Are loud cans selfish?

I thought Rupert Paul made an uncomfortably good point in Bike magazine last month.

Obviously the guy lives near a busy road and is p*****d off with loud cans.

But you can't deny that it seems ridiculous to check whether cans are 'offensive' with neighbours but not give a sh*t about all of the other peeps who are subjected to them.

Yours (feeling a bit guilty)....

As has been said a zillion times already

Loud cans saves lives

End of conversation

I don't have a loud can ...yet but I do believe that if they can hear you coming it's better than not .As for selfish my neighbour has her hedge cut at 8:00 am on sundays. This is all a matter of feet from my bedroom so I think that is far worse than any loud bike going by.

[fizzwheel]

My neighbours dont give a f**k about me when they play "gansta rap" at 3am in the morning when they come in from the pub and wake me up when I am trying to sleep, so I dont give a toss about disturbing them either.

Also they have taken to doing DIY at the weekends and think its OK to use their hammer drill at 7:30am in the morning.

They looked very bemused when I explained to them that I thought it was anti-social, especially the last 3 weekends on the trott...

So when I got my can I took all the baffles out of my EVO3.. so I am waiting for them to complain about that.. ggrrhhh

Rant over

That said I do try and ride conservatively through built up areas to keep the noise down...

I don't know. All my neighbours look at me when i get home from work. The little kids like it

As soons as they can hear my can -they turn around and look at me... some old people shake their heads.

I don't care.

Last week at a petrol Station a Policeman on a bike was behind me, and as i came back from the shop - he said "Nice can you got there mate".

So I thought "fu**", but said "yeah, I love it". He laughed and went back to his bike!!!

So seems that they don't give a monkey neither

i would suggest that if it gets on his tits THAT much, that he move!

bet its 'cos he's cracking on a bit, i would even wager that he was an advocate of loud cans until the wife/ boyfriend (?) made him do the gardening all the time and its just sour grapes 'cos he wants to be out *having it*

FWIW - i have a pipe that is NFRU and it only gets loud when the bike is being spanked (always! )

[timwilky]

I care far more about my safety than I do for my neighbours. Apart from the guy accross the road who has a louder can on his R1 than my CCC. That way we advise each other to crack the beer open as one or the other gets home.


Seriously if road noise get on your tits. MOVE. I can't be doing with these winging gits who buy houses next to major roads/rail or airports and compain about noise or near factories/incinerators and complain about smell etc.

Welcome to the real world if you don't like road noise buy a house in the middle of nowhere down a 1 mile dirt track.

[Balky001]

Originally Posted by BigApe

As has been said a zillion times already

Loud cans saves lives

End of conversation

Yeah, but whose? The people that benefit most from a loud cans are pedestrians who can hear you coming when they are crossing the road (especially in heavy traffic) and cyclists.

Drivers cocooned in a car, windows up, radio on and not expecting a bike to come up (you know, the dangerous ones) are never going to hear a can coming from behind unless you are knocking out 150db's or you are happy to sit behind them for a while so that it clicks with them that there's a vehicle behind. Of all the commuting I've done in the year I've been riding (about 8000 miles) changing the can back to standard has definately not hindered me. What's really improved things is keeping my full beam on most of the time (not in tunnels or if stuck behind someone for a while or night time). My mate told me to try it and I always thought people could see main beam and hear my can - it's amazing the way the see you and pull aside when you have full on - not everyone though of course but you can't help that.

I have 3 scooter boys (16 and 17 year olds) passing my house most nights on their way home. They have no baffles at all and sound loud. The first few times I heard them I thought they must be doing well over the speed limit - only to find one doing around 20mph struggling up an incline. And that's the trouble with loud cans - perception. Everyone thinks you are doing 100mph when you are doing 40 because of the noise. Anyone that reads MCN or mags know that biker's liberties are under threat due to pre-conceptions by non-biking politically motivated poeple that win public backing due to the perceived danger caused by bikers that have no regard for other road users or themselves. Same could be said for Nova/Escort XR3i drivers but bikes are easy targets as people don't get them. The more ammo you give to anti-bike organisations the more restrictive it will become.

Who doesn't love a sound of a thumping twin (I do) - well, truth quite a lot of people.

I also live on a main road, and at a major T junction at that.

Do loud bike cans **** me off? Hell no, cos once they are past my house, I can hardly hear them.

What does make me livid are these bloody boy racers with exhausts the size of dustbins, who you can hear for minutes after they have gone past, all the bloody tyre screeching as they are pulling away from the junction, or even trying to get the car go sideways round the corner!

I have lived at the same house for 22 years, and the problem with Toy racers is a hell of a lot worse now, than it was 5 years ago, whereas the amount of bikes on the road round here has stayed the same.