Noisy "exhaust system" for kids' bikes

Turbospoke is a fake noisy exhaust system for your bicycle, a commercial update to sticking hockey cards through your spokes. It uses one of three different cards (each makes a different sound) coupled to an "exhaust pipe" that acts as an amplifier. I have to say that nothing makes me want to string a throat-level monofilament across the road more than the jerks who drive the streets of London with their bikes tuned to deafening levels, but I have to admit that I'd have enjoyed this no end when I was six years old (which is a commentary on the emotional maturity of the attention-starved look-at-me bikers with their dumbass "straight pipes save lives" bikes).

Turbospoke (via Red Ferret)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Camp Freddie

The idiots on scooters are the worst. There was some pizza guy in my old neighbourhood that had modded his exhaust pipe. Every 5 minutes from 6-12 pm, you’d get this horrid 2-stroke whine than echoed down the road from a mile away.

It stopped after a couple of months. I like to think a monofilament wire was involved, but the pizza place probably just fired him.
soongtype

Yeah, because traveling under your own power is TOTALLY LAME! If you want to be cool you need a vehicle that’s loud and destroys the environment. Good lesson for kids.
- robulus
  
  You’ll be wanting get your kids the “PriusSpoke” instead. It doesn’t emit any noise, just a general air of self-righteous indignation at all the other bikes.
MrsBug

I have to say that when my husband and become Dictators for Life, the first thing to go will be Harleys with those loud exhausts. HATE!!
Ronald Pottol

From a BMW rider I knew who rode with Harley people some times, the only benefit he found to loud pipes what that they tend to spook the deer so they run off before you get close (vs the motion of your vehicle doing it, so they jump in front of you and you hit them).

For traffic, one of those day glow yellow Aerostich are the way to go, plus, when you are off the bike, people think you are a fireman.
bkad

Yeah, because traveling under your own power is TOTALLY LAME! If you want to be cool you need a vehicle that’s loud and destroys the environment. Good lesson for kids.

Selling this toy didn’t teach kids that. They figured it out all on their own! :-)
Csteph

“nothing makes me want to string a throat-level monofilament across the road more than the jerks who drive the streets of London with their bikes tuned to deafening levels”

For shame!

You just lost my respect Mr Doctorow. Not that you care I’m sure. Perhaps you should spend some time riding a motorcycle before you start advocating an action which would kill us.
Anonymous

I find it ironic that many of the guys I see with obnoxiously loud pipes wear those little “beanie cap” helmets which will only protect you if you somehow manage to land on top of your head.

Another thing about loud pipes: you can’t hear any other vehicle around you. In fact, after a while you can’t hear anything at all.
mdh

“straight pipes save lives”

they do, but don’t they just make you wish they didn’t?

straight pipes save the lives of bullet headed noise polluters.
- Xuth
  
  The problem with the logic of straight/loud pipes save lives is that by that same logic, the horn on all small cars should be wired into the on position. We could go further to say that all vehicles should have a very loud noise maker attached. And have big flashing lights and then sirens… and…
  - Anonymous
    
    This truly is an issue with electric cars. There are concerns that pedestrians & cyclists are unable to hear them and will walk/ride into the path of an oncoming vehicle. There are discussions concerning the type of “noise” an electric car should emit. Maybe going back to spoked wheels on cars and strapping on a couple cards is an inexpensive solution…okay maybe not.
    - hohum
      
      Huh, what? Sounds more like an issue with pedestrians not paying attention to what they’re doing. Note that I don’t drive an electric car, and I am a pedestrian the vast majority of the time. If I walk in front of a silent car, pretty sure that one’s on me. If I walk in front of a silent, invisible car, I guess that’s a different story.
    - Michael Smith
      
      This truly is an issue with electric cars. There are concerns that pedestrians & cyclists are unable to hear them and will walk/ride into the path of an oncoming vehicle. There are discussions concerning the type of “noise” an electric car should emit. Maybe going back to spoked wheels on cars and strapping on a couple cards is an inexpensive solution…okay maybe not.
      
