Motorcycle Philosophy

I know you've read many other arguments on the issue of "loud pipes save lives".

I wanted to present a new argument on the standpoint that our society only counts fatalities, and not survivals.

The problem with the "loud pipes save lives" claim is that there's no way to measure it as being true or not. As long as riders continue to go on living, we'll never know if it was their loud pipes that saved them from accidents.

On the other hand, we can count biker deaths. But what good are biker deaths when we're trying to figure out if loud pipes save lives?

If you ride a motorcycle, I'm sure you tend to get a little anxious about being in someone's blind spot. I always accelerate or drop out of it. The fact is that I don't know if my pipes have ever saved my life. But I do have loud pipes, and yes I've been in several near misses. The fact that I'm still alive just might be attributed to those pipes.

We'll never know for sure if loud pipes save lives because government doesn't count accidents that almost happened. But ask any motorcycle rider who is still alive, and he or she will tell you about the near misses they were involved in.

The irony, however, is that many people who protest against loud pipes are often the same people that support helmet laws. They claim that helmets save lives, but how do we know that if we only count the fatalities?

The truth is that we don't have statistics on how many times a helmet saved a life. We only know how many bikers died. Instead we analyze the consequences of repealing helmet laws by comparing the before-and-after fatality rates. If we see a 0.25% or higher reduction in fatalities, we pat ourselves on the back for making progress.

So can't we also suggest that loud pipes don't always save lives, but they will increase your chances? What if a state decided to aggressively enforce its noise abatement laws and forced every motorcycle owner to reinstall their stock exhaust? Will motorcycle deaths increase?

And if they did increase, will the State apologize and reverse its decision on loud pipes? Should we experiment with the lives of motorcyclists and see if more of them die?

If we defend helmet laws with aggregate statistics, then it stands to reason that the same can be done with loud pipes. Except, we don't have such statistics.

And I don't think we ought to create any, either.

I'd like to hear your comments.