Who likes loud cars? Ontario study suggests they skew young, male and score high on psychopathy and sadism, Western University prof says noise pollution from illegal cars needs to be taken seriously by Colin Butler, CBC News, Apr 21, 2024
There’s a clandestine car scene in Canada that most people often don’t see, but they can sure hear it — usually at night and often from a bedroom window left open in the summer with the hope of catching a cool overnight breeze.
The noise is often hard to place in terms of distance, but definitely distinct: young gearheads who gather at unsanctioned car rallies in empty parking lots, or guerrilla drag races at desolate city intersections.
These tricked-out rides — with the gunshot pop of tailpipes, the surly roar of engines and the sound of tires screaming rubber against pavement — pierce the night and sometimes even the restless buzz of the day. They’re heard through trees and over rooftops, in some cases, jarring people awake and prompting calls to police.
- ‘I don’t sleep’: West London residents call halt to street-racing noise
- Police charge one driver, looking for another, in weekend stunt driving incident
For Julie Aitken Schermer, a professor of psychology and management and organizational studies at Western University in London, Ont., they’d rumble by as she walked her dog just south of the campus.
“Every day we come across these loud cars and pickup trucks and motorcycles that are backfiring and I get startled,” she said. “My dog was startled. I see the animals run away that are in the trees and squirrels on the ground.
“I thought, ‘Oh, who really wants to make this kind of noise?’ And so a typical academic, I went and did an extensive search and found nothing.”
Because there were no psychological studies on what kind of person prefers loud cars, Schermer conducted one of her own.
The pilot study, titled “A desire for a loud car with a modified muffler is predicted by being a man and higher scores on psychopathy and sadism,” was published last year in the international journal Current Issues in Personality Psychology. Schermer also wrote about it in Psychology Today.
We found that it was sadism and psychopathy was predicting who wants to modify their mufflers, who feels more connected to their vehicle, and they think loud cars are really cool.
– Julie Aitken Schermer, Western University researcher
As part of the research, Schermer surveyed 529 undergrad business students — 289 men, 234 women and six who identified as “other.” They were asked if they viewed their car as an extension of themselves, how much they thought loud cars were “cool” and if they would make their cars louder with muffler modifications.
Schermer also gave them a Short Dark Tetrad (SD4) personality measure — another questionnaire that assesses a cluster of malicious personality traits, including narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism (linked to being cunning and manipulative).
When she got the results, she expected to see a strong correlation between someone who prefers a look-at-me exhaust system and narcissism, but that wasn’t the case.
“We found that it was sadism and psychopathy was predicting who wants to modify their mufflers, who feels more connected to their vehicle, and they think loud cars are really cool.
“It seems to be this callous disregard for other people’s feelings and their reactions. That’s the psychopathy coming out and it’s also they probably get a kick out of enjoying watching people get startled.”
Just like frac’ers! And their enablers like AER. In my experience, AER and Alberta Environment management got pleasure out of the many frac harmed getting nowhere with Alberta’s “regulators” that primarily serve corruption, greed, cover-up and polluters.
Slide from Ernst speaking presentations
‘This is a stereotype,’ car enthusiast says
As you can imagine, some car enthusiasts don’t react well to this study. Suck it up vile life-harming polluters!
Bailey Trap, for instance, grew up in a family that loves big, loud cars so much that they started a business.
Performance Unlimited is a London custom car shop that specializes in loud vehicles, such as muscle cars, hot rods, tricked-out pickup trucks and specialty custom vehicles. Noise is cruel and incredibly harmful to health (human and other species – even plants!), noise has even been proven to cause heart disease and drive some humans to murder.
“Dad has a ’66 Chevelle that he’s had since I was a little kid and it is a large motor and it is loud, and I absolutely love it. I actually have it tattooed on my arm, that’s how much I love it,” said Trap, 38.
CBC News gave Trap a copy of Schermer’s study to review. She doesn’t think it’s an accurate reflection of the car enthusiast community.
“This is a stereotype,” she said. “Obviously you’re going to have more men liking vehicles and using that as a way to express themselves.
“A lot of the guys I see with loud cars are older gentlemen,” she said, noting the car community regularly holds events like cruise nights that raise money for charity.
To her, the surly rumble of a gas-guzzling engine or the shotgun-like pop of a tailpipe is a means of expression, like a pair of ripped jeans or a bright sparkly dress.Sickening and killing people and non human species, nice “expression.”
“It’s a creative form. It’s a way for somebody to stand out in a society that wants you to conform,” bullshit, loud car and motor bike drivers know damned well how harmful their noise is to others she said. “It may not be your taste, but it is something that says something about them.”
When put to Schermer, the psychology professor said “that’s a different demographic and characteristic from what I studied.”
Quiet car bylaws aim to curb noise
Schermer said that, unlike guerrilla car enthusiasts who drag race at red lights or meet in a deserted parking lot of a big-box store, people who go to scheduled, sanctioned events that raise money for charity are more likely to modify their cars in a legal and safe way and, if you asked them politely, they would probably keep it down.Try asking a frac’er or driller or compressor operator to turn down the noise.
“The personality profile I found with our loud mufflers are also the same personality profiles of people who illegally commit arson,” she said. “I’m sure the older, retired gentlemen who are making their classic cars louder and more noticeable are also not going out and setting fires illegally.”
Schermer said the issue of noise pollution from illegal car meets needs to be taken more seriously. It’s why she plans to expand on the study. Thank you very much!
In response to the rising number of illegal car meets, drag races and excessive noise, many Canadian cities have created quiet car bylaws to crack down on the clandestine activity.
In London in particular, city police have been doing regular enforcement blitzes since 2020, laying hundreds of charges each year.
In 2020 alone, the city’s police laid 110 charges for improper mufflers, 38 charges for “causing noise likely to disturb” and four charges for making illegal modifications to vehicles, including removing emissions controls. Such nice elderly gentlemen! Cruel selfish ignorant fucks is what they are
Refer also to:
2023: Frac noise hurts; frac noise harms health
2021: New study: Songbirds’ reproductive success reduced by natural gas compressor noise.
2013: University of Michigan researchers on noise: Turn down the volume for health’s sake