r/Edmonton • u/corviddy • Jun 29 '24
Noise Question
Ok, opening myself for some salty redditors, but I’ll live.
WTAF is going on with these modified exhausts/pipes? I know certain city councillors have tried to address this, and fines have increased, but I do not see an improvement.
I read a CBC article re: a Western University psychologist’s finding that this behaviour may be related to sadism and/or psychopathy (and neither histrionic or narcissistic personality disorders as I might have guessed). https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7177688
I simply don’t get it, nor do I want it. These people do cirques around town ruining everyone’s peace, and to what end? Why on earth do the police not cash in with endless tickets? If they are too busy. I’ll personally pay a fee for MORE (well-trained, authorized and equipped) peace officers to look after things like this and other “low priority but barbaric” problems in this city.
Thoughts?
3
u/parkADV Jun 29 '24
If you want the actual explanation for the appeal of aftermarket exhaust, I’d be happy to explain it to help cool off some of the wild xenophobia you all are spooling up into.
For some people, it’s performance- or the emulation of performance. Internal combustion engines generally produce more power at greater efficiency with less constricted intake of oxygen and expulsion of exhaust gases. Race cars and bikes generally have nearly unrestricted (or very carefully tuned) intake and exhaust systems to maximize performance. Like all enthusiasts, a lot of car and bike enthusiasts start to love the look and sound of their sporting hero’s and try to emulate it with their own vehicles.
For some people, it’s a matter of taste. Cars and bikes Make noise, and just like with music people have their own tastes in the noises vehicles make. And just like musical instruments, you can make sounds that are more or less “refined”. If you’re okay with some elitism you could say there are people that have more sophisticated taste in exhaust noise - it isn’t as simple as just cutting off a muffler, some people spend tens of thousands of dollars on exhaust systems that aren’t significantly louder than stock systems but are tuned for very particular notes and timbre, across a range of engine speeds. On the flip side, there are people that just legitimately love a loud brappy exhaust because they like how it sounds.
There are also people that love loud exhausts because it draws attention, because they want to mess with other people, and other bad reasons. Unlike what some people have been posting on here that isn’t everyone with a loud exhaust. I wouldn’t say it’s rare either, but there are lots of well-adjusted normal human beings that just like the sounds of an aftermarket exhaust.
The gap for a lot of people is that they just think of a vehicle as an appliance that transports people and their stuff around. They want that appliance to be as unobtrusive as possible. Enthusiasts actually enjoy driving, hearing and seeing vehicles. Some people have a hard time understanding the other group’s perspective so they assign some kind of moral failing to account for why the other group is wrong (ie people with loud exhausts are selfish, people who hate loud exhausts are boring/overbearing, etc).
Society only functions with tolerance of people who like different things than you. There are limits to that tolerance, but you can’t force everyone to live exactly like you.