Loud pipes IMO is when U ride behind someone with, say, V&H's LS's like my neighbor has on his 99 EVO, when he nails it your ears actually feel like just they blew up, I mean you can actually feel the pressure from them. gotta be well over 110 DB's...and I have tendinitis from noise exposure in the factory all my life...

Even mys sons BSL's with reg baffles in them is too loud to me if U ride behind or to the right of him..
My Rush has 2'baffles and their lined with fiberglass, and sound like the old glasspacs that my 63 chevy had...deep and throaty. Not ear piercing, or nothing similar to open headers on a race car...

 

I am a PhD student in human factors and ergonomics and one of the areas of research in this field is safety and warning systems. I had a colleague recently conduct a study to investigate the safety of quite hybrid cars. He found that these cars are too quiet and can be a safety hazard for pedestrians. Other research has supported this. So, we can start with the idea that at least some amount of noise is important for vehicles.

My study will investigate just how much noise is important, and whether there are safety benefits to louder pipes. I haven't developed the formal research questions or hypotheses yet, and I'd love to hear some good input for the design of this type of study. This will be a side-project as my specific area of research is in human-computer interaction.

Anyway, it could be fun and hopefully actually provide some real data for once. I'm not proposing that the study will be the final word on the subject but hopefully it can direct us in the right path. I'm also not proposing that people's opinions should be heavily be influenced or changed by the results, but I do think knowledge is power.[/QUOTE]


Chopfury....
I just reread you OP..
So Ur in school to get Ur PhD, and U have a class in H.F. & Ergo.
So I'am thinking the safety and warning must be in the HF side of the field and not Ergo..
So how Much noise is necessary to be able to be called a warning system
without too much noise to be considered it as a nuisance or damaging one's hearing, and still be considered safety..
The more I think about this, its one weird study...By that I mean how to obtain information.

Seems that to be able to get readings on noise and how it effects the public at certain levels, it will have to be where the person being studied is, and thats going to be rough to get without them being aware of the surrounding issue and being testing at hand,, JMTC.

 

You forgot pedestrians. I had an actual incident and almost hit one with my stock pipes coming around a sharp corner to a cross walk.

 

Check out this article that was on the front page of the Fresno Bee.


Published online on Monday, Jun. 15, 2009
By Jim Guy / The Fresno Bee

That rumble rolling up Valley roads on warm summer evenings is sweet music to some — and a buzz-kill for others.
It’s the roar of motorcycles, revving at stoplights and thundering up and down the street, bouncing shock waves off buildings like the soundtrack of a 1960s biker movie.
For some motorcyclists, the noise is as much a part of the riding experience as fresh air. Harley-Davidson even sought to patent the potato-potato sound of its engines a decade ago.

Some riders pump up the volume even more by removing stock catalytic converters and adding aftermarket pipes in search of better performance — and an ear-splitting roar that can infuriate patio diners or sidewalk latte drinkers.
While some bikers revel in the sound, others justify it by saying it protects them from inattentive motorists. “Loud pipes save lives,” is their mantra.
Nonsense, says Fresno motorcycle Sgt. Eric Eide, who rides an ultra-quiet BMW.
“Straight pipes are hugely offensive,” he said. “It’s a quality-of-life issue.”
Noise “is one of those things that needs to be addressed.”
That appears to be happening. A proposed law working its way through the California legislature, SB 435 by State Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), targets modified motorcycle exhausts that produce more air pollution. The bill also aims at the extra noise generated by after-market motorcycle exhausts.
Local opinions are as sharply divided as they were during a recent Sacramento hearing on the bill.
Scott Maddox, who was standing near his Harley-Davidson on Olive Avenue, didn’t think it was fair to single out motorcycles.
“I don’t know if it’s any more noise than when a city bus goes by,” he said.
Karey Wedemeyer, who was enjoying ice cream at an outdoor table, seemed to agree.
“It’s no more a problem than loud] stereos,” she said. “It’s more the stereos that bother me.”
Several blocks up the street, bicyclist Kevin Statham disagreed.
“No one should have the right to inflict their noise [on others] as they drive down the street,” he said. “Ridiculous.”
Said Mariam Widenham, who tends bar on Olive: “If you start it up and go, it’s cool. But if you’re revving it … it’s rude.”