      Bicycle commuter here. Sound levels are relative. I listen for tyre noise. On most cars these days engine noise is a lot harder to hear. Once petrol engines are gone, noise makers on electric vehicles will seem redundant.
  - Anonymous
    
    Loud exhausts don’t save anyone. Since they project backwards I don’t hear them when driving until they have gone just past me, far too late to stop me from changing lanes into them. All they do is make life miserable for people who have to live near the noise which is the real reason these attention whores use them.
- nexusheli
  
  If the average a-hole behind the controls of the 4-wheeled 2-ton chunk of metal with a bluetooth in their ear, a burger in their left hand and waving their right hand at the unbuckled children in the back were to pay more attention to actually “driving”…
  
  When the average driver finally realizes that what they’re doing is a privilege and not a right we might get to the point where joggers, cyclists and motorcyclists won’t feel the need to wear reflective jackets just for drivers to notice them.
- Anonymous
  
  Loud straight pipes actually saved my life.
  
  Late one night, I was sitting on my idling Harley at a red light, waiting for it to change (motorcycles are often a challenge for embedded eddy current sensors). A car appeared in my mirrors, quickly closing. I stomped several times on the rear brake to no avail, it was clear he didn’t see me and was going to run the light. A couple twists of the throttle blasted the driver back to awareness, he screeched to a stop scant inches from me. Had I not lived, I would have not been able to purchase all those wonderful books by Cory Doctorow!
  - Anonymous
    
    Kudo’s for seeing this moron and being aware of your environment. Points subtracted for not moving and relying on exhaust noise to save your life.
Bob Stanley

There was a very similar product in the 1960′s.
Anonymous

If straight pipes save lives, some of those bikers are trying to save the whole damn neighborhood!
Steve Gula

I always used a soda can. Just run it over with the front tire and it will get stuck onto the tire and run up against the fork. Sounded just like a real motorbike at the time.
Anonymous

They do save lives, and if you ever rode a motorcycle for any length of time without them you’d find out why.
- Anonymous
  
  Well, having driven an ambulance for many years, I can tell you that they don’t have all that much effect.
  I’ve driven up behind cars with the siren going (deafening to those on the side of the street–and remember–the speaker is facing forward) and have the cars completely ignore me. The can’t hear outside noises with their stereo going and kids fighting, etc.
  Bike pipes fact to the rear–causing most of the noise to go to the rear and sides.
  Oh, yeah–and I’ve ridden fairly quiet bikes for over 50 years, so I think I have a bit of experience.
- Anonymous
  
  If Loud Pipes saves lives, imagine what learning to ride that thing might do.
mn_camera

There’s a bumper sticker popular in the US that reads: Start seeing motorcycles, to which I’ve always wanted respond thus:

When hearing them from two blocks away isn’t quite enough…
oschene

We used baseball cards and clothespins. (And wore an onion on our belts, which was the style at the time.)
- Anonymous
  
  They didn’t have any white onions, because of the war; the only thing you can get was those big yellow ones…
AirPillo

If the point of making all that noise on a motorcycle is because you only drive it in busy traffic and need to be heard, then I suppose one wouldn’t mind being banned from residential streets after dusk.

I hear a harley going down my street at 1am and the only thing I can think is that someone has to be pretty severely impacted by middle age when spending thousands of dollars on a bike tuned to be noisy and feel (but not actually be) powerful is more effective than buying little blue pills.
holtt

Irrespective of whether you like straight pipes or not, riding a motorcycle (or bicycle) is an inherently dangerous thing, because people often just do not see you. People pull out in front of you, turn in front of you, and do numerous other things because it just doesn’t register in their brains that you are there. It’s not just 2 wheel vehicles as it happens to me very often in my MG Midget.

My personal theory of straight pipes, leaf blowers and jet skis is that they are the most obnoxious thing in the world that should be banned, until you yourself are in control of one. Then they transform into the coolest thing ever.
- discontinuuity
  
  I think it was Eddie Rickenbacker who said that “anything that moves is dangerous.”
  
