235513 Resource 106835 108325 108325 1246312548133 1246312548133 Controlled Motorcycle Sound Test

SAE Test a Likely New Standard for Noise

If there are two things that non-riders agree on, it is that they dislike motorcycles because of 1)  Loud exhausts, and 2)  Lane splitting, particularly with high speed differences between the motorcycles and the cars. I know the argument about "loud pipes save lives", but those loud pipes come at a huge cost in public relations. Does this make a big difference?  Probably not.  I expect the new standard to be considered whenever legislatures discuss noise standards for motorcycles.  It seems reasonable that the new standard will influence legislation. But it seems most probable that enforcement will continue to be discriminatory, and that authorities will use loud pipes for leverage against riders that they want to ticket or stop for some other reason. Still, it is interesting that such a large organization would come up with a noise standard for road bikes.  Over time, it may focus the loud exhaust argument on the question of "how loud is loud?" 10 application/xml false Loud exhaust loud pipes save lives motorcycle noise road bike noise standard SAE Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.11) Gecko/2009060215 Firefox/3.0.11 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 mpadway 12.238.241.77 false true false false true 201650 false false true false false false true 106835 blog blogsite/MichaelPadway/web