"I'd always see those 'Loud Pipes Save Lives' stickers on bikers helmets outside the bar, and I never really thought twice about them. The stickers would just kind of blend into the banal biker aesthetic that we're all too familiar with, just another platitudinous saying amidst a garden of 'American boys ride American Toys' and 'Helmet Laws Suck'. But when you spend those late nights at the shop wearing torn up knuckles like wedding rings because the wrench slipped...when you're so frustrated that you stopped caring to use a rag to wipe the sweat off your nose so you just use your black, gritty hands and when you're knee is sore and swollen from the kicker slipping, what about those nights? Those nights aren't spent alone. Two dozen beers and a half dozen friends are all invested with you. The collective interest of the group understands that this is what we do to stay sane and to keep our heads above water. We each know that outside of the thin tin walls of the shop we're worried about paying next month's rent and paying for last night's bad decisions. We all struggle with the mundane problems of life that stretch us to the breaking point together. But a cluster of flickering headlights speeding down Old Montgomery Highway at 1am on a hot Alabama Night always outruns problems. The girlfriends and the bills and the jobs get washed away in a cloud of smoke. The problems can never scream hard enough to be heard over the rumbling exhaust. Maybe there's more to that sticker than I thought. Maybe loud pipes really do save lives???"
David Clyburn, Birmingham, Alabama - USA