  I’ve been hit once while riding a bike. I don’t think being louder would’ve helped much. I blame modern luxury cars with their double-thick sound insulation and big blind spots (not to mention distracted drivers) more for collisions with bikes than quiet bikes.
Anonymous

I did the baseball card in the spokes thing as a kid in the 60′s, but I got one of these Turbospokes for my kids a few years ago, and it was well received and fun for all of us! I wouldn’t be surprised if I had first heard about it on BoingBoing years ago.
Anonymous

Aww, Hockey cards. How sweet. It’s those little things that remind us you’re from Canadia Cory. I bet you stuck your hockey cards into your fork whilst walking on the pavement then cycled along the dual carriageway next to a lorry and after a fortnight the cards had all worn through.
- Flashman
  
  One wonders, given the profound affect that living a few years in Blighty has had on Mr Doctorow’s vocabulary, that he didn’t recall them as Top Trumps.
gravytop

For some reason I thought the throat-level monofilament revenge fantasy was a product of my own invention — in my case it was a response to the Harley riders who congregated at the tattoo parlor one block away from me, and used the few hundred yards of straightaway that my street provided to reach potentially decapitating velocity. It’s a little disappointing to find that even the way I sublimate my impotent rage lacks originality.
- Jason Rizos
  
  FWIW, Simpsons Did It. S9, E9, 1997: “Reality Bites.”
  - gravytop
    
    no kidding. thx.
PaulR

Years ago, I used to be the in-house tech-support dude for a photo lab. I spent some time and effort modifying the equipment to make it run better, more reliably, etc…

I had made the ‘dip and dunk’ film processors there run very, very smoothly and quietly.

The technicians who developed the film then came to me and asked if I could install some sort of device so that the machine made a some noise when the hanger/lifter bar would cycle, every three minutes or so. (To load the film, the technicians had to work in total darkness and they had ca-a-a-r-r-refully feel the equipment to ‘see’ if it was ok to load another ‘rack’.) They said that the processor ran so quietly now that in the dark, they couldn’t tell when it was cycling.

“Well,” I said, “I could attach an empty pack of cigarettes to the machine’s chain with clothespins so that it would thwack-thwack-thwack when the chain was running, just like kids do with their bicycles.” (…Y’know, so the wheels’ spokes hit the cardboard as they turn.)

/They thought I was serious…

//I came up with another, more elegant, solution, I can’t remember what it was, though.

//The point is, you can get this sound effect for free, no?
Anonymous

As much as I love peace and quiet, straight pipes do save lives. Car drivers don’t pay enough attention in general and especially when it comes to motorcycles. If it takes an obnoxiously loud engine to get you to hang up your cell phone and look before you change lanes, so be it. I had a quiet bike until the accident. Now I have straight pipes and only 90% range of motion in my right arm.
Anonymous

As someone with migraines, I really wish the noisy exhausts would be illegalized. I’ll be feeling perfectly fine and then the idiots that live on my street will start revving their bikes up, riding up and down the block (not even going somewhere, just trying to show off) and BAM -my head hurts so bad that I have to lay in bed for a few hours.
If they inconvenienced people with any other disability this seriously, the law would have been changed already, but too many people still think migraines aren’t actually disabling.
Anonymous

Hockey cards, eh?
Parvenu

Remember “Moto Horn”? The bee’s knees when I was a kid!
Anonymous

Ha we used empty plastic drink cartons stuck in the frame so they struck the wheel as it spun for a similar noise effect back when I was young (mind that was only 10 years ago, at the creative age of 10 before secondary school had a chance to strip that away from me)
NorhillJohn

I ride a motorcycle but i guess I’m some kind of freak; when I lived on the upper floor of a duplex, if I rode home late at night I’d cut the engine and coast up the drive to avoid bothering the 1st floor tenants as I passed their window.

Loud is stupid. Now, I do love the throaty tone of my current ride, but it’s not loud; it just sounds great.

I notice here in Texas, where there’s no rules about helmets, that the loud pipes gang is also typically the no-helmet gang, so I doubt there’s really much thought about “saving lives” going on when exhaust choices are made.

That said: I’ve never heard a motorcycle as annoying as someone’s Kia with a major subwoofer rattling my windows from two blocks away.
- AirPillo
  
  I’ve heard worse than that, actually.
  
  There are a half dozen people in my neighborhood who have modified the exhaust on their two-stroke power scooters to come in at something like 80 decibels.
  
  That isn’t an exaggeration either, they’re audible from inside of a home when they’re half a mile away.
  
  They tend to ride together, too, and ride around all day… so everyone in the area gets to hear a high-pitched chorus that sounds like bumblebees broadcast on the sound system for a rock concert and lasts for several minutes because despite all that noise they only go about 15mph and take forever to pass out of the huge range they’re audible from.
Anonymous

The Turbospoke is pretty clever, better than the battery powered ones of my childhood. It would be interesting of one could tune the resonating chamber to get a different “exhaust note”, the same way one might tune a speaker cabinet or a musical instrument. The different sound cards don’t appear to really address that exact issue. As is, it sounds more like a small displacement 2 stroke scooter than a motorcycle.
bcsizemo

People find straight pipes offensive? Seriously? I’d rather be deafened by some guy on a Harley than a ricer with a fart can.

At least motorcycles are just annoying and don’t make me want to claw out my ears with broken glass.

Oh and if you think leaf blowers and jet skis are bad, you should be around a muffler modded chainsaw…mines only mildly done and it’s deafening without ear protection (and I mean literally).
- imag
  
  Harleys are especially stupid because they make so much noise while making so little horsepower…
  
  And because most of the people who rev them really are like small children. They always look kind of sad to me, thinking that people really want to look at them because they can turn a grip on an overpriced pile of crap.
  
  The Harley riders I know think they are really independent while they ride on roads paid for by the tax dollars of the rest of us. One former coworker constantly complains about how The System is out to screw him – while collecting the unemployment benefits which keep him alive.
  
  Harley is the DeBeers of motorcycles – and people seem to fall for it hook, line, and sinker, buying logos to prove their resistance to The Man.
holtt

Oo yes, add chainsaws to the list. Annoying when the neighbor’s doing it, a ton of fun if you are.
Anonymous

The truth of it is that straight/loud pipes CAN save lives – in conjunction with proper riding, safety gear, etc. The problem is that pedestrians and other drivers do EVERYTHING in their power to not see you. There’s something about the profile of a two-wheeled vehicle that makes you damn near invisible, even when people are staring straight at you. Sometimes horns don’t cut it – and they’re useless for the things incoming the you can’t see, as well. By circumstance I’ve ended up with a bike with loud pipes – the first thing I did was install baffles to quiet it down. I’m usually out late and I live in a residential neighborhood, no need to be an ass. Even with the baffles, if I’m in town I usually ride in such a way as to keep the engine quieter.

However, even I’ve had to come over to the Loud Pipes side after many incidents where small and large accidents were avoided purely by my being able to maintain the noise profile of a large vehicle. Pedestrians who ignore horns, drivers who come right at you at stop lights at night (despite your visible-for-a-mile reflective armored gear). We live in a horn filled world, and more and more, I find that nobody listens to your horn – they will listen to something that sounds like a much louder vehicle.

Now, yeah, loud pipes push the sound back and to the sides and so are only useful in certain circumstances – and they can be terrible noise issues if not used respectfully – but when the only thing that has saved your life from getting knocked off the road by someone on the cell in their SUV, you realize that loud pipes can and do sometimes have an impact on safety. And some people just like them because they’re loud.

If pedestrians and drivers were more aware of their surroundings, then the conversation would be moot.
peterbruells

Okay, I tried google, but all I found was pictures of half-naked woman posed on bikes. (So the time I sepnd was only half wasted.)

