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Electric Cars May Be Made Noisