12 ms·

I owned ride 6-7 different motorcycles, and I believe there's a special place in hell for those who put on loud aftermarket exhausts. Sure, it sounds nice to t

• martyvis 5y ago
  I obviously don't talk to enough bikers. This is the first timeI have even heard the idea, I'm 57 and certainly have known a lot of books riders, that people like loud bikes because they think it makes them safer.
  • pjmlp 5y ago
    I never heard safety being ever related to it, only being the motorbike version of tuning culture.
  • rlonstein 5y ago
    My reply to that (as a motorcyclist of 30+ years) is, "If loud pipes save lives, imagine what learning to ride that thing would do?"
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  • snarfy 5y ago
    We make it illegal to eat or use cell phones while driving because distracted driving is dangerous, yet it's ok to rattle everyone's windows with your Harley. Even if somehow it is 'safer' for the biker it's definitely not for everyone else.
    • tapland 5y ago
      It's much safer than not hearing traffic or covering sounds from the environment using a car stereo though.
    • mikestew 5y ago
      It’s not “ok”, we have the same laws against loud exhausts. They’re just not enforced. Why? I have no idea. Should be easier to enforce than cellphones.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • np- 5y ago
    There’s a pretty common four word slogan called “Loud pipes save lives” - if you look out for it you’ll start to see it everywhere, bumper stickers, tshirts, etc. Its somewhat controversial and not widely accepted by all motorcycle riders.
• baybal2 5y ago
  I noticed that people on more powerful bikes crash way more often for their own lack of driving skill, than the other way around. Lost count to seeing scenes like kids on H2Rs "crashing" into something at like just above pedestrian speeds. It takes a lot of skill to drive a powerful, and heavy motorcycle. It's definitely should not be your first, or even second machine. I'm myself on two-wheelers for 15 years still feeling that I am about to fly off a seat even on a relatively tame 300CC scooter.
  • NikolaNovak 5y ago
    I would support all that. When starting out, take that weekend course your local college offers - and try all the bikes in a controlled safe environment. I was shocked how much I didn't want a sports bike - the posture and low speed maneuverability were horrid. I also didn't like cruisers personally, didn't feel in control leaning back. I turned into a lifelong standard posture guy - whether city bike or adventure or dirt/supermoto... But point is, find out what feels right for you, rather than get a 750cc superbike as your first ride based on specs or review or what you think may work well. I had fun going full throttle redline on... My cbr125, back in the day:D. More so than on some twitchy overpowered bike where I feared touching the throttle.
    • brandall10 5y ago
      Fwiw, in California it’s customary to do a day long motorcycle safety course in lieu of taking an on road test with the DMV, which is noted as having some aspects that are unusually difficult.
      • annoyingnoob 5y ago
        I did both, but the rules have changed since then. When I did the CA DMV motorcycle test it was super easy. Ride straight between two white lines, then around a full circle between the lines, then back between another set of lines - all you have to do is stay in the lines. Took all of about 1 minute. The trick was to use a small motorcycle, you need a 250cc or above for M1 so I borrowed a 250. Piece of cake.
• snarfy 5y ago
  Nothing brings out my violent psychotic tic faster than an asshole with a loud vehicle.
  • teknopaul 5y ago
    Road rage is a terrible thing, nothing brings out intolerance like a metal cage. Try to abstract it, see road rage as a thing in itself, don't let it in. If you get there, all of a sudden you don't mind what or how other people drive. If you don't get there, it's only you that suffers. That tic can't express itself in your self-imposed cage.
    • adament 5y ago
      Being a pedestrian I get the raging tic for loud vehicles easily without any metal cage assistance. And sure I try to not get annoyed by their insane noise pollution and disruption of pleasant conversations or enjoyment of sound in a large radius. But fundamentally I believe that as the driver of an unnecessarily loud vehicle you* are an arsehole. *you as in the driver, I am aware that the parent poster is not necessarily driving a loud vehicle.
    • NikolaNovak 5y ago
      I completely agree road rage is a terrible thing; I agree we are all responsible for our own behaviour; and as drivers we should not allow such things get to us. But a needlessly loud motorcycle, particularly the kinds that "detonate/explode" on shifts/off-gas, will make me jump and annoy no matter what I'm doing - reading a book, having a coffee, mowing the lawn, going for a walk, playing with my kid, whatever... especially since unlike some similarly annoying sounds (Snoring, anyone :P), it is 100% purely intentional. This rider went out of their way to make it such, knowingly and willingly they spent money time & effort.
      • erikbye 5y ago
        This is wrong. Many bikes have pops and cracks like this stock, straight from the factory floor. So do not assume the owner went out of his way to make it so.
• cosmodisk 5y ago
  They have their place in hell next to the quad bike owners,who think it's ok to use them in urban areas. None of them are cool, only complete douches.
