Hey Salon, what’s with this fluff about Harley noise? The article, ostensibly written by a New Yorker for a San Francisco publication, has nary an ill word to say about the fact that aftermarket dealers purposefully walk right through an “off-road” loophole to sell motorcycles that violate noise and pollution standards, just to imitate a noise created by an antiquated, inferior engine technology that carries a ridiculous “brand mystique.” The article even repeats the preposterous “loud pipes save lives” canard. Loud pipes blast sound backwards, which then echoes through the urban canyons — rendering the noise useless for sonar. Annoyance is no substitute for care; bicycles make no noise whatsoever, but crash and fatality rates for bicyclists are far lower than those for motorcyclists. The fact of the matter is, a motorcycle that can be heard a mile away can, in a city, distract and unnerve thousands of people with every rev of the engine. That may appeal to some people, but it doesn’t appeal to most everyone else. This noise pollution must be stopped!

Okay, another peeve: SUV blind spots again. A driver in the center lane at an intersection decided to turn right, right in front of me. (I got out of the way.) Now, I don’t know what he was doing turning right from the center lane without signalling in the first place, but he yelled some “fuck you fucking fucker” at me after I yelled at him to signal, apparently because he didn’t see me coming. And why not? Because those monster trucks have huge blind spots, and because their drivers (taught to drive in small cars) either don’t know or don’t care. I sometimes suspect the latter — the law of the SUV jungle states that everyone else has to follow the rules, but SUVs don’t — but the blind spots are a flaw inherent to all trucks. These things must be stopped!