That didn’t take long.
Less than a month after Ontario relaxed COVID-19 restrictions to allow outdoor dining, we’ve got the complaint train leaving the station. Ordinary people are once again sick of modified motorcycle exhausts. So, we get a piece from Sabrina Maddeaux in the National Post with this headline: “Unmuffled motorcycles are an assault on my freedom to have ears that don’t bleed.”
Lest there be any doubt as to Maddeaux’s feelings, the sub-hed reads “The culprit is a gaggle of men in Sons of Anarchy cosplay, compensating for their inferiority complexes with outsized douchebaggery.“
From there, we get considerable complaining about loud pipes and their impact on enjoyment of public space (there’s also a link to some previous discussion about this problem on CMG—we’ve never been against performance exhausts, but we have taken a stand on obnoxious noise).
And then, at the end, we get this (emphasis ours):
“It’s far past time Canadian municipalities got serious about the impact unmuffled motorcycles have on communities. I hear many government budgets are strapped for cash post-COVID. Here’s a perfect opportunity to make a few quick bucks by enforcing noise bylaws and ticketing offenders. Those caught with illegally modified vehicles should be subject to increasing fines each week they refuse to fix the issue. At some point, motorcyclists who refuse to follow the rules should have their hobby horses impounded.”
This is the future reality that awaits the loud pipes crowd. No matter how much of a smoke screen they run to promote their noisy motorcycle lifestyle, their arguments fall apart, and increasing numbers of people are angry about their behaviour, all across Canada. Eventually, they’ll be forced to comply, just like the no-helmets crowd. Just as dirt bikes are being driven off public lands, loud-piped bikes will be forced off roadways.
But for now, everyone still has to put up with the noise. The comment section in the NatPo story shows that despite evidence to the contrary, loud pipes lifestylers are convinced their exhausts are saving lives and also their right in public spaces.
The loud pipe guys continue to make the rest of us look bad.
The article’s writer clearly doesn’t know the difference between a cruiser and a “crotch rocket”.
The former are definitely the bigger problem, noise wise.
She also completely ignores loud cars and trucks. Living near a major road and intersection, I can tell you that heavy trucks, ricers, muscle cars and pickups (especially the modified diesels) are just as big of offenders.
Definitely some cluelessness on the part of the writer. But then, that’s part of the problem too. Angry normies don’t care about the nuances of the law or moto culture. They just want the noise to stop, however they need to do it. If that means banning bikes, so be it. Lots of people hate them anyway, as they’re an affront to their own sense of risk assessment.
True. The article clearly shows what an easy target loud bikes are, even when there are plenty of other loud vehicles out there.
They can’t easily make laws discriminating against any of the other sources I mentioned (although the MOT could do something about loud exhausts on heavy trucks as part of their roadside inspections – to listen to truckers they’re the most-persecuted road users. Also they “need” straight stacks for efficiency and because proper replacements are “too expensive”.)
But they can certainly implements bans against motorcycles, more roadside bike inspections (despite the unfairness of targeting bikes, specifically), and so on.
Thanks for helping to bring the heat down on us, loud pipe morons!
The more people they piss off with their noise, the worse it is going to be for all of us.
It will be interesting to watch these clowns attach speaker systems to the electric bikes we will all be forced to ride in the near future 😉