Copyright 2004, Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.
FIRST PERSON/OPINION
Via e-mail:
The best noise I have ever heard was a Honda 250 six ridden by Mike Hailwood during a demonstration in front of 100,000 car fans at a South African F1 Grand Prix event back in the early 1970s. To see all 100,000 people stand and cheer as the lone Honda raced around the track was unbelievable and the sound was incredible.
Yes, bikes can make great noises.
But too much noise will kill racing.
Unfortunately virtually every track in the USA and Canada is facing ever-increasing activist attention to the noises coming from their car and motorcycle events with the results that more and more are being forced to apply sound controls. It is highly probable that some will eventually be forced to cease operations unless they find ways to contain sound effectively.
The reality is that, no matter how much we, the enthusiasts, understand the emotional value that race vehicle noise adds to our enjoyment of our sport, the same does not apply to the vast majority of neighbors of race facilities around the nation.
The reality too, is that there is an ever increasing tendancy for persons who do not appreciate our sport to resort to more and more effective activist methods in their attempts to not just remove the “noise” but to eliminate entirely what they percieve to be the nusiance and other negative impacts of race tracks in their communities. The Internet has become a major weapon used by such groups who no longer restrict themselves to fighting their local tracks but who now offer assistance and advice to groups all over the country.
The consequence is that noise is becoming the biggest single factor in preventing or limiting the growth of new facilities and slowing or stopping the ongoing development of existing facilities in the USA and Canada and will have a huge future effect on limiting use at existing tracks in the future.
For this reason I was saddened to hear of the experiment to run open pipes at Moroso. Not because I do not understand the value to the fans but because of the negative implications and the message being sent by this action. A potentially fatal step if followed by other groups at other tracks.
I speak with some level of authority.
At any one time, over the past six or more years, I have been involved in the development or potential development of between 10 and 15 tracks at any one time, most of which have not resulted in completed facilities (which have averaged around two per year over past seasons). A very significant reason for these many proposals going away has been the opposition raised by noise activists or by the potential for such activism.
It is pointless to note that the real impact of noise is far less than that suggested by activists or that the perception of noise pollution is far worse than reality. It does not matter than many tracks live comfortably with their neighbors or that many neighbors have moved close to existing tracks, knowing that noise was present and now fight to control that same noise. It does not matter that tracks provide great economic benefits to an area as well as valuable recreation, safety and other factors.
All that matters is reality and the reality is that, in this day and age, our sport and industry is coming under greater and greater pressure from community groups, activists, environmental agencies and their activist groups, social engineers, the media and other pressure groups and that we will eventually have to find effective ways of lowering the end sound emitted by racing cars and motorcycles.(Noise is just one activist’s issue. Freedom to ride on open lands, or in closed communities and freedom to chose whether to wear helmets are all examples of other activism that has or will result in ever more stringent controls being placed on motorcycle recreation and sport).
I am not calling for immediate, drastic action but offer what is more a heads-up awareness comment that the industry and its participants and fans are going to have to begin the process of establishing an orderly and controlled reduction of noise at our events at some time in the near future.
If we do not do it, noise controls will be forced on us.
Many tracks are already required by local authorities to apply their own limits, even tracks as well established and as valuable to their communities as Laguna Seca. More tracks will inevitably be required to apply limits by their community agencies, counties, cities or town planning commissions. Every single new track has to face ever more stringent noise ordinances as part of their permitting procecedures.
The problem with this is not just that riders and drivers will have to comply if they want to race on these tracks, the noise standards will vary from track to track making it very difficult and expensive for competitors to comply with varying standards and sound testing procedures around the country.
The answer has to be for the race industry, the sanctioning bodies and clubs to work together to develop a common noise standard that will be acceptable to competitors and communities alike, which can then be used as the basis for future court rulings (which are inevitable) and community standards. Far better for the noise limits to be established by the industry than have it rammed down our throats at unacceptable levels.
And believe me, some of the levels that I have seen proposed by community groups are drastic in the extreme!
Unfortunately, the answer to noise control cannot come from the tracks themselves. It is almost impossible to retro fit effective noise barriers to existing tracks because of the inefficiency of even the best existing systems and because of their extremely high costs. For example a 16-feet-high earth wall of around 1000 feet can cost more than $90,000 to install using basic dirt, will have limited effect and may not be considered acceptable by uncooperative community engineers. More expensive professionally installed sound control walls will run as much as $500 per foot, so a 1000-feet wall could cost nearly a million dollars and may still not eliminate problems with aggressive anti-noise activists.
No track in the USA can afford costs such as these, given the the long distances typically needing to be covered, so they would have to increase track use fees considerably. Consequently the cost would be far better shared by the thousands of users on a one time, relatively small expenditure per user basis.
Activists are getting increasingly into monitoring sound themselves (thanks to easily available noise meters) and even if these are typically very inaccurate all it takes sometimes is a single example of excessive noise to trigger action by community noise enforcement authorities that can result in large fines or immediate closure of an activity on the track. So a single car or motorcycle that does nopt comply with track limits can lead to major problems. It’s getting that critical in places and can only get worse.
There are many issues involved in noise that will and are being faced by track owners today. They include obtaining and retaining permission to operate; legal and engineering costs; increasing limitations on the number and size of events; limitations on use days, even the possible limitation of the number of users on a track at a given time. They make it extremely difficult to improve facilities, because any approach for construction permits for such things as track additions, extensions and even safety modifications can bring with the permits a conditional requirement to reduce noise at the facility. These are real issues being faced every day right now by many facilities and this is only the beginning of years of future fighting to maintain the use freedoms we have enjoyed in the past. Any trend to increase noise will have major negative implications and will make it more and more difficult to win these battles.
Yes, we all like the sound of racing engines, just as we like watching World War Two fighter aircraft but we live in the 21st Century now and noise is something that is no longer acceptable to the communities in which we have to live
and operate.
I know that my comments will likely result in round condemnation from many motorcycle and car racers and enthiusiasts but I have witnessed at first hand many instances of anti-noise activism and have come to recognize that this is an increasingly powerful and energetic source of anti-motorsport activity that has the potential to severely impact our sport.
Note for example that Arizona Motorsports Park was closed down by activists who started working together using noise as an issue, and who, when the noise issue was invalidated by scientific tests continued to work together to find other ways to close the new facility. And they succeeded.
Alan Wilson
Castle Rock, Colorado
See related post:
7/28/2004 CCS Florida Experimenting With Unmuffled Racebikes
© , Roadracing World Publishing, Inc.