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Quite, Please
Quite, PleaseAs the weather gets warmer, more motorcycle riders are coming out of hibernation. Motorists need to share the space with bikers, while bikers need to follow the rules of the road and wear helmets and other protective gear that increases their visibility.
In 2008, there were 79 fatal wrecks involving motorcycles in the commonwealth. In the first eight months of 2008, 1,827 motorcycle crashes occurred and 1,678 of the people on them were injured.
It's dangerous out there, so be careful.
Obeying the rules of the road and wearing protective equipment makes a lot of sense. Replacing your factory-made and factory-installed muffler with one that is considerably less muffling makes none.
Loud motorcycles are not any safer than quiet motorcycles.
Testing has convincingly demonstrated that no matter how loud a motorcycle, almost all the noise flows behind it while the vast majority of threats are in front or on the side.
By a huge majority, those bikers who are guilty of fiddling with the equipment ride Harley-Davidsons. The company started putting disclaimers in its ads some years ago, the fine print noting that loud machines on the road didn't leave the factory floor that way.
Obnoxious bikes, apparently, are made, not born.
Over the ensuing years, Harley has become much more adamant in warning its customers that stringent new regulations are coming down the pike if they keep swapping out legal mufflers for what amount to amplifiers. The company's plea has largely fallen on deaf ears, a hazard, perhaps, of riding its equipment.
Other research into urban noise pollution has demonstrated that a single obnoxious biker with an illegal muffler can potentially wake up every sleeping soul within a full square mile. In a major metropolitan area, that's potentially hundreds of thousands of people.
Warm weather each year brings these issues to the forefront, as have a couple of announcements from otherwise fine, community-spirited organizations that they are raising funds though poker runs in the weeks ahead.
Give those organizations a call. Let them know what a terrible idea that is.
Poker runs are not so popular in this part of the world as they are elsewhere. If you are unfamiliar, motorcycle riders pay a fee to join in a joint ride, making five (or seven) stops, collecting a playing card at each and creating a poker hand.
At the end of the ride, the best hand wins part of the pot of registration money, with the remainder going to the host organization.
The more riders there are, the more money in the pot.
The more riders there are, the more dangerous the entire enterprise becomes.
The more riders there are, the more the serenity of an otherwise bucolic Fauquier County afternoon is shattered.
In addition to asking that private citizens voice their displeasure to otherwise upstanding civic groups, we are asking the Sheriff's Office to put a damper on all this burgeoning activity by enforcing speed limits and all the other laws governing bikers' behavior on the highway.
Particularly, we want the Sheriff's Office to put the hammer down on bikers riding with faulty and/or illegal mufflers.
Easily done. According to Noise Free American, federal regulations mandate that any motorcycle muffler sold for street use in the United States, including aftermarket mufflers, bear an EPA label.
The label is there in the first place to ensure that motorcycle mufflers meet the federally mandated noise level of 80 decibels. All deputies have to do is visually examine a motorcycle muffler to determine whether it is legal or not.
We make the request in the knowledge that, until recently, the Sheriff's Office sponsored its own motorcycle in support of Shop with a Cop. Word is, it didn't raise enough money to make the effort worthwhile.
That should be sufficient reason, we hope, that host organizations like the Warrenton-Culpeper Elks, who are planning a poker run on June 27, will find some other less annoying, less dangerous way to raise money.
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