During a trip to rural Cumbria, I’m waiting at a T-junction to turn right from a minor road onto a B-road with a national speed limit. It’s a heavily wooded area.
The road is clear to the right, and it’s clear to the left as far as I can see, but that isn’t terribly far, because a short distance away there’s a bend.
If I pull out just as something comes too quickly around that corner, it’s possible they could find a Volkswagen Arteon-shaped obstruction picking up speed in their lane. I’ll put my foot down, sure, but I’ve got a big car full of stuff, it’s only a 1.5 petrol and the road goes uphill. I’ll be out of the way quicker than if I was a pedestrian, a cat, a deer, a group of cyclists or a tractor towing a trailer of hay bales, but still.
It’s not an inherently dangerous situation, but it could be an uncomfortable one or, in freak circumstances where somebody whips around the corner way too quickly, is paying poor attention and has poor bike or car handling skills, a perilous one.
Should I be worried? You could argue not. You should only drive or ride at a speed that means you can comfortably stop in the distance you can see, right? So if somebody rounds the bend too fast then, well, they’re going too fast. But the world doesn’t work like that, does it? You don’t wilfully put yourself in harm’s way just because it’d be somebody else’s fault if it goes wrong. At least I don’t. But anyway, because it’s a hot Sunday morning and I’m going to be in and out of the car a lot, I’ve got the windows down and the air-con off, so while I look, I also listen: the gentle rustle of wind in the trees, and nothing else. No screaming approaching engine. And I pull out, and cruise away. No bother.
Electric cars must make noise, rules European Commission
‘Loud pipes save lives’, the old adage goes. It even says as much on a sticker on the back of myVolkswagen VW Beetle, a car whose glacial speed doesn’t require early warning of its impending approach. But right now, I’m thinking, I’m grateful I could listen for piped noise.
I’ve read claims disproving the ‘loud pipes save lives’ theory, which argue that it’s only put forward by people who like loud exhausts. They’re probably right on the latter.
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Noise
There's a bloke who lives round the corner from us who has a Focus RS with a huge non-standard exhaust on it. Whenever you see a car like that, you assume the driver is an imbecile who drives like a nutter and hangs out in supermarket car parks of an evening.
We know he's coming because we can hear him bombing down our 30mph residential road at about 60-70mph every evening at around 7pm.
It could save lives, because anybody within a 1 mile radius will know to get out of the stupid idiot's way.
That story would have more swear words, but y'know... edited out etc...
@ WallMeerkat. I don't agree
@ WallMeerkat. I don't agree that its non-production cars that are the real menace. I have recently moved away from a main dual carriageway on the outskirts of the city, and over the past few years its very noticeable how much noisier the traffic has become. Its nearly always recent, usually german, production vehicles, with their switchable 'sports' exhausts which are causing the nuisance, using the road as a race track, particularly in the evenings and early hours. I love cars, but these just sound so artificial and unpleasant, these guys drive in an appalling manner, and you can tell that its all really just about getting people to look at them.
Too much, too often
As the owner of three Ducatis, two of which have Termignoni exhausts, only one of those being road-legal, I appreciate a good exhaust note as much as anyone else. Which, if we got one or two passing a day, would be fine. We live in the middle of a national park which contains some epic riding/driving roads and summer weekends are a constant cacophany of loud pipes. Funnily enough, you can tell the properly set up systems (car or bike) from a great distance and they're not too bad, but the vast majority are cheap dumbass end cans which do nothing for either performance or bystanders ears, even if they're naturally appreciative. So I'm making sure that my utility machines are road legal from now on and that I'm very careful about when I use my homologation special which really can't be silenced.