This is extremely short sighted. I’ve owned several cars that I have modified or have factory exhausts that are audible, and it’s always been purely because I enjoy the sound, but I’ve never made them obnoxious or deafening.
Car guys don’t do things to annoy other people, they do it because it brings them happiness and joy, just like anyone’s hobby does for them. Thinking that everything in the world that disturbs you was done in malice is a pretty dismal worldview.
This reminds me of how cigarette smokers famously don't know how horrible they smell to everyone around them, and think it's "fine", something they do to bring themselves "happiness and joy", and so forth. Maybe if the people around you who aren't car enthusiasts find your car obnoxious and deafening, it's just obnoxious and deafening.
Personally, I'd settle for a compromise where no one is allowed to drive one of these vehicles down a street with private residences on it after 10 p.m.
When I was a kid, everyone smoked everywhere. And I spent decades smoking cigarettes, or cigars. I'd quit for a few months or a year at different times, but in my corner of society I was still around tobacco smoke even when I wasn't smoking myself. It was impossible to evade.
Because I was always exposed to it, I never really became aware of the stink.
I switched to vapes this time 'round. And unlike other times in the past when I didn't smoke tobacco, public smoking is pretty much forgotten in my corner of society here in 2024.
So now, at this ripe middle age, I've finally become aware of the stink.
And I'm certainly not going to go on some anti-smoking crusade, but... Dang, some people who smoke really stink. It's an effervescent odor that just radiates off of them in seemingly every direction, and tickles the insides of your nose in a bad way, and you can detect it sometimes from twenty feet away or more.
I'm really sorry to have done that to others. I had no idea it was like this.
I think you’re straw manning my argument, where I conceded that absolutely some people go too far and are obnoxious. The civic at 2am example is a great one, street racing late at night is another, and I agree with you that’s unnecessary.
My argument was simply that I have yet to see an implementation in proposal that stops the above, without also making the factory exhaust that’s barely above road noise level on your average sports car illegal. Where do you draw the line? How do you get people to agree on where the line is? Do you make exceptions for things like performance vehicles/supercars? You’re not going to find consensus among the population besides for most of us it’s a non-issue that nobody even thinks about.
I'm not sure what's so hard about the line. Most municipalities already have the line well defined. They have noise limits that are different in residential and industrial areas, and are lower during normal sleep hours.
If it means that you can't stomp on the accelerator in a residential area in your stock performance vehicle at night, so be it. Yes, some legally stock vehicles are loud when driven hard. So don't drive them hard when that's inappropriate.
Yes - I agree with you. Some of the commenters above have conflated “an annoying person drives a straight piped mustang through my neighborhood” into “every car is bad”.