I do not understand why it is legal for motorcycles to be so goddamned loud.
I was out for a ride around town on my cycle this afternoon. While I was waiting to turn out from a quiet residential side street onto a more major thoroughfare, a guy rolled up next to me on a motorcycle. When there was a break in traffic, we both pulled out. Motorcycle Guy opened his throttle and it was just ear-splittingly loud—enough that my watch gave a loud environment notification for 90 decibels. I could still hear him long after he was out of sight.
And don’t give me that “Loud pipes save lives” bullshit. If the vehicle you are driving is so unsafe that the only solution is to make it deafeningly loud, it should not be legal to drive.
I do not have a fundamental problem with motorcycles themselves. For busy urban areas where space for both parking and driving is at a premium, they make a lot of sense. A street full of motorcycles is about less crowded than a street with the same number of cars, and they are more economical and fuel-efficient as well. I have been to cities in other countries where the streets are filled with motorcycles. They are never loud like the ones here.
Clearly this problem is solvable. I have to get my car inspected every year and if the exhaust system is too loud, it won’t pass. I don’t see why the same thing can’t be done here.
The problem, of course, is that motorcycles have gotten wrapped up in the car culture mythology that makes everything about driving so weird and dysfunctional in the US. Instead of being a practical means of getting around, they tend to be real-world manifestations white guys’ social and emotional insecurities. And like all the rest of the manifestations of these same issues, the rest of us are expected to just put up with them.