mantra, I'd be a millionaire.

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.

Have you considered maybe you're in the wrong? The hierarchy of responsibility puts a motorbike above (more responsible) than a pedestrian. Three people is more than one, so you are really saying you inconvenienced three more vulnerable people just so you, a single person, could go down a road, at speed, without a care for others.

That why I always drive on the sidewalk. It’s the courteous thing to do.

I wasn't racing down the street, if that's what you're saying. And, at least in these parts, pedestrians aren't supposed to walk in the middle of the street if there are sidewalks available (outside certain designated areas, of which this street was not one).

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.

That's why I wear a car alarm strapped to my head, always going off, when I walk down the street.

At the low frequencies that tend to dominate and at that volume, it's relatively difficult to figure out where the source of the sound actually is, especially with buildings around that reflect sound every which way

It was a one-way street, so it was pretty clear where the traffic was coming from.

I do not think that matters much.

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.

What do you mean?

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.

> Because in my mental model of traffic, drivers are very likely to not follow the law.

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 think the point, consistent with the original story, is that most people don't look either way when crossing the street.

Behold, the dialectic of the material conception of the human mind. In my mind it bears an uncanny resemblance to the liquid humours posited by our forefathers, no?

Deaf people exist. And there are going to be people in the middle of the road from time to time; it happens. And sometimes people make mistakes. I’ve even seen people not realize that a street was one way. And sound reflects and bounces, and vehicles are capable of moving at different speeds; they’re even capable of moving the wrong way or on adjacent roads or on cross roads or on fields, making the determination of location not always straightforward. And any factors that did or did not apply in your story may apply in others. Just all the more reason for drivers to be careful.

> It was a one-way street

I don't think pedestrians are generally aware if a street is one-way or not.

Or if they were like me, they were trying to ignore the loud sound damaging their ears that 99.999% is a vehicle nowhere near them.

Or they were just blocking your way.

Whenever I hear a douche nozzle with an extremely loud exhaust, I start crossing / walking obnoxiously slow. Two can play the game.

It was a legal, unmodified exhaust. It was loud, but not "extremely" so. Also, they were not crossing, they were walking down the middle of the street. You know, where cars are supposed to go. People walk on sidewalks.

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.

"Legal" is an arbitrary metric likely formulated in concert with the car/bike manufacturers via corrup... excuse me, via lobbying, so you should really know better than to use that term as a shield.

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.

I do agree. It's one of the reasons why I've sold that bike several years ago.

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.

They were in Paris! This changes everything. Of course they were walking in the middle of the street.

Plus, Paris or not, with no setback for the buildings nobody wants to risk getting leftover washing liquid poured on them from a window.

> 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 sort of see it all the time in Paris. I almost got dumped on a couple of weeks ago when walking my children. If we had been five seconds earlier, we would have been soaked.

(I say "sort of" because I assume it's generally people watering plants, but the amount of water coming down seems excessive.)

But surely you are aware that Paris has many visitors.

And that a good portion of them may be paranoid about this type of thing due to their very real experiences elsewhere.

Exactly. As far as I've been able to tell, mere noise will do absolutely nothing to get most drivers' attention. I've seen drivers fail to notice a police car or other emergency vehicle behind them, siren and lights both on, as they stare fixedly at the phone in their lap. Even in less extreme cases, most drivers will just treat loud motorcycle noise as part of the general din of being in a place where they exist. It won't generally have any effect at all on their decisions to speed up, slow down, or change lanes. Fun fact: the more common a noise is, the less likely it becomes that it will have any effect at all on people's behavior.

Most people are either blissfully unaware of their surroundings regardless of the noises or they just tuned out said noises because there are so many of them.

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.

Agreed, ban headphones while walking down the street!

Please turn your vehicle in to the authorities to be cubed immediately.

Yeah that is dumb, I agree. It's asking to be hit on the roads.

I know you're being facetious and it would obviously be silly to ban them. That said wearing headphones/earphones while walking around a city, for me, would reduce my situational awareness to a degree I would absolutely not be comfortable with. I know plenty of people are comfortable doing so but, while drivers and road design almost certainly bear the lion's share of the blame for pedestrian injuries and fatalities, distracted pedestrians don't help themselves. (Just the other week, I saw a person come super-close to getting hit in a parking lot as they were obliviously walking across the traffic lane buried deep in their phone.)

I once saw a pedestrian step out in front a speeding police car with lights and siren . . . I guess because the walk light turned green? The police car had to slam on its brakes and honk before the idiot noticed it.

> Most people are either blissfully unaware of their surroundings

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!

Yeah same, it boggles my mind. I'm scared for my life of busy intersections, many drivers get impatient to the point of seemingly not caring if they'll kill you. I never ever look at my phone while on the move.

It's an absolutely delusional argument imo. I think SciShow did an episode on it, but drivers can not hear motorcycles until they're right next to them, and I believe it has to do with how sound travels.

I've noticed the same on my motorcycle. The pipe points out the back.

If the only way for a vehicle to be operated safely is for it to be incredibly loud, then how about we ban them from urban areas or perhaps in general?

