I Am Duly Awestruck By Your Loud Vehicle.

The BBQ Pit
41

“Loud pipes save lives” is completely ridiculous and stupid, it has been proven over and over to be absolute bullshit! but it is a great excuse for the “tiny winkie club” to buy wide open mufflers.
I play around with vintage British motorcycles and most of them have modified exhaust systems but they are nowhere near as loud as your run of the mill Hardly-Ableson with craptacular mufflers or modern Jap-scrap with a “race only” can.
As the AMA say’s “Loud pipes risk rights”.

To those who cling to “loud pipes save lives” I say cite.

Unclviny

42

When I was taking my BMW motorcycle technician certification class at the American Motorcycle Institute at Daytona Beach, the instructor told us about sneaking up on the Harley guys when they were using the dynomometer (a big thingie that directly measures horsepower at the rear wheel) and sticking a large screwdriver handle into the open pipes, restricting the flow (and noise) a little. Guess what happened to the power output? IT WENT UP!! The Harley guys were excited at the readings, until someone saw what was causing it. :smiley:
Can’t have more power if it means less noise, huh? :rolleyes:
If I feel the need to make noise on my Triumph, I use the horn! :wally

43

Y’know, I’ve been itching to have this conversation for years…

I’ve ridden on and off since I was 18, I like motorcycles, I plan to get another shortly. I don’t plan to overpay for a harley either, It’ll be the Honda VTX 1800 and the exhaust will be slightly modified so it has a slight throat, and makes noise on rapid acceleration. That’s IT.

Stock pipe sound is fine, it’s as loud as you need it to be, and usually as loud is as allowed by law. When I see these harley dickheads with their shorties and chopper boys with their as-close-as-i-can-get-to-drag-pipes exhaust, it pisses me off to the point of violent overreaction.

Loud pipes don’t save lives, there’s never been a study or research to make the case, it’s just hackneyed conventional wisdom. In fact, as some have already pointed out, loud pipes don’t warn other drivers from the front, and in my practical experience, more than 70% of motorcycle accidents happen from the front. In 15 years of responding to accidents, 1 motorcycle was hit from the rear. One. And HE was standing still at a green light talking on his cell phone.
Still the myth keeps perpetuating, the concept about loud pipes assumes that; a) a car driver is not only going to hear the bike, but be able to determine it’s location relative to his own. b) Drivers rely on sound as much as vision to locate and avoid obstacles. And c) That sounds from a motorcycle’s exhaust travel equally in all directions from the pipe end.

All very dangerous assumptions. I mean, think about the last time you heard a siren, were you able to identify the location of the approaching vehicle by the sound? Did you know where it was as soon as you heard it, or did you have to wait for visual confirmation? Me? I STILL have to wait until I see the vehicle, and I’ve been operating emergency vehicles all of my adult life.

Extra Loud pipes are a lie, a nuisance and a myth, wholly perpetuated by those who SELL loud pipes to idiots like the one that lives next to Scumpup. Riding a motorcycle is an inherently dangerous activity, so leather up “biker” boy, putting extra loud pipes on your midlife crisis only makes you look like a bigger asshole with a smaller dick.

What’s more, the notion of a REAL biker is dead and gone anyway, there’s no rebellion in a 40,000 dollar motorcycle, and 5k in accessories, the outlaw culture that these so called ‘American Steel’ bikes are supposed to represent is alive only in the hopeful minds of the suburban office warriors, who are, by the way, the only ones who can afford the price tag.

So I say in response to the “loud Pipes” argument, and in concert with the American Motorcycle Association and some of you here…

…BULLSHIT!

44

Wouldn’t it be safer if you (the biker) could hear other vehicles and avoid them? A quiet bike would be better for that. Bikers seem to have such low opinion of car drivers’ skills, and it’s puzzling to me why they would rely on car drivers to hear the bike and avoid it.

45

Yeah, loud pipes save assholes’ lives. Just what we want. :rolleyes:

Even if it were true, I would hope motorcycle riders could find a way to ‘save lives’ that didn’t involve their drowning out my stereo when I’m sitting in my house, a quarter-mile off the highway. Like flashing lights or something complicated like that.

46

Making it compulsory for all bikes to be painted day-glo pink might be a first step. And the addition of some nice shiny deely boppers would help out on the visibility front, too.

47

Pfft. I walk. Which is not easy, seeing as I have to drag my enormous penis behind me.

48

What’s up with all the hostility towards bikers? I can understand being skeptical about the “loud pipes” thing, but what I’m seeing here is downright hatred, and coming dangerously close to wishing death. Where does this irrational venom come from?

Makes me think that any advice you have about biker safety is pure bullshit, seeing as you’d like to see bikers eliminated.