What’s the idea behind “straight pipes save lives”?
- holtt
  
  peter, I assume the idea is that if a really loud motorcycle is near you as a driver, you’ll notice it. If it’s quiet, you’ll not be as likely to see it and thus more likely to be in an accident with it.
CastanhasDoPara

First off, I know a fair number of bikers, ones that actually know how to take apart and rebuild their machines without a manual which suggests to me that they know what the hell they are talking about. None of them think that straight/loud pipes save lives. What they do think saves lives is paying attention and always wearing safety gear. Furthermore, it has been said by a person in this group that “the dipshits that think their loud as f#@& bike is saving their life just hasn’t been on the road long enough. Eventually, every rider has some sort of accident.” What I take from that is that if you know how to ride and don’t put your safety in other people’s hands then you are miles ahead of the pack. Also the jerks that want the loudest sound from their machine are the ones that ride the least, have the smallest dicks, and or have no business being on the street in the first place.

On a personal note, F a bunch of “loud pipes”, for all the good it’s going to do you you might as well cram them up you a$$.
chillitom

Is it just me or does the voice-over sound like an English guy trying to do an American voice-over voice?
- Anonymous
  
  @chilitom I think the voice over guy is Irish. Unlike some of their neighbors one island away, Irish actually pronounce their R’s.
- Anonymous
  
  It’s an Irish accent (we don’t all sound like that though). Digging into the turbospoke website, the company is based in Co. Waterford, Ireland.
Anonymous

I love the graphic in the corner of the box that says, “CAUTION: This product is Awesome”

but I resent the idea that bicycles are motorcycles for kids. this product reinforces the idea that bikes are for kids and when you grow up you’re supposed to graduate to a motorized machine.

Why don’t they sell motorcycles with baskets on the handle bars that go much more slowly and produce a soft, pleasant clicking sound when they coast. That would be much nicer.
Bob Stanley

How about a rake with a leaf blower sound effect?
- holtt
  
  How about a bumper sticker that says “Give ‘em a rake” :)
Anonymous

Nothing speaks better of maturity than accusing someone else of childish behavior. Discuss.
Anonymous

Helmets save lives too, but are rarely seen on straight-pipe bikes…

As a long-time motorcycle commuter, I have noticed that being seen, heard, and maybe even smelled isn’t enough to protect you from the idiots out there.
technogeek

Youse youngsters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC0dK42wOOA
Anonymous

“straight pipes save lives” – so do full-face helmets.
gwailo_joe

You know, I believe South Park did an expose about this sort of thing but, well, I don’t think I’ll give the title here actually. . .needless to say handled with the tact and taste SP is known for.

Still and all: I’m not immune to the pleasures of the sound of an internal combustion engine: a burbling glass pack on an old American muscle car is music to my ears: but straight pipe bikes are just Too Loud.

Loud is OK. But DEAFENINGLY SCREAMING POINTLESS NOISE to get to the next stoplight 300 feet away. . .is just annoying.
- PaulR
  
  Best comment on the video:
  “We used baseball cards. Baseball cards that are now worth thousands of dollars.ï»¿ Oh well.”
betatron

Mattell did it. the V-Room. Had one on my bike in 19…65. Yes, it was very cool.
- Anonymous
  
  I remember the V-Room, but the one we all coveted was “The Sound of Power…
  by Marx”. It looked like a motorcycle engine and used batteries to produce the
  sound. I still quote that line from the TV commercial, complete with significant
  pause, whenever I’m in the car with my kids, step on the gas, and hear anything
  but the sound of power.
Vengefultacos

That said, when I was a kid back in the 70′s, we not only had cards in the spokes, but also there was some you you could clamp to your handlebars that had its own handgrip. When you twisted the handgrip, it made a vroom vroom sound using some sort of mechanical noisemaker. It was pretty lame in retrospect, and probably wouldn’t pass muster since it interfered with using the handlebars. But it saved us from having to make our own “vroom! vroom! waaaaaaaaash waaaAAAAAAAH!” sounds.

