Cities, townships, what have you, will care about whatever their active constituents tell them to.
It took a few years, but a neighborhood organization managed to get a crackdown on motorcycle noise in Chicago. I don't know if it worked because I moved away before it went into effect. But there was a ton of press coverage for a very long time, so there's no way the offending riders could know that people don't like them.
Loud Motorcycles In Alderman's Crosshairs As LSD Noise Monitoring Starts: https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170824/lincoln-park/loud-m...
I think the poster was referring to active constituents.
But I think you are wrong. I don't know of anybody who wants a loud car or bike trekking by their house. But yet it still happens over and over.
It is unclear if enough "active constituents" are not complaining or they are ignored.
I don't disagree. But in context.
On track day at the local race track? Sure. At a professional sporting event? Great. Going down a residential street when people are trying to sleep? No way.
It's people in gated communities and quiet suburban neighborhoods where there is rarely much noise who complain about noise because the baseline amount of noise they experience is so low that every single loud noise is highly noticeable.
When I lived on a busy intersection, the noise level was always there, it just became background.
When I lived near a flightpath, the sound of airlines was regularly there, and it also just became background.
I now live in a very quiet area, and every passing motorbike is a disturbance.
Then again, the other thing that's changed is my age and expectations of life. Whether or not that's related or not, I dunno.
There is very good reason to treat it differently from the usual honks and airbrakes.
Perhaps I was lucky to get a cop who wasn't so much of an asshole that he'd write me a ticket despite seeing my best intentions to deal with a situation that could happen to anyone. Then again, I could have been pulled over by a guy who would have started off nice and thanked me for being conscientious enough to stop for the part that night.
So people that don't make a good impression get screwed out of a grand they probably don't have. Relying on the benevolence of police is not going to work out well for average people in the long run.
One of the reasons states increase fines regressively is because the targeted acts are committed most frequently by those at the lower end of the income spectrum, and existing fine amounts were insufficient to deter such activity.
Plus if you are in California look up AB1824 which changed the loud exhaust regulations to assess a fine in every case. Used to be if you got pulled you could simply produce a receipt stating you fixed the loud exhaust and pay no fine but people were skirting that with obvious success. So yes, governments do care. Some HOA and Condo association ban all motorcycles because of noise.
Now with regards to drones, noisy little suckers. The other issue is a private citizen is heavily restricted where they can even fly them. State parks are off limits in most states, any place where people gather of course is out, you can even be blocked from flying them on your property by many HOA and Condo associations (mentioned them before for similar reasons).
Locally to me, Cobb County Georgia has an association for model aircraft that may support drones. They have their own field put in with tax dollars but "maintained" by user fees. Don't even think of using it until you pony up to two different organizations and an initiation fee and such. Yet places which are set aside for the legal use of drones may end up being this way unless the industry adapts.
My father's recent DJI purchase did not automatically include the propeller guards, seems there is good profit in selling replacement blades. It definitely is noisy and I would expect research into blade technology can remedy some of that, surely the military has already done so.
you don't necessarily want prop guards most of the time. they make the props less efficient, which decreases aerodynamic performance and battery life.
that said, I got the combo bundle with rotor guards and I almost never use them because they make the drone so squirrelly in wind. I hand launch/land every time and I have yet to cut myself on the rotors. I was very happy to have them when I used the drone to check all my gutters for leaves, takes a lot of the stress out of flying so close to the roof.
A simple fender bender on a motorcycle can be fatal which is the reasoning behind the phrase "Loud pipes save lives."
Are some people doing it to be obnoxious? Probably. Are some people doing it out of the desire for increased safety? Yes.
No, the reasoning is to come up with some plausible excuse to run open pipes. Safety, however, is a cloud of bullshit to distract you from the thirteen year old boy in leather making vroom-vroom noises.
You wanna “save lives”? Ride like you’re invisible. Because that “cars pay more attention to loud pipes” bullshit is going to get you killed with a false sense of security.
Signed, 35 years of riding on stock pipes, and haven’t collided with a car yet.
I rode a (non Harley, well engineered) motorcycle for years and always thought the claim that you needed to make your bike loud to enhance perception was bollocks. The right answer is to always ride with the awareness that people can’t/don’t see you and plan lane position accordingly.
Even if Harley's have other safety compromises, loud pipes can make them safer. Even if you ride with awareness, loud pipes can make you safer. There is generally a lack of hard evidence, but it only makes sense that they would to me.
It can simultaneously be true that loud pipes save lives and loud pipes annoy people; whether the tradeoff is worth it to you is the real question.
The lack of hard evidence should be your first clue, because you know the loud pipes crowd would crow to sunset if there were even the slightest shred of evidence. But it “makes sense”, does it? How many things did we think we knew because it “makes sense” until one day, “turns out...”?
So one must first establish that loud pipes save lives. And the onus is on the one making that claim.
