We already have laws about this. Exhaust noise level restrictions are pretty common, if not well enforced. California just tightened its laws dramatically. No need to ban motorcycles.
Full disclosure: I have three bikes in the garage. With quiet, stock exhaust systems
My kid had just finished watching a different Broadway show – apparently To Kill a Mockingbird runs longer, so that audience was still in the theater when the sound was heard and they rushed out of the auditorium – saw everybody panicking from that theater and running, so she ducked into a restaurant and texted me to ask what was going on. At the time, I couldn’t tell from the live cam what was going on, but soon enough the information was passed around that it was a motorcycle, not gunfire, and she went on to the subway to go back to her dorm. She’s 17 and in an unfamiliar city away from her family. She texted her mom to find out what to do next, once she’d at least gotten herself to relative safety. That is the world our children are growing up in. Freedom!
I wonder if the motorcyclist was actually pleased with the panic he caused. I used to have a neighbor who rode noisy motorcycles that he made more noisy by screwing with their mufflers. He delighted in causing distress with the noise.
Cover? If nothing else, running prevents one from being a sitting target, so it’s a good strategy if you think someone is shooting, even if you don’t know where the shooter is. (Though presumably they were looking ahead and could tell that direction was clear of shooters, at least.)
I wish I could say this wouldn’t be me, but at this point, yeah, I just might blindly panic at a sound like that, given the place it occurred and recent events. Ever since the Garlic Festival shooting I’ve been feeling vulnerable- it’s a very specific place that I’ve considered visiting, and one that would have been dead last on my list of suspected domestic terrorist targets. I’ll probably still go some day, but I’ll always be freaked out by the knowledge that I could have been killed if my travel plans happened to place me there on that day, and that if it can happen there it can happen literally anywhere.
What cover? It is Times Square? Did you see any cover in the video? What were people supposed to do duck and cover behind the over priced ice cream pop-up?
The buildings themselves.
Not to belabor the point, but the buildings in Times Square run parallel to the square and are all big storefronts. They would be damn near impossible to run into if there was a huge crowd of people running in a single direction. The only “buildings” you have in the square are the pop-up food shops.
Times Square isn’t really a square.
It is surrounded by buildings with stores and restaurants/cafes, all with entrances in plain sight because that’s how commerce works.
Fight, flight, or freeze: those are the three options animals (including humans) have for defense in the case of danger. Running away from what sounds like gunfire is so normal that the only weird element here is that you keep questioning it.
Too late!
The fact is: people did run into stores, restaurants and theaters facing the square. But just getting alongside a building provides some cover, staying with the crowd provides some protection, and - again - just running is some measure of defense, even if it’s just back and forth. Standing there would have been the least safe option, had there been a shooter.
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