Do you have many motorcycles in your community?

Question

I have noticed many more people are driving motorcycles without mufflers in my community.

To me someone who drives such a loud vehicle is being rude! It is so loud and distracting. The people who drive the choppers seem to like making noise and will gun the engine for five minutes while they wait to leave.

I understand it is a way to save money but they make so much noise.

Have you noticed an increase in choppers in your town? Is the act of driving such a loud vehicle in it self rude?

Answer 1

I live in SE Wisconsin and this last weekend Harley Davidson had a huge 105th Birthday party for its owners.  Needless to say, there were probably 350,000 EXTRA motorcycles in the general area and the HD's are all pretty loud.  The folks are nice, but the constrant drum of those engines really got to me.  I'm glad the party is over and they've gone home now.

I agree, loud vehicles are very rude.  There is a car in my neighborhood that listens to its stereo so loudly, I'm sure the driver cannot hear anything else, ever.

By the way, Harleys are GREAT bikes.  The drivers are courteous and careful and actually polite on the road.  I'd rather share the road with Harleys than with most cars.

Answer 2

It's because Harleys are so unreliable and poorly engineered that they need to be run for five minutes before you ride them to make sure they won't cough and die in an oil-dripping heap on the side of the road.  Same reason they insist on having bright shiny chrome everywhere - so it makes the pieces that fall off due to the excessive vibration easier to find along the side of the road.  I say "THE road" because generally speaking the range of these clumsy beasts is a few city blocks up and down the same road where the bars and college chicks are.  Any further than that and they tend to inhabit the back of pick ups, like hunting dogs - except they can't get up there on their own.

In truth the phenomenon is identical to that of blaring car stereos - an attempt to get themselves and their overpriced overaccessorized tractors the attention they yearn for but do not deserve as individual people.

Oh and be sure to be ready for the "loud pipes save lives" argument.   Make sure that when you get that one you ask the person so concerned for safety and life why they don't ride with all appopriate safety equipment instead of homoerotic Village People costumes.

Remember another reason beyond the noise why Harleys and vacuum cleaners are not the same and it'll be easier to understand**

** You can only fit one dirtbag on a vacuum cleaner.

EDIT for inoffensive.  Sure I'd buy that - if you also wear neon fluorescent yellow Aerostich or similar hi-viz gear and a bright colored full faced helmet like I do to be visible.  Cagers are often riding with blaring stereos so even your straight pipes might not break their daze,  but most of them at least have their eyes open part of the time, and the straight pipe crowd ain't exactly known for wearing visibility gear.

As I'm sure you realize, my schtick is the standard tongue in cheek banter that various bike enthusiasts toss at each other, and I certainly have no problems with your choice being different from mine in all sincerity, but it's a bit disingenuous at the least to say that the straight pipe crowd use them for safety in anything but rationalizing with cops and concerned neighbors.  It's an image thing and we both know it.  I'm not immune from my own image thing as a sport tourer guy of course and not pretending to be, but I'm not going to BS and say I do back to back 1000 mile days because of safety or some such.  It's for street cred just like your pipes - only a different kind of it.

On a technical note any of the newer FI bikes can be ridden from a cold start as long as you don't do the GP 10000 rpm takeoff, and even when bikes need to be warmed up, they don;t need to be, and it's in fact harmful for them to be, blatted up and down with throttle blips.  I've never understood that at stoplights either and that's as much a riceburner or Teutonic suitcase thing as it is a Harley thing.  Idling does just fine.  So do pipes that meet noise regs.

Answer 3

Anyone who has ever voluntarily ridden a bike with straight pipes (no muffler, as you say) will tell you that loud pipes save lives.  Motorcycles are nearly invisible to so many motorists, so those pipes are a way of letting the four wheeled (and larger) vehicles that we are here and please watch where you're going so you don't inadvertently pull out in front of us, rear end us, t-bone us, or all of the above (which unfortunately is often the case with motorcycle riders).

As for sitting and gunning the engine... as the proud owner of a Harley Davidson, they take time to warm up and sometimes require a little gunning to get them to wake up and pay attention.  It's not done specifically to annoy you, my neighbor.  

If you have noise ordinances, please, by all means, call the police when riders are violating those ordinances, but otherwise, realize that if you can hear my pipes, you know I'm there so you will be likely to be more cautious.  

EDIT: (for Dave above me...) All the safety equipment in the world can't help you if the other vehicles around you don't see or hear you.  I agree that Harleys are more poorly engineered than other bikes, but I don't know of a single bike foreign or domestic that doesn't need warm up time, before you go tooling off into the sunset.

Answer 4

Yes yes and yes.

They are antisocial.As a car driver they annoy me also when weaving to the front of a traffic queue and taking up position on the pedestrian crossing at the traffic lights.

Worst of all are those riders who disregard speed limits and are a danger to themselves and to my mind it's a senseless way to travel since there is no protection offered to the rider in the event of an accident.

Lastly my dog,when travelling in the car hates every one of them and goes into a fit of barking whenever one comes into sight.

And really really lastly-the ones with the biggest noise are invariably ridden by those with the smallest prick