Has anyone actually proven the “straight pipes saves lives” maxim through actual studies? I’m willing to bet not.

My major issue with the concept is, your straight pipes are projecting sound *behind you*, which really isn’t the place you need the sound to be to warn drivers you’re coming. I suspect most accidents with bikes involve drivers pulling out in front of, side swiping, or cutting off motorcyclists.

And that said, I find it pretty amusing that bikers feel the need to make so much noise for their own safety, while bicyclists and scooter riders who also ride in traffic don’t. Meaning big bad burly bikers are more risk averse than fixie riding hipsters and and eco-conscious hippie girls.
- Anonymous
  
  That might have been the Sound of Power, from Marx Toys. It was a battery-powered simulated motor one mounted in the bicycle frame, and which featured a retrofit twist-grip “throttle”. I sure wanted one as a kid.
Mark Temporis

Yeah, MAYBE bikers have a right to be heard by other drivers. They DO NOT have the right to be heard by me when I’m WATCHING TV IN MY EIGHTH STORY APARTMENT at a level that I have to pause the TV, clap my hands over my ears and possibly lock myself in the bathroom.

I really can’t stand loud noise. Which is strange, as I’m actually a HUGE heavy metal fan. Which I listen to at moderate volume.
Egypt Urnash

a: bikers need to be noticed by car drivers – they are more likely to do “surprising” things due to their maneuverability, and they are totally fucked in a collision.

b: they may need to be noticed on a much longer range than motorists, due to tricks like lane-splitting!

c: on a quieter street, the safety need to be noticed is far less.

in a perfect world, the motorcycles would be equipped with some sort of device that would automatically lower the noise footprint based on ambient noise, and possibly a power plant that makes much less noise than the motorcycle!

but sometimes you just want to go faaaaast and fuck all those other considerations.
ROSSINDETROIT

I’ve been a motorcyclist for 30 years. If I thought I couldn’t get the attention of one distracted driver without harassing 100 innocent people with annoying racket I’d go ride somewhere else.
holtt

Egypt Urnash – Have either of you spent much time on a motorcycle, bicycle, or other vehicle that’s not like most? Have you ever experienced a driver pulling out in front of you or turning in front of you as if you were not there? When you’re going down your lane making no surprising moves, lane changes or other actions? It happens – a lot.
KWillets

If they’re serious, bikers can get those beeper warning things that buses have. They’re higher frequency and easier to locate.
Anonymous

I ride, and I dont like overly loud pipes. If I’m rolling in in the wee hours, I cruise in low and slow. I cant say the same for the kid down the block that’s rattle dishes off the counter with his subs. I’ve almost been run down twice while wearing a dayglow orange rain suit.. Would the cagers kindly start paying attention? I saw a mom and her daughter almost hit by a twit on their cell trying to beat fresh light traffic, on a left turn.

Also what about the ricers with the exhausts that could deep throat a whale’s doink?
ROSSINDETROIT

The problem with loud pipes for conspicuity is that it’s a broad solution directed the wrong way. Noise is emitted primarily toward the people you’re right in front of, who pose the least risk. To say nothing of the uninvolved within earshot who pose no risk at all.
GlenBlank

Some electric-car drivers have been adding noisemakers to their cars (and manufacturers have been testing fake ‘engine-noise’ generators, and legislators are mulling the wisdom of mandating such devices) because the cars are so quiet that pedestrians don’t hear them coming, and so do things like stepping off a curb directly in front of them without looking.

Even with my very quiet little gas-engine Toyota, I sometimes have to pop into neutral and rev the engine a bit to get oblivious pedestrians lost in conversation with their friends or their cell phones to notice that there’s a 2000-pound hunk of steel bearing down on them. (I figure that’s more polite than honking at them.)

When a fast(er)-moving object is too quiet, people don’t ‘see’ it, because they aren’t cued to look for it by the noise it makes.

