We talk about friction of tires on Asphalt, or engine noise. Nobody seems to do something about exhaust modification. This is big win with little effort. The logarithmic scale of DB hides how serious the issue is. A 95db modified exhaust create noise that's equal to 10000 54db cars. One such vehicle passing by downtown at 3am can disrupt the sleep of thousands of people (among hundreds of thousands who are in the range, but most of them might not be that sensitive). IMHO, an exhaust modification that adds more than 10db to the factory provided one should be illegal. It's easy to think of next steps for cars that are made noisy in the factory, but it's incredible that nothing is being done about this.
> IMHO, an exhaust modification that adds more than 10db to the factory provided one should be illegal. It's easy to think of next steps for cars that are made noisy in the factory, but it's incredible that nothing is being done about this.
In Europe cars have to pass an annual technical inspection to renew their license. Every part on the car has to be homologated and they'll only homologate things that are within all safety/noise/etc regulation.
My sister's ex boyfriend had to remove his modded exhaust and reinstall the stock version every year before inspection. This is clearly annoying so most people wouldn't bother. It also comes with heavy fines should he ever get pulled over for speeding or street racing. Cops love to hand out additional "illegal car mods" tickets when they're annoyed.
Added bonus: This would also solve the American problem with lifted trucks and LED headlights. Unfortunately it would also make my motorcycle unregisterable (not the exhaust, other stuff like distance between indicators).
I just cannot wrap my head around exhaust mods. I previously rode a 600cc sports bike, I specifically chose it because it's quiet, and still the noise from the stock pipes would give you a headache without earplugs if riding for more than an hour. When I sold it the buyer mentioned the first thing they would do was an exhaust swap...
I've heard people justify it as a safety thing. People in cars are terrible about paying attention to motorcycles because they don't take much space. So with a loud exhaust you can get their attention and let them know you are there. I can buy it except for the people that just rec their engine for absolutely no reason.
I absolutely do not buy it, and all of the studies I've seen don't support it. The best analogy is trying to maintain a conversation with anyone standing in front of you; sound doesn't travel well in opposite directions enough for any practical benefit, until you're right next to them.
Every lane-splitter when I drive in Cali surprises me, and I'm shocked I haven't accidentally hit one.
If you remove the deaths from drinking and riding, wouldn't it be reassuring to know the likelihood of dying isn't as high as it seemed, or even that the fake need for loud pipes is even less useful?
If bikers cared about their own safety, they'd sell their motorcycle and buy any other vehicle. Car drivers aren't terrible about paying attention, it's bikers who are great at positioning themselves inside our blind spots and at being quite small objects in general. Loud exhausts do nothing but make them a massive nuisance to everyone around them since you only hear them when they're practically right next to you anyway.
> Car drivers aren't terrible about paying attention
I feel like this would be a very tough statement to agree with if you're anyone but a car driver. If you meant it only in opposition to the idea that it's exclusively the cause of motorcycle accidents, then I'd agree, but think it'd be a necessary qualifier.
I'd probably also disagree with the somewhat hyperbolic claim that bikers don't care about their safety simply because they're on a motorcycle. While motorcycles provide for a clear increase in risk, how much someone does about their safety is only limited by their vehicle choice in this context, not decided by it. Cars provide for their own parameters of safety, as do others, and in each case people make tradeoffs for different reasons. It would probably be equally silly for me to say that as a public transit rider, if someone cared about their safety, they just wouldn't drive at all, but I sometimes think it.
As in, if you drive a car for your commute, you're probably much more likely to die in a vehicle accident than I am as a pedestrian or train rider, compared to the difference between being a biker or a car driver, but that doesn't mean you're not going to try and maximize your safety within the bounds of deciding/having to drive to work.
> I'd probably also disagree with the somewhat hyperbolic claim that bikers don't care about their safety simply because they're on a motorcycle.
