The Joint Commissioner of Transport has started a drive which will target premium bike owners in Bangalore as their bikes produce noise levels above prescribed limits.
You are a bike fanatic, own that snazzy 800cc bike and you stay in Bengaluru, there is some bad news heading your way. Apparently, the Joint Commissioner of Transport is on a meltdown to target superbikes like Harleys, Triumphs and Ducatis as they cause noise pollution even after having allowed their sales and registering them at the R.T.O. According to city regulations and the transport authorities, the permissible decibel limit for bikes is 80 decibels but superbikes produce at least 200 decibels of noise levels which is clearly over the prescribed limit. At first instance, the bike owners will be fined a certain amount but the second time they are caught their bikes will be seized as violation of the above mentioned rule.
Superbike owners who fell for this fine found this to be meaningless as the R.T.O. first collects taxes in the form of registration fees and later catches them on the streets for creating noise pollution. Also, they have been left with a question mark as to what this fine will actually promote as all the bikes are sold with statutory approvals. The silencers of high performance bikes come in accordance with their engine displacements. Bigger the engine, bigger will be its exhaust and the corresponding sound. On some bikes like Royal Enfield (famous for its thumping engine sound), modifying the exhaust to reduce noise levels make the silencers long and heavy which can prove to be unreliable as they are held by just two bolts.
Last month, a similar fine was forced onto as many as 180 Bullet owners in Pune after the Traffic Police received complaints from citizens that bikers modify their silencers to get a louder exhaust note from their bikes. The bikers were charged under section-190(2) of the Motor Vehicle Act which issues a fine of up to Rs. 1000/- for improper modifications to vehicles. The Traffic Police also went a step further and said that it would look into garage owners who modify these silencers and take action against them as well. Bengaluru is one of the biggest hubs for superbikes in the country with all major bike brands present in the city.
