It may be hard to believe, but according to Forbes, the Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes Northampton, Lehigh and Carbon counties in Pennsylvania and Warren County in New Jersey, is the third noisiest in the country.

With all of our major highways, rail lines, an amusement park (Dorney Park), Forbes found when all of its criteria were crunched, the Lehigh Valley MSA was less noisy than only Riverside-San Bernadino-Ontario, California, first (score of 100), and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, second (score of 97). Lehigh Valley tied with Greensboro, North Carolina, for third with a score of 90.

You probably are scratching your head as I was trying to figure out why our area was higher than the likes of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and other major metropolitan cities across the country, including New York.

Our area was the only region in Pennsylvania that scored in the top (or maybe I should say bottom) 20. Four metropolitan areas in New York state were among the noisiest - Albany (6th), Rochester (10th), Buffalo (13th) and Syracuse (20th).

-The article, appearing in Forbes Health, cited our area because of its density of manufacturing and transportation (those dreaded warehouses and the big trucks that are part of them again) and commuter traffic and other noise-producing factors.

In explaining the methodology used in its study, Forbes said it set out to determine which metropolitan areas in the country could pose the greatest risks to residents’ hearing health. It ranked the regions by calculating the density of 11 types of noise-producing factors in each area. They were then weighted based on how potentially damaging they can be to hearing health, how accessible they are to the public, and if they require some type of hearing protection to access certain noisy areas.

Local statistics show that more than 100,000 of our area’s residents commute to jobs outside of the region daily creating a considerable amount of vehicular noise in addition to those big tractor-trailers that crisscross the area to and from the region’s warehouses. They also indicated that manufacturing production was nearly $8.5 billion, which is considerable given the area’s overall population.

The A-B-E MSA is the third largest in Pennsylvania with about 875,000 residents, behind the Philadelphia MSA with a population of 6.3 million and the Pittsburgh MSA with a population of 2.35 million. The A-B-E MSA is the 69th largest in the country among the 384 the U.S. Census Bureau lists.

As I was waiting for a light to change in Palmerton the other day, a souped up Chevy Camaro was next to me. The teen driver gunned the vehicle several times as if he were challenging me to a drag race, and his radio or stereo was so loud that his and my cars were reverberating from the decibel overload. When the light turned green, he took off like a shot with tires squealing. I, intentionally, was left in the proverbial dust. I am not a lip-reader, so I don’t know what profound comment he made as he roared away.

When I saw the Forbes’ report, I thought that this type of noise should have been a part of the survey. Between these types of vehicles and incredibly loud motorcycles, they really are annoying, and a number of my friends agreed when I mentioned it to them.

Then I caught myself. You know, when I was 16 and 17 and cruised Ridge Street, the main drag of Lansford back in the day when it was a bustling shopping area for the entire Panther Valley, I remember gunning my parents’ 1955 red and white Buick Roadmaster and trying to screech my tires as I took off from a stoplight.

Given my Palmerton experience, apparently not much has changed in the intervening nearly 70 years. So what motivates youths to do this? According to my sources, young people often play car music loud as a way to express their identity, and seek attention - exactly why I did it 60-some years ago.

It might also to be noticed by their peers or stand out in a crowd. When he was a teenager, my grandson said it was also the thrill of bass-heavy music and the power that comes with controlling the volume, which can be really appealing to some attention-seekers.

We must also remember, however, that not all young people engage in this kind of behavior, and preferences for loud music as a statement of who they are and what motivates them varies with the individual.

By BRUCE FRASSINELLI| tneditor@tnonline.com

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.