Excessive Decibels Echo Your Own Past Transient Pleasures Soon Enough, Those Young Dudes Will Be Doting Dads.

Should loud car stereos be regulated?

In a short story published several years ago, a man in his 80s looks out on a group of young people playing, laughing, goofing around.

He feels awe at their limitless energy. He’s a bit envious, too, about how easily they move in their bodies. Bend over to pick something up? No problem. What flexibility! But for the old man, it’s long gone.

Next time you are at a stoplight next to a young man who is playing his car stereo so loud your windows rattle, imagine that young man in 10 or 15 years. Most likely, you’d see a baby’s car seat in the back and the stereo would be playing Raffi, a popular singer of children’s tunes.

Like the old man, he might feel nostalgic for the loud, old days. But by 30, most men (and it’s mostly men who pump up the car stereo) will outgrow the need to drive their cars too fast and blast their music too loud.

In Coeur d’Alene, though, don’t push your luck. A city ordinance limits the decibel levels of car stereos. Recently, Coeur d’Alene police purchased equipment that will measure noise emanating from those rigs of testosterone. They are ready for a crackdown.

Play it too loud, dude, and you’ll be cited.

As baby boomers age and run things, it seems they forget more and more what it means to be young, energetic and cruising. So they pass laws designed to control all hormonally driven behavior. In Spokane, young people who once tooled up and down Riverside in their cars have been banished to Division, not nearly as cool.

And now in Coeur d’Alene, rock ‘n’ rolling cars are the target. What’s next to be ticketed? The bared midriffs of teen girls?

Young people need ways to express themselves. Blasting a car stereo is a way for them to say, “I’m here. I’m cool. Notice me.”

If it offends, simply drive off. Or, if someone is idling in a neighborhood and treating the entire block to the latest hits, simply ask that the volume be turned down. About 99 percent of the offenders will comply, because behind all that noise, they are nice kids.

Ordinances, expensive monitoring equipment and police time are wasted on a problem that rarely gets out of control. Let the loud music play on.