My apartment overlooks a busy intersection and I feel nothing but ill will towards motorcyclists thanks to this obnoxious behavior. Gunning it away from the intersection to maximize noise is not a way to stay safe. It’s just a way to make everyone hate you.
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If you can work a line about polishing and waxing your weapon into a thread about bookshelves, I’m sure you’ll find a way. 
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HEY! Proper maintenance is no joke! It is carbon steel and will rust and the hilt is something that will tarnish. The wax is a museum grade protectant!
MUSEUM GRADE!
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Not always an option.
On my first bike (1983 Honda CM250), you had to use the idle set screw as an auxiliary pseudo-choke. If you didn’t wind it up at the start of a ride, the engine would die at idle. If you didn’t wind it back down five minutes later, the engine would idle at 5,000rpm.
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If you’re dealing with window-rattling open pipe Harley wankers, you have my sympathy. That level of noise is pure dickishness.
OTOH, I have at times been known to both rev the engine while stopped, and gun it away from traffic lights.
In neither case did this have anything to do with “maximising noise”.
Revving at the lights is no longer something I do, because I no longer ride cheap twenty year old bikes. But when I did, an occasional slight blat on the throttle was often necessary to stop the engine from dying. Old and battered air-cooled carbureted engines do not idle well.
As for gunning it from the lights, that’s also nothing to do with noise; it’s to do with survival. The cars can’t hit you if they’re half a block behind you.
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Okay, I’ll bite: What is a cager?
Car driver. Cars are “cages” for the occupants.
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The problem with “the loudness of the engine is for safety” argument is that some bikes aren’t that loud (and are you really telling me the hard-ass Harley riders who won’t wear helmets are really that concerned about safety?)
Two anecdotes. There used to be a guy in my neighborhood in Boston who worked early in the morning, so every weekday at sunrise he got on his Harley and revved that fucker for all it was worth as he blasted down the main street. It was like a WW1 biplane taking off every morning.
And once in New Hampshire, backpacking, we are miles from the nearest road, looking out over a beautiful valley, and suddenly there is the distant (but very clear) sound of a motorcycle interrupting the serenity.
The volume of the bike might be broadcasting “hey, look at me!” but it’s less about safety and more about ego.
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I think the super loud bikes are less “look at me” and more"fuck all the rest of you".
I actually think motorcycles are pretty cool, and if I wasn’t so sure I would spill one and break many things, I would have bought one a long time ago. Pretty much everyone I know who rides has spilled their bike at one point or another, to varying effect. There’s so many cool things about being able to get on the bike and go anywhere, but I think we can largely separate the noise = safety arguments from the people who drive the very loudest bikes and who rev them for fun, regardless of how the noise affects other people.
I appreciate the article, because it does let us know more about cyclists and why they do the things they do. Lots of things cyclists do are entirely reasonable. But just as bad cops are defended by good cops, anti-socially noisy motorcyclists are often reflexively defended by otherwise more responsible motorcyclists. Just as car drivers need to admit that they need to be more aware of motorcyclists and bicyclists, I think motorcyclists should admit that some motorcyclists are noisy just for the sake of being annoying.
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I respect motorcycle riders, but goddamn can the noise be obnoxious.
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If it’s any consolation the straight pipes murder your power in the low/mid rpm range. You know, right where you need it for riding in town.
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Not so much “being annoying” as “being a sociopathically self-centred arse”.
Personally, I can’t stand ultra-loud bikes; they’re obnoxious, distracting and unpleasant to ride near. To me, riding an open piped bike on the road (cruiser or not; race-piped sportsbikes are no better) is just waving a huge “I’m a wanker” flag over your head.
I do like the sound of bikes in general; my old R65LS had a lovely thump-thump to it, and the growl of my current MT-07HO does a fine job of singing in tune with your adrenalin on a twisty road. So I can understand the desire to enhance the sound with a sensible, not-too-loud aftermarket pipe.
But keep the sportsbike racepipes for track days, and the cruiser open pipes for plumbing. Neither belong on the road.
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I agree about the noise. My old bikes are much quieter than any of the new Harleys or Sport Bikes. I have never understood the mentality of being unnecessarily loud. It just seems rude to me.
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I see it all the time. I live in a state where splitting is illegal, and I can be on the highway and see bikes come between cars as if they had no care in the world and were in a hurry that everyone should be watching for them, not the other way around.
I have both a '78 Goldwing (stripped down) as well as a newer Vstrom (1000) and it even makes me wonder if bikers are all idiots because the minute someone mentions that people do this, the apologists come out and say “it doesn’t happen” when if you’ve spent ANY time on the road, you’ll see if.
