Passes & Canyons Blog

Even if loud pipes do save lives, you better believe they seriously annoy a lot of people at the same time.

One of the biggest risks of excessively loud motorcycle exhaust systems is that influential people will get sufficiently annoyed that they will bring pressure to “do something about it.” Unfortunately, doing something about it all too often sweeps up the innocent along with the guilty.

Now, with the decline of newspapers it’s hard to say anymore how influential someone like the editorial page editor of the Denver Post is. Years ago that person had a good deal of influence.

Which all leads up to the fact that Vince Carroll, that aforementioned editorial page editor, had a column in Sunday’s paper entitled, “Mobile Noise Pollution,” in which he made it totally clear that too many bikers have pissed him off for too long. While the loud portion of our rider community claims that “loud pipes save lives,” other segments reply that “loud pipes risk rights.”

I’ve never been a loud guy myself. I have three bikes and none of them are louder than the typical car. And they’re a lot quieter than a good many pick-up trucks I’ve seen and nothing close to making the noise a semi makes. So my reply to the loud pipes save lives argument has always been that hey, I’ve never been in an accident, so maybe attentive riding and practiced riding skills are really the main things you need to save lives–forget the noise. And there are a lot of people out there like me. Somehow we survive year after year despite our lack of noise.

Sure I’ve had some close calls. We all have, haven’t we? The road is full of idiots. That’s why you always ride defensively, as if you were invisible.

And at the same time, I’ve known people on loud bikes who have gotten hurt. Was it just that their loud bikes weren’t loud enough? Yeah, let’s try making them even louder and then see how rabid the general public becomes toward shutting us all down.

Now, I’ll give it to Vince that he was not lambasting all motorcyclists. He very carefully made the point that his grudge is with a minority. But here are the words of warning:

Yes, they (loud bikes) are much harder to ignore. We can agree on that. But if safety can be achieved only by becoming a public nuisance–a questionable claim–then maybe these hobbyists need to find another pastime.

As I said, it’s hard to say how much influence someone in Vince’s position has any more. But what if a few legislators read his column and they agree? Perhaps they’ve had similar experiences. And they do have the power to do something about it. Then what happens?

Biker Quote for Today

The great riding pleasure is “to crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women,” all from a smaller, less powerful bike.

These Zero electric motorcycles might need playing cards in their spokes.

Every kid who has ever dreamed of riding a motorcycle has at least considered the option of attaching playing cards to their bicycle wheels so the spokes will hit them and make “motorcycle-like” noises. I know I did more than just consider it.

Is that what we need to do with electric motorcycles? After all, they’re so quiet pedestrians are likely to walk out in front of them while busy texting on their smart phones.

This is a serious question, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) wants to know what you think about it. No, not the playing cards, but should electric motorcycles be required to make some noise that warns people that they’re there?

The proposed rule is titled, “Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards; Minimum Sound Requirements for Hybrid and Electric Vehicles.” Here’s part of it:

As required by the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act (PSEA) of 2010 this rule proposes to establish a Federal motor vehicle safety standard (FMVSS) setting minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles. This new standard would require hybrid and electric passenger cars, light trucks and vans (LTVs), medium and heavy duty, trucks, and buses, low speed vehicles (LSVs), and motorcycles to produce sounds meeting the requirements of this standard.

This standard would ensure that blind, visually-impaired, and other pedestrians are able to detect and recognize nearby hybrid and electric vehicles, as required by the PSEA, by requiring that hybrid and electric vehicles emit sound that pedestrians would be able to hear in a range of ambient environments and contain acoustic signal content that pedestrians will recognize as being emitted from a vehicle.

So the NHTSA is asking for comments. The Motorcycle Industry Council has come out against the rule, for a variety of reasons that I don’t find particularly compelling. Not that I support the rule; I just don’t think the MIC has made much of an argument.

So what do other people think? Well, conveniently, the (currently) 80 comments are all right there for anyone to read, so let’s read a few.

Kipling Inscore (is that his name?) says, in part:

I do not believe that current study shows sufficient evidence of a safety problem caused by electric (EV) and hybrid (HV) vehicles being too quiet; I think further study is needed. I will, however, state my remaining points as if assuming that there is a “quiet vehicle problem” and that the solution is to impose a minimum sound requirement. A minimum sound requirement should apply to all motor vehicles, not just those currently most likely to be too quiet.

Now there’s a familiar argument. Funny, I’m accustomed to seeing it presented in regard to the issue of motorcycles making too much noise.

Joel Stottlemire says that:

The proposed regulation on minimum sound requirements for hybrid and electric vehicles are at best only minimally effective. At any speed faster than a few feet per second, audible warnings do not give sufficient reaction time to pedestrians and contribute to noise pollution.

Says David B. Rees:

I oppose mandatory noise pollution. The proposed standards do not appear to appreciably increase safety but do increase noise pollution. We should be aiming to make noisy cars quieter, not quiet cars noisier.

And here’s a note from Joe Adams:

Our society is becoming more and more noisy. Many low flow toilets sound like an explosion when operating. Many hand driers sound like a jet aircraft. City streets are extraordinarily noisy. The new electric cars are a step in the direction of achieving more QUIET in society. Adding an artificial noise to these cars is similar to adding the reverse backup “beep” on construction vehicles. The flaw in the concept of reverse backup alarms is that such alarms fail to acknowledge a basic trait in human nature: people tend to filter out irritating noises that go on all day long.

There seems to be a consistent theme there. I didn’t read them all but the comments I did read are pretty solidly in opposition to this rule. What do you think? You can offer your own comments to the NHTSA up until March 15.

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A motorcycling year in pictures – 2012

Biker Quote for Today

You’re a biker wannabe if your $500 boots aren’t scuffed from riding.