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The tracks have noise and pollution restrictions, track days aren’t available year-round, and many/most events require the vehicle to have passed a safety inspe
by altairprime 2y ago
The tracks have noise and pollution restrictions, track days aren’t available year-round, and many/most events require the vehicle to have passed a safety inspection. These severely limit the number of personal vehicles that qualify for doing these activities safely, and as there’s no other unsafe or lower-cost method for doing these things, they end up on the streets.
This is also a side effect of cuts to street traffic motorcycle police staffing, with limited resources allocated elsewhere and funding starved due to seized-up local politics and police mistreatment of citizens. People sometimes now just disregard red lights in the Bay Area as the chances of a traffic cop seeing them do so are so close to zero as to make it a safe bet.
I generally loathe the idea of increasing policing but it’s either that or automated camera enforcement with plate readers, since we can’t trust ourselves to be sensible about it.
- ziddoap 2y agoI’ve been to many many different tracks, and none had a noise or pollution restriction. My race cars exhaust dumps straight out of the hood and has 0 pollution control. It’s loud. Until I was running sub-11 second quarters, I never had to produce anything safety related. But as others have pointed out to me, it seems these may be more of a counter-culture/party type thing than a purely car thing. I was looking at it from the wrong perspective.
- olyjohn 2y agoDrag racing is a lot less strict on noise. Your car would get kicked out of a lot of races. Even the 24 Hours of Lemons has noise limits. Most sanctioning bodies do because they don't want to get noise complaints from neighbors who moved in after the track opened.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- altairprime 2y agoLemons also has extremely specific safety requirements; they're a best in category example of how to do relatively cheap safety. https://24hoursoflemons.com/safety-checklist/ https://24hoursoflemons.com/safety-checklist/
- altairprime 2y agoAt all major Bay Area raceways a noise limit is published, and exhaust limits are either stated or implied (i.e. limiting to 90dB requires a muffler). Sonoma Raceways - 103dB at 50ft. Thunderhill Raceways - 103dB, mufflers required. Laguna Seca - 90dB, with rare exceptions. Antioch - 95dB at 100ft. Ocean Speedway - 90dB at 100ft. Petaluma Speedway - 95dB at 100ft, mufflers required. Stockton 99 Speedway - 95dB, "exhaust must be turned down or out". Measurement techniques vary; Laguna Seca is especially hostile to noise to the point that some stock exhaust systems do not comply from factory (i.e. Subaru WRX STi); Stockton 99 buries the limit deep in the fine print viewed by racers; Nascar is difficult to host as their cars can reach 130dB; enforcement may be more or less strict; it's possible there are smaller local tracks I don't personally know about that aren't listed here (I'm more familiar with North than East or South, for example).
- ziddoap 2y agoThanks for the extra information! I didn't realize it was that strict in that area. I stand corrected. I actually went and re-read the rules for the three tracks I most commonly go to (just in case I was mistaken/misremembering), however there are no noise provisions at all. >some stock exhaust systems do not comply from factory (i.e. Subaru WRX STi); Yikes! They definitely wouldn't like my WRX STI.
- altairprime 2y agoSure thing. I would expect this is not the case nationwide :) There's some factory Porsche setups that also cross the 90dB threshold. You could look up automated noise enforcement trials in NYC for some really upset people who found out that their factory-stock cars are illegally loud. I haven't seen anything serious stem from that yet, but I personally cannot wait for enforcement here at home just to put a stop to all the racing exhausts on the streets around here!