Personally, I only split if traffic is stopped. And no more than 15 miles an hour. I would support splitting being legal if clear guidelines were defined. I remember back when I spent a lot of time in LA, there were no actual laws supporting nor denying splitting, and California went out of its way to not describe what might be dangerous or illegal – or talking about splitting at all (not illegal, just not supported either).
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Weird, I didn’t realize that lane-splitting is illegal in every state except California, and in California it isn’t legal or illegal, it’s unspecified entirely. Finally, this year, a bill may pass explicitly allowing lane splitting using the guidelines the CHP used to publish up until they were sued by someone who claimed they shouldn’t be setting policy.
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Was it the Hurt Report that specifically stated that by and far, most accidents happened in directions that a loud pipe would NEVER be heard by the person that actually hit them. Something like 60% of fatal accidents came from someone turning left into them and would never have heard them anyways because physics just don’t work that way.
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Yeah, that’s how it was described back in the day. Though I THOUGHT there were other states that OK’d it. I guess not. I really don’t feel safe doing it with the exception is traffic is stopped. My bike overheats if I don’t keep it moving, so I have a motivation to do this. Half the bikers I know – which seems to be ALL the sport riders I know (I’d be happy if all the sport bikes were taken off the road) – seem to think splitting is a god given right no matter how fast they or the others are going. My main bike is stupid fast – but its geared low. I can still get over 100MPH without trying, but it takes a lot longer that my friends seem to get on a regular basis.
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Seems like the time to post this again:
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I am strictly a cager so what do I know. I see lane splitting in NYC traffic (BQE, The Belt, LIE, Grabd Central, etc) regularly and it looks like a death wish. In dead stopped traffic I get it but when it’s moving? Ugh. I cringe.
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That’s good list, and could probably double as advice for new riders. But speaking honestly as a pretty respectful to bikes, and honestly quite jealous driver of a car I feel like there’s often a fair bit of denial and myopia involved in this sort of thing. Like I said all of that is true, good information, and totally in line with what I see from experienced safe riders. A large amount of the distaste and criticism of motorcyclists you hear out of every day people is down to bad riders who resolutely aren’t doing those things. The safe, respectful, skilled rider isn’t necessarily going to stick in your head. But when I’m in bumper to bumper traffic on a major highway and some jerk water on a sport bike lane splits by me going 110. Wearing only flip flops, shorts, and a baseball cap. And honks angrily at me after he’s already passed my drivers side door. That’s going to stick in my head. And its going to piss me off, and is an actual thing that happened to me two weeks ago. Because that shit is god damned stupid. Its dangerous for me and its dangerous for the jerk. I believe you call them squids. So yes please do keep working to inform the general public about what your on about. But also please do keep blaming the squids, and educate and peer pressure them too.
In terms of what I meant by myopia?
"Why don’t motorcycle riders stop directly behind me?
You’ve probably noticed that bikers often stop just to the outside of your rear quarter panel at traffic lights. It might look like they’re about to filter (we’ll get to filtering later) but they don’t move. Why? The motorcyclist has set up an escape path for themselves. Bikers are rear-ended far more often than car drivers: this allows us to watch our mirrors and get out of the way."
That’s fine and I understand why you did that. BUT. Depending on how close you’ve pulled and where exactly you’ve positioned yourself, you just pulled into the most common blind spot on a car. Speaking as a guy who adjusts my mirrors to minimize or eliminate blind spots, and is actively looking for motorcyclists, its pretty hard to see you there. It’s outside my peripheral vision, and towards the edges of the mirrors, if not out of view entirely without turning my head. If traffic is heavy, you’re moving quick, or you just happen to slide up between mirror checks, I likely didn’t see you till you were already there. And contrary to popular complaint. Unless your bike is as loud as your penis is small, I can’t actually hear you all that well. With widows up, in traffic, with the music going, or just in the wind and general ambient noise your bike just blends into the general cacophony of the road. I can likely hear a bike but I may not be able to properly place it. Ultimately its understandable if a bit dumb. The rider is thinking about what they can do to keep themselves safe. But the myopic part is he’s failing to consider what’s going on on the other side. Considering the car almost like a stationary, predictable thing. Its not, there’s a human being controlling that giant lump of mobile steel. The part of that that makes me a bit angry is that those riders know better. 99% percent of them also drive cars. They have direct experience of how that’s a problem spot for four wheel vee-hicles. And yet fail to consider that.
Seriously. Leave a little more space if you can, and make some noise. Honk. Wave. Demonstrate your penis size if that’s your thing. Attract attention. Before you end up in that dead zone. I once had a guy knock on the back of my car (nice dude, had a quick conversation at the next traffic light). I would expect that’d be a great way to start a fight. But the omni-present thank you wave seemed to defuse that for him pretty well. And as I understand it, in most of Europe a quick double beep of the horn serves the same purpose as the American thank you wave. So its like an all purpose solution.
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