Dude: After tiring of having 18-wheelers wake me up with their extremely loud exhaust, I looked up the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. It seems to me that the Arkansas Highway Police doesn't enforce the standards of Part 325.91 about exhaust systems and which covers mufflers and noise. Could you check with them and let the citizens of this great state know? -- Rattled Panes
Dear Panes: When checking with the Highway Police, we go straight to the top -- Chief Ron Burks. He said Part 325.91 isn't enforced by the agency because the agency doesn't have the authority to do so. But the state has adopted Parts 383-399 of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations. Specifically, exhaust system violations are enforced under Part 393.83.
Everybody got that?
In the past 12 months, Burks said, Highway Police inspectors uncovered 268 violations of Part 393.83.
Arkansas Code Annotated 27-37-601 and 27-37-602 have language similar to Part 325.91, he said, and Highway Police issued five violations for trucks that had no mufflers at all.
Burks said the noise our reader dislikes is more likely from an add-on engine brake, more commonly known as a jake brake. Some municipalities in Arkansas have ordinances that prohibit their use, but otherwise jake brakes aren't against the law.
Burks invites our reader to contact his office at (501) 569-2421 to discuss this matter and, if warranted, his officers may spend some patrol time in our reader's neighborhood to determine if noise regulations are being violated.
One of our sharp-eyed readers -- he calls himself Yankee Left Turner -- takes slight umbrage with last week's discussion of who gets to go first when two drivers stop at an intersection and one wants to go left and the other straight. Maybe umbrage isn't the right word. Maybe it's disputatious. Fortunately, he didn't insist on a forced defenestration of The Mahatma.
(Yo, bro. Big words today are a public service to students headed back to school to study vocabulary. Defenestrate: Exit via a window. From the Latin, fenestra, meaning window.)
Cutting to the chase, last week's answer was for the driver turning left to yield to the driver going straight, even though the former got to the intersection momentarily before the latter.
Our reader quotes Arkansas Code Annotated 27-51-103, specifically the end, which says this: "[A]nd the drivers of all other vehicles approaching the intersection shall yield the right of way to the vehicle so proceeding."
Under last week's scenario, our reader argued, the vehicle so proceeding fits the description of the left-turning driver, and since he entered the intersection first he has the right of way regardless of direction.
"No Southern civility required," he added.
We would counter, respectfully, that civility is always required, regardless of compass point.
Vanity plate spotted in Conway: HUGSUM1.
Mahatma@arkansasonline.com
Metro on 08/16/2014