The question of “how loud is too loud?” for a car is back in the spotlight, again because of a dispute between neighbors and the owner of one such loud car.
A new post has gone semi-viral on social media: a Ford Mustang owner from Ohio says someone filled his exhaust with dry wall foam, but not before dropping him a handwritten note (in the year 2020!) to warn him there would be consequences if he did not put mufflers on.
Aaron Robinson loves his Ford Mustang. It’s a nearly-brand new car, having bought it in September last year, as he made sure to boast about it on Facebook. Then, last week, he received a note about how the Mustang was making too much noise, so he needed to put mufflers on it so the neighbors wouldn’t be bothered every time he drove by. “I finally found you!” the note read. “You want our attention, you don’t want our attention. You have 14 days to fix the mufflers or put the stock [exhaust] back on. Don’t egg us on, you will only regret it. We encourage you to call the police [or] install video [cameras], nothing will work.”
Clearly, Robinson didn’t take the threat at face value, and he was wrong to dismiss it. Because whoever wrote it meant business, so they came back and filled the exhaust with construction foam, the kind you can only remove by cutting it off. He says the foam ruined the exhaust and the tips, and that he’s gone to the police to file an incident report.
Meanwhile, his friends and fellow car enthusiasts are suggesting an alternate way of getting back at the vandal: put together a drive-by or maybe even a burnout outside his home. That will surely bring out the vandal with complaints and they would then be able to dole out justice, the vigilante way.
Obviously, violence or instigating to more aggression is not the answer. A better way to have handled this, one where no physical property was damaged, would have been for the angry neighbor to talk to Robinson face to face – and for him to use the Good Neighbor Mode / Quiet Exhaust Mode his car probably comes factory-equipped with.
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