No, I know they don't care. I literally researched this. I went to my local emergency medical service, I calculated a representative sample of all cases which led to an ambulance being dispatched, I painstakingly compiled statistics on thousands of cases. Among the results I obtained were the facts motorcyclists were about 2.5 times more likely to require an ambulance than car drivers and that they'd be in much worse shape when an ambulance got there. Sadly I didn't have any outcome data, the trail ends after the patient reaches the hospital. I know from personal and professional experience that they die or are permanently disabled a lot more often than car drivers though.
If you get onto such a death trap, you clearly don't give a shit about your own safety. Motorcycles are much cheaper than cars so sometimes people have no choice but to accept the risk. Or maybe they just like exercising their god given freedom, I can at least respect that as a motivation. Don't tell me they care about safety though. They don't. Especially not the people enthusiastic enough about bikes to modify the vehicle's exhaust because they like the sound.
Every single day I deal with people like that on the road. Truth is they'd die even more often were it not for drivers like me who literally accomodate them. I actually go out of my way to avoid killing these people. They
do make it extra hard though. They do stupid shit like mistake my defensive driving for a gap they can squeeze through to get ahead in traffic. Every single day. I feel like I'm slowly losing my sanity. Once I had 4 motorcycles literally surround me in transit. One in front of me, one behind me, one passing me from my left and one passing me from my right, all at the same time. Literally boxed in. Steady as she goes. If I had done anything else, I'd have killed one of them.
Seems to me like you're on some bizarre personal crusade against motorcyclists, and it seems like you feel like the roads belong to cars only, while people who use other means of transportation feel like the most common danger or nuisance on roads is... cars/trucks. People shouldn't feel like the only safe place to be is in a bigger car, but people do feel that way, because they're most likely going to be killed crashing into... another car or truck.
But maybe we should take a few lanes out from a majority of roads and dedicate them to anything but cars.
I don't know where matheusmoreira usually drives, and I admit that from the comment's tone there may be some kind of prejudice against motorbike riders.
However, as a rider myself, I do tend to agree. If I had a penny for every stupid shit I've seen a rider do, I could buy all the highways in my country.
One short way I like to put it, is that they trust way too much the other people on the road (cars or bikes!) to not do something stupid at the exact moment they themselves do something stupid. Like cutting people off, riding 2 inches behind the vehicle in the front, overtaking some car waiting for pedestrians to cross – you name it they've done it.
As someone riding fairly defensively, I'm actually quite bitter about all this. Those idiots give us a bad rep and the powers that be are attempting to take our joy away with stupid regulations that won't actually improve anything.
Yeah, choosing a dangerous mode of transportation and then choosing to disturb swaths of people everywhere you go because you're afraid of danger seems crazy to me.
I'm not against motorcycles in general... safer (to others), smaller, more efficient transportation is great. Dedicated motorcycle lanes? Getting rid of cars?
If you want to really want to question your fellow human, check out some Reddit threads about loud exhausts. The number of people who steadfastly defend their right to drive a loud car is insane.
"Hi all, could anyone please advise how to tackle this situation. My neighbour are good people but their sons car are very loud. There is so much base that I feel the sound on my bed in night Time. Our little one is due in 3 months. I’m worried about this situation."
And one popular response: "Just the reality of people living their lives..."
What I find interesting is that despite the rise of social media and the endless social-shaming that it enables, obnoxious behaviour doesn't seem to carry the same stigma that it once did. Related to this seems to be the conflation of what is legal and what is ethical (i.e. if it isn't illegal it is fine).
When I was a teenager with a loud car I’d kill the engine when I turned off the main road and rolled down to my parents house to not annoy the neighbours if it was late at night.
When leaving at unsocial hours i’d do the same - roll down the road until I was away from the houses and then start the car.
Some people just have zero awareness or empathy for their impact on other people.
The main road was rediculously loud to begin with and there is a big difference between cruising past at 2000rpm and 70km/hr and coming down a residential street at 30km/h.