  • teknopaul 5y ago
    Quads do no harm, bit less co2 than a car, bit more exposure to the elements. Buying two vehicles is considerably less eco. More noisy than electric but better range and more fun. If you can't appreciate other people having fun, of course, it's lose, lose.
    • cfn 5y ago
      It is fun until you live next to a trail that becomes a quad highway in the weekend. I used to and I was really looking forward to the electric quad revolution. That would leave only the dust for us to suffer which, somehow is less distressing than the noise. I get the point of loud engines being fun in a teenager kind of way but they are so un-fun to everybody else that we should strive to look for and provide some other fun things to replace it.
    • H1Supreme 5y ago
      I think you missed OP's reference to "urban areas". People who blast though densely populated neighborhoods on quads (usually "sport" models with obnoxious exhausts) generally have no regard for anyone around them. This is a very different scene compared to someone riding in the woods on one.
      • jessaustin 5y ago
        They're scarcely more tolerable in the woods.
    • Zababa 5y ago
      "people having fun" on quads have no place in the city, same with scooters with aftermarket exhausts. Especially when they go as fast as they can at 3am.
• 83457 5y ago
  I always assumed that the point of loud vehicles was to assert dominance by being an asshole. If people are annoyed and upset then it is working exactly as intended. You have provoked an emotion that fuels your ego and image of yourself as a bad ass that doesn't care about other people.
  • dazc 5y ago
    This explains a lot of modern day behaviour, thanks for pointing out what should have been obvious. Yet here I have been all these years thinking these people didn't realise what they were doing.
  • reader_mode 5y ago
    I don't have aftermarket pipes - but your post is clearly from perspective of someone who doesn't ride. Sound is an essential part of the riding thrill, riding my bike past 10k RPM gives me F1 sound and insane rush. I suspect riding an electric motorcycle would be much less thrilling that way and make me more aware that I'm on a suicide machine. I regularly get small children approach me on motorcycle and want to pull the throttle, then get scared, then want to do it again, there's something primal about that, it's (mostly) not about other people.
    • uglycoyote 5y ago
      Sure.. I get a kick out of twisting the throttle on my Yamaha a couple times but I totally disagree that it is an essential part of the experience. If you could sell me a completely silent but very powerful motorcycle I would buy it. And even if you are thrilled by the sound, there comes a point (when you put straight pipes on) where it clearly becomes less about whether the rider can hear their own bike and more about whether everyone else can. So As someone who has spend hundreds of thousands of kilometres on a motorcycle I totally agree with grandparent post here, once it gets to that point where you are changing your exhaust to make it louder, it out is mostly about egos and images.
      • reader_mode 5y ago
• Leherenn 5y ago
  Where I live, they have started adding noise pollution cameras in the city center. They don't give ticket, just display the noise level and a smiley, but I'd love for them to become active and more common. It's so annoying being woken up at night because of some kind of really loud exhaust noise.
  • kelp 5y ago
    I'd love it if there were automated tickets for this. But California can't even get it together to allow automated speeding tickets, a bill for this just got killed. In SOMA in San Francisco I'll often hear motorcycles drive by that are so loud they set off car alarms along their path. And don't get me started on the cost/benefit of car alarms.
    • foobiekr 5y ago
      Once you’ve been the victim of the Kafkaesque process of being victimized by a computer error asserting your car didn’t pay a toll (“here is an image of your car including a different make/model and utterly dissimilar license plate number, PAY!”) you might understand the reluctance for more automation by California.
    • fibonachos 5y ago
      I used to work in a busy downtown area of the east bay and we used to get a lot of the loud bike with loud stereo rolling through. What other possible motivation could there be for such a thing than wanting the attention? South Park hit the nail on the head with their loud motorcycle episode. As for the cameras, I’ll echo the sentiments of a sibling comment. You don’t want them. I lived in AZ in the mid 00’s when these things were everywhere. They mostly serve to disrupt the natural flow of traffic and caused people to make dangerous sudden stops when they should have proceeded through a yellow lights. Also, many are operated by third parties who take a cut and charge a fee to run them. If they fail to produce enough revenue they become a financial liability to the city, which will either monkey with signal time to increase ticket revenue or simply remove the camera.
      • 5y ago
• Osiris 5y ago
  Modifying the exhaust can add power which is why you never see stock exhausts at the track. But for most riders, the performance improvement is barely noticable. I'm saying this as someone that had an aftermarket exhaust on all of 3 of my street bikes and one of my dirt bikes.
  • horstmeyer 5y ago
    Lose 5 kgs and you'll have gained more performance without annoying other people.
    • mdoms 5y ago
      Most aftermarket exhausts will drop far more than 5kg from your bike weight.