49

That wouldn’t be so bad if the little punk-ass bastards actually played GOOD music instead of the usual obnoxious rap they think is so cool. :rolleyes:

50

I don’t hate bikers. I don’t hate motorcycles either. I owned 6 of them and plan on getting another in the next few months.

I hate the racket from loud pipe bikes. It has fuck-all to do with rider safety. It’s all about rider ego and plain obnoxious rudeness. Loud pipe bikes are no different than the kind of asshole who lives in an apartment building and plays his stereo loudly enough to be heard in other apartments. Its no different from a smoker who blows smoke in your face. Its nothing but “I enjoy making noise! Fuck everybody else!”

51

No problem. It wasn’t your posts specifically that I was commenting on.

Are you sure about that? That in every single case safety is merely an excuse to cover up purposeful obnoxious behavior? Every single case? That sounds like quite a conspiracy. Is it remotely possible, at least in some bizarro world, that one or two people may have, at least temporarily, taken “loud pipes save lives” at face value? Is it possible that those very few people may have actually had safety on their minds?

52

Last night when I took my evening walk, I was thinking about this thread and I paid particular attention to motorcycles I saw. On an hours walk, I saw 14. Not a single one of the loud pipe bozos was wearing a helmet or any other protective gear. Not one. There were 8 of them. The other six bikers had stock, or nearly so, exhaust systems. 5 of them were wearing helmets. 4 of them were wearing jackets. Loud pipes for safety? I’m not buying it. It’s all about being the “bad boy.”

53

Interesting point, and I’m sure that in many cases, you are correct. But I think it’s also possible that some of these people eschewed helmets because they got a false sense of security from their loud pipes. Or perhaps they thought that increased visibility and hearing(?) were favorable tradeoffs. Never attribute to malice yada yada.

Until reading this thread, if I had gotten a bike, I would have made it loud simply because I’d heard that’s what you are supposed to do. It never occurred to me to question this wisdom. (Then again, I never seriously considered getting a bike, so my lack of skepticism was never an issue.)

54

What I’ve always wondered. . .

if the “loud pipe saves lives” crowd is so concerned about their safety on a bike, why don’t they attach one of those tall orange flags to it?

I bet that would save some lives, too, and be much less distracting to those around them.

55

Town hall. Great place, it’s where they keep all the paperwork.

Local PD. Though I’ve found cops to be mostly useless, especially at keeping up with the mountains of paperwork and confusing laws, they are the ones in control of what they enforce. Ask them, report the noise as a problem.

In many towns, both of these departments, are available by e-mail.

56

I don’t hate bikers. I do have a certain level of dislike for those who have extremely loud pipes and disturb the peace with them. This does not wish I mean them harm, but I would like to replace all their pipes with ones that are quieter. I also take exception to the attitude of some of those very loud pipes bikers that they don’t give a damn about disturbing the peace, or are even proud of the fact that their bike can be heard inside my house with the windows closed from a half mile away.

And my opinion of biker safety regarding those loud pipes is echoed by an organization that definitely does not hate bikers or bikes, the American Motorcyclist Association, how is it automatically bullshit just because it’s inline with my dislike of having my eardrums bleed?

If it hadn’t been shown to be demonstrably false by organizations like the AMA, I might. But since it’s false, why should I take it at face value? It may be their belief, in addition to their being proud of the loud pipes, but they’re wrong about it.

Would you have bothered to check out the AMA or just gone with the conventional wisdom of some guy down the street who’s been riding a Harley for 20 years?

57

Do very loud motorcycles increase safety to some degree?

Perhaps.

Do the annoy the fuck out of a whole lot of people to an insanely high degree?

Certainly.

Does the increase in safety justify the annoyance?

No fucking way.

58

When I made my hostility comment, I was mostly thing of RTFirefly’s comment “Yeah, loud pipes save assholes’ lives. Just what we want.”

I’m on board with that. I’m just questioning the wisdom that every single loud biker is being loud simply for the sake of it, and has no safety concerns at all. I also question that every loud biker has a small penis. Until I see you approaching the Hell’s Angels with a ruler in one hand and a rubber glove in the other, I’m assuming that you’re just taking a wild guess. (I use “you” in the general sense, not you specifically.)

Because maybe not everybody takes the time to search the web for such things? Because not everybody is skeptical about the things they hear? True, it’s no excuse, but a lack of skepticism is not the same as deliberate malice, nor is it the same as obnoxious egotism.

Since it’s purely hypothetical and I have the choice of viewing myself in the best light possible, I’m going to take door number one, Monty.

59

Using a ruler to prove that hypothesis true is completely unnecessary. One merely has to admit that it’s possible they have small penises, and from there we can use logic to prove that it’s necessary for all owners of loud Harley’s to have small penises.

60

Thank Og for that. I wasn’t relishing the prospect of telling Snake and Butch to drop trou.