Not the majority I know, but for many, thinking of others has taken a far back seat to everyone's supposed god-given rights to express themselves. It's defended like a cult by so many.
The timbre is also important. Tire and engine noise are closer to white noise, which you can tune out. An aftermarket muffler like what my jackass neighbor has is a single pitch that pierces through anything.
If one were so inclined to be civically active in the US at least, it should be possible to set up an api with local law enforcement that would be able to take in data from always on microphones such as with widely deployed door bell cameras, smart assistants and phones coupled with ai sound recognition and automatically report and triangulate offending sources of noise which would probably go a long way towards making enforcement more plausible. Over a decade ago when I first proposed this I was against its development for obvious privacy concerns. Seeing as how that ship has long sailed it seems that were long over due to have such a background system in place. I mean at this point its no worse than the litany of cameras we see already deployed by municipalities on traffic lights.
Amongst other things, you have to define a system of calibration that will stand up in court. I've read about speeding tickets getting tossed for lack of same.
That said, for all these communities surviving on / leaching off of ticket revenues, I've wondered why they haven't gone after these noise rats. Or a private entity whose business is selling equipment/systems to law enforcement. Put detectors on squad cars, and sell them a calibration setup. Pass and/or enforce some local noise ordinances, and...Ka-chinge!
I've been tortured by neighborhood subwoofer dicks as well as straight pipe pricks. I'm sorry to be derogatory in tone, here, but those are the mildest words I can bring myself to use for them. A steady rush of tire noise or the like would be welcome by comparison.
I too have serious privacy concerns WRT modern technology. However, seeing as that ship has sailed, stick such systems, with license plate readers, around town, and go after the violators. Triangulation, running video, and repeat logging to confirm the specific offender.
In my county, ostensibly repeat offenders can escalate to having their vehicle impounded. Of course, in real life, nothing is done -- not even a ticket.
People should be given a bit a time to e.g. fix a damaged exhaust. But for those who choose to inflict their noise on others? Better to ruin their lives, than let them ruin ours.
(Can you tell the recent bout of warm weather had left me dealing with this in my neighborhood... :-/ Sorry for being a downer, here. But this is a real, significant stress, and one many friends share. One that is the result of another's willful, selfish choice.)
The absolute void of interest to enforce the law is the problem here, not finding offenders.
I'm my area, all it would take is a cop to watch the main drag and start enforcing speed limits and state and local noise ordinances and it would stop. But they don't because they are not interested. In part because they or their children partake in the hobby of harassing people in their homes a mile and a half away. Another part is its easier to ticket people late for work because they won't run like the noise makers do.
>The absolute void of interest to enforce the law is the problem here, not finding offenders.
A couple of reasons come to mind:
1. Cops in our area are super busy handling call associated with theft, drug abuse, mental illness and homelessness that i’m not surprised they are not interested in bringing more work upon themselves by initiating contact for a relatively minor (to the above) infraction.
2. A lot of cops are into hotrods and imho the most flagrant of noise making vehicles, Harleys.
Or maybe we could finance some kind of scheme where law enforcement officers traverse cities, towns and countryside using a variety of transport options, primarily two- and four-wheeled motorized vehicles on a rotating basis. If we then equipped these officers with some kind of method to audibly detect abnormally loud noises, they could proactively investigate such offenses with minimal response times and take appropriate action.
Of course one issue with my plan is that it depends on the cooperation of the dispatched law enforcement officers. If they were to symphonize with the people committing the noise infractions they might simply refuse to punish them.
It is probably illegal, and I'd risk doxing myself, but I've considered just making a "Complain about drivers, keyed by their license plate" website. Then you can shame people publicly and treat it as a quick background check on anyone.
Law enforcement actually already has something very similar in the US: Gunshot detectors. Supposedly backfiring cars can trigger them (which is another insane mod that some people apparently do intentionally these days – one of these has given me temporary hearing loss in the past...)