  • NikolaNovak 5y ago
    Yes it can, but as you hint yourself: 1. How many aftermarket exhausts actually add meaningful performance 2. How many people actually need / notice / use whatever performance they gain vs 3. How many people, consciously or not, admittedly or not, just get it for bling and sound Very few people with aftermarket parts take their bike or car on the track or competition. Very few have training to take advantage of it. (I don't speak from a theoretical high horse - I spent thousands of dollars myself to add power to my WRX, before I finally realized that 1. Stock car was already faster than myself, and started investing in lessons/training/practice runs, and 2. The hands-down best investment I made in my car was a $200 aftermarket (additional) multi-point seat harness, as it stabilized my body/arms and enabled a much much finer degree of control. If I were to modify a car today, I'd start with suspension/control, not engine/power. For bikes, even more so - every bike I ever owned, from 50 scooter to 400cc supermoto to 500cc adventure and 750cc touring, can do amazing things in hands of a professional rider and can do far far less in my own hands; modifying it for "performance", for 98% of riders, is pointless and we're only fooling ourselves )
• mchusma 5y ago
  In my life, the most clear & obvious example of negative externalities is loud vehicles. I'm saying this as someone who would cut 90% of regulation: but I think anyone on a public street with a vehicle louder than a UPS truck should get fine. Enforced by a camera and microphone array.
  • andai 5y ago
    The noise and the exhaust are the main reasons I don't like populated areas, so I am glad both will probably go away in my lifetime.
    • wildrhythms 5y ago
      I have lived in both Manhattan and the rural midwest. The consistent, droning cacophony of the city pales in comparison to the suburban lifted truck with aftermarket exhaust that wakes up the entire neighborhood every morning at 6:15am.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • captainredbeard 5y ago
    How do you feel about airplanes?
    • nosianu 5y ago
      As a private pilot: The same. I always took extra care to cut back on the engine after takeoff, crossing the homes near the airport more slowly and without ascending much. And I avoided pristine landscapes or at least also slowed down a lot for a much quieter engine and prop. Because when I was at home or in some national park I hated those noisy small planes as much as the next guy. With a propeller the engine is not alone in producing noise, the propeller can easily be worse. Especially when you are perpendicular underneath an airplane crossing above. Still, what I find even worse is that general aviation still uses leaded fuel. I know this is so "esoteric" for most people that few really care, because it is so abstract. As someone who went through a heavy metal diagnosis and chelator treatment (university clinic, lab proven exposure) I know that even the tiniest amounts still have an impact. Not a clinical impact, you are not sick. But your brain and everything works a bit worse. With tiny amounts adding up over decades any small problems you get will be attributed to "age", "stress", "it's in your head". Because while we know, statistically, that there is an impact (that is why the _medical_, threshold for lead, and others, is zero), we are unable to make any useful statements for individuals. Which means for any given person the problem does not exist, and for the population level it remains an abstract threat. So noise is one thing, but spreading lead over the landscape - yes in tiny amounts, but I believe it still adds up and matters - to me is even more outrageous. I apologize, for years I spread lead over some, or many?, of you guys here when I flew around the Bay Area. At the time I completely ignored the "LL" on my avgas. Only after my own clinical encounter did I realize what it meant, suddenly it was more than just a technical term. https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas/ https://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/avgas/
• hourislate 5y ago
  Love this South Park Episode..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipDmsxQVxIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipDmsxQVxIM
• gooseyard 5y ago
  I can't even stand listening to it on my own bikes, particularly if I'm slabbing it somewhere on a freeway at a steady speed, the racket is insufferable after 15 or 20 minutes, even with plugs and a full face helmet. There seems to be a prevailing masochism among this flavor of biker, who often add ape hangers and then ride around pretending to be comfortable.
  • NikolaNovak 5y ago
    Hah, I always wondered about those and didn't know the name ("Ape Hangers") until now... feels like my arms would lose circulation and muscles would hurt from that position! I assumed I'm just a wimp :P I see a few posts now that I know what to search for that it "relieves strain on wrists and arms", but honestly, I think standard riding position (city / adventure / touring bikes) has the most natural and relaxed body position overall, as long as you can adjust it to your body size and proportions.
    • gooseyard 5y ago
      I think you're right- it might be more comfortable than, say, a race bike, but when I think about what it feels like to have my arms in the air for a length of time (like working on an overhead light fixture or something), I can only imagine what it'd be like trying to ride with a set of those goofy bars for an hour.
• buffet_overflow 5y ago
  My favorite bumper sticker goes something like, "If loud pipes save lives, imagine how it'd be if you learned how to ride the thing"
• sdenton4 5y ago
  As a bicyclist, loud motorcycles are the fscking worst. They're deafening and extremely distracting, which is extra terrible if anything complicated is going on. Which there often is, because people on loud bikes are often driving like fscking idiots, dodging between cars who end up nearly crowding me off the road.
