Not a myth.
Personal experience.
Statistics don’t back up the claim
Some riders will still believe they avoided a crash when a car heard their exhaust, and maybe that really did happen. But North America’s best-known study on motorcycle safety, the 1981 Hurt Report, found motorcycles with loud pipes were not less likely to be involved in crashes — if anything, they were a little more likely to crash. As the report states on page 421:
Statistics don’t back up the claim
Some riders will still believe they avoided a crash when a car heard their exhaust, and maybe that really did happen. But North America’s best-known study on motorcycle safety, the 1981 Hurt Report, found motorcycles with loud pipes were not less likely to be involved in crashes — if anything, they were a little more likely to crash. As the report states on page 421: