I'd say it's a curve.
this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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This could be log scale. Or inverse log idk which way you want the curve to be
dB is already log scale
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There is a house in my neighborhood with your picturesque suburban short king that has a white Chevy Tahoe with the loud muffler setup! As annoying as it is on performance cars, I kinda get it. But in a family SUV? Dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. And he revs it in front of middle school kids waiting for the bus to boot. What a sad little man.
Related: "A new study by Western University in Ontario says that if you've got a car with a modified exhaust system, odds are you're a guy and probably also psychotic and sadistic."
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a60983144/study-loud-exhaust-psychotic/
this whole post should be in fuck_motorbikes
A few (major) caveats:
(edit: I previously misread the author's information; she does work at UWO)
- The study is being filtered through a blog post.
- The study itself is written by one author and published in a journal by the University of Gdańsk of little import. That's, of course, just an indicator it might not be the most credible.
- I will defend psychology as a science until I'm blue in the face, but it is right now undergoing a serious replication crisis, especially because of its poorly representative sampling.
- The sample is: "A sample of 529 (52% men) undergraduate business students", which is a laughably biased sample compared to a global population. They never say which university, but given ~~the publication and~~ the author's workplace, it's safe to revise that to "529 (52% men) undergraduate business students at ~~U. Gdańsk~~ the University of Western Ontario".
- The study evaluates negative personality traits based off a "dark tetrad", which is a still-controversial extension of the "dark triad".
- As the author notes, the mean score from the three questions pertaining to "I want to fuck my car" wasn't all that high (approximate total average of "somewhat disagree" on all three with approximate total standard deviation of a single "neither agree nor disagree"). This means the actual sample of people who had the problem being addressed in the title of the study was vanishingly small.
This, to me, is flimsy evidence at best even when I already buy into the basic premise.
Not true. I don't have a modified exhaust system.
I wanted to be high IQ on this graph so I started walking everywhere. But I still have noisy exhaust.
Stop eating Chipotle
In the next stage, you can gradually increase and decrease your speed, switching from walking to running and back again if you want.
I don't think dB is a linear scale, so it would be weird if it increases in step with IQ dropping.
As sound pressure levels increase exponentially, perceived loudness increases linearly. That's why the dB is used.
The IQ drop is also non-linear.
Doesn't apply to some rockets. NASA vs Space Sex rockets.
My car's loud cause I'm poor and exhaust parts are expensive. It's stinky inside sometimes too, probably not helping with the IQ thing. Guarantee it bothers me more than it does you
Modified exhausts are way louder than simply broken ones. Maybe 1% of loud cars I see are old and beaten up. In vast majority of cases someone paid extra to install custom exhaust.
I think you must live in a nicer area than I do lol. There's like two guys with fart cannon Subarus, probably five with straight piped pickups, and uncountable beaters with soup cans/tin foil/hose clamps/rtv/bailing wire doing their best. We have cheap power and everyone wants electric but no one can afford it. There is exactly one Nissan Leaf owned by the school district superintendent. My car was $700 including all the parts to fix it. That's pretty typical here. Cheapest exhaust I could fit was $800 alone when I looked into it, and almost certainly more now.
Probably difference between USA and Europe. In Europe beat up cars will not pass technical checks. To have a really loud car you have to replace the exhaust for the check and then install the custom one again. Only special kind of drivers have the time and will to do it. Mostly bikers.
That actually probably explains why bikers do it the most since there it seems like on most bikes the swap can be done in less than 30 minutes as the exhaust system is small and self-contained and easily accessible
Motorcyclists also believe a loud exhaust makes them more visible to drivers - to what degree this is true is debatable but sometimes the motivation is not pure malice like with cars.
I think this is pure BS and trying to excuse stupid behavior. Never in my life did I ever hear an approaching motorbike, no matter how loud. Cars are well isolated, you have noise from the tires, some radio or music is usually playing or you're talking to someone. Outside noises are barely noticeable. I can only hear the loud bikes when they are right next to me, not when they are approaching.
Makes sense. The sheer excess of keeping two fully functional exhaust setups around so you can legally run one that's more obnoxious is definitely infuriating
I once paid over $400 to put a muffler onto a hatchback that a previous owner had deleted, I must be a fuckin genius.
I really like that my car is pretty damn quiet. Especially on start up and crawling speeds, so when parking for example. In every garage the car was in someone told me that they can remove a screw or something from the exhaust, so it's always open and makes loud noises all the time. They all were pretty perplexed when i told them that i absolutely don't want that.
If you want a loud exhaust just drill a few holes in it.
It'll be loud af.
You sure are.
I mean this is especially valid if you look at measured exhaust noise. Many people have cars that CAN make a lot of sound(if they use it for racing for example) but CHOOSE not to make a lot of sound to not ruin peoples days. The one big problem with this is that cheap motorbikes, which is something you would 100% use because theres no better public transit alternative, are also really loud.
I've seen data from Austria indicating that 70% of vehicles exceeding legal noise levels are motorbikes, 20% are cars, 10% are trucks and busses. Vast majority of loud vehicles are modified in purpose to make more noise.
Also, where I live loud vehicles will not pass annual technical checks so people put in legal exhaust for the check and then put the illegal, loud one back in. This has nothing to do with people not having money to fix their cars/motorbikes and everything with low IQ street racing sub-culture.
I drive an EV, so I'm super smart! /s
Even more so if it does not make any additional artificial sound!
You don't have to be a genius to have empathy. Fun fact: most people only use 10 % of their heart.
you simply don't understand
We're on the exponential curve my mates
I would think logarithmic given that one of the units is dB
Do you really want to get into an argument whether they are the same or not
Fuck all the cars, regardless of how obnoxiously loud they are.