Is louder safer?

On my way home last night, I needed to stop to get some gas for my scooter. I only had $3 on me but that was enough to get the tank about 3/4 full. Another fellow was there with his Honda motorcycle and we got to talking. He was very enthusiastic about having bought his used bike cheap. It needed a lot of work but he had fixed it up and it looked great. One of the things he liked so much about his motorcycle was that the motor ran smoothly and quietly.

It got me thinking about noisy motorcycles. Our town has always had a touchy relationship with noisy motorcycles. The businesses in our town depend a lot on vacationers and a lot of those come here on motorcycles. People on vacation seem to think they can do things that they wouldn't do in their regular life and a lot of the motorcycles go roaring along the roads here. That's led to a lot of complaints about the noise and some noise-limiting laws were passed (or maybe the town is just talking about passing some laws - I'm not sure). But many motorcyclists claim that they purposely make their bikes noisy so car and truck drivers will notice them. So, the arguments go back and forth. Can the town ban something that is a safety issue?

So, as I was pulling out of the gas station last night I wondered - Has a study ever been done comparing the number of traffic accidents for people with quieter motorcycles with the number of traffic accidents for people with noisier motor cycles? I'm going to look into this (since my Honda motor scooter is very quiet) and if I find anything, I'll write about it. In the meantime, I agree with the Honda motorcycle guy. I like having a quiet ride. For one thing, I don't like bothering other people. And another reason is that I don't want to lose my hearing any time soon by riding something that makes a lot of noise. But the biggest reason, to me, is that having a quieter ride lets me hear other cars approaching and lets me hear horns, sirens and people yelling at me better.

When I started to ride my scooter, I was already used to riding my bicycle a lot and needing to stay aware of what cars, trucks and even pedestrians were doing so I could stay out of their way. On a bicycle, you've got to learn to look ahead for trouble and stay away from it. People in big cars can just blast through assuming other people will get out of their way. And, if you're in a big car, even if you get in an accident, you'll be safe. People on bicycles, motorcycles and scooters can't make that assumption. Safety for these smaller vehicles is more in the rider's ability to see trouble coming and stay away from it. And that means seeing and hearing where trouble may be coming from. To me, quieter is safer.