On Monday, officials served the administrators of the Corvette Museum Motorsports Park in Bowling Green, Kentucky with notice that the neighbors around the track think the fledgling raceway is too damn loud.
According to Bowling Green Daily News (via Hemmings), neighbors complained about the track’s noise, although no specific decibel limit was specifically outlined in the track’s permit to operate.
According to Mitch Wright, general manager for the motorsports park, track officials met with the city-county’s planning commission today. The track held a meeting Monday night with neighbors and local officials to discuss noise coming from the track.
“This is about us coming together and coming up with meaningful solutions,” Wright said.
The track has operated since last fall, although this is the first official violation they’ve received from neighbors. Wright said in the past neighbors would complain — or not complain — about noise from the track depending on the type of cars or wind conditions from the day. He also stated the motorsports park is building “significant” structures at the track to help mitigate sound escaping, including a 30-foot garage to shield neighbors from the noise.
The track, which is part of the National Corvette Museum complex is a significant tourism draw (read: free tax money.)
“Obviously there’s a number of businesses and industry in this area. From a tourism standpoint, we have a pretty serious effect,” Wright said.
We live in a generation of loud speakers, loud phones, loud movies, loud videogames, and loud Rice-Burners, and yet we still cant stomach a bit of good ol’ V8 grumble.
I don’t get it
Not to mention backup beepers, “rescued” yaptrash, tax feeders in low flying helicopters, leaf blowers, omnidirectional sirens on pig haulers…..
In civilized societies, there is a set decibel limit. Equal for everyone. Done! Not that civilized and us have much in common anymore, but one could always dream…
Oh yes, let me add dogs on top of that be it dogs outside or dogs melting in the parking lot.
Me thinks its just hippies trying to get Muricans to stop driving them big V8s.
I think ‘ “rescued” yaptrash’=dogs. At least that’s how I read it.
I want to pile on about the leafblower. Those things are the work of the devil. loud and obnoxious, and all they do is relocate dirt; relocate into my carport, onto my deck, all over my car, at the threshold of the garage, etc.
The neighbor’s leaf blower would not be an issue – if you had a bigger lot!
#distance
I have an idea for a new generation of restaurant, called a Quiet Restaurant.
Each table has a decibel-o-meter above it, designed to capture the noise level at each table. There’s a digital read-out up high somewhere with your table number, and the number of decibels you’re creating. Color coded green/yellow/red/purple to let you know you’re too loud.
You can earn a free dessert or 5% off your bill or something, if your decibels stay below ____ (low level) for the meal.
It would be the most pleasant dining experience, with no loud children or shouting idiots.
Sssssssssssssssshhhhhhhh
I think I’m getting old because I hate loud bars. I hate having to yell me order to a bartender. Every bar I went to in Scottsdale was like that. $14 drinks and talking to people is useless.
This means I was born being about 35 then. I have never lied loudness. I think I have sensitive ears, seriously. As well, the noises people make really grate on me, as far as typing loudly, walking too loud, opening their Tupperware at lunch.
Some Germans are studying this condition just recently, so I think it does have a name. Most people in this country aren’t aware of it.
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Also, the Quiet Restaurant would create a healthy spirit of competition and admiration of those tables who are able to keep their noise the lowest, since it’s all displayed on the score board.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/08/misophonia-annoying-noises-disorder_n_953892.html
This. I have misophonia. I am greatly irritated by the noises, but do not have the rage part.
Noises bother me less after having a kid. I can tune all child noises out. When I’m flying and kids are crying, I’m just happy it isn’t mine.
Babies crying grates on my ears soooo bad.
But when I see people who have kids that are behaving very well, I almost want to compliment them because it’s so rare to see.
I usually end up thinking “No, single men don’t talk to people with little kids though, it comes off weird.” So I don’t.
If my daughter throwing a fit or making a fuss, I remove her from the situation. Sometimes you can do everything right and kids will still be a$$holes. On a plane, there is just nothing you can do. Nothing. Booze?
However, there’s always that one family that has four kids that always behave. F#ck that family. I bet they hate each other so much when they get home.
Misophonia. Hmm. Maybe that’s why everyone’s preferred tv volume is too much for me. Funny thing is it only bothers me with small, tinny tv speakers. I have no problem turning the volume up for a movie on a decent surround sound setup.
My sound annoyance doesn’t really cross into rage, but I do like my peace and quiet.
It really causes me a lot of annoyance and stress. I find when I’m around such noises all day long, I’m more tired than if it’s been a quiet day.