I think having occasional law enforcement compliance checks at auto mechanics (with escalating fines for performing illegal installations) would probably be more effective at reducing the problem.
For many of us with loud exhausts, the aim isn't noise... It is free flowing gasses allowing the engine to produce more power. The noise is what it is for that.
That said, as a loud car driver, I can't stand people who map pops-and-bangs into their car or buy loud exhausts for loudness sake. It is lame, from an engineering standpoint.
Also those of us with loud, modified, high performance cars appreciate engineering. With this comes maps and exhaust valves to allow the car to be quieter at 3am.
Point is, we are not all the same. A ban would treat me as a criminal to punish the others.
Isn't this something we argue is bad all the time here? Such as surveillance of everyone as if they're criminals for the sake of crime reduction?
The situation with loud cars is more nuanced.
Nuance is easy to ignore when something irritates or annoys you personally.
It's really not nuanced. You seem to think that other loud cars are bad but your loud car is ok but guess what, they're all the same to the people outside the car.
I don't care about your performance car. Go to a racetrack if you want that. Get your loud car off public streets.
Ok but why should a car have the ability to be a nuisance in the first place? I get that you're saying you're responsible about it but if we allow that, then people who are not responsible will also do it.
The generalization of what you're saying here would ban trombones, because someone can get drunk and play them at 3AM. Pre-crime is a poor basis for law.
There is no alternative to a trombone making noise, but silent cars that get you from A to B at whatever speed you desire very much do exist.
That said, I have no issue at all with loud cars existing, as long as nobody that's annoyed by them ever has to hear them. They shouldn't get a license plate for public roads though.
Why is being loud on the highway necessary when there is an alternative (driving a quiet car)? There are people and animals living close to highways, some of them longer than either the highway or your loud car have existed.
Cars also have the tendency to sometimes go outside and move from place to place quite rapidly, creating the potential to wake or otherwise disturb thousands of people in a short timespan. Try that with a trombone!
Sure, that makes sense, I guess. Since I do support the sale of semiautomatic weapons to the general public, unlike genocide supporters such as yourself. Every government which commits genocide begins by confiscating weapons from the public, after all. So that must be what you want.
I'm kind of joking, I consider gun-control advocates to be sincere, but tragically mistaken. I just figured your insane hyperbole deserved the same.
Do you deny that loud exhausts are unhealthy for people (like the OP maintains) or do you maintain that the adverse health effects are justified by the excellent engineering efficiency of your car?
But empirically, I can see that building quiet ones that perform very well has been possible for many years now, so I consider intentionally buying a loud one and regularly using it anywhere other than on a racetrack sociopathic behavior.
I agree partially. Having a loud exhaust could be legal. Driving with a loud exhaust on public spaces should not ever, regardless of the time of the day or if it's a main road or a small neighbourhood. It's always disturbing.
If you have a car with a loud exhaust that can be silenced, keep it silent until you're out of public, like in a race track or your own private property in the middle of nowhere.
That said, self-regulating seldom works and enforcing this at the point of the infraction is very very hard.
The next best solution is to ban loud cars from driving in public spaces.
You're welcome to transport your loud car to the race track and use it there but use a quiet one for that.
Yet somehow GM was able to engineer a Corvette to have a factory muffler that's pretty fucking quiet (I would know, I had a family member with one) yet flows enough exhaust to make 500 HP.
I'm not saying loud exhausts are good all the time. I'm saying they shouldn't all be banned, because it isn't black/white.
My exhaust is perfectly quiet and within regulations off the track. The OPs argument would ban my perfectly polite modifications because they have the potential to be loud some of the time.
There's no nuance in the argument, or point to yours.
My point is that a loud muffler isn't necessary on the track, by showing a production car can be quiet yet still fun to drive.
But you're right, there is no nuance in my argument. I'm so fucking sick and tired of being woken up 2:00 in the morning by my neighbors cars that this is something that I feel strongly about. And there's lots of others like me.
As s long time FD owner with a deleted precat, ceramic coated downpipe, 3" catback exhaust and mild street port (that could be driven quietly under very narrow circumstances, but often wasnt, because what's the point of expensive mods of you don't use them) I'm sorry you think you need a loud exhaust to make decent power. this is largely a self- justifying myth told by insensitive jerks to other insensitive jerks to cosign each others' abuse of the public space for their own selfish (snd juvenile) enjoyment. i grew up and got rid of my stupid childrens' desperate attention seeking noisemaker toy and you should do the same.
I said mine _is_ loud when the valves are full open. Around the city, they're closed and it sounds factory.
My exhaust is modified. Valves open, it happens to be louder than factory. OP thinks this should be banned. I don't think loudness is a pre-requisite of power, it just so happens it is louder because "quiet" wasn't in the scope of requirements for the aftermarket downpipe and exhaust.
You're telling me what I should or shouldn't do while being willfully ignorant of what I was saying and showing a judgy narrow minded attitude. You're also projecting a lot of worst-case gap-filling there, which is often a sign of insecurity in ones own arguments. I won't accept value judgements over what is childish from you :)
> I didn't say it needed to be loud to make power. I said mine _is_ loud when the valves are full open.
So your car is loud despite a viable alternative existing that achieves the same outcome, performance-wise, while being quiet(er)?
Yeah, that should not be allowed on the streets/get a license plate. On the racetrack? Do whatever makes you happy! Just park it right there.
I do consider it possible that you personally might be responsible enough to have it perform quietly while you drive there and back, but too many people aren't. But in a world of always-responsible, always-rational people we wouldn't need gun laws either.
It sucks to be that responsible person in our non-ideal world, but I don't know a better solution that avoids massive collateral damage inflicted on people that couldn't care less about cars. If law enforcement were better about enforcing noise pollution laws I'd probably have a different view on this, fwiw.
Since I moved to California in a city, I have been finding it pretty hard to find any source of "pure" quiet. It really made me appreciate the saying "Silence is a luxury".
When I grew up in a rural town in the midwest, it was quiet. Like we lived in a neighborhood full of houses, but it was silent almost all times of day except for nature sounds. There was occasional yardwork or a train going by. But neighbors driving around were drowned out by rustling trees it seemed, and I never noticed much traffic noises. When my wife visited for the first time, she was uncomfortable and almost in pain because of the silence, something I never expected.
But where I live now, it is constant cars. When I try to go out to park or out hiking, you hear the highway. The trails here are full of people and I have to listen to people talk my entire hike.
I live in a hilly area and leaf blowers seem to resonate through the hills. At 8am every day even on a Sunday, the golf course starts mowing which reverberates though the hills. There is no escape from man made noise.
Sometimes I miss greatly having any space within an hour or 2 that I can go and just listen to nature. It is a huge difference and a shrinking luxury.
> If you complain about noise you get labeled a Karen
It’s incredible how effective that social media campaign was/is.
Moan about bad service from any company and you’re a “karen”, not a customer who rightfully demands good service, given the cost of things. Suddenly you’re not allowed to complain about anything and all employees are literal heroes on the same level as war veterans
A "Karen" is a particular type of complainer, one who's only aware of themself in their little bubble world, with insufficient regard or empathy for other human beings, or the external factors which sometimes make delivering A+ (or even decent) service infeasible.
My understanding is that the "Karen" archetype usually complaints or abuses people without any power to do anything about the issue. Companies have structured their systems such that every point of contact with the outside world is as powerless as possible.
The person on the other side might even agree with the complaint, but they usually don't have any power to do anything about it, and they're probably making minimum wage.
The gentrifier label comes when you complain about things that have been neighborhood fixtures without engaging with your neighbors before deciding that your feelings matter more than theirs.
Noise gets treated differently then other types of pollution, exception being light.
You probably wouldn't get labeled a gentrifier, or really even get push back, if you wanted to clean plastic waste, put up garbage cans, recycle etc...
