Every year residents report being disturbed by motorcycles with excessively loud exhausts, the unnecessary racing of engines, and acceleration. This noise can often be heard inside homes even with the windows closed.
While living in an urban area means there will be more noise from vehicles and traffic, the kind of noise generated by some motorcycle drivers can be prevented and is illegal.
All motorcycles registered in Maine must display an inspection sticker on the license plate. This serves as an indicator of compliance with State inspection standards, meaning the exhaust was within noise limits when inspected.
As warmer weather has arrived and motorcycles are present on our roadways again, the Portland Police Department will be prioritizing loud exhausts, unnecessary revving and racing. Owners should get motorcycles inspected and ensure the exhaust is legal.
Loud motorcycles and those without a current inspection sticker can expect to be stopped and cited.
3 Comments
gerry
Hate speech. Pure and simple. Hate crimes against protected people are serious. Unified traffic codes are failed to be voluntarily complied to, by all people operating different traffic types. Your public letter represents a hate incident against specific people institutionally protected to operate highway motorcycles on a public way. You give false evidence to create a narrative for your own biased and prejudicial reasons.
Now let’s brake down where you are wrong.
People who may make a complaint to authorities, that this type of sound energy source is unwanted, may be listening to a NASCAR race on a cranked up TV, with a volume placing higher sound pressure energy into their ears, then any consistent traffic types from a known identifiable source. Of course public safety officials receive noise complaints. A complaint is not evidence that something was likely to of happened, by an preponderance of the evidence, a burden of proof, “We The People”, have institutionalized.
People don’t drive motorcycles, they ride them. Do you drive a horse, a bicycle?
A Motorcycle, is a low-noise-exhaust-emission regulated product, legally entered into U.S. commerce, from which federal law is enforced upon any wholesaler or dealership to tamper with the applicable noise controls before this product is sold to a highway using customer. The state statutes mirror the federal law’s tampering provisions, that where presumed tampering with a noise control is not tampering when it may be “shown” that the result of any changes continue the product to meet or exceed the epa by-pass test standard or the standard volume has not been raised. Owners, riding these altered or modified products on public way, are not automatically classified by authorities to be outside traffic codifications. Riders of these products, that have a current valid license, registration, proof of insurance, and display a current valid inspection sticker, are operating within all applicable laws, even if the manufacturer’s noise controls (under federal law) are missing, altered, modified, remove, or rendered inactive. A state defendant must not prove any burden of proof that the questionable noise control configuration is likely to be in violation of either subsection 1) Muffler Required, or subsection 3)Amplification Prohibited, or Title 29a section 1912. There is no scientific sound level test required for any official to place court evidence. Any type of test can be ordered by any official to ascertain the legality of the controls, but no objective test is needed to call a defendant to court.
The sticker label is not an automatic indicator of any applicable federal compliance or state compliance while this product is operated on a public way. This is why Maine has first a MMVIM guideline, and second a 1912 general muffler regulation for people found on a public way. Any motorcycle operator, who has been granted a sticker label, may be found in violation of a Class E violation of altering the state of the sticker, when a noise control modification is made. Because all unsold dealership products, must have a current valid inspection sticker before a sale is concluded, owners are prohibited from making any legal changes, but these specific laws are not well enforced. The sticker label does not indicate any proper noise control configuration by any objective measuring criteria.
The exhaust is not what makes these product’s noise controls street legal. The EPA Administrator was very careful to remind all, that their agency does not certified motorcycle exhaust systems. They do not test exhaust pipes, or regulate the performance characteristics of these individual devices, for original OEM applications, or for after-market. The agency regulates the procedures and certifies the testing methods the manufacturers must undertake within applicable law. The law allows these products to be made super quiet and to be found with total sound levels so low, that owners may modify any constituent component of an overall noise control to not be found to of violated the maximum noise levels.
Lastly. All highway motorcycles are noise controlled to allow noise higher then any car or light truck. Highway motorcycles are heard over other types of vehicles inside a traffic soundscape. These noises represent the nature of a product that does not have room for long exhaust system plumbing, and metal hidden engine compartments. Highway motorcycles make noise. Higher rpm, comparably smaller engine displacements, then car or trucks, make more noise when the engines are spinning higher. Twin cylinder engines, with large pistons, make a different timbre of sound, ofter being confused, with louder volume.
There are any number of situations where a person on these products may be found outside traffic code, just as any other person who is not on these products on the public way is found outside voluntarily complied to traffic code. One such noise control problem which is identified by the EPA, is an hybrid electrical car, which is driver over the posted speed limit to produce excessive and unusual noises in the traffic soundscape. Because the ratio of registered cars and light trucks to motorcycles makes operators driving over the speed limit, makes the small number of motorcycles pale in comparison to this environmental problem.
So you see your letter is full representation of hate speech against a protected group of people for prejudicial reasons, using inflammatory language, and lies, for biased reasons against one form of traffic type, because it is missing two wheel. Shame on you.
Rebecca
Hate speech?
SERIOUSLY?
Why does someone’s “right” to ride a motorcycle with an engine (or exhaust or whatever) SO LOUD it sets off car alarms supercede my right to the quiet enjoyment of my home and property?
Why does someone’s “right” to endlessly rev their LOUD motorcycle right under my bedroom window supercede my right to be in my house with all my windows and doors SHUT and NOT hear that?
I am NOT a NASCAR fan, in fact I hardly watch TV at all and when I do I usually watch PBS or maybe Cartoon Network and I very seldom have the volume up loud enough for it to be heard outside of the livingroom. I don’t even own a stereo. I do own a car but it is HARDLY loud, in fact I would be pretty surprised to find out any of my neighbors could hear it at all, especially if they were inside their houses.
There is NO REASON for any engine on any vehicle people use for transportation in and out of a residential neighborhood to be SO LOUD it sets off car alarms! There just isn’t! Anything that is that loud is loud simply for the sake of being loud and I fail to understand how someone’s “right” to be obnoxious is more important than my right to be undisturbed by such ridiculously annoying bull IN MY OWN HOUSE. A person’s house is where they go when they don’t want to deal with the annoying and stupid people of the world, and you think that just because someone CHOOSES to ride a stupidly, pointlessly LOUD bike they somehow have the right to inject their noise, ignorance, lack of consideration and manners, and bull into my home?
In an urban or suburban setting in which there are thousands of people living in very close proximity, it is inevitable that we are going to hear one another. This makes it more important to be aware of how much noise we are generating. This is called “being considerate of others” and it is what reasonable, thoughtful adults do when they live in close proximity to lots of other people. It’s really NOT that difficult, if you can remember the Golden Rule and PRACTICE IT, you shouldn’t have any trouble. Yes, this means that you will sometimes have to inconvenience yourself, perhaps by not making your bike as ear-splittingly loud as humanly possible and then racing your incredibly loud a-hole machine around the neighborhood you share with hundreds, possibly thousands of other people at all hours of the day and night. Boo-hoo. Get over it.
Anyone who insists on being loud just for the sake of being loud deserves all the tickets the police can write them. That’s just obnoxious, incredibly rude, and anyone who does is a moron.
You guys SUCK!!!
max stenson
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