Sound Advice Issue #234 | Noise, New, Bike, Have, Would

You are here: Home

Sound Advice Issue #234

Written by Robert Smith
Wednesday, 10 October 2007
I’m riding a stock Road King through a subdivision in Whistler, BC. I round a bend to see a mother walking on the sidewalk with her young daughter. The toddler looks over her shoulder, spots the bike and, cowering, clamps both hands over her ears, hiding her face in mom’s skirt. It takes me a few seconds to work it out. The Road King is whisper quiet, and I’m hardly a threatening sort of person: I was “born to be mild.” Then I realize it isn’t the reality but the perception: she’s expecting the big chrome cruiser to emit the usual raucous, ear-rending racket, and children, of course, have much more sensitive hearing. I’m appalled and ashamed: I’ve frightened a child—something I would never want to do, and wish never to do again. LIKE MOST RIDERS, I LIKE TO HEAR MY MOTORCYCLE’S ENGINE, and especially the exhaust. It’s an important part of motorcycling’s visceral experience. But like it or not, we all live within a social framework of some kind, and societies have rules. These rules are intended to create a safe and comfortable environment for the majority of its citizens. In the US, it’s life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; here in Canada: peace, order and good government. Included in these rules, regardless of the level of supposed liberty, are limitations on the personal freedoms that might otherwise affect the comfort and well being of the majority. It’s why you can’t cut down the boulevard trees that spoil the view from your bedroom window, for example, or ride your scoot down the sidewalk. We also live in a representative democracy. When politicians take up a particular cause, they’re probably betting it will win them more votes, not fewer. There are exceptions, of course (especially in the early stages of a mandate), but politicians rarely commit electoral suicide. Motherhood issues—the ones it’s difficult to argue against—are especially popular. And if you ask 100 people if they’d like less noise in their lives, I’m guessing an overwhelming majority would say “yes.” One of the issues they’d be sure to identify—especially in summer—is motorcycle exhaust noise. There are, of course, regulations and standards in existence for motorcycle noise—motorcycle “sound” in the industry’s euphemistic jargon—and all new motorcycles sold in Canada conform to these requirements. So how does noise become an issue? I’VE JUST CHECKED OUT OF THE OLD FAITHFUL INN IN YELLOWSTONE National Park and slid on to my rented V-Rod when the bike next to me lights up. The explosive racket from the short, slash-cut pipes could have curdled milk and stopped watches, echoing as it does under the low carport roof. I’m glad I can slip in my earplugs. Later, I ask Laura, a sassy New York hairdresser, why so much noise? “The engine needs to breathe,” she says. Somewhere in North America there are three football fields covered to a depth of around a metre with discarded stock motorcycle mufflers. That’s my back-of-an-envelope estimate of the sheer volume of exhaust pipes removed from new bikes and replaced with aftermarket items. A good number of these make no attempt to reduce noise, producing a cacophony similar to Laura’s. And doesn’t it seem odd that a motorcycle would need open pipes to “breathe” anyway? After all, would you buy a new car that needed $1,000 in accessories to work right? As sold in Canada, new motorcycles over 175cc are allowed to produce no more than 82 decibels of sound pressure measured at one metre distance under specific throttle conditions. But noise rules for motorcycles actually on the street are a mish-mash of provincial and municipal regulations. In BC, if you get ticketed on the street for a supposed noise infringement and then challenge it in court, there’s a good chance it won’t stick anyway because of inconsistencies in the test procedure. So noise regulations as they presently exist are essentially unenforceable. So that’s okay then? Well, not really; because every summer, with the peak in the number of unmuffled bikes on the road, there’s a general clamouring for tougher noise legislation, predictably spurring biker advocacy groups into a flurry of lobbying and calls for solidarity. The danger: one day a piece of dumb legislation will get through that outlaws exhaust modification completely, making Lorne Mayencourt’s Bill 203 in British Columbia seem modest. In some European countries, riding with any non-stock muffler will get your bike impounded, regardless of noise level. Think it can’t happen here? Why does this matter to British bike enthusiasts? Because stock mufflers for most of our bikes don’t exist: we’re forced to buy from aftermarket manufacturers. And there’s no guarantee that older bikes would be grandfathered out of future noise regulations. Responsibility isn’t a word that fits easily into bikerdom’s outlaw lexicon, but if we’re all more responsible about the level of noise our motorcycles produce, it may save us from a more regulated future. Those who don’t adapt to necessary change are likely to have change thrust upon them. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, to quote old Bill Shakespeare: the more noise your bike makes, the more likely it is that some enterprising politician will turn it into an election issue. Seems to me, the future of noise legislation is in our own hands. Comments (0) Subscribe to this comment's feed Write comment You must be logged in to a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.