What's the deal with obnoxiously loud motorcycles?

I just cannot understand the appeal of riding around on something which molests the eardrums of everyone within a 400ft radius.

I would seriously push for a ban on fat hogs in the city. I've lived in two places here in LDN where neighbours had big fat Harley type bikes with derestricted exhausts loudly advertising the smallness of their civility.

I've often lain awake at 7am listening to these people drive off, impacting the lives of literally thousands — tens of thousands! — of people along whatever route they take.

I can't believe it's tolerated in this context. Go live in Arizona!

It's so that car drivers can hear us and remember to look up from their phones and not kill us.

Seriously though; the noise issue divides even the motorcycle community. Advocates will tell you "loud pipes save lives" and are usually the equivalent of "car guys" that live/breath bikes. Other will tell you that the only defense is defensive riding and it's annoying.

I agree it's annoying, my bike isn't that loud, but anecdotally when I've ridden louder bikes I feel safer; riding a bicycle I feel invisible. I always hear loud bikes before I see them.

I wouldn't mind a louder bike, because I love the sound of engines; but I'd feel self-conscious riding it around my house. The sound wouldn't be a problem for my hearing because I wear custom ear plugs.

Exactly: the sound isn't a problem for you (the riders), but it's a big problem for the people that live around you.

Sure, but I'm suggesting that the lack of a sound also presents a problem for us, the riders.

I don't think riders need extremely loud exhausts to be safe, but an exhaust sound adds an element of safety that cannot be ignored. It's the same reason why all vehicles are fitted with horns, after all.

I think people might be more understanding if they rode a motorcycle in a busy city for a few months, and realised how many drivers (at least in my city, London) are far too busy looking at Facebook to drive.

Driverless cars can't come soon enough; though I'm sure that road will lead to motorcycles being made illegal anyway - but that's another story...

One of my driver's ed instructors was a rider who opposed loud pipes. His reasoning was that drivers ahead look left or right to find the sound, often drifting slightly when they do. Then the risk of the motorcycle being hit is increased anyway.

People confuse power with competence.

The attention-getting signal of extreme volume followed by the false impression of competence triggers hormonal response of interest.

Drape yourself with the carcass of a dead animal (that someone else prepared) and you're the skin deep image of an alpha seeking procreation opportunities.

If people ever used their heads, motorcycling would retreat to the practical, enjoyable activity it is at baseline. But in a confused society of scarcity, with a curious blind spot to unenforcing this branch of noise laws, the benefits of the "loudness mutation" to the individual are great.

In the city it helps make pedestrians, and to a certain degree cars, more aware of you, especially if filtering / lane splitting.

And some people just want attention.

you know, it's funny, i've never seen a loud motorcycle rider wear a high visibility vest or helmet. in fact they're usually wearing nearly all black.

A loud machine seems more powerful. If the sound is deadened, people often feel like something more than the sound is lost. For similar reasons, some new cars play engine noise through the car's stereo system.

Compensating for something.

I know. I'm happy it's winter in Denver now, because the amount of motorcycle traffic is so much less. The noise motorcycles with pipes produce is right up there with emergency sirens.

If car horns were only half as loud to the honking driver, protected in his glass cage, as they are to a person standing unprotected next to the car, honking would not be much of an issue...

The effect is also worse because you're not expecting it, whereas the driver is.

There are some problems in life where a punch in the mouth seems like the only viable solution.

I think this is mainly an enforcement and punishment issue. I don't know the situation in other countries, but here in Germany you are only allowed to honk if there's a danger. Enforcing this rule with a hard penalty (500+ Euros or something like that) would do wonders to cure people of their "I will honk in every damn situation" mentality.

I would worry about unintended second-order effects of that. If there is a danger, I do want a driver to honk quickly and without hesitation. Might imposing an external after-the-fact judgement on whether it was neccesary or not, with a very stiff fine, cause people to hesitate in situations where they shouldn't?

In the US, this varies per state. In most states, though, it is illegal to "unnecessarily" honk your horn. But as the sibling commented about the UK, it's rarely enforced and is at the discretion of the officer.

I don't think most people know it is illegal.

In the UK the law is similar but not enforced, I don't think the penalty is that great either?

Comparing it to talking/texting on a mobile phone while driving, where the penalties are moderate and there is some enforcement, attitudes are changing - very slowly though.

Internalize the externality.

Tie horn honking to a credit card in the car. $1 per second honked. A quick road runner meep-meep cost 20¢. Holding down your horn like a dipshit for 30sec is a bit expensive.

Use those dollars to bolster city taxes.

Yeah and what about those cases when you're honking to prevent a crash?

Do you have to honk to prevent a crash so often that the 2$ would add up to anything? It's negligible compared to the cost of the car. You're still incentivized to honk as the cost of a crash is much higher than the cost of honking

Not me but remember that there are people who don't have as much money as we in IT do.

Another issue is that this is something you need to do in a fraction of a second or it might be too late - if the first thing you do isn't smashing the steering wheel but hesitation in the form of thinking about money, it's probably going to be too late.

I have to honk to prevent a crash about 2 times a week - and I go to and from work (30 km combined) and nothing much else. What about professional drivers?

Actually the concept is interesting. You could even make like: 30seconds free per day, or something like that.

I've found that the majority of honks are not for urgent situations

There are people who would then intentionally honk for 30 seconds a day so they could feel they'd had their entitlement.

I fear it would make things worse?

In NYC I wear earphones on my way to work and a big chunk of the time I'm not even listening to anything, just blocking out the noise. (subways, buses, cars, fire trucks, ambulances, ... everything here is loud)

I think a certain segment of the population actually enjoys the hustle, bustle and noise... and I suppose they all move to NYC.

Yup, I wear my Bose noise-cancelling headphones on the subway most of the time without music -- it just takes the edge off the rumble, the noise, the screeching.

It works really well on the subway, since the frequencies tend to be lower (similar to planes). Outdoors it's less effective, since the bothersome noises are the higher-frequency sirens, the beep of backing up, jackhammers...

I hate when someone honks for no reason, makes me want to just reverse back into them.

Where do you live? It sounds like you wouldn't last a minute in India.

That doesn't make it less annoying.

When I was in Kolkata a couple years ago, the sheer level of noise was quite impressive.

I would not want to live there, for a variety of reasons, but that is the biggest one.

Maybe I wouldn't. I live in Geneva.

I thought in Switzerland any such noise is punished with the death penalty!

Jokes aside, I live in a Southern European country in which many people think it's normal to use the horn in every junction “in order to raise awareness in advance ” since they drive well over the allowed speed limit. Very interesting concept especially since they horn to other cars with raised windows and music on which pretty much renders their action mutt but stupidity is without limits...