We’ve all seen and heard it a million times before. On tees, patches, stickers, badges, tattooed on your private parts after a particularly wild New Years party. Or is that just me? Anyway, have you ever stopped to think whether there’s any merit to the thought? Are loud piped-bikes really less likely to see their masters and commanders pay a visit to the big custom house in the sky? If that was a fact, why aren’t all bikes built to deafen?

The days of most cagers driving with their windows down while listening to a tinny AM radio with a $5 speaker that couldn’t rock a matchbox are well and truly gone. Look around you at the lights these days and you see windows up, 36 speaker sound systems pumping out The Pussycat Dolls latest pile of hot dung, sat navs a’satting and a’naving, and a disturbingly large percentage of drivers fiddling with their iPhones. How’s a few loud noises going to save you from these hung-over soccer mums with a car full of screaming kids, an incoming call, and a steaming lap full of Seattle’s finest? Could loud pipes really save your life? Time to decide, peoples.