At 06:25 AM 9/23/99 -0500, George Ryan wrote:
>Rocky
>
>I guess, out of all this correspondence, that your feelings are that
>the offending driver(s) should be given a chance to quieten the vehicle
>before other actions are taken. And I agree with that. My "what if's"
>have been extreme, only to illustrate how general and broad based
>the "discretionary" statement can be.
Since "common sense" is hard to evaluate we simply use a 93 DB(a)
standard at 50 feet in San Diego. We are required to do this per our
agreement with Quallcomm Stadium. As a result there have been NO
noise complaints about our events in several years. If a vehicle violates
the 93 db, that run is disallowed and changes must be made to the
car. If that run is too loud you're out of the event. We don't care what
makes the noise be it tires, intake, backfiring,or whatever; noise is noise.
This standard works very well for those who put forth the effort. Note, also,
that it is not a "protest" situation. The person running the sound meter
station writes down the reading for EVERY car thats runs on every lap.
If someone is close (say 91 db) they are notified of that fact so they can
be aware of the situation. If you do a 93, the rules cover the proceedure
from that point, which helps take the politics and griping out of the picture.
The point that some of the quiet cars are the most obnoxious is also valid,
but we can't measure sound "quality" without being subjective again, and
too much of that was one of the things that led to the meter in the first
place.
We also have a lot of formula/sports racers running here and none of them
has any big problem with the standard including Guy Ankeny, the C-Mod
Nat champ. Actually the Sports Racers in general are among the quietest
cars at our events
>Squeeling Tires?? Man, I don't EVEN have any thoughts about that one!!
>> >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 - ?
This is the situation when a meter might be of HELP to a competitor.
If you really are loud, they can prove it. If the meter says you're O.K.
you get to stay. "Discretion " is removed from the situation.
Bottom line; we ALL griped when the meter was instituted, but it DID
give everyone a number to shoot for and a standard of enforcement which
is the same for everyone. It has IMO been a good thing in the long run
because the arguments over what is "too loud" have disappeared and the
Stadium management and neighbors are happy. Without a meter, you end
up having discussions such as the one going on below.....
>> 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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