Photo credit: Sebastian Voortman from Pexels
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This report from Ontario’s BayToday discusses the problem of snowmobile exhaust noise there. Specifically, snowmobilers there are modifying exhausts with minimal decreases in weight but maximum increases in noise. Since most of Ontario’s snowmobile trails cross private land, the landowners bothered by the noise are closing down their trails, depriving snowmobilers with unaltered machines of their winter activities.
I’ve gone snowshoeing and cross-country skiing in remote locations, too remote or too steep to have snowmobile trails. The silence of the wintry landscape, broken only by the rustle of the wind in the bare trees and an occasional bird cry, is beautiful.
It’s a shame that sociopathic snowmobilers–winter’s equivalent of motorcycle riders with modified exhausts–are disturbing the forest quiet even more than those without modified snowmobiles.
The solution is simple: enforce existing laws against modifying snowmobile exhausts. Or to really make a change, enact laws allowing for confiscation of modified snowmobiles and the problem will cease.
