~a column by Colleen O’Brien
Someone who lives down my street drives a honkin’ F150 (a half-ton Ford pickup truck) with no muffler. It is big and it sounds big, like a large, angry/hungry/horny beast from Dante’s seventh circle of Hell. It is impossible to ignore his coming down the road because his unmuffled engine interrupts conversation, hurts my ears, makes my heart race and — each time — pushes me straight into plotting a horrible fate for him and his unbridled steed.
Definitions of torture: something that causes agony or pain; infliction of pain to afford sadistic pleasure. So in my way of thinking, my neighbor’s loud pickup is a synonym for torture. He’s not saying “Hi” to me, he’s saying, “Ford u!”
All of you who drive around this quiet little town gunning your engines to make your modified mufflers sound like a juggernaut from Hades, get over yourselves. Do any of you mufflerless wonders believe you actually elicit admiration? Think again. There is no envy, wonder, Gee-what-a-cool-guy thought passing through our brains as you pass by our lives.
The pickup trucks and hogs (Harley Davidson motorcycles; and cousins) seem to be the worst when altered. (This is an observation, not a documented fact.) The roar they make taking off from a stop sign or tooling up the hill from the river not only hurts my ears, it hurts my heart. Why would anyone hope to annoy everyone?
And worse yet, why do they get away with it?
There is a city ordinance (City code 62.01) that relies on Iowa vehicular code 321.436 MUFFLERS, PREVENTION OF NOISE: “Every motor vehicle shall at all times be equipped with a muffler in good working order and in constant operation to prevent excessive or unusual noise and annoying smoke, and no person shall use a muffler cutout, bypass or similar device upon a motor vehicle on a highway.”
Is there a reason that law enforcement does not enforce this law?
Loud mufflers? They certainly toggle my anger response. In the scheme of things they’re not as bad as murder, rape, war. But they are a form of torture. Widespread. Indiscriminate. Scary if you’re the pedestrian in the crosswalk. And so unnecessary. According to a friend who has a quiet Harley, these vehicles do not come off the assembly line loud; they have to be modified to in order to blow out eardrums. My husband and I had an F150 for a while; it did not sound like a formula car at the Indy 500. It hummed down the road like a gentleman.
No matter how you fool yourselves, you who modify your mufflers, you are not rugged individualists after the American ideal, you are copycats, perhaps impressing each other, but to the rest of the world that has to share the same space, you are bullies, forcing us to suffer as you pass by.
