Motorcyclists face fury from annoyed public
Many people want to ban bikes, mostly because of the noise, David Booth writes.
A spate of articles from around the globe attacking motorcyclists has me on the brink of paranoia. To be more specific, said reports are calling for — or celebrating — the limiting, testing and, in the most egregious of cases, the outright banning of motorcycles from certain areas. Ostensibly, the reason given is noise. More precisely, loud exhaust systems.
Now, I know what a lot of you, especially the non-motorcyclists reading this, are thinking: Good riddance to bad rubbish.
And I agree with you. I’m on record as loving the sound of internal-combustion engines. A Ferrari 458 at full-chat or a nicely muffled Ducati is as close as I’ll ever get to appreciating Beethoven. Still, even as a diehard motorcyclist, straight-pipe Harleys and open-exhaust bikes at 4 a.m. tick me off as much as they would any other suburbanite.
Now, it’s hardly news that various provinces and cities have taken actions against loud motorcycles. A number of cities in Quebec have banned motorcycles from their downtown cores, some provinces have made loud exhausts an automatic fine (rather than the “fix it” admonishment normally written up), and Toronto Mayor John Tory recently decried excess noise as being “all in the apparent cause of feeding the egos of inconsiderate people.” Meanwhile, numerous major newspapers, including Postmedia’s National Post, have called for stricter rules or outright bans of bikes.
But that’s not what scares me. North Americans, perhaps because they watched The Wild One too many times, have always been a bit puritanical when it comes to bikers. What I find truly frightening is that traditionally motorcycle-friendly Europe has turned up the heat on bikers. Austria has recently introduced Draconian sound testing, and according to Motorcycle News, the tests are so strict many stock exhaust systems fail to pass muster. Even worse, the focus of the effort is in the Tyrol and only targets loud motorcycles, not loud cars, an especially egregious focus since the district is one of the prime summer destinations for vacationing bikers.
Germany and the Netherlands, meanwhile, bar motorcycles from certain areas at certain times, while France has set up “noise cameras” specifically targeting bikers. In the U.K., another hub for motorcycling, many British bikers are facing the possibility of local bans.
The motorcycle industry typically counters the uproar by explaining that stock motorcycles are as exhaustively noise-tested as cars, and that the problem is always aftermarket modifications. But at least a portion of the general public is seemingly concluding that since the motorcycle industry can’t police itself, then perhaps the only solution if to just ban motorcycles altogether.
What makes this issue even worse is that a subset of activists actually want to ban private vehicle ownership altogether. Whether it’s traffic congestion, the injury statistics associated with poorly driven cars, or simply an irrational hatred of all things automobile, the voices calling for reducing, even eliminating, private transportation are growing stronger.
What these advocates seem to hate most is the recreational use of vehicles. You know, the good old-fashioned road trip or visiting mom at Christmas. As an avid motorcyclist, what I find most frightening is that pretty much all of North American motorcycling is recreational. That’s why I think bikers themselves need to take responsibility.