Hog Heaven--to the Unconverted, It’s an Ungodly Din

Dear Street Smart:

My concern is with noise. Specifically, street noise. More specifically, Harley Davidson street noise. I am a resident of Newport Beach and live fairly close to a major surface street. Night and day, my peace and quiet is disturbed by accelerating Harleys with unmuffled exhausts. Apparently, the police are unwilling or unable to do anything about this ungodly din.

What does the law say about excessive noise? If there are laws against noise of this type and magnitude, then why are they not being enforced?

William B. Cook

Newport Beach

There are indeed laws against excessive noise and they are being enforced whenever possible, according to John Klein, traffic sergeant for the Newport Beach Police Department. Part of the problem in Newport Beach, however, is that the city attracts more motorcycles than many other cities, especially on weekends.

“Because it’s a beach community,” Klein said, “we have more motorcycles here, because a lot of people with Harleys who want to go on weekend drives want to go someplace that’s scenic, and the beach is scenic for them.”

State law requires all vehicles, including cars and motorcycles, to be equipped with mufflers designed to cut down on the noise their engines emit. Drivers whose mufflers are either faulty or have been altered can be cited. But the citation is only an infraction, imposing no fine and requiring only that the muffler be repaired. And in order to issue it, Klein said, a police officer must hear the noise firsthand.

“We’re not targeting motorcycles particularly,” Klein said. “If an officer sees it and he’s in a position to take some action, he will. It’s not a hazardous violation, which an officer will respond to first.”

If the loud Harleys are always in the same neighborhood, however, it might be a good idea to report the nuisance to the police department by calling (714) 644-3717 and asking for the traffic division.

“If we get a complaint about a specific area,” Klein said, “we will send an officer out to evaluate, and if it’s a problem, we will correct it. If there are too many motorcycles coming through with modified exhausts, we will increase enforcement in that specific area.”

Dear Street Smart:

I have just received notification from the Department of Motor Vehicles that my vehicle license is up for renewal on my 1995 Ford F150 truck. I was also asked to choose between having a smog check or paying $39. In response to my telephone inquiry, a DMV official said a payment of $39 would take care of the smog check requirement for the next two years.

My question to you is this: If my vehicle does not require a smog check, as is indicated by their option to allow a payment as an alternative, why should I be required to make the payment? Or conversely, how can a payment of $39 ensure that I am not polluting the air?

Howard H. Belmont

San Clemente

The option of paying $39 in lieu of having your car smog checked (which California law requires every two years) is offered only to the owners of new cars about to be checked for the first time, according to Paula David, a spokeswoman for the California Dept. of Consumer Affairs. The idea behind it, she said, is that more than 99% of the two-year-old cars that get tested pass with flying colors anyway.

“New cars are cleaner than ever, and our bottom line is emissions reduction,” David said.

So instead of requiring such cars to undergo meaningless testing, she said, state lawmakers two years ago enacted a law allowing the owners to choose to instead contribute to a fund to be used to purchase and scrap older “gross polluting” cars that have failed the smog emissions test miserably.

“We know from the numbers that we are not losing air quality from offering this option,” David said, “and, in fact, we will gain it if we can get the program going and a lot of people say, ‘Hey, give me a few hundred dollars and you can have my old clunker.’ ”

So far, though, the program hasn’t gotten off the ground because not enough new car buyers have opted to make the contribution: Instead of the projected revenues of $25 million, David said, only about $4 million came in the first year.

State officials are trying to improve those numbers by sending information on the option in the mail along with the DMV registration materials for new cars, which is where you found it.

Dear Street Smart:

After observing yet another drag race by two cars simultaneously receiving a green light on a freeway onramp without a diamond lane, I wonder why the two lights do not alternate green.

Mark Schneider

Seal Beach

Alternating those lights was certainly one of the options considered by Caltrans during an extensive study of this problem conducted in the 1970s, according to Joe El Harake, an Orange County spokesman for the agency. The other option was to stagger the cars in the two metered lanes of a freeway onramp by setting one of the “starting” lines--the line on which the metered lights are set--several feet back. To find out which option would work best, El Harake said, each was tried at various onramps throughout the state and the results carefully monitored and compared with the results of leaving the lights alone.

The surprising finding: that none of it really made any difference.

“Alternating lights were no different in terms of safety,” El Harake said. “It’s really an issue of reckless driving. We cannot stop motorists from drag racing.”

That said, El Harake added, it’s not a huge problem. “A certain percentage of drivers will go ahead and violate,” he said. “Fortunately, though, that number is very, very small.”

Street Smart appears Mondays in The Times Orange County Edition. Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about traffic, commuting and what makes it difficult to get around in Orange County. Include simple sketches if helpful. Letters may be published in upcoming columns. Please write to David Haldane, c/o Street Smart, The Times Orange County Edition, P.O. Box 2008, Costa Mesa, CA 92626, send faxes to (714) 966-7711 or e-mail him at David.Haldane@latimes.com. Include your full name, address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited, and no anonymous letters will be accepted.