And the threshold for ‘too quiet’ depends on how insulated the people are – car drivers with rolled-up windows, air conditioning on, radio blaring, can be deeply oblivious.

There’s certainly such a thing as “unnecessarily loud” (and, as one of the hottest biker chicks I’ve ever known always said, “the louder the pipes, the smaller the dick”), but a quiet bike among cars is a risky ride.
RoadTransport

On our motorways I sometimes see the exhortation:
“Think Bike.
Think Biker.”
…to which I always mentally add:
“Think Bikest.”
Charliem76

The gist of the comments that I’m getting is that people are being oblivious when they ought be paying attention. The pedestrians that are otherwise distracted on their phones are stepping out in front of the luxo-barges with soundproofing so thick that the drivers couldn’t hear emergency vehicles over their filling-loosening subwoofers.

Let’s kill two birds with one stone, shall we? As stated in an opinion article about the Prius mishaps, get rid of automatic transmissions. Force drivers to DRIVE, and maybe pay attention once in a while.

On the contrapositive, let’s force all cars to have installed a proximity device on the dash that lights up in the presence of a vehicle that has a corresponding transponder. Anything smaller than a Honda Fit should carry said transponder.

…

I thought I was being constructive with that idea. The longer I sat with it, the more I hated it, cause it’s just one more device that lets people not pay real attention while they’re driving.

My REAL thought is that safety features should protect both those inside and outside the vehicle. Structural integrity is great, by when it accomplished by blind spots the size of a bus, you’re just passing the danger off to the guy next to you in the MGB that you didn’t see and attempted to merge into. Grill guard owners, thank you for undoing all the engineering that went into the crumple zones on you F150. Way to transfer all that kinetic energy into the little Subaru forester stopped at the light cause you thought 4 wheel drive meant you could drive like normal on icy roads.
Anonymous

Hockey cards? In our neck of the woods, back in those days, we had baseball cards. I’m pretty sure I destroyed my ’65 Sandy Koufax card that way.
gerg

I have a stock exhaust on my bike, if I’m lane splitting (filtering), then I usually keep it in a low gear so that as well as being more manoeuvrable, I’m also louder and it’ll help reduce the risk of a car driver turning without looking.

I can understand how some bikes (Usually Hardley’s), can be way too loud, and it doesn’t help they sound like tractors.

Ride a bike though, and before too long you’ll start to appreciate the different sounds, like that of a v-twin or the inline-4 howl. For my bike I’ve been thinking about changing exhaust, not really to make it louder, but because I want to improve the sound.

There’s almost an emotional bond with your bike, that non-bikers may find hard to understand. I think as somebody once put it “everything else is just transportation”.

As a biker you have to use every means possible to reduce your risks, in an accident you’ll always come out worst off.
dee

“Is it just me or does the voice-over sound like an English guy trying to do an American voice-over voice?”

To me he sounds like an Irish person trying to speak normally.
Antinous / Moderator

I keep myself and others safe when I drive by honking my car horn every three seconds. I haven’t had an accident yet, and the bullet in my neck doesn’t bother me at all.
Anonymous

Coming from a guy that was almost killed by a *cough* lady turning into a dual-carriageway without looking where she was going … an extremely loud noise might have just been enough to pull her face out of her arse and pay attention.

However I hate street noise – so I’m torn on this one.
hostile17

Yet still not as funny and stupid as teenagers adding stupid, huge, loud exhuasts to crap, tiny Ford Fiestas etc.
Anonymous

If you think loud pipes save lives, you’re doing it wrong.

Oddly enough, all motorcycles come equipped with an electronic noise maker that can be turned on when extra attention is required. It’s called a “horn”. Some rebels replace the stock horns (stock horns on some bikes are called “meepers” for good reason) with HORNS. My bike has horns that produce a tone which pushes a button deep in the human hindbrain labeled “1970 Buick Electra 225; probably rusty… with bad brakes”.
skeptacally

i didn’t notice the strangeness of the “hockey card” comment. i guess that it IS a uniquely canadian thing, eh?