1y ago

Deliberately loud vehicles should be illegal, impounded, and crushed into a cube at the owner's expense

Since the last 24 hours have had nothing but troll posts (and one that a user deleted; dunno what that one was), here's my latest gripe / reason I'm tired shaped into the form of an Unpopular Opinion. Hopefully this gets us back on track.

Nobody is impressed by you revving your engine at a stop light and cranking out 300 dB of noise from your fart cannon at 3 in the morning (or any time of day, for that matter). There is also no reason to peel out from the stop light when the next light is 2 blocks away and guaranteed to be red. e.g. We left the first red light at the same time. I drove normally, you like an asshole, and we both stopped at the next light all the same.

Driving an (intentionally) obnoxiously loud vehicle, especially driving it aggressively, should result in immediate revocation of license and the offending vehicle crushed into a cube. As much as I hate vague "disturbing the peace" laws, this seems like a good use for them (where noise ordinances don't exist).

I don't care about the extra 1-2 HP you get. Do tell me all the (street legal) things your pavement princess of a truck is going to do with that (I can see it has neither the tow package nor a speck of dirt on the tires). If you just like the sound and think I should get over it, allow me to come fart near you. If you don't like the smell, by your logic, that's on you: get over it.

Note: It may be a regional thing, but this is definitely an unpopular opinion in my (very redneck) area.

73 comments

Addendum: Rolling Coal should be an immediate bitch slap and some jail time being force fed Vegan meals while blasted with Enya.
- And let's not forget headlights at night. If you can blind someone your lights should be illegal, even worse if you need your truck to overcompensate and keep them at eye level.
- Enya.
  Settle down, Satan.
- Don’t threaten me with a good time!
- Harsh but fair!
- Rolling coal should be punished with an emissions check, and then the vehicle should be limited to some tiny exhaust so their huge truck makes a little "fweeeeee" sound when driving, and it will restrict airflow and sap engine output.

I live just off a road that has illegal street racers 3-5 times a week from 11 pm to 2 am. Hard agree.
- You must live south of Seattle because this is my exact experience lol.
  
  Indeed I do!
- That shit really needs heavier penalties
  
  Or any enforcement whatsoever. It happens so regularly all they would have to do is, like, try. Show up on a Friday at midnight and they'd get a guaranteed ticket if not arrest.
  They put in some roundabouts to try to stop it but the street racers just keep destroying the center island. It's brand new and covered with tire marks and plastic debris from them bashing up their kits.
- Box of nails and screws might help.
  
  That takes out innocent drivers as well.

Of course – fully agreed that something has to be done. Civilized countries, like Netherlands have "sound traps" – if a vehicle is too loud, photo is taken as in speed photo traps, and penalty is sent to the owner. Sadly, I do not live in such a country.

I would also accept rough sphere and pancake as shapes the car could be crushed into.

Crushing a vehicle because it's loud is stupid and waste of resources. In a civilized country it would simply fail inspection and you'd have to make it not-loud in order to get it registered again.

Modded motorcycles are super common around my region (Brazilian midwest), despite said "EXTRA LOUD" mod being illegal and the bikes being in impounded if they're caught.
Another thing that is even worse are sound cars (shit like in the image below). No idea how often they're a problem in other countries, but here, it's always fucking idiots parading their window-shaking bass in the middle of the night, or creating "parties" in front of liquor stores or friends' houses during the fucking week. These, unlike those bike mods, are not illegal.
- Damn, I have never seen a car like the one you shared a picture of before. That's wacky!
  Subwoofers in cars were really popular in California in the 90's, but I rarely see them any more.
- The crusher will take care of the speakers, too.
  
  A pen could take care if that monstrosity.
- Seems like the kind of thing that could get solved with some light arson.
  Not that I would advocate for those things. Just noticing there could be a lot fewer loud vehicles and shitty towing companies if people were more liberal with their use of cocktails.
- Jesus, that thing is hideous and can't possibly sound good. It probably can't even deliver enough power to properly drive all that to begin with.
- Just hope that rotary subwoofers don't become a commercial product.

IMO behavior like this is a symptom of a larger problem.
- Oh, it definitely is IMO as well. At this point, I'd settle for just treating the symptoms. lol

We left the first red light at the same time. I drove normally, you like an asshole, and we both stopped at the next light all the same.
Ah, but only one of you had any fun.
Your opinion is pretty popular. The unpopular opinion is thinking it's cool to be loud and drive aggressively.
- People who drive aggressively don't do it to be cool unless they are teenagers
  
  I meant cool like "okay". Like, "are you cool with this?".

I have a car with an aftermarket exhaust and intake. When I test drove it I had the windows down and made sure it wasn't loud. And it isn't, as long as I don't open the throttle up a lot and keep it under 3,500 rpm. My parents were concerned about it until I fired it up and my dad said "Oh, it just sounds like my old MG."
So you don't need to have noise to get a horsepower increase. You just need to do it correctly and think about someone other than yourself.
- So you don't need to have noise to get a horsepower increase. You just need to do it correctly and think about someone other than yourself.
  Yep. But that's not what I see, or rather, hear in the wild. Especially the thinking about others part. lol
  I don't hate the sound of a good engine, but I've never heard an aftermarket kit that sounds good to me. It's like....the car is either built with it or it isn't.
  
