Having moved to a small town this winter, I now live about 50 yards up the slope from one of the two two-lane highways that form the crossroads. There’s not a lot of traffic, but about half the traffic that does go through town passes by my windows. And now, as spring has finally arrived, two more elements have fallen into place: those windows are open, so I can hear the traffic better, and some of that traffic is motorcycles. Some of them unnecessarily loud.
I love motorcycles more than any other inanimate object on Earth. I’ve been riding them for more than four decades and making my living off them for more than two decades. And I still find loud bikes annoying. So it surprises me not at all how much the noise annoys and infuriates others.
Noise is the main reason motorcycles get banned from city parks and private communities. Noise is the number one negative aspect of motorcycling that non-riders first think of. As they sit at their streetside cafe table on a beautiful spring day, they won’t notice five motorcycles that go by with stock mufflers but they will absolutely notice the one with open pipes that interrupts the conversation and breaks the mood. And that will influence their image of motorcycles and the people who ride them.
Riders who use loud pipes immediately jump to the safety defense. Drivers damn near kill me all the time! People aren’t paying attention! They’re looking at phones, messing with their infotainment touch screens, and putting me in danger. I have to use loud pipes for my own safety.
Actual testing has shown that loud exhausts are an inefficient way to alert other drivers to your presence. That’s not the same as saying they never work, and I quickly add that because the loud pipes proponents will jump on that statement as if I were saying they were 0% effective, instead of not very effective. We also know for a fact that most motorcycle crashes involve a hazard that’s in front of the motorcycle, more often than to the rear or either side, which is part of the reason a noisy, rear-pointing exhaust is not the best solution.
So here’s the question I have that none of the loud pipes advocates can answer: If you really care about safety, instead of paying hundreds of dollars for loud exhausts, why not make a simple, virtually free modification that would really alert drivers to your presence? Just wire your motorcycle so that the horn is blowing any time the bike is running.
Simple and guaranteed effective. The sound will be pointing forward, where the danger usually lies. People all around will definitely look, because they’ll wonder what’s going on. It’s guaranteed to be more effective than loud pipes and a lot cheaper.
So why does nobody do it? Because loud pipes aren’t really about safety.
Whether it’s the ubiquitous unbaffled Harley-Davidson cruiser or a 600 cc sport bike bouncing off the rev limiter at 14,000 rpm through straight pipes, safety is just the socially acceptable veneer layered on top of anti-social behavior to justify it. The real motivations are other reasons.
“Maybe people will look at me. I like it when people look at me. Maybe they’ll think I’m a badass.”
“Maybe they’ll think my ponderous, slow cruiser or poorly tuned sport bike is the most powerful thing on the road because it’s the loudest thing on the road. And then maybe they’ll think I’m a badass.”
“Maybe I’ll sound intimidating… and people will think I’m a badass.”
“I just like the sound of my pipes. I think it’s badass.”
Sure, you’d be safer riding down the road on a motorcycle with a stock exhaust and a blaring horn, but nobody’s going to think you’re a badass if you do that. They’re going to wonder why that weird guy hasn’t fixed his malfunctioning horn. But if you want to be safe, and you want people to notice you, that would be a far better strategy.
But you’re not going to do that, are you? No. Because people who say loud pipes are about safety aren’t telling you the full truth.
Last month I talked about how it’s hard for me to get worked up about helmet laws, another hotly argued issue, because that personal decision mostly does not affect others. Loud pipes are different. They affect us all, from quality of life to turning people into anti-motorcyclists who we all have to contend with.
Loud pipes are the middle finger to the rest of the world. Safety is the excuse. Otherwise, you’d use your horn.
Well said.
A problem that I run up against when I rehabilitate derelict motorcycles is, if the stock mufflers are beyond repair and I cannot score an OEM set worth salvaging, most every aftermarket silencer I can find is borderline (or beyond) obnoxiously loud.
That is a genuine problem. So many times original parts aren’t available for old motorcycles. It’s one of the drawbacks of the much smaller numbers of motorcycles than cars, for which parts are far more often available.