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Dumb Car Laws


Paul Dobbin

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My bike is louder than my Cadillac to be sure, however the manner in which I drive my bike determines the volume level as it does with my Caddy. I keep my bike in higher gear thru residential areas and it's no louder than any other car except the diesels who are louder at idle than my bike at 20mph in 3rd let alone going down the highway. In my 30+ years of riding, My loud pipes have saved my life and more than once and to say otherwise would be lie. I blip my throttle instead of the horn as It gets your attention immediately where horns are largely ignored. If you are aware of me, I am less likely to be killed by you.

I know motorcycles are dangerous, but I also know cars, planes, the insane, beer, sharp objects, toasters in the shower and almost everything around you is dangerous. I choose to take my chances doing what I love. You don't have to choose the same things as me nor approve my choices. Looking at some of the comments, I can clearly see who is a rider and who is not. I have ridden in groups of 10,000+++ bikes and that is a sight to behold (unless you don't like motorcycles). There are good riders and there are bad. For the most part I go with more good than bad. Just like people in general, mostly good.

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I like to think that a lot of the motorcycle yahoos run off the road by car drivers, got it because of their loud pipes.

I hate loud motorcycles, and I have owned and ridden motorcycles since 1966. To my mind half the anti motorcycle prejudice I have had to deal with over the years, was because of loud pipes.

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Edited by R W Burgess
PLEASE! Is this necessary?? (see edit history)
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The restrictive "red flag" laws on "road locomotives" were passed in England because of powerful interests involved in the coaching industry, the sale of horses, fodder, and so forth.

The result was to force the steam coaches off the road, and onto the railroads. Within 10 years there was a railroad boom, and grass growing in the middle of the roads, long distance coach travel was dead, and the towns and inns that depended on it were next thing to ghost towns.

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Getting back to dumb car laws. I am grateful to Barry Herbert of the British Steam Car Club who has compiled a list of strange traffic laws. The one about dismantling the car and hiding it in bushes is there but also from Pennsylvania:

"Any motorist driving along a country road at night must stop every mile and send up a rocket signal, wait 10 minutes for the road to be cleared of livestock, and continue."

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A good one from Brazil:

"If a driver in an accident dies the police are still required to do a breathalyzer test to legally be able to determine who was at fault for the accident. If the deceased refuses to take the test they can face fines and a suspension of driving privileges."

you couldn't make it up!

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  • 2 weeks later...
Traffic laws can also be dumb. In PA a yellow painted curb, which most assume means NO PARKING, is actually meaningless without accompanying NO PARKING signs at specified intervals. I am an elected Councilman in a small PA town and we deal with such idiocy all the time. Many STOP signs in small towns are unenforceable since every sign must be OKed by PennDot and requires an expensive traffic study before they can be enforced. We just put 'em up and depend on citizens obeying them without asking questions.

Would that hold true for posted speed signs as well?

I got a ticket for going 49 in a 40 zone on a country road in NJ. The policeman said he clocked me at 55 but he's giving me a huge break by writing it up at 49. If he wanted to give a real break he should have let me go. I went back to the scene and saw a sign for 40 MPH in the middle of farms. about a mile down the road, coming into a town there was another sign for 40 but across the street there was a 50 MPH sign for traffic coming out of town. This seemed to be in conflict with the first 40 sign as one side of the road is different than the other.

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Would that hold true for posted speed signs as well?

It is my understanding that in this country, speed limit signs must be on the left to be legal. Those on the right are for notification and reinforcement only. We are right hand drive of course. I think permanent signs also have to be published in the Government Gazette to be legal. The GG is the official notification vehicle.

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Guest buickkuhn

I got a ticket in Michigan for my windshield wipers not coming to a rest fast enough . This was on a medium duty dump truck that the wieght master said this is standard procedure (not) . That was the only time in my life did I have a officer check the speed of my wipers . Yes it was a $75 non correction fine .

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In PA speed limit signs must not be more than a certain distance apart to be enforceable. Our local District Justice begins many hearings by saying "will the guilty party please step forward?". We only recently redid our ordinances and absolved our mayor from his duty to "maintain all public horse watering troughs" in the town. We also updated our definitions of "motor courts" and "tourist homes". "Bed and Breakfast" sounds so much better.

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