"Loud pipes save lives" has never been proven by any data. Decent article/rant about this saying: https://www.revzilla.com/common-tread/stop-saying-loud-pipes...
Could you explain what exactly ?
The joke is that Harley owners spend more time in the garage with their bikes than riding them. They require a lot of maintenance to keep running. From a risk perspective, the onerously frequent maintenance requirements increase the chance of a mechanic introduced error having negative safety outcomes. The fact that every owner basically “has” to work on the bikes rather extensively means that they are more likely in general to be worked on by not so qualified mechanics. The extensive customization culture surrounding the bikes also comes with a lot of really easy ways for safety compromising designs to be introduced via ill thought out customization.
These may seem like small factors but all of them represent much more real risks than the imagined safety benefit that might come by making your bike excessively loud. Someone telling you to ride a Harley and also telling you to make it loud for safety is not giving good safety advice — to maximize safe riding you should never try to lower the responsibility of the rider to be aware of other drivers not seeing them - you can’t make yourself more visible by being loud and shouldn’t encourage someone to think this will work and thereby encourage them to not proactively defend themselves from a driver who might not see them.
There are other safety relevant issues with the bike design — notoriously bad brakes and gearboxes, poor suspension, heavy with a low center of gravity that makes turning a relatively higher effort activity for shorter riders and generally makes recovery from problem scenarios more difficult, the “Harley wobble” (yes wobble can happen with other bikes but it tends to be more severe with Harley’s) ...
It’s probably also worth pointing out that there have been something like 4 large recalls in the last 5 years for clutch problems that can lead to sudden brake failure. Also, the twin cam engine design is inherently not long lasting with many failure modes which means breakdowns are common (engine failure/fluid leaks are not generally conducive to safety).
With cam tensioners changed you'll get 100k out of a twincam before needing work with just oil and tires(and whatever parts rattle off).
Harley's trying to innovate(electric bikes/scooters, dual sport). Problem is their consumer base is stuck in past/vanishing. Some people use fountain pens instead of more modern pens, even though they might be more inconvenient/expensive. While I only own Japanese bikes now, I can't deny there is a 'feeling' of riding a Harley.
And there’s that fat-ass Harley hauling it’s bulk down with that one scrawny disc and anemic caliper. ‘cuz, you know, style. Always seemed like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Can you imagine a car manufacturer saying, “the braking system is not even close to state-of-the-art because it wouldn’t look good”?
That said — wearing a helmet can cause one to take more risks out of a belief in greater survivability odds. On the track in full safety gear — the odds of crash survival really can be high enough to justify the extra risk taking mentality — loud pipes don’t boost survivability to anything remotely the same degree as helmets — in my opinion it’s very likely that someone who genuinely (and mistakenly) believes their loud pipes make them more perceivable will allow that belief to influence their actions and be very likely to drive less defensely.
On the general topic of helmets increasing risk taking — I actually do think this belief can lead to meaningful increase in chance of mistakes in other contexts. I’m an avid rock climber — a very small percentage of climbers always wear a helmet but most only wear one when doing climbs with significant amount of loose rock. The main safety use of a helmet when climbing is protection from falling rocks or other objects — there are some rare circumstances when a helmet could protect you when you fall but those are quite unusual — generally only happen when you get flipped upside which usually only happens when you mismanage the rope position. It’s _possible_ the helmet could help protect from a climbing fall but much better protection is to correctly manage rope position which is necessary, typically straightforward, and also something you are unlikely to do wrong when climbing at your level. If you put a helmet on and suddenly feel “able” to take more risks when climbing you are making a big mistake — the very marginal extra fall safety of the helmet is not worth increasing your risk taking at all — but it can often be hard to avoid increase to risk taking even when you are aware the increase is not justified. In my opinion, the helmet is not worth making this trade off (except in areas with lots of risk of rockfall or dropped gear from parties above).
I think the negative effects of noise pollution are underestimated. It's never properly taken into account when people plan things. Part of it is many people don't understand just how soul destroying it can be (yet).
This is however exceptionally helpful for blind people navigating near a road.
I haven't seen the BMW in question so it might be unnecessarily loud, but electric cars are often so quiet you could barely hear one coming.
One of the more dangerous aspects is in areas where cars are reversing / manoeuvring at low speeds - e.g. car parks. I'm fully sighted and still occasionally have a near miss with an electric / hybrid that I haven't noticed reversing!
Bicycles do present some measure of danger, albeit reduced thanks to the lower momentum & crushing power.
Some material from the RNIB, a UK charity: https://www.rnib.org.uk/rnibconnect/silent-deadly-electric-h...
They're not exactly quiet from the factory but people make them loud because thanks to the Doppler effect you need to be really loud for someone in a vehicle beside you to hear you (and they're unlikely to consciously see you if they want to move over because their brain isn't used to checking for objects that are motorcycle sized).