Of course most people would just peg this as “easily annoyed” or “too picky.”
“I have an idea for a new generation of restaurant, called a Quiet Restaurant”
I take the train to work – Double decker cars so the upper level of each coach has a “quiet zone”, no phones, no loud headphones, no talking only brief quiet conversation, it is sheer bliss…
See, I think I need to create this.
I would definitely frequent such a restaurant.
There should be similar rules for planes, at least for situations that can be controlled. I’m still trying to figure out how I can sometimes hear someone else’s music from several rows away over the drone of the engines.
Funny you say that. Last year on a flight, I put in my most-noise blocking ear buds, Aurvana or something. They’re pretty good.
Before I put them in, all I heard was plane drone. After putting them in, I could hear someone’s music in their headphones. They were so far away I couldn’t even see who it was.
How!
One of my favorite nuggets when contemplating time travel is the notion that someone from, say, the 1700s wouldn’t be able to stand the noise today, and if we went back to that time we woudn’t be able to stand the smell.
I would say that while you CAN cut out the noise rather easily via headphones or moving to the country, the lack of sanitation and health care in the 1700s would be unbearable. As well as a dealing with all the illiterate people, working conditions, and lack of electricity.
The 1700s person entering today would just be really stressed for a while, but they’d adapt. Someone going back to that time would likely contract a disease quickly and die!
“Someone going back to that time would likely contract a disease quickly and die!”
Probably dysentery. That is unless they drowned trying to ford a river first.
Grow some trees, add some bushes, build a fence. Problem Solved!
And it will look even nicer.
Petition the Lord for more sinkholes.
Being that this is a new facility and the homes were pre-existing, the track will have to find a way to reduce the noise trespass. What usually is the case though, is the neighborhood grows up around an existing facility. Then the noise complaints come in, the politicians fold, and the track that has been in use for three decades is forced to close – usually becoming more dull vinyl clad boxes. This killed a neat track in my general neighborhood called Islip Speedway. Row after row of box homes and condos closed in on the track. Despite the buyers being well aware of the track, they bought anyway and forced to closure of the track. The owners should have told the neighbors to stick it, but they first tried to reduce the noise with mandated mufflers and the like but to no avail. The Condo Kings win again
There used to be a NASCAR speedway not far from me in Nazareth, PA…but it closed down before I even moved up here (I used to live further south). That was a shame.
Yeah, I get when the people were there before the racetrack, but as you said – I remember there was a case in Pennsylvania where a family moved in next to a drag strip, and then started complaining about the noise.
Look, there’s a reason you got a screamin’ deal on that house.
If you buy a place next to a race track or in an airport takeoff pattern, KNOWING IT WAS THERE, you don’t get to whine about the racket.
Jeez, I’d pay EXTRA to live next to a race track.
Faceman!
It was probably a toss up between using Face or Scarecrow for the picture.
Is that the remote for the car? I’ve seen this guy referenced before, and just always assume it’s a Corvette GM promo video from what – 1986?
I think that’s actor Dirk Benedict of “The A Team” tv-series fame. I believe that’s a scene from the show with him activating a bomb with a remote while sitting in his Corvette.
Ha, oh. I pity the fool who don’t know A-Team (me).
What bugs me is that the people who complain about their neighbor’s engine noise think nothing of letting their children run around the yard shrieking their heads off all afternoon or letting their dogs bark incessantly for hours.
NCM isn’t set up for serious racing, so applying a decibel limit might not be all that hard, unlike Laguna Seca or Limerock. On the other hand most of the events there have been car clubs and other track day organizations, meaning a heavy proportion of street legal (more or less…) cars.
I’m a bit surprised to hear about the complaints. The track layout is long and thin and hard up against the very busy multilane I-65 on one side. The other side of the track is bordered by a huge black-topped parking area with trees on its far side. From there the terrain drops away down to a county road. There’s not a lot of housing around it, although there’s one house just feet from the track — the people who just wouldn’t sell? — although it can’t possibly be occupied. Still, there’s no doubt that the nearest houses must experience more noise than before, but I wouldn’t have thought it to be especially loud.
Neither Apple Maps nor Google Earth have aerial shots new enough to show the track, but I can see a subdivision with maybe 50 houses just to the east of where it is.
The Corvette “nose isn’t so bad, but whats with the Harley Davidson motor cycles that seem to have straight through exhausts. Where I live they seem to come out in the Summertime(like mosquitos) and are a royal pain. The cops don’t seem to bother giving tickets re exceeding decibel levels.