When Exhausts Speak of Conscience
Subuh had not yet fully departed. A light fog hung over the Bungbulang streets in Garut as one by one, young people arrived with something in their hands. Not weapons. Not demands. They came bearing brong exhausts—sixty of the loud exhausts they had installed on their cherished motorcycles.
They surrendered them willingly.
There was no operation. No raid. No officers standing with handcuffs and tickets. What existed were young people from various youth organisations walking to the police station of their own accord, a sight that felt strange, but because of that, it lingered in the memory.
Brong exhausts are not merely a technical issue. They are a statement. Its racket in the early hours is how some youths declare: I exist, I am free, I will not be ignored. Yet behind the roar, there is a mother waking from her sleep. There is a baby startled by the noise. There are parents grimacing in pain, bothered by the noise in air that should be quiet.
Freedom that disrupts others’ peace is not a complete freedom. It is only noise seeking attention.
So when the Bungbulang youths stepped into the Polsek and laid their exhausts down one by one, there was something bigger than mere metal changing hands. There was an admission. A maturing sense of conscience gradually speaking louder than the exhaust’s noise.
Head of Bungbulang Police Sector, AKP Priyo Sumbodo, received the surrender with service, calling it evidence of synergy: between police and youth elements in safeguarding public order, especially during the holy month of Ramadan which requires silence and respect.
“This step deserves appreciation,” he said. And indeed it does.
Far from Bungbulang, in Singkawang City, West Kalimantan, a similar crackdown unfolded with a different face. The Traffic Unit of Singkawang Police Resort went onto city streets, fining 33 riders caught using exhausts not meeting technical specifications. There, there was no voluntary surrender; there were tickets, on-the-spot exhaust replacements, and parents called to accompany their underage children.
Head of the Singkawang Traffic Unit, AKP Raden Bagus Aryo, chose a professional, humane, and educational approach. Offenders were even asked to destroy their own brong exhausts in the presence of officers, not as punishment alone but as a rite of awareness. So that the hands that installed them could feel what it means to remove them.
On the western tip of Sumatra, Aceh Barat holds a grimmer tale. On Iskandar Muda Road, Johan Pahlawan District, illegal racing and brong exhausts frequently shatter the dawn’s quiet. Residents complain. Their sleep is disturbed. Their sense of safety eroded.