>You probably wouldn't get labeled a gentrifier, or really even get push back, if you wanted to clean plastic waste, put up garbage cans, recycle etc...
The nice thing is there are plenty of socially-acceptable, but still every bit as objectively valid reasons to advocate for policies aimed as reducing the use of cars in cities.
When stresses of work/life pile up, the inability to free myself from the unceasing car noise to find some tranquility can feel downright overwhelming at times.
I've lived in cities (especially bustling downtown areas) for most of my life, and whenever I go out to somewhere quiet I get profoundly uncomfortable. For me, the sound of the city (sirens/cars/people) is soothing in the same way being inside during a storm can be relaxing knowing that you are safe from it.
You can very easily create the your personal noisescape of choice using speakers (at home) and headphones.
The opposite is orders of magnitude more difficult and often prohibitively expensive (or impossible, when renting), especially given the poor noise proofing that most US buildings seem to have.
> The opposite is orders of magnitude more difficult
This is my main qualm about noise. I use noise canceling headphones and it is not the same as having a quiet space or having no noise. It's not that I want silence, I want to listen to the world without man made sounds. Hear the trees, listen to the birds, etc. Nothing worse than going to the park and having one person sitting alone with their sonos turned up polluting the surroundings with noise and you can't "turn it off". your only option is to mask their noise with more noise of your choice by using headphones.
The solution is obviously to play "nature sounds" at full volume on your noise canceling headphones – while in nature!
Totally agreed: I do have a lot of empathy for people playing music on a lawn in the park, but speakers on a trail etc. in nature are extremely annoying.
Traveling definitely made me have some empathy towards people playing music in public places. In south america my friends there would be like "wtf" if they got to a beach or park and no one was listening to music. For a lot of people music is a symbol of happiness and having fun and a lack of music makes them feel uncomfortable or even depressed.
So its more so a gripe about a lack of power for us people who enjoy the peace. You can't "turn on" quiet like you can "turn on" music.
Have you never had someone perform construction outside your domicile? You aren't creating a "personal noisescape" with noise that physically moves the contents of your stomach.
Yes, have had this happen multiple times to varying degrees of severity in my life. as long as construction doesn’t happen inside my normal sleeping hours, it eventually blends in with the rest of the cacophony.
Of course this is true - my first thought is this article just makes me question its premise that noise pollution itself is inherently harmful to humans. That was the only “intent” to my post, not suggesting we should literally tolerate or promote excessive noise because my subjective experience makes it useful.
> this article just makes me question its premise that noise pollution itself is inherently harmful to humans
For all we know, it really is: It increases blood pressure [1], harms brain development [2], and causes cognitive impairment [3], just to name a few.
Of course not all noise is the same, and e.g. white noise can help mask both tinnitus and other, more stress-inducing noises (e.g. loud music, people yelling on the street etc. – personally, I sleep significantly better with a white noise machine masking city noises).
“for all we know” is a powerful qualifier - I don’t think any of the articles you linked show noise itself is inherently harmful. It seems like the responses to noise stimuli in some of the subjects of these these particular studies could cause harm, but nothing about noise itself. One of the articles you link mostly deals with observing sudden loud noises effects on subjects’ concentration - which is not what I am talking about. Even very loud sounds can become white noise to people if they are persistent.
> It seems like the responses to noise stimuli in some of the subjects of these these particular studies could cause harm, but nothing about noise itself.
Yes, in a similar way to how nobody dies from a fall – it's always the abrupt landing that follows.
These reactions (blood pressure rising etc.) are largely involuntary, so why not prevent the cause if it's feasible?
It's an interesting alternate take to explore. While I do enjoy a bit of ambient noise, I'd be perfectly happy to see all vehicles constrained more than they are, because vehicles of all kinds reduce the physical space for casual conversation outside, and make it audibly difficult. The level of noise I'd prefer is quite a lot lower than what is usual, but not silence
