Certain neighbors don’t get the message until it hits them in the wallet.

What would you do if the family next door refused to fix their kid’s obnoxiously loud exhaust?

Would you confront them directly?

And what if that didn’t work?

Would you let it go or find another way?

In today’s story, one homeowner deals with this exact situation and finds the best way possible to deal with it.

Here’s what happened.

Neighbors loud exhaust

We live in a nice suburban community in the Midwest.

The houses are not super close, so we usually don’t have problems with our neighbors.

We have lived in our house for 16 years, and have only had very minor problems for the most part.

A neighbor was building something in his garage and using power tools until 11 PM on a weeknight.

That kind of thing.

Our next-door neighbors, in particular, are very nice people.

They have four children, who, for the most part, have never been a problem.

My wife and I don’t have children, so we never really bonded with a lot of the neighbors.

We never really clashed, either, though. We just kind of keep to ourselves.

The problem all started when the neighbor’s son became old enough to drive.

So my next door neighbor’s son became of age to drive, and they bought him a Kia Soul to drive.

He proceeded to customize the exhaust on the car, which made it very loud.

I tried to passively and anonymously suggest to them that the loud exhaust was annoying and not appreciated.

To accomplish this, I sent text messages to the mother’s phone asking politely to fix the exhaust.

To which she replied, it was not illegal, and they weren’t going to fix it.

To which I replied, Technically, it is illegal to modify the exhaust to make it louder.

So, anonymous diplomacy wasn’t going to work here.

He decided to mention the issue to a cop friend.

It’s time to get someone else involved.

The area where we live has about 30,000 people, so it’s not huge, but it’s not a small town either.

I frequently patronize the local diner, where the police also go frequently.

We talk sometimes, and I got to know one guy in particular pretty well.

So I just brought it up in passing as it was annoying, but it was not something I was really willing to do anything more about than anonymous texting.

I didn’t even suggest doing anything about it to my buddy, the police officer.

One day while driving home, though, about three weeks later, I happened to notice he had the Kia Soul pulled over.

I couldn’t see anything beyond that, though.

The young man who drives the car is a little aggressive on the gas, but not obnoxious, so I figured it might be a noise violation.

It turns out the mother had been driving the car.

A couple weeks went by, and I forgot all about it.

I bumped into my friend again at the diner.

He proceeded to tell me about pulling the Kia over, and giving them a ticket for loud exhaust.

I asked if the young man was cool about the stop.

He said no, there was some middle-aged woman driving.

So, the mom had been using the car, apparently, because her car was in the shop or something.

Needless to say, they fixed the exhaust, and it hasn’t been a problem since.

I will never understand people who do things like that without regard for their neighbors or others.

Haha, though, there is a small amount of justice in this world.

Wow! Telling the cop was great thinking.

Let’s see what the folks over at Reddit have to say about this.

This is an excellent observation.

Here’s someone who got tired of idling motorcycles.

It may be stock.

Exactly! The Kia Soul is a beast!

Kids will be kids.

You can’t blame this one on the teenager, because this all his parents and what they let him get away with.

Sheesh.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.