Let me paint a picture:
There's a waterfront bar near my house, and motorcycles are all over the place in Florida. This bar is popular with all kinds of people, meaning on any given evening, there will be quite a few bikes in the parking lot. In fact, the place has a special parking area up front just for bikes. Fantastic place to have a cold one and watch the sunset. They have a sign out front asking riders to please be considerate of the neighbors in terms of how much noise they make with their bikes.
There's only one entry drive to the marina where the bar is located. There are houses down this entry all the way to the marina parking lot. Back at the corner of the main road and the entry drive is a seafood restaurant with outdoor seating. Great food at this restaurant.
I've been at both places. Love both of them. But here's what I've seen while at the restaurant:
Sitting there with the wife and kids while groups of loud bikes roar up the entry drive to the main road, sit and roll on their throttles just outside the open eating area and then take off. Sitting there, I can hear them as they first crank up down at the marina, then blast up the residential street to the intersection and the restaurant. Now, I've heard enough of this to where it doesn't bother me as much as I can tell that it bothers others. But even I admit that conversation is impossible when there are bikes at the intersection. Looking around at the patrons, it's easy to see how annoyed many of them are. Anybody trying to talk to a waitress just has to wait until the bikes are gone. Waitresses look annoyed, too, as they tap their toes and wait to finish taking someone's order. Everything at the restaurant stops. Every time this happens, another restaurant full of folks gets a negative impression of motorcycles in general.
My bike has aftermarket pipes with baffled mufflers that (IMO) make a pleasing rumble yet I know are nowhere near as loud as many other exhaust systems out there. I used to have a much louder set of pipes, myself. I took them off because they were too loud even for me, the rider. Hurt my ears after an hour or so. Even with the quieter pipes, however, I wouldn't sit there with six other riders, just outside an open-air restaurant full of people and tweak the throttle over and over. I don't know if most of those folks are doing it on purpose or just innocently ignorant while having their fun, but it's easy to see that the people trying to have dinner don't like it. I can't say that I blame them.
I like the HD sound but even I don't want to hear loud pipes...well, when I don't want to hear loud pipes. If I want to load up on good exhaust sound, I'll go to a rally or a bike event. As has been said already, we could do ourselves a big favor by walking even a short distance in the shoes of others and realizing that we are going to have to look at ourselves as noise ordinances gain more and more popularity. It's a tricky balance between our desire to pursue our interest and have fun and other folks' not being interested at all in hearing our bikes.
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Topic: EPA and US ! (Read 1559 times)