A good air horn!

 

Your personal attacks are telling,

 

I love this debate, it is always the same. Most people like loud pipes and feels as if they save lives. Yes I am one of those who feel that I have been saved a few times from the soccer mom in the SUV on the cell hazard. In fact three months ago on the way to work. I have V&H Duals with the quiet baffles (like the deep sound), as I was passing her, she decided to move on over. As a rolled the throttle (and brought the foot up to kick her door) she moved back. People look around to see where the nosie is coming from even in the parking lots they call freeways in So Cal.

I agree that some should be aware of neighbors while riding during early morning hours and tread lightly however, it is almost always the old guys who get pissed because you ride next to them and they can't hear the golden oldies screaming from fairing.

 

Like your sense of Humor, Ride Safe and Take Care

 

in the end all thought process... I started this thread and enjoyed it. While may have agreed and disagreed, there is one thing that a loud pipe will do. It will alert a motorist to your presence in his/her vicinity while riding a multi lane road in the same direction as said motorist. This to me is the only true benefit to a loud pipe from a safety standpoint. I don't think it can help in any other manor. However this benifit could in fact save one's life someday. If any naysayers are out there that cannot recognize this, I encourage you while driving in your cage to pay attention to that time when you hear a bike before you see it. At this very moment think about how this allowed you to recognize it was there. This little benefit could save someones life whether you choose to agree or disagree. Simply stated it has saved bikers from situations and it will continue to do so. In the end if you can't figure this out, well... talking to you is like clapping with one hand I guess.

 

In another thread "Why cages have near misses with bikes" there is a lot of comments about how the Cage drivers are stupid, distracted, don't care, talking on phone, reading the paper, didn't see the bike, don't like bikers, etc etc etc
"NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON" in 6 pages of comments said their near miss was because the Cage heard them last second and swerved away . Not one single person.

 

Post#41... I did say that if I thought they didn't see me I blipped the throttle and they usually look.... was it at the last second... don't know... could have been if they had decided to change lanes without looking! There are still the azzhats that will pull into you for whatever reason even with their windows down.. why??? Because their azzhats!!! They know your their but they are bigger!!! I will keep my pipes... thank you very much!

 

original at http://personalpages.tds.net/~dsulli...s/loudpipe.htm



Do loud pipes save lives?

This is a philosophical question.

The first point is that motorcycles differ radically from cars in their relationship to primary and secondary safety.

Primary safety is the capability to avoid hazards. For example, a vehicle with better brakes has better primary safety. Secondary safety is being able to survive accidents. For example, large heavy cars have better secondary safety than pedal cycles. Motorcycles naturally have better primary safety than cars: they can escape through smaller gaps; have better acceleration; have better control ergonomics give effectively faster reactions; have fewer blind spots; the higher head position gives a better view of traffic in all directions; they can move around more to exploit different views. But motorcycles naturally have worse secondary safety than cars.

Now for the philosophy. The attitude of drivers/riders towards safety ranges between two extremes. On the one extreme we have the active in-control person who trusts his wits and skill to avoid accidents. This kind of person wants the best possible primary safety to give the greatest possible scope to his wits and skill. On the other extreme we have the passive victim person who thinks that there is no way to avoid other idiots having accidents involving him, and so wants the best possible secondary safety in order to best survive the inevitable accidents.

The passive victim type will want to drive the largest heaviest most crash-proof car they can get their hands on. The active in-control type will want a vehicle with the best performance. In cars this is some kind of sports car. The extreme is a motorcycle.

Thus, comparing cars with motorcycles, bikes are naturally suited to the active in-control type who prefers primary safety, whereas cars are better suited to the passive victim type who can't avoid accidents.

So what about loud pipes? The argument in favor of loud pipes is that because you can't avoid all the idiots out there, you are better off making a loud noise to force them to notice you. This is the secondary safety view. The question of why YOU haven't noticed THEM does not occur to this kind of person. This philosophy contradicts the nature of motorcycles, which excel at primary safety at the expense of secondary. We would therefore expect these people (who advocate loud pipes) also to prefer their bikes to lean in other ways towards the secondary safety philosophy. For example, they will be likely to choose motorcycles with unusually low riding positions, motorcycles which are unusually heavily built, motorcycles with poor brakes, cornering, and acceleration.

Is this what we find in practice?
Yes -- the loud pipes brigade has an unusually large proportion of Harley owners.
These people are philosophically ill-suited to motorcycling. They would be much better off in motor cars. In fact, if you look at the riding position on a chopped Harley you will notice that it is the same position of body as a car driver -- feet forward, leaning back, hands up in front. And we also find that the Harley-owning loud pipes brigade rapidly stop riding their bikes as they get older, and take to driving around in pick-ups with the bike in the back.
My company offers philosophical therapy to these confused people at very reasonable rates. If you have a friend or neighbor who suffers from the loud-pipes syndrome, suggest he gets in touch with us. We can progress the patients through this distressing and dangerous phase of philosophical paradox and get them safely ensconced in large heavy cars where they naturally belong.

PHILOSOPHICAL THERAPISTS.
LOUD-PIPE CRUISER-RIDERS A SPECIALITY.
SHEEP-******** TREATED BADLY. CLANSVESTITES AND TARTAN FETISHISTS ABJURED.
CALL TOLL-FREE 0800 1234567.
Chris Malcolm cam@uk.ac.ed.aifh +44 (0)31 650 3085
Department of Artificial Intelligence,
Edinburgh University
5 Forrest Hill, Edinburgh, EH1 2QL, UK
DoD #205 "The mind reigns, but does not govern" -- Paul Valery
Copyright 1994

 

^^^^ Uhuh... but I am beyond help!! My therapist bought a harley and I changed the pipes for her for free!!!

 

Your horn button works just as well, if not better, in that situation. Your pipes are an existing sound, so, not as likely to attract attention. Your horn presents a new, different sound - one to which people have learned their entire life is an alert/warning sound.

There is only a sliver of reality in the loud pipes save lives myth - that being, in a case where a vehicle is next to you and starts moving over towards you, some people, perhaps with limited motor skills, find it is somewhat easier to pull in the clutch and rev the throttle a couple of times than it is to move their thumb to the horn button & press it.

Doesn't happen. I see them long before I hear them. If my windows are up, I rarely hear them at all. In cases where I failed to see a bike (that would be at an intersection, and the bike is hidden by the A pillar), whether it had loud pipes or not didn't change anything. I saw it when I saw it, not when I heard it (because I didn't hear it at all, or only heard it well after I saw it).


Loud pipes saving lives is right up there with "I had ta lay 'er down ta keep frum rekkin'!" (The theory that chrome offers more traction than rubber).