  • jonahhorowitz 5y ago
    I had a motorcycle pass between me and a car while I was in a bike lane. Revved his engine while he was right next to me. Scared the daylights out of me. It sounded like a bomb had gone off. Seriously, screw motorcyclists with loud pipes that drive like idiots.
    • pmontra 5y ago
      The keyword is idiot, not loud pipes. To be fair sometimes we cyclists also behave like idiots on the road. Same thing when we get off our bike, get into a car and drive. Of course an idiot with a needless loud exhaust is far worse than a silent one, I agree on that.
• tomduncalf 5y ago
  > there's a special place in hell for those who put on loud aftermarket exhausts. Living by a busy crossroads, I could not agree more!
• throwaway743 5y ago
  Yup... living on a 1st floor in a major city, I've grown a deep hatred for those with loud motorcycle/car engines/exhausts/soundsystems. It's unnecessary and ruins quality of life/productivity. The noise pollution is already bad enough in the city with everything else
• xtat 5y ago
  IIRC there is research that hearing loud vehicle sounds raise your blood pressure and and cause release of stress hormones.
• kindall 5y ago
  "Loud pipes save lives," they say, while putting their own lives in danger from ordinary motorists who must constantly repress the urge to destroy the insufferable noise machine.
• manyxcxi 5y ago
  As someone who was a motorcycle safety instructor, which required a ton of training and memorization of safety statistics for a 20 something year old in order to teach new riders for a few summers during college - the numbers agree with your sentiment. Loud pipes don’t do squat. All the noise is behind you, no one hears you coming they only hear you going, and at that point they hate you. Now… I have an admission to make, and public apologies to give. The pipes on my current primary motorcycle are the exact same pipes I had on my previous motorcycle but they are significantly louder and it was way too late to do anything about it that wasn’t going to cost thousands before I realized. They are not jerk levels loud, but they have enough rumble to them that I essentially do everything I can to idle out of my neighborhood in the morning (I’m a block in from an agricultural road). They don’t really reach “Harley level loud” until I’m at least 85% throttle and on my bike that is basically drag racing level of throttle position. Here’s the thing- they were incredibly expensive and my bike is completely, _perfectly_, tuned for them with new FI programming, air intake, and full dyno tuning. No accel/decel pops, etc. So- neighbors, world, I’m truly sorry. When I replace this bike I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Until then, know I feel like a jerk every morning in my new neighborhood basically coasting to the main road.
• mdoms 5y ago
  I don't ride for you, I ride for me, and I love my loud exhausts. Don't like it? I don't care.
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    Please put your HN handle onto your biking leathers. So if we come across you out on the road we'll know, "Oh, it's that arsehole".
  • NikolaNovak 5y ago
    I mean, yes, we agree; what you are saying is you're an a*hole and you don't care. You wake babies, startle people, annoy thousands, anger others, cause negative emotions wherever you go, but that's the point and you love yourself some loud exhausts. The image you portray is exactly the image you want to portray and by all accounts accurate. To a certain degree, I suppose I should appreciate the warning, and as I said in a sister thread, I respect people who like yourself are open and upfront about being selfish bastards, over those who pretend (whether to others or even themselves) it's for safety or performance or some other nebulous rationalization :).
• 2muchcoffeeman 5y ago
  There's no increased safety factor - there's no real location or distance clue such loud exhausts provide and in my experience they only stress and antagonize other drivers :-/ Curious where this idea came from. Some bike riders must also be drivers and it’s very obvious this isn’t true. Even when emergency vehicles turn on their sirens I can’t tell where they are until I see them when I’m driving.
  • erikbye 5y ago
    In my country it is mandatory for electric vehicles to make artificial sound so they can be heard.
    • vladvasiliu 5y ago
      That noise is usually intended for pedestrians. Over here in France there's such a law too, but from my 2005 car, I cannot hear that noise. I barely hear the loud motorcycles behind me too, FWIW. When I hear them, they're usually up next to me. When on foot, that's a different story. If there's low to no traffic, having an electric sneak up on you can be destabilizing. Then again, I also ride motorcycles and remember one day, in a quiet neighborhood, there were three people walking in the middle of the street for some reason and didn't hear my bike, which was loader than the artificial electric car noise. They weren't wearing headphones, and given the time of day were probably not drunk either.
• shric 5y ago
  I have a BMW S1000RR with a stock exhaust and I want to get an after market exhaust simply because the stock one sounds awful. I don't want it to be particularly loud, just a more pleasant note. Unfortunately any after market exhaust may be louder. This is why I've held back on buying one.