Denver has adopted a new noise ordinance for motorcycles. Taking effect July 1, it has provoked many repetitions of, “Loud pipes save lives.”
This seems logical. Motorcyclists don’t enjoy much protection when they encounter cars and trucks. They need to be noticed by other drivers. Making noise attracts notice.
But most such accidents – somebody cutting in front of the motorcycle, or opening a car door just ahead of the bike, etc. – happen in front of the motorcycle. Exhaust noise is aimed backward, not the direction where it would be most prophylactic.
Further, most modern cars have air- conditioning and sound systems. The windows are rolled up year-round, and there is music, news, or talk-radio blaring away inside. Motorcycle vroom-vrooms may not penetrate enough to matter.
This is rather academic, though, and we need real data. You’d think that someone would have looked through fatal accidents involving motorcycles and other vehicles, and determined whether loud bikes were involved less often than quiet bikes.
Even if you had those numbers, though, it might not tell you much. Loud bikers might be involved in more accidents because they tend to ride more, or perhaps it’s the quiet bikers who put on more miles.
Figuring out just which bikes were loud would be difficult, too. You might simplify it by assuming that BMW riders were quiet and Harley drivers were loud. But Beemer drivers could be more safety-conscious, in general, than their Hog counterparts. Or maybe that’s just a stereotype.
The more I thought about it, the less likely it seemed that there would be any definitive statistics. But I tried anyway. The Web offered anecdotes, such as the guy whose loud pipes inspired a moose to leave the highway before he had to put down, but no hard numbers.
I called the American Motorcyclist Association in Ohio. I left a voice-mail message. Hours later, I decided that the AMA must have a policy against returning telephone calls.
I did reach the Colorado State Patrol, where I talked to Ryan Sullivan, a public information officer. Our state patrol prepares detailed accident reports, he said, but not with the kind of information that would tell us whether loud pipes save lives. I tried a different tack. Surely the patrol cares about the safety of its troopers. Some of those troopers ride motorcycles. If noisy pipes were safer, wouldn’t the patrol install louder exhaust systems on its Harleys?
“Not as far as I know,” Sullivan said. “I’ve driven them. They sound perfectly stock to me.” He wasn’t 100 percent positive, though, and he tried to find a motorcycle trooper who would know for sure. However, they were all on the Western Slope escorting The Post’s Ride the Rockies bike race.
So as nearly as I can tell, “loud pipes save lives” is an urban legend, or perhaps a sales motto for shops that sell modified exhaust systems.
But bogus safety issues aside, is a noise ordinance necessary?
One pleasant Sunday morning some years ago, we had breakfast with our daughters at a sidewalk café in Denver. A row of big motorcycles was parked across the street. The drivers came out and roared off. They came back a few minutes later and sat around idling loudly before roaring off again. They repeated this several times.
I asked the waitress about calling the police; she laughed and said it would do no good. Since our family was unable to converse, we left after the bikers’ fifth or sixth rendition.
If such obnoxious behavior isn’t illegal, it should be. And I can’t say I’m much concerned about the well-being of such people. Motorcyclists would be a lot safer if their unnecessary show-off noise didn’t make people want to run them over.
Ed Quillen of Salida (ed@cozine.com) is a former newspaper editor whose column appears Tuesday and Sunday.
