Dont know just find loud bikes loud ...
What makes me safe is not how fast or loud. But a freakish paranoid defencive riding constant awarness.
Looking for cell phone users....hard to enjoy the ride in traffic now adays.
Emergency stopping, being good at the ol swerve move. Or passing police style classes are the guys that impress me.
Fast and loud do not. And never have its just plain obnoxious.
Been Riding 46 years so far.
Road raced. Bmx. Salt flats once..just to say I did it. And drags. In traffic is more dangerous than all the above.
You choose to ride its you taking the risk.
someone blows a red light on the cell phone ..
Is all it takes. you need to have an escape route in your head and have it together allways..
Pipes will not help you keep your head right.
You're pretty much preachin' to the choir about the right state of awareness while on two wheels.
You're pretty much preachin' to the choir about developing defensive maneuver skills.
However, when they don't see
OR hear you and go at the last second, your only escape route may be a summersault over the hood.
Or, in a case of an escape from being rear-ended, driving your machine into a culvert.
Last year, a local retired grandfather was literally run over while he slowed to initiate a right turn into his daughter's driveway.
His daughter watched the whole thing from the front porch of her house.
He and his cruiser were drug down the road underneath the SUV.
He was dead by the time they got the SUV off of him and his machine.
The driver of the SUV was texting.
As it came out in the trial, she didn't look up long enough to see the rider.
There weren't any skid marks at all until after the impact point.
The driver got time served (a couple of weeks), community service, 5 years of probation, suspended license and around $2,000 in fines.
The rider was a well loved and respected member of the community.
He was not a member of anything motorcycle except for a passive membership in the AMA.
There were over 200 bikes in his funeral procession.
Hindsight sucks in a case like this and really doesn't mean a thing.
But two things might have changed that outcome.
Like you've said, an escape route.
Because of the way the road was, any sucessful escape would have required a bike with a lot of low end torque.
In other words, a powerful bike (which the rider had). Some would interpret a powerful bike as being a fast bike.
It would have taken that constant awaress you mentioned.
It also would have taken the maneuvering skills you mentioned.
The second thing could have been enough noise emminating from that machine to have caused the driver look up from her phone.
I wear earplugs above 60mph to "keep my head right".
I wear a helmet, long pants, a jacket (usually thick leather) and boots each and everytime I take one of the bikes out of the gate.
If It's 85 degrees or hotter, I wear a mesh jacket with armor.
Personal bias aside and "sound" logic applied, I'm going to continue to give myself every chance to stay upright and healthy that I can.
I will not let my personal bias dictate taking additional risk by choosing not to use one or more additional personally proven safety aids.
If certain individuals assume that's an attempt to be "tough" or an attempt to "impress", that's totally a projection coming from the "assumee"
If I'm irritating people, it means that I'm successful in getting them to realize that I'm there.
And yet here I am again, responding to another post that contains the word "impress" or one of it's variations!