The only thing that needs to be audibly loud on a motorcycle is the horn. It's there specifically as a safety device. However, almost all OEM horns on motorcycles sound comical when used in an empty room and are useless in traffic, and that really annoys me. When I'm in traffic and I push the horn button, the vehicles around me should be able to hear it clearly, and the only reason
I can hear it at all is because I know I'm pushing the button.
I know that it's fairly easy to upgrade the horn, and that is on my "to do" list for all of our bikes. It still bothers me that the typical OEM horn equipment is only up to minimum standard as a legality, rather than something loud enough to have a useful effect as a safety device.
Every time I hear
"campaigning" from the loud-pipes-save-lives folks, that it's their
right to annoy people, I don't know what to do. Don't they realize that the people that they're annoying are
voters, and that there's a lot more of them than us?!? That's the kind of situation that can get nasty laws passed to control situations where common sense used to do just fine.
What's really comical is when I hear the loud-pipes, and the helmets-are-dangerous,
"safety" arguments coming from the same person, almost in the same breath.
OK, I'm done now.