From the Car Domain Blog…. Clearly, bureaucrats in Europe hate cars more than life itself, but this seems like a stretch even for them: the European Commission is now attacking the noise made by vehicle tires.

But what noise are they talking about? That soothing slushhhh of traffic going by on a rainy street? That burly wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah that comes from a Jeep rolling down the highway on mudders? And if a car actually makes a lot of wheel noise going over a road, doesn’t that generally just mean that the road needs to be paved better?

Frankly, I can’t imagine what this legislation can possibly be targeting, since I don’t believe there’s an excess of Europeans doing noisy burnouts—they mostly drive underpowered commuter microbots over there, don’t they?

The only possible conclusion anyone could reach is that, since modern cars have gotten so quiet that you can’t even tell if they’re running anymore, some busybodies have decided they’re "bothered" by the sounds that tires make—the only part of a car that makes any sound at all anymore.  Some people are pretty upset about this, linking tire noise to stress-related illnesses. Are they serious? I can’t believe what some folks choose to spend their time on—or that anyone even has enough time on their hands to bother getting worked up about tire noise at all. Can you?

Technorati Tags: tire noise, car tires, car noise

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