It is not my example, it is yours. And you asked the question, whether there was negligence based on your example. Now you say that only a jury could answer your question, so "there is no definitive answer." That is the refuge of someone who has run out of any real arguments. I think the truth is that you don't like my answer, which was "Yes," but you can't figure out any way to undercut it but to say it is blurry. BTW, you may want to rethink comparing your driving to that of a grandma.

 

Yes, they do.

I actually played a similar trick on my wife a few months ago. I never got out 2nd gear. She thought I was speeding (speed was 55mph - I wasn't even doing 50mph yet). She yelled at me, asking why do I always have to go so fast. I laughed and told her what I did..., she didn't believe me at first.

Anyway - I've had a woman yell at me for speeding, when I was doing ~25mph in a 25mph. I was NOT speeding in my own neighborhood - ever.

 

I just checked, it was a part of tcouture's example, but it was your argument.

You are making a lot of assumptions that have a lot of holes in it, and I think that you don't like that I found them.

And you are absolutely right. I'll just say that I drive safely and cautiously.

I am done with this thread. I am just wasting time. People just aren't open and there is no point in talking anymore.

 

Yeah, that seems to be more or less how Inglorious reasons. Example:

Me: "If you're walking in the park, and you suddenly see/hear a sports car revved to high-rpm approaching, is your first thought "oh, he's probably just doing 20mph in first gear?" No. It's "I need to get out of the way NOW so I don't DIE." It's very difficult to judge the true speed of a passing car, as many have pointed out. To me, these people are responding in a reasonable manner."

Comment: If you see/hear a loud sports car revved to high-rpm's approaching, it is most reasonable to assume that it is travelling pretty fast.

Inglorious: "With the park scenario, you hit on an important point. You don't know how fast other people are going. People are using emotions or heuristics instead of using facts or quantitative information. To me, it just doesn't seem right for someone to wag their finger and to tell someone else how to drive or to slow down if they aren't speeding and driving within the confines that the law dictates is acceptable and safe. These busybodies are not trained. They are not cops. They have no authority. They aren't professionals who work in the DMV. So, I think it is perfectly reasonable that they should mind their own business if someone is driving within the speed limit.

Comment: Inglorious fails to address my point that it is reasonable to assume that a sports car revved to high-rpm's headed towards you is probably going very fast. Instead, he implies that only a "facts or quantitative information" should be used to judge the speed of an approaching sports car at high engine rpm, not useful observations like the sound of high rpm's. He then makes 2 strawman arguments (unrelated, nonparallel arguments that are true, but don't prove/disprove the original argument): 1) it's not right to tell someone how to drive or slow down when they're not speeding (obviously, but that's not my point) and 2) people should mind their own business if someone is driving within the speed limit (obviously, but also not my point). My point was that if a person sees/hears a sports car with a loud exhaust note and an engine revved at high rpm, it would be reasonable to assume that the car could be speeding. So I respond:

Me: "So, if a person doesn't have a radar gun (or other "quantitative/factual" information), he shouldn't be concerned if a sports car with a loud, high-revved engine is headed straight for him? A reasonable person knows that the exhaust gets louder and the engine revs faster when a car is going fast - and this assumption would be correct most of the time. A car going 20mph in 1st gear, making the same type of noise, would be an exception."

Comment: Once again, I try to explain that you don't need a radar gun to be worried that a sports car with a loud, high-revved engine could be speeding, because this would usually be the case (with few exceptions). Common things are common. His response was,

Inglorious: "People should not blame people or accuse them of breaking the law when they haven't. I don't like Big Brother watching over me when I haven't done anything wrong."

Comment: Again, another stawman. Obviously, people should not blame people for breaking the law when they haven't. Of course, that's not the point I was making. Again, I was making the argument that civilians are behaving rationally when they hear a loud, high-revved engine on a sports car and develop concern that it is speeding. Others have tried to say the same thing.

If people have already made up their minds, there's really no point in having a logical debate, because it ain't gonna happen.

 

I don't live in those communities, or any city at all for that matter. Our neighbors are widely spaced but they probably would come out of their houses armed themselves and looking for the bad guys. The area would light up with flashlights like an old-fashioned movie premiere. Which is why it would be inconsiderate to mislead them like that.