Doing dangerous stuff is cool. All the coolest bikers stealth their bikes. Put on extra silent exhausts. Dress in all black. Dim their lights. Hide in the blind spots of other cars.

Hire some people to put that on TikTok, and it's problem solved.

Ban cars because loud noises are required to make them not kill people? Good idea.

They are banned in many major European and Asian cities for a good reason

Even louder pipes with high frequency noise should help with directionality /s

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.

I still think it's "bullpucky" and two or three clueless pedestrians don't demonstrate anything.

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.

People are conditioned to ignore the droning sound of exhaust. It's ubiquitous and also not very directional. Horns, on the other hand, usually work to get peoples attention.

The sound on those bikes are directed almost entirely backwards. Which is why you can hear a Harley that blows by you until they get 2 miles ahead, but that same bike is essentially silent while it’s closing on you from behind. It’s a stupid argument.

Pipes point backwards. They still don't make enough noise to be heard from in front. That's why loud bikes always scare people, you don't hear them coming until they are next to you and blasting past you. It's silence and then deafening roar.

Loud pipes save lives is bullshit. Defensive riding, good safety gear, and staying out of blind spots saves lives.

> While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky.

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.

"Silly" is really underselling it.

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.

Yeah, when are the cops finally gonna crack on noisy mothers, not to mention their screechy children?!?

I'm trying to drive over here.

You’re being an oaf about the strollers, the noise isn’t anywhere near as loud as for motorcycles (bizarre to compare them) and if you had kids you’d know the inflatable tires only work on large jogger or double wide strollers (and about those you’d be complaining how much space the pay take up on the sidewalk, in the grocery store, in the subway etc and if someone needs to ride the bus or a taxi they are not even an option). Typical complaining from a self centered non parent.

No need for jumping to conclusions. I sympathize with parents' problems and I prefer the bigger strollers because they don't rattle. Whether they belong to public spaces is something people can't agree on but I'm not seeing riots over it.

Me and others are inclined towards solutions that reduce noise.

> 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.

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:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F02_9V7OKjw

Very popular line of thinking with people who own (e.g.) Harley-Davidsons… which are loud out of the box.

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.

The aftermarket for noise scofflaws should not exist. I lived near some kind of chopper club years ago and every Sunday around 10am you'd have these clowns revving loud enough to nearly make eardrums bleed. I theorize the reason they feel comfortable inflicting this on others is because they have the admiration and encouragement of the individuals on the police force who would do the same with their cruisers if the city would buy the parts. Pox on all of them in this narrow regard.

I was banned from /r/motorcycles for commenting on a handlebar camera video where a guy was racing down a winding, limited visibility road with his buddies and lost control trying to avoid hitting a cyclist who was crossing in a crosswalk, complete with blinking warning lights.

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.

This kinda nails an issue with reddit. You can find a hobby/community that you have overlapping interest in, but the culture/moderation of that community may not have any consistency with what you want. Which would be fine, but reddit doesn't provide room/discoverability for multiple subreddits of the same topic with different moderation styles/cultures.

If this was recent, much of the subreddit's mod team left a few months ago. The new management is far less active in moderation.

> While this sounds like a reasonable argument, I think it's a load of bullpucky

And you would be correct:

https://www.motorbiscuit.com/new-study-confirms-loud-pipes-s...

Not to mention, the noise from pipes emanates backwards, toward cars that have the motorcycle in their field of vision. Even the loudest bikes I don't really hear until they pass me.

I don't buy it, and I'm both a motorcycle rider and a driver.

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.

> It makes you feel powerful.

That is all it is. It lets you impose yourself on others without sufficient probability of retribution.

While this sounds like a reasonable argument…

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.

That’s the first I’ve heard of the insurance argument, and I think you’re right. If loud pipes saved lives, Progressive Flo would’ve mentioned their noise discounts.

Actuaries can tell us the exact relation between volume and deaths per mile, I bet, and it must be nearly zero.

Motorcycles aren't loud by default. My BMW k75 is basically quiet even when you rev it. Turns out mufflers work.

> it has been repeatedly explained to me that theh make their bikes louder to be heard for safety

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".

Loud bikes slightly disorient me when I'm driving my car. If anything, I'm more likely to have an accident when they drive up near me

>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 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.

There's a problem in that the danger is in front but the exhaust noise goes out the back. I was once driving cross crunchy in a big truck with a trailer when I was startled by a loud motorcycle coming up beside me. He had been in danger the entire time he was next to me but I never heard him until he got right next to the cab. They should really point the loud exhaust forward but who wants to live with that noise?

Can't wait for all cars to have proximity sensors/cameras alerting us drivers to what's around us.

Oh! They need to be heard to be able to be going between traffic and passing vehicles closely.

While I am annoyed by loud motorcycles, I understand and totally agree with riders about being loud so cars are aware. Drivers are shockingly unaware of their surroundings. It's worse with drivers of larger trucks and SUVs. Drivers don't address their blind spots, they don't pay attention, they don't signal, they don't look. I've fortunately never seen a motorcyclist hit by a car, but I've seen a lot of close calls, and not one of them has been saved because the driver suddenly noticed the bike.

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.

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