Want to ride quads and dirt bikes on your farm? Not so fast, says this guy

NIMBY neighbors are the best, right?

The Quickshift

• The parents of four small children have a farm in Pennsylvania
• They bought their children dirt bikes and ATVs for their 34-acre property
• City dwellers don’t like the noise

Let’s play a game. No, not in the style of a certain horror movie franchise. I promise I won’t speak into a voice modulator…

Imagine you have four young children and want them to grow up outdoors. But you don’t currently live in a place where that’s possible. Since you have the opportunity, you buy a 34-acre property in a rural area, complete with a farmhouse to live in. Your children, with your help, become interested in power sports.

They have dirt bikes and quads and now they have 34 acres of woodland with trails and hills to explore on those dirt bikes and quads. Sounds pretty good, right? Sure, there will be bug bites and scratches and hopefully nothing more than minor injuries along the way. But overall, it sounds like a recipe for lots of pretty idyllic fun.

However, the situation is different in Unity Township in the US state of Pennsylvania: There, a man named Keith Fulton and his family now have to deal with noise complaints from an angry neighbor who gives the impression that he just can’t stand fun.

There is currently no noise ordinance in the township, but the family has reportedly been cited for violating a ban on “pleasure rides,” according to local CBS news station KDKA. The area where the Fultons’ property is located is zoned for agricultural use, and the township, like many others, has a full list of building codes and ordinances that anyone can view.

How big is Unity Township? According to the last U.S. census in 2020, Unity had a population of about 21,606. It is a fairly small place located southeast of Pittsburgh.

“I understand that everyone has the right to do what they want on their property,” neighbor Jackie Lindsey, who filed the complaint with the municipality, told KDKA. “But you can’t harass anyone while doing it.”

“They want to be able to ride their dirt bikes from sunrise to sunset,” he said.

Look, I understand that noise affects you differently when you live in the country. I grew up in Chicago, but my grandparents lived in the country. It was much quieter there, so you could hear the sounds of individual insects much more clearly than in the city. The same was true for cars, bikes, lawn mowers, and pretty much anything else with an internal combustion engine. But you could still see the stars at night, and it was beautiful.

But seriously, did no one tell this guy about the existence of headphones?

This is how we city dwellers cope with all the noise that surrounds us every day. This is how I survive in airports. It has blissfully enveloped me in a bubble of my own music or podcasts or audiobooks when everything around me unbearably loud. And you never saw me angrily shaking my fist as the CTA buses rumbled by at all hours of the day and night (long before sunrise and long after sunset) when I lived in a basement apartment right next to a bus stop on Damen Avenue.

And if the B-roll footage that KDKA edited into its news report about this particular inner-city power struggle shows some of the actual vehicles involved, exactly how loud are they?

Assuming the four kids really do ride them “from sunrise to sunset” like the guy complains (and honestly, he’s probably exaggerating a bit, like most people do when they’re upset), how much noise do they make on their 84-acre property?

While the kids are having fun, they’re probably also screaming and giggling. Is that also a problem or is it just the noise from the engines?

If you were one of the parties in this situation, how would you handle it? I suspect most of us would not like being told what to do on our own property (within reason, of course, but no one is killing anyone here).

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