Give ‘em the old double-honk.
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Probably not backfiring. Just the typical obnoxious level of noise motorcycles make when they’re illegally modified to make them as loud as fucking possible.
If I sound salty it’s probably because I had to move from an apartment I really liked because it overlooked an intersection and had to routinely put up with pricks on unmuffled bikes gunning it when the light turned green.
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fear.
hell of a drug
mission accomplished. there you are, land of the free.
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Well I hope nobody got hurt in the commotion, every time I read one of these stories I am simultaneously saddened for people who have to deal with the horrorshow that is The USA’s gun culture and relived my own country has sensible gun laws.
Stay safe America we are all rooting for you to make it through this nightmare.
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A bicycle makes little noise.
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I tend to eschew crowds for this herd mentality reason. If I heard three pops like that around where I live, I would go outside and see what was going on.
It seems all it would take nowadays to start a stampede (which would probably kill/injure in a huge crowd) is a packet of firecrackers.
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People are smart, crowds are dumb.
“The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its most stupid member divided by the number of mobsters.” – Terry Pratchett
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The Most Dangerous Game.
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I knew someone who lived in Northern Ireland during The Troubles. When she heard a car backfire, people would stare, because her instinct was to throw herself flat.
Given recent events in the US, the growing instinct is not to see what’s going on, but to get the hell out of the vicinity. It’s a reasonable instinct, based on real world events. Especially if you’re in a crowd in a popular place. Yes, it’s panic, but it’s not unreasonable panic. Especially if, as is happening more and more, you’ve already had it happen once.
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On the contrary. The about-to-be-all-around-us silent electric vehicles need an artificial noise to announce their presence to other road users especially pedestrians and cyclists. Perhaps the sound of a backfiring motorcycle? 
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I was present when something like this started to happen in a city here in France.
We were crossing a footbridge, when the crowd on the side we were heading for started to behave strangely, and a visibly distraught woman went running past us over the bridge.
The crowd, meanwhile, rushed away from an area near the end of the bridge we were heading for. We stopped on the bridge, prepared to go back, but from our higher vantage point, we realized that the only out of the ordinary thing we’d seen (or heard) was the distraught woman.
The crowd calmed down, and we continued without incident, but for just a moment, they were ready to panic. If I’d so much as clapped my hands, they’d have gone off.
Couldn’t figure out what set it off in the first place. The woman had looked upset but not (to me) frightened.
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I would not do that where I currently live, but I take your point.
Firecrackers are harder to purchase in some states.
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Really? Personally I understand running blindly over standing still. If danger is coming from a few degrees out of 360 of them (or more if it involves elevation), then just trying to gtfo seems like better odds than hesitating to identify the direction in a situation where direction is hard to pinpoint because of echoes.
Plus, scattering instead of everyone going in one or two directions makes a wider area that a gunman would have to adjust for. Less clumping that he can pour bullets into.
Expecting a random group of people to move in a calm orderly fashion in what they think is a live fire situation isn’t realistic.
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An armed society is a dystopian society. This is one of many examples why.
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I think a subtle but nagging doppler-inducing hum fits neatly under my absolutely has to clause. 
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Yeah, of course, in practice. But no fun. 
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I’m not convinced. Maybe when they’re creeping along at < 10mph, but then they don’t pose much of a threat anyway. A car moving with any speed makes a huge amount of wind noise. When I’m riding my bike out in the countryside on a road with very little traffic, I can hear the whoosh of a car (even a Tesla) approaching from at least a quarter mile away, and even tell if it’s an SUV or a sedan long before I can see it (SUVs are disgustingly un-aerodynamic.) Bike paths paralleling the freeway are unpleasant to use for more than a few minutes due to the constant roar of cars cutting through the air at 60mph.
Circling back to the topic, one of those low-traffic country roads I ride my bike on passes a gun range. The intermittent sound of gunfire around there puts me on-edge, too.
Motor vehicles cause subtle, but insidious, health problems from noise pollution (and just normal pollution)… Terrorists attack us with guns… Motor vehicle noise pollution gets mistaken for gunfire in Times Square… Terrorists attack us with motor vehicles in Times Square… Ugh. I need to go ride my bike and forget all this noise.
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Good points, well made. And below 10-20mph certainly needed. And it’s not just wind noise, it’s road/tyre noise as much, if not more. I wonder if leccy car designers are playing with tyre/wheel design to produce a certain noise rather than have speakers and volume controls.
But we are geting off-topic At least battery motors do not backfire noisily.
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