Courtesy publicdomainpictures.net / Charles Rondeau
Morning Word, Sept. 28: “Santa Fe muffler laws head for hearing”
Take it Away
You link to an article in Vice magazine about why people (men) make their vehicles loud. But the Vice reporter basically interviewed the 1% of noisemakers and produced a not-so-bad vibe to the whole thing...Consider that the use of Jake brakes on big trucks, which actually serve a purpose but make a lot of noise, have been banned in most municipalities. Banning purposely loud vehicles, which serve no purpose, but which affect tens of thousands of citizens in Santa Fe every day, is long overdue. Dramatically increasing the fines acknowledges the negative impact and makes it worth the effort of enforcement...Last year I suggested to my councilors that they have the city’s GIS department do such a study. I live about 650 feet from Cerrillos Road. The noise from offending traffic is loud enough to interrupt conversation in my house daily. The irritation from this is mounting. So, even though I refer to such vehicles as “pointlessly loud,” there is in fact a point to them—the point is to be irritating. (It’s a bit funny to think how different the self-perception of the drivers is from the perception of those who have to hear it.)
And how many people have to hear it? I’ve heard complaints from people living along many major thoroughfares in Santa Fe. The Reporter quoted Deputy Chief Champlin as stating it had a “direct impact on the quality of life in several areas of the city.” I would say “most of the city.” And this can be calculated. The city’s GIS office could map the city for, say, a thousand feet on both sides of all the major streets, and probably all of downtown, and quickly see the large fraction of our population affected by what’s probably a couple hundred regular offenders....Perhaps you’ll recall the early films of Jane Goodall as she studied chimpanzees. In one clip, a small male chimp took one of Goodall’s cooking pots and ran around banging it with spoon, causing great consternation in the community, until eventually the alpha chimp took it away. In modern society, we defer the role of taking away the spoon to our government and police. Why didn’t we do it sooner? Doesn’t matter; do it now.
Jeff Donlan, Santa Fe
