Once a month or so I play a music show at a downtown bar that often keeps its windows open to benefit from the ambience of Austin’s happening Sixth Street scene. Inevitably, during a song or two, somebody drives by on a motorcycle that is so loud it can doubtless be heard several blocks away. When that happens, I keep singing and playing although no one — including me — can hear anything I’m doing, because one of my cardinal rules is not to stop once I’ve started a song. But between lyrics, I also tend to grit my teeth and think angrily about the “Loud pipes save lives” slogan that bikers use to justify riding around on such sonically muscular steeds.
So do loud pipes save lives? A lot of people claim they must, based on common sense: If car drivers can hear you, the reasoning goes, they won’t pull out in front of you. Of course, common sense doesn’t counterbalance actual evidence. And we have some actual evidence from the most comprehensive motorcycle safety report done to date. The Hurt Report, released in 1981, found that “street motorcycles with modified exhaust systems were over-represented in crashes.”
It doesn’t sound to me like loud pipes save lives. If they do, then why are bikes with modified exhaust systems over-represented in crash statistics? I can’t think of an explanation that makes sense, unless possibly drivers of loud bikes are also more likely to drive in dangerous situations, or to drive in dangerous manners. So, bikers, if you would put somewhat quieter exhaust systems on your motorcycles, it would be appreciated. And, no matter what your patch may claim, the evidence is that loud pipes don’t save lives.
In fact, to the extent that loud pipes have a causative effect on motorcycle crashes, whatever that may be, it would appear possible that loud pipes actually *take* lives, given that modified exhaust systems are over-represented in crash stats.
That’s not as crazy as it might sound. It’s a documented fact that ambulances with their lights and sirens on are more likely to be involved in crashes than those running without lights and sirens. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, from 1992 to 2011, of the annual average of 1,500 ambulance crashes involving injury, 59 percent occurred while the meat wagons were running in emergency mode — lights and sirens — nearly twice as many as the 34 percent of crashes that happened in non-emergency mode.
So if an ambulance with lights and sirens is more likely to be in a crash, why would loud pipes save lives? You tell me.
Things Everybody Knows 