One of my parents was (probably still is idk) into motorbikes, and their justification for having an obscenely loud exhaust mod was that “loud pipes save lives”.
They had a lot of justifications for a lot of shit though, so I don’t know how valid that one is.
Only in an obscenely car-centric society does the vroom vroom have any potential for saving lives. But if you make everything quieter, with more mass transit, slower driving speeds, and more walkability, then most of the safety issues for the rider are handled.
I’ve lived in Asia where there’s only one rule on the road: might is right. Riding a motorcycle is dangerous to start with, but it’s literally Russian roulette in that context: you have to take all the precautions you can. I have definitely noticed that cars give more space to loud bikes.
That being said, doing an arms race to keep yourself safe (bigger cars, louder bikes, brighter lights) is really just making everything more dangerous for everyone.
There’s an almost-definitely fictional story of a foreign mechanic who fixed all of the imperfections and timing issues with his friend’s Harley so it no longer rumbled and shook while running misunderstanding that that’s part of the “charm” is the noise and rumble and rattle. The story goes that it was the most powerful harley ever because of it, but the friend still made him put it back to its “broken” state
One of my parents was (probably still is idk) into motorbikes, and their justification for having an obscenely loud exhaust mod was that “loud pipes save lives”.
They had a lot of justifications for a lot of shit though, so I don’t know how valid that one is.
Only in an obscenely car-centric society does the vroom vroom have any potential for saving lives. But if you make everything quieter, with more mass transit, slower driving speeds, and more walkability, then most of the safety issues for the rider are handled.
Not totally wrong.
I’ve lived in Asia where there’s only one rule on the road: might is right. Riding a motorcycle is dangerous to start with, but it’s literally Russian roulette in that context: you have to take all the precautions you can. I have definitely noticed that cars give more space to loud bikes.
That being said, doing an arms race to keep yourself safe (bigger cars, louder bikes, brighter lights) is really just making everything more dangerous for everyone.
There’s an almost-definitely fictional story of a foreign mechanic who fixed all of the imperfections and timing issues with his friend’s Harley so it no longer rumbled and shook while running misunderstanding that that’s part of the “charm” is the noise and rumble and rattle. The story goes that it was the most powerful harley ever because of it, but the friend still made him put it back to its “broken” state