Noise from motorcycles: victory of the exhaust – journey

When wanderlust was invented, nobody wanted to be lazy on the beach. What attracted people were foreign cultures, heroic landscapes – and the rapid progress of modern cities. Electric escalators led down to the Paris Métro, the Baedeker travel guide excitedly noted a hundred years ago, and more and more automobiles raced along the wooden boulevards alongside horse-drawn carriages. Everything rushed, honked and rattled from barely insulated explosion engines – what a hell of a spectacle.

When the motorized wheels learned to run, few could afford the privileges of this new era. Even if the first cars, express trains and planes caused a stir, their noise was usually greeted as the pulse of a better future. As early as 1909, Tommaso Marinetti had celebrated the new beauty of speed in the Futurist Manifesto. He cheered racing cars with explosive breath, pounding locomotives and airplanes “whose propellers flapped like a flag in the wind and seemed to applaud like an enthusiastic crowd”.

All in the name of progress: who would have believed a hundred years ago that today there are more than a billion cars and almost as many motorized two-wheelers racing across the planet? A few probably already had an inkling: the German Noise Protection Association was founded in 1904, followed by the Society for Avoiding Unnecessary Noise in New York in 1906, followed two years later by a London committee to combat street noise. But the triumph of the exhaust could not be stopped.

Last but not least, this tradition of jubilant noise finds its modern echo in leisure mobility. Why is it so beautiful in the Alps? Because of the many tunnels in which the sports exhaust fanfares can trumpet. In the narrow valleys and high up on the passes, there is banging, sputtering and babble everywhere. What was so irritating about the pandemic lockdown was the sudden silence in cities and on country roads. Scary.

This year, at the beginning of spring, the drumming of the highly developed engines can be heard everywhere again. The one who doesn’t take a joke at all is the German Environmental Aid. On the day of noise on April 26, she raffled measuring devices against noise pollution from motorcycles and sports cars. “Most motorcycles are as loud as a chainsaw or a jackhammer – unfortunately not just a few,” said Thomas Marwein, the noise protection officer of the state government of Baden-Württemberg, during a similar measurement campaign two years ago: motorcycle noise is a great impertinence for residents and those seeking relaxation.

A clear case of a change in perspective: the focus is no longer on the wild hunt of the progress pack, but on those who are left behind and in need of rest, although they make up the majority at 70 percent. Nevertheless, Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) is not only against speed limits, but also against the introduction of noise cameras based on the French model. Unlike conventional speed camera photos, the search for a noise delinquent is not that easy. Noises are superimposed and reflected. Every motorcyclist knows this echo effect from the mountains. That’s why the industry is relaxed with its noisy flap exhausts: First of all, someone should find the actual source of the noise in a group of motorcyclists. Roarrr.