4 ms·

Agreed. Rode for more than a decade in many different guises. Do not recommend. Road trips are nice, but even on largely open country roads fatigue is real and

Agreed. Rode for more than a decade in many different guises. Do not recommend. Road trips are nice, but even on largely open country roads fatigue is real and it is easy for experienced riders to have accidents. Commuting is not safe. Some car drivers are just bad and will pull in front of you. Some car drivers will pick fights and threaten your life with their motor vehicle. After giving it up, and growing up I suppose, I have also come to realize how many motorcyclists are jerks. I don't expect this to be a popular opinion. I always knew some were jerks: I saw their bad riding & picking unnecessary arguments with car drivers when out on rides with them! As a motorcycle-aware car driver many years later I have encountered many more whinging motorcyclists who themselves created unnecessarily dangerous situations then lectured me or flipped me off. As a car driver, stay away from motorcycles. Considering motorcycling?: stay away from motorcycles. ;-)

nayuki 5y ago
> I have also come to realize how many motorcyclists are jerks. As a non-motorcyclist, I detest the noise from loud exhaust pipes. Bad enough are the ones that sound like loud farting, the absolute worst are the ones that sound like roaring thunder and can be heard from 500 m away. These noises degrade my experience living in the city, whether I'm walking on the streets or in a building (street shop, apartment, etc.). It is absolutely selfish and despicable that one driver can cause so much noise for hundreds of people nearby. There are cars and motorcycles that are guilty of making excess noise. Motorcycles make up a minority of traffic, but I would say about 50% of them are overly loud. As for cars, the vast majority of them are normal, and maybe 5% are the obnoxious noisemakers. These are my observations in Toronto.
- nayuki 5y ago
  Note - a week ago in the thread "High-powered motorcycle vibrations might impact iPhone camera", a good number of comments talked about excessive noise and the lack of enforcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491372
  - whartung 5y ago
    California has been doing a lot of effort to address the noise problem. They made new legislation to the point that it's almost impossible to get illegal exhaust systems installed on street bikes in the state, and that out of state exhaust system vendors will not ship product to the state. Folks interested in that have them shipped to Nevada and then "smuggled" in to the state. There was also a recent anecdote that the CHP was enforcing noise regulations at a popular motorcycle destination/hangout. And you have to appreciate the difficulty of this, as it requires special equipment, and a specific process to perform the measurement, which is not something the typical CHP officer carries (I can't speak to their training if they, indeed, did have the equipment). Also, violations are no longer "fix it" tickets, but immediate fines, which deter those that simply swap them out, get them checked out, and then swap them back in. There's also recent (past few years) requirements for badging and labeling from the manufacturers about compliance, and these need to be retained on the equipment which is an immediate violation if they're inspected and found lacking. It's difficult to enforce in the wild. You can't, necessarily, readily cite someone for being "too loud". Just like you can't cite someone for going "too fast", they need an actual measurement, and they can't normally do that in the field. The labeling requirements help, as well as the fines to vendors and installers if they're caught facilitating the violation. Mind, many bikes are grandfathered in, and it will take more time for them to fade off the roads. But it should get better. Right now, there is pressure back on the State because there's more legislation in the works that starts making it more and more difficult for folks that do, indeed, wish to modify their vehicles for competition and other off road activities. There should be balance, and it's not unheard of for the State to go too far and need to be reeled back in.

nayuki 5y ago

> I have also come to realize how many motorcyclists are jerks. As a non-motorcyclist, I detest the noise from loud exhaust pipes. Bad enough are the ones that sound like loud farting, the absolute worst are the ones that sound like roaring thunder and can be heard from 500 m away. These noises degrade my experience living in the city, whether I'm walking on the streets or in a building (street shop, apartment, etc.). It is absolutely selfish and despicable that one driver can cause so much noise for hundreds of people nearby. There are cars and motorcycles that are guilty of making excess noise. Motorcycles make up a minority of traffic, but I would say about 50% of them are overly loud. As for cars, the vast majority of them are normal, and maybe 5% are the obnoxious noisemakers. These are my observations in Toronto.

nayuki 5y ago
Note - a week ago in the thread "High-powered motorcycle vibrations might impact iPhone camera", a good number of comments talked about excessive noise and the lack of enforcement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28491372
- whartung 5y ago
  California has been doing a lot of effort to address the noise problem. They made new legislation to the point that it's almost impossible to get illegal exhaust systems installed on street bikes in the state, and that out of state exhaust system vendors will not ship product to the state. Folks interested in that have them shipped to Nevada and then "smuggled" in to the state. There was also a recent anecdote that the CHP was enforcing noise regulations at a popular motorcycle destination/hangout. And you have to appreciate the difficulty of this, as it requires special equipment, and a specific process to perform the measurement, which is not something the typical CHP officer carries (I can't speak to their training if they, indeed, did have the equipment). Also, violations are no longer "fix it" tickets, but immediate fines, which deter those that simply swap them out, get them checked out, and then swap them back in. There's also recent (past few years) requirements for badging and labeling from the manufacturers about compliance, and these need to be retained on the equipment which is an immediate violation if they're inspected and found lacking. It's difficult to enforce in the wild. You can't, necessarily, readily cite someone for being "too loud". Just like you can't cite someone for going "too fast", they need an actual measurement, and they can't normally do that in the field. The labeling requirements help, as well as the fines to vendors and installers if they're caught facilitating the violation. Mind, many bikes are grandfathered in, and it will take more time for them to fade off the roads. But it should get better. Right now, there is pressure back on the State because there's more legislation in the works that starts making it more and more difficult for folks that do, indeed, wish to modify their vehicles for competition and other off road activities. There should be balance, and it's not unheard of for the State to go too far and need to be reeled back in.