Loud Pipes under attack

[afgunner]

I sat in on a city council meeting the other day for personal reasons...

There was a proposal put before the council to start ticketing motorcycles with loud pipes as they are offensive to good image of our city. They had a detailed list of testing methods and standards and it all came down to a judgement call on the part of the police officer. The premise is that if the officer can hear the bikes exhaust for more that 100 feet, under normal conditions, they could initiate a stop and check for baffles in the pipes. If there are no baffles, automatic ticket as it fails a standard Texas motorcycle safety inspection. If there are baffles, they would use a Db meter to measure the sound of the pipes at three feet from the end of the pipe at 1000 Rpm and issue a ticket with the amount of the fine dependent on the level of the reading. During the stop the officer could also issue tickets for additional safety violations such as having too tall of "ape hanger" bars, no signal lights on a bike that was originally equipped with them, lack of a working front brake, etc.

I asked to and was permitted to address the council and suggested we all step outside for a little demonstration. They agreed (small town) and I asked a PO to mark off 100 feet in the parking lot. I pulled my bike to one end of the marked off area and had the council stand at the other. I asked them if they could hear my exhaust at that distance and all agreed that they could hear it clearly. I pointed out that my Nomad had stock OEM pipes with no modifications, so under the proposal pretty much every motorcycle on the road would be open to receive a ticket.

We all went back inside to continue discussions and it turns out the council member just built a new $250K+ house within three blocks of an MC's clubhouse and wants to force them to move to improve the property values. They also feel that as our town is now on the map for temporary residents from northern climes, we should improve our image by reducing the number of motorcycles in the city. Everyone knows that motorcycles are nothing but trouble and their riders don't contribute to the local economy to any real degree. I was very happy to point out that approximately 50% of those temporary residents that they were speaking of rode motorcycles and that if we make it tough on the bikes, they will probably go somewhere else to stay the winter.

This is the kind of stupid things that happen if we don't pay attention. If someone hadn't spoken up this could have become a city ordinance with very little trouble.