  I thought the same thing until I drove my car and then I realized what a difference it can make. This is what I have on my car along with the matching intake and I can confirm it sounds really nice. But, again, it's designed for better performance and not just more noise.
  Plus I know that it's going to be louder, so I anticipate that and try to drive more quietly. Because I'm not a selfish asshole.

I think California actually has vehicle noise laws for this lol.
tbh the obnoxiously loud cars are people who hacked off their muffler. Even the decats and pop+bang tunes aren't as loud as an uninterrupted stream of sound from the engine.
- They do, but there is precisely zero enforcement.
  
  There is enforcement. But it's rare. I had a leak in my exhaust and was pulled over and ticketed for it. Replaced the part. Then you go to a special smog that tests the sound level.

I like cars and bikes, so I don’t mind some extra noise, but there’s definitely a limit. I’d also say that in any crowded area like a big city neighborhood I’d rather not see any cars, but if they have to be there they should be as quiet as possible.

I used to think loud trucks were cool, and then I turned 8.

Just take their license. People being obnoxious is annoying but no need to waste the car
- Fair enough, but where's the fun in that? The vehicle needs to be at least restored to "factory defaults" at the owner's expense.
  
  Yes, this
  plz reduce, reuse, and recycle
  
  I get that you like revenge, but that's just wasteful. If you really want revenge, make them also pay for making it street legal again. Or heck, impound the car and auction it

Motorcycles, dirt bikes, four wheeler shitheads ride downtown (where I live) in my city every weekend. They takeover intersections and rev their engines. We call them "cool guys," because I joked to my partner that they aren't overcompensating for anything; they're obviously super cool, with big dicks, and happy lives.

Sorry, but Tha whistles go WOOO
- [They show it off]
  Flies out, nearly side swipes into parked cars, runs a stop sign (on camera), and ~~screeches~~ whistles down the street.
  Man...I'm without words for this one 🤦‍♂️ (unless !idiotsincars@lemmy.world is a word? )

I hate them, too.
And the ones that sound like an asthmatic box fan about to die are just hilarious. Heard a mustang like that today.

Agree. I can only hope it gets less common as electric vehicles become more common. Although, I could also see them adding aftermarket noisemakers just to be obnoxious.
- I agree, though as a blind person some level of noise is needed
  
  I got you.
  https://youtu.be/47GoI680kU0?si=lpijyDdQbVjqNUrh&t=35s
- That's already happening. Saw a couple at some car shows.
- Some electric cars do have noisemakers (for safety). I could see those being modded to sound obnoxious, though. lol
- One of the things I love about my electric motorcycle is how quiet it is. I can ride around without annoying people with obnoxious noise.
  I have to add that I don't mind the sound of most (unmodded) exhausts, but I can't also imagine that when you love in a region that's popular among motorcyclist, it becomes quite annoying when you can't enjoy the good weather outside without near constant noise.

No problems with that. Just don't forget to put the drivers license into the trash compactor, too.

God I hate the stupid loud vehicles. And it almost always sounds like shit too.
Be funny if coal rollers had to strap a giant diaper to the back of their vehicle to identify them, since clearly their lifted douche-wagon struggles with incontinence.
I like aftermarket stereo equipment in a car (mostly just like the feel of bass going through me and sound quality improvements), myself, but I'm not an asshole about it, I just blast music on interstates, and keep it to conversational levels on normal roads. If you can hear it outside the car it's generally too loud anyway.

"You have 24 hours to move your car before it will be impounded.
"You have 24 hours to remove your car from impound before it will be crushed into a cube."
"You have 24 hours to move your cube."
- 😆 I had that scene in my head when I decided to phrase it that way. Good catch.

Car alarms needs to be added to this list as they're completely ineffective and obnoxious.
- Well being obnoxious is the entire point of it but if they're annoying you then they're doing their job. If they're annoying your neighbors then they're doing their job. They are for getting attention of people in the area by annoying them or their curiosity.
  
  It's pretty old news that they just get ignored as a result... https://www.theguardian.com/money/shortcuts/2016/may/17/are-car-alarms-a-complete-waste-of-time-security-insurance
  I never look at the car with the alarm going off but I hear it.
  
  Yeah, that's accurate. But there's also the fatigue of it where it happens so often. People get conditioned to treating it as an annoyance to ignore rather than something to investigate.
- So true. Though, in my experience, it's less the alarms being overly sensitive and more panic button on the remote getting pressed in pockets/purses. I always imagine some grandma frantically rummaging through her purse trying to find the fob and figure out which button shuts it up. lol
  
  God I hate the panic button on my fob (Toyota Corolla, 2005). I've never had any use for it, and accidentally press it a few times a month.

One of our suburbs used to have this rule. It kind of fizzled out due to unnecessarily large cars for a suburb environment becoming normal.

- "If Chewbacca is a wookie, you must acquit."

Being a bit hyperbolic here: I have to deal with 1000 stupid societal things every day, either directly, as mandated by the legal system, or because of the popularity of religion, etc. I have to drive slow through school zones when the lights are flashing. I have to deal with Trump voters and the last eight years of political drama. I have to deal with teenagers driving wrecklessly down my street because other people feel have the right to breed and disturb my peace 17 years later. I have to listen to the soapbox preachers shouting at me about how I'm going to hell. I have to deal with poor people breaking down on the side of the road, creating dangerous traffic situations.
If I can deal with all of this, people can deal with my modified exhaust for five seconds as I drive by. Otherwise, I'll just find some other way to be obnoxious haha.

73 comments