>
>OK, now tell me - in the real world - who do I protest to at a local event
>when the event chair tells me to leave the site because I am making too
much
>noise - at his discretion - ?
Actually George, I think you have a valid point there. Maybe the RE, the
solo chair (as opposed to event chair), the safety steward (not really a
safety item, but perhaps he would be a voice of reason). Local level is
casual enough that the useful bureaucracy is not really in place. One would
hope you would first get the opportunity to quiet the car. If the event
chair is just going to be a jerk about it, then you probably have to accept
that he is a jerk and just go. The tough part would be to just go while
refraining from being a jerk yourself (which would be so tempting). But I
also believe it highly unlikely an event chair would appear out of the blue
and command "You're too loud, get outta here." More likely it would be,
"George, we've got a problem with your car, It's too loud for our neighbors.
What can we do to quiet it down?"
>If the event chair at a Tour (or anywhere else) determined a competitor
has
>a car making excessive noise - in his opinion - there aren't too many
people
>that will try to usurp that decision, in my experience. This isn't a formal
>protest being handled by a committee (maybe it should be?). This is solely
>one of the responsibilities of the event chair, and at his discretion.
>
>Sure, the competitor could lodge a protest with the protest committee,
>but are there rules in place that allow the Protest Committee to overrule
>an event chair in this case? I can't find any. (Remember, the car in
>question IS loud, what is being discussed is how loud is TOO loud?) I doubt
>a protest committee would challenge the event chair's discretionary
>decision unless he was being biased, and other cars equally noisy are
>allowed to compete.
At a Tour or Divisional level, at which the entire rulebook is mandatory,
there should then be the formal protest procedure in place. And any action
by an event official is protestable. Yes, IMHO a PC could overrule an event
chair's decision that a given car was too loud. Of course, they may also
agree -- not declining to overrule, but independently agreeing that the
suspect car was over the line. But again, even with such a finding the first
resolution should be an opportunity to quiet the car. The basic premise is
that the given car is too loud FOR THAT SITE. The nature of Solo competitors
being what they are, I'd believe that anyone finding himself in such a
situation would find plenty of help and advice on suppressing the noise.
Funny thing about event noise -- the last event I attended where event noise
became a significant factor irritating the neighbors, it was not cars with
louder exhaust notes that was the problem. It was all those stockers and
their SQUEALING TIRES on an asphalt surface that drew the complaints. Man,
talk about unwinnable! The cars with loud pipes only fired up every now and
then, but the tire squeal was constant. When some neighbor complains that
tire squeal is the irritant, that's a noise impossible to quiet and an
argument impossible to win.
--Rocky
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