If my pistol upsets you, consider the trash cans. Our ranch is perimeter-fenced and the fences all lie two feet inside the property line less any easements. Anything inside that fence is on our property and subject only to the fairly loose zoning restrictions for property outside a city or township. So we can pretty much put anything we like anywhere on our property. Nevertheless, we don't put our trash bins where the neighbor would have to stare at them when walking around his property, and we don't put thorned or poisonous bushes along those perimeter fences where one of his children or animals could be injured. We positioned the goat pasture where it wouldn't be upwind of a neighbor. That sort of thing. Courtesy, not legislation.

We all have to live with each other. A gentleman is one who does not unintentionally hurt others. Once I'd been around awhile I realized that sort of 'hurt' extends to just making their life more difficult or even less pleasant with no corresponding gain for me.

I believe my statement was that a disregard for our neighbors leads them to put in place the laws you say you need to quiet down. On any given issue, our neighbors outnumber us. The only way to keep our freedoms is not to abuse them by pissing off the rest of the population. People don't think about long-term effects on Freedom! when they just want a quiet place to raise their kids. I did not say they would ban 911's. I said we wouldn't be able to have cars like we have. I'm not talking hypothetically here. This is an ongoing process I'm reporting, not surmising that it might happen some day.

You can't even have cars on a bloody race track like we used to enjoy in the sixties. People got fed up with the exhaust noise and didn't stop with "residential neighborhoods." Now our race tracks in California have to install sound-measuring equipment and demonstrate that they fine race cars that make too much noise. Failure to do that causes much bigger fines for the track operator. I haven't run there in decades, but I'm told that Laguna Seca is so restricted that some classes can't run there any more. (That's hearsay, not my own knowledge. I would have expected the sanctioning body to restrict the sound levels on those classes so they could keep the raceway on the calendar.)

Actually, you're making the assumption that speed was what concerned her. Maybe she had a sick child and the exhaust noise was the problem. Maybe she has a mother in that house, who like my wife with her terrible stroke needs to sleep for several hours every day. Again, not the speed, just the behavior. Maybe she's not an engineer. Many people are not and understandably feel no obligation to get the training. So perhaps she doesn't realize that some cars can reach high engine speeds at low road speeds. Her Toyota with the automatic doesn't do that. Any details are necessarily assumptions. All we do know is the OP was upsetting her by his driving.
Actually it doesn't in this context, and I'm a pretty aggressive guy about personal freedoms. This isn't one of those cases. You're on their property when you drive past someone's house. In California, and probably most states if not all, a residential street is not built on public land. The land went into private ownership from various origins long before the roads were considered. We aren't England where many roads have been there since the Romans built them.

For freeways and such, the state condemns the land and reimburses the displaced owners. Most small roads are built on an easement that was granted by an early owner when he wanted the city or state to maintain a road across or along his property line. I grant this happened so many years ago that most home owners don't realize it, but we still have a fairly large parcel and the easement in our case is an explicit paragraph in the property title. I'll let the attorneys among us correct my interpretation as necessary. We own the west half of the land under the county road, a rousing forty feet, where the road passes in front of our place from where it enters at the north end to where it leaves on the south end. The owners of three empty parcels across the road own the eastern half. We can't reclaim that easement as long as the county maintains the road and the public keep using it, but if it were abandoned (as does happen occasionally), the use of the land would revert to us. The easement along our north boundary was in fact abandoned, but it still exists for some arbitrary number of years in case people resume using that path.

All that is true on a smaller scale in most residential areas. I've never investigated but I suspect something more community-related happens in housing developments. Possibly a joint easement by the property owners group that owns the entrance gate and similar property in the development. Or perhaps the road maintenance is paid for annually by that group. The point would be the same. It is a public road, but it passes over private property. Literally over, as in "lies on top of." The property of the people upset at your driving. Or if you claim to be upset solely for the OP and never do that yourself, then the people upset by the OP. The easement that is granted is defined by common law as far I know, not statute, but I doubt we are far off to describe it as the property owner granting the public a right to peaceable passage over that piece of land. A property owner objecting by running into the street may be more excitable than I am, or may have a stronger motive, but the subject matter is their business: the behavior of drivers using that easement. Whether unnecessary squealing of tires or undue high engine speed is in the same class with a truck full of toxic waste or a high school brass band or a herd of sheep are all questions a court would have to decide. But I wouldn't bet in favor of the driver winning in court who is defending behavior that was not a necessary part of peaceable passage.

On a freeway, your driving is between you, your fellow drivers, and the highway patrol. On a residential street, the owners have a stake in the question.

I did this privately, remember? I thought the system automatically attached my signature to that comment, and I was wrong, but I did try to keep it private because personal criticism in public does nothing but invite a flame war. I have only responded in public because you asked for that.

No, I didn't really want to discuss manners and civic responsibility, and honestly I still don't. I'm probably older than your father (and possibly your grandfather as well) but I don't feel parental in the least and I gave up teaching this stuff more decades ago than I gave up racing. You have your own advisors in life and business I'm sure. Nevertheless, you invite criticism when you make a public assertion like: You were wrong and the polite way to say so was privately in my view. I never say anything in private I would not say in public though, so let me state my position simply: It is their business when you're driving by their house and suggesting to younger drivers that they rev their engine "the next time they see the *****" is bad advice.

Gary

 

As has already been said, these same people wouldn't bat an eye if a deafing Harley drove by. I am sick of the double standard between cars and bikes as far as noise is concerned.

 

Agreed.

Gary - that whole "noise of a high revving engine" is going to go away when EV's are the standard. What will these engineering-highway-patrol-experts say when the EV is going the speed limit?

Are we really to assume that speed was NOT the issue, when, according to the OP, this was the complaint filed against him?

Interestingly enough, I do also gauge the speed of a vehicle based on RPM's. I do it almost everyday. It's not the initial sound of a vehicle, it's counting the gear changes, along with the RPM's. I can approximate that 'x' vehicle in 'y' gear (normally - without aftermarket gear ratios) is travelling at 'z' speed.

If these housewives are minimally intelligent, I bet they could do the same. Unfortunately, I believe you are giving them ENTIRELY too much credit, as the greatest their knowledge (on a general level) is what shows are on what channels and what times.

 

I swear I knew it was Connecticut.........
I started reading the posting and guessed where it was..
I"m sitting here in Old Stamford looking out the back window and just knew too funny

 

same thing happens to me with my z06 with the corsas.. when my buddy had a straight piped massive cammed camaro SS , when we come down on our bikes...

people are stupid... end of story

and since the cop did not witness it I am pretty sure they cant do anything to you but say if you were speeding slow down.

 

What a load of crap...... You must drive a convertible with a head that big

 

Yikes - this thread seems as though it's gotten a little outside of the spirit of the forum.

I was thinking about it yesterday though, when not one but something like 20 deafening Harleys drove by me going the other direction, and I was thinking something along the lines of the double standard.

I was feeling a little sheepish about the elevated volume of my AWE exhaust, which is at least a little louder than the PSE. And then heard the gaggle of riders go by at a volume that actually hurt my ears. Anyway, I instantly stopped feeling anything close to sheepish about my exhaust - I'm pretty sure that my early 911 was louder, right from the factory.

With respect to the original post - seems like an unfortunate incident that, but for the grace of God, could have been me...or many of the rest of you. Something about being presumed guity - exhuast noise or no exhaust noise - just because i'm driving a 911 - is irksome. But seems as though that particular point, in several different forms, has already been covered here.

 

i think an overly laud exhaust (like muffler bypass with 200 cell cats) is quite a childish thing to fight for. it is fun for a week then it is a very annoying thing for everybody. especially when you have to drive out at 4:30am in the morning. people do not like such stuff very much.

keep stock mufflers on - they will subdue noise to reasonable limit.

 

Says the guy with an aftermarket exhaust mod...

 

i do not run bypass nor i have anything 'exotic' like borla or similar 'harley' like stuff. my car is pretty civil.

 

Just pokin' ya. I agree with the noise. Some people like it. Because my family goes with me a lot of places, I don't want them to be put through that. I'm staying as quiet as I can.