A loud exhaust in Tulum carries a 1,575 peso fine, if anyone is checking

Mariano Sosa Dorantes treats the motorcycle noise in Tulum as half of a problem. The open exhausts carrying through town belong to the same bikes he watches cross intersections without traffic lights.

He is one of several residents reporting increased motorcycle noise across different parts of the municipality, most of it from units running open or altered exhausts. His complaint runs past the sound. He counts the number of bikes on the street, the street racing, and units he says do not meet rules that already exist.

The municipality has already answered this once. On May 14, the public security secretariat launched an operation targeting exactly these vehicles, with a fine attached and a grace period preceding it. Close to four months on, residents say the checks are not being maintained, and the same vehicles turn up in most of the crashes the municipal traffic department records.

"Then regulations like these do not exist"

Eduardo Cruz, another resident raising the issue, has not forgotten the operation. He recalls that months ago the municipality moved against motorcycles whose exhausts produced excessive noise, and that owners were warned about possible sanctions. What he disputes is whether any of it held.

"What good are regulations if the residents ignore them and the authorities ignore them? Then regulations like these do not exist. They have to be applied," Cruz said.

The noise pollution, in his description, is tremendous. Enforcing what is already written is a municipal job, he said, and so is keeping the patrols going.

Sosa Dorantes arrives at the same place from a different direction. "I have always been against what is not legal. And if you do something outside the law, obviously the authority has to step in," he said. What he wants from the municipality is a set of controls specific to motorcycles, covering noise, riding practices, and road safety.

Edgar Aguilar Rico gave riders a truce before the checks began

The operation Cruz referred to has a name and a start date. Tulum's public security and citizen protection secretariat announced it in early May under the title "En favor de la seguridad vial y la salud auditiva," and set it to begin on May 14, after what the secretariat described as repeated complaints reaching the emergency lines about bikes with altered exhausts.

Edgar Aguilar Rico, the municipal public security secretary, told La Jornada Maya his department had published a notice first, a truce, so owners could return their vehicles to original condition before the checks started. "This is not a witch hunt. We are giving time for anyone with modified exhausts to correct the situation before the operation begins," he said.

The legal footing he cited was specific. Article 38 of the municipal traffic regulation prohibits altering mufflers and installing devices that raise a vehicle's noise. Article 25 of Tulum's civic justice regulation treats the use of instruments producing noise that disturbs the peace or the health of others as an administrative offense. Officers would also check licenses, registration cards, and plates.

Penalties came with numbers. Aguilar Rico set the fine at five days' minimum wage, roughly 1,575 pesos, and said units found with missing paperwork could be sent to the impound lot.

Seven of every ten crashes in Tulum involve a motorcycle

The noise complaint sits on top of a road safety file the municipality has already opened.

Rosario Jessica Osorio Zavala, Tulum's director of traffic and roads, said in April that motorcycles were involved in an estimated 70 percent of the crashes recorded in the municipality between January 1 and April 12, according to Palco Quintanarroense. Two deaths were confirmed in that period, both of them men. She attributed the main causes to drivers ignoring restrictive signage, following too closely, and speeding. Public service taxis were involved in three or four incidents during the same weeks.

State figures point the same way. Citing INEGI data for 2025, 24 Horas Quintana Roo reported that motorcycles accounted for 43.7 percent of road deaths in the state and that 3,443 of the 8,740 crashes registered in urban and suburban areas involved two-wheeled vehicles. Of 71 road deaths in the state that year, 31 came from incidents involving motorcycles, and motorcyclists made up 59.3 percent of the 4,068 people injured. Those are state totals, not Tulum's.

Cheap bikes, and the workshops that service them

Sosa Dorantes raised one piece the May operation did not name. As the number of motorcycles has climbed, he said, so has the number of workshops repairing and modifying them, and he wants that growth to be within whatever the municipality decides to regulate.

He was blunt about why the fleet keeps growing. "Motorcycles are proliferating right now. It is cheap, because everyone can buy a motorcycle, but there has to be control," he said.

The argument is running elsewhere in the state too. In April, the ecological group GEMA asked authorities in Cancún to set limits on the late-night group rides known as rodadas, telling Noticaribe that the noise runs from about 10:30 at night until close to four in the morning, mostly on weekends. Tulum's own May announcement said the complaints reaching the secretariat came from residents and visitors alike, which includes anyone who rents two wheels for a week.

The decibel line where motorcycle noise in Tulum becomes an infraction

There is a federal number underneath all of this. NOM-080-SEMARNAT-1994 caps exhaust noise for motorcycles in circulation at 96 decibels for engines up to 449 cubic centimeters and 99 decibels from 450 up, measured with the microphone half a meter from the exhaust while the engine is revved to the manufacturer's specification. The same standard hands enforcement to federal transport authorities, the states, and the municipalities, each within its own competence.

That is the line a sound meter would have to establish. None of the coverage of the May announcement mentioned measurement equipment, and the secretariat did not describe how officers would determine whether a given exhaust exceeded the limit.

No public tally of citations issued under the operation has been released since it began, and the municipality has not said whether the checks are still running. If they resume, the fine is already set at 1,575 pesos, and the legal basis has already been cited. If they do not, Cruz's test applies. A rule nobody enforces, in his account, is the same as a rule nobody wrote.

Our earlier coverage fills in the broader picture: the municipal camera network that grew to over 1,850 under the same security secretariat, the rules that already apply to renting two-wheeled vehicles in Tulum, and our 2026 guide to safety in Tulum for visitors and residents.

Has the noise from modified exhausts changed on your street since May, or is it exactly the same as before? Join the conversation and share your perspective with us on Instagram and Facebook at @thetulumtimes.