Sax Maniac's Journal: Where are all the considerate motorcyclists?

I just spent a week's vacation on Long Island, driving down an fabulously warm June day. As the kids finally lulled asleep, and I was listening to the radio, the usual happened: a motorcyclist with straight pipes comes up behind me about 90 mph, weaving around everyone in moderate traffic. Par for the course is obscene volume, waking up the entire family. Yes, with the windows closed and air conditioner on.

Motorcyclists are always pointing out that the majority of riders are law-abiding, considerate people, and it just merely seems like they're complete assholes. From the AMA position paper on noise:

A minority, riding loud motorcycles, may leave the impression that all motorcycles are loud.

I can buy that. I admit you usually are not going to notice people acting considerately. But is this really true? Or is it just spin from a bought-and-sold organization?

So, I decided to do a quick non-scientific experiment. For the rest of the 6-hour trip I decided to count the motorcyclists, to come up with an obnoxious to non-obnoxious ratio.

The results? Of thirty-nine motorcyclists I shared the road with, all but two either were driving unsafely (weaving in and out of traffic, splitting lanes), or extremely loud (meaning they had aftermarket exhausts, and thus are much louder than an average car with a functioning muffler at cruising speed). Usually both.

That's 94%. Hardly a "minority".

To be fair, about three or four passenger trucks did have aftermarket exhausts, and a pair of Mercedes were racing and weaving. But against the thousands of cars I shared the road with that that day, it's well under 94%. Well to the point of insignificance.

Am I an anti-biker? No, I'd love to learn some day. But I guarantee, when I do, my bike will be silent.

In the interest of fairness, note that I have defined "loud" here as "much louder than an average car with a functioning muffler". When driving in my car, the volume of nearly all other cars is underneath the threshold of the ambient noise inside the cabin: they are effectively silent. I still count them, because even a mildly-loud bike, which is audible but not obnoxious when listened to from inside a car, can be extremely loud in quieter circumstances. Say, if you're setting sitting on your back deck, and there's a road a mile away.

I guess it comes down to how you define excessive. I say motorcyclists should be no louder than your average car that passes inspection with a muffler. As it stands, a typical motorcycle is about loud as car driving around with it's horn stuck on. Yet would we stand for that behavior? Maybe next time I'm near see a pack of motorcyclists, I'll just lay on the horn too, to join the fun! Of how about I park in front my home town's police station, and sit on the horn and find out. Or: wouldn't it be great if no cars had mufflers at all, then everything would be so loud, nobody would stick out! Why is riding a motorcycle a free pass to antisocial behavior?

I'm going to take the Maddox pledge to annoying behavior. To all bikers with loud pipes: I am going to ignore you. I won't see you, I won't hear you. I don't care if I get a ticket or my insurance goes up.