Toyota Adds External Speakers To Warn Pedestrians

HockeyPuck writes "When I was a kid, playing with my matchbox cars, I used to say 'VROOOM VROOOM' to pretend my toy cars had big engines in them. Well it seems that Toyota has decided to do the same thing with the Prius by optionally installing, in Japan, external speakers to alert pedestrians of oncoming Priuses."

Comments

Re:What a shame

[Daniel_Staal]

Also, it reminds me of the old rules requiring someone to walk ahead of automobiles with a bell, so you wouldn't scare the horses...

We have a car with an advantage (that it is silent at low speeds), and we cripple it because we aren't used to it.

Finally

[hsmith]

Automobiles are 508 compliant!

Re:Just when you think...

[mark-t]

And what do these people do to avoid people on bicycles, while not as likely to be fatal as a collision involving an automobile, a collision involving a bike and pedestrian can still very easily result in a serious injury requiring hospitalization.

Nissan Leaf

[Flammon]

Here's what the Nissan Leaf sounds like: http://nissan-leaf.net/2010/06/11/nissan-leaf-sound-revealed/

Re:Only Priuses?

[cgenman]

It's more of a Woo Woo.

Sample found!

[babboo65]

I was able to locate a copy of the factory default sound played for the Prius speakers to make a more noticable engine sound.

http://tiny.cc/kdrv9

Re:Horn?

[yurtinus]

The sample size hurts, but the biggest problem to me is the cars they include - there is no ICE corollary for the Prius. It *should* be the largest contributor to those statistics, but you can't isolate if the accidents are due to sound (or some other factor related to the HEV), or something else specific to the Prius (visibility, etc).