Martin Garcia, who rides a Yamaha cruiser, concedes that sometimes the temptation to do just that sometimes takes over.
“Everyone does it,” he said. “They want to see how loud their bike is … like we don’t know it’s loud enough already.”
Eide attributes the excessive noise to some motorcyclists trying to emulate the outlaw biker lifestyle through loud exhausts, faux-**** helmets and skull facial masks. Eide said officers currently use a vehicle code section to cite motorcyclists for excessive noise but generally only go after extreme cases.
And it isn’t always easy for police to make noise violations stick. Mary Lynne Vellinga, a legislative consultant in Pavley’s Sacramento office, said the standards in the current law are not clear and tickets may not stand up in court. She said her research shows that California Highway Patrol officers wrote just 14 citations in the past two years.
Pavley’s office wants to strengthen the law and, after an initial setback, is still fine-tuning a bill that would do so, Vellinga said. A portion of the bill that would require semi-annual smog checks for motorcycles appears dead for now, but Vellinga said her office still intends to use SB 435 to target motorcyclists who remove catalytic converters.
Under the current law, a motorcyclist cited for removing a converter often can ride home, bolt the stock exhaust back on and have the citation cleared. That would be much more difficult if smog checks were required because many riders would need to have expensive engine modifications done to pass a tailpipe emissions test. Vellinga concedes getting a law through the legislature has been a tough slog.
“Motorcycle folks are super-vocal,” she said.
But industry officials are aware a backlash is looming. Harley-Davidson President Jim McCaslin, in a message on the company’s Web site, told riders to pipe down, citing a 400% increase in negative news stories regarding motorcycle noise in the past 10 years. Local dealers warn about it as well. At Harley-Davidson/Buell of Fresno on West Shaw Avenue, a sign urges bikers to ride away quietly.
“The noise issue is huge,” said Peggy Day, sales manager. She said the American Motorcycle Association had to fight local officials near Carmel to win back the right for motorcyclists to ride down 17 Mile Drive. She said riders need to discipline themselves.
“Unless we’re socially responsible,” she said, “our right to ride is in jeopardy.”

 

didn't finish reading thru all the posts, only got thru about half of them. but then i had an idea and thought i would post it.

i like this study, just out of curiosity. and if nothing more it might bring up some interesting points.

anyway - what might be an interesting idea if possible would be to set up things in those driver education simulators. that would be a completely controlled environment. then you could add in all kinds of things with less problem. like have a semi sound, sirens, noisy car. maybe a lawn mover or jack hammer near by. jet plane over head. and then of course a motorcycle. maybe with some kind of stereo thing you could have the noise from different directions etc.

it seems to me that this is more a study in a drivers reaction to sound. maybe checking out something about how they come up with the different sirens that they came up with might be interesting.

and just an additional thing that might be added would be the location of the motorcycle to the car. obviously the bike coming in the opposite direction is the most dangerous, etc. then being next to the car.

my point being that you could have train coming at you, a semi truck, a car and a motorcycle all making the same level of high noise and then again with low noise and i would bet you that people would still miss the motorcycle regardless of the noise. i say this because of the size of the motorcycle. becaue a motorcycle is small, people have a tendancy to think it is farther away then it really is, people are basing what they are looking for on the size of a car.

but next to a car, the noise might make them check better regardless.

whatever

interesting - i like it

 

Is this true? Is the 17 Mile Drive on Monterey Peninsula open to motorcyclist? I've got family and friend in the Salinas area and have been out there on my bike's 6 or 7 times in the past 12 to 15 years and it was never open to motorcycles. I've always wanted to ride the area. If this is true, it'll be something to look forward to.

Thanks!
Steve R.

 

i haven't read the entire thread so forgive me if this has already been said...

i think you'll get the results you after, and if some government lackey gets ahold of your study you'll probably effect legislation.

the problem with this is the legislation will most-likely backfire because you're a pontificating bowl of porridge with a clear bias.

senator buttfux of anytown will cite a study that shows that low frequency noise (as found on big-twin motorcycle engines) does not communicate direction and therefore leaves the car-driver in the precarious position of knowing there is eminent threat but having no idea where it comes from. this could lead a weary driver to over-react and plow into a school-bus.

senator buttfux also has a study that shows human ears can easily discern direction from the sound of a loud mid-tone similar to that used on garbage trucks and back-hoes when they are backing up.

a new bill is proposed that makes contstant beeping devices mandatory and bikers go batsht crazy and foam at the mouth etc etc etc.

in the end it is decided that a short blast of a horn is more than sufficient for alerting other drivers while you get credit for being published on some bullsht academic paper that was nearly used to incite bar-room riots across the nation.

 

if visiual capacity is at fault, then a big yellow bus would make every one deaf.

come on kid.

 

leave senator Schumers code name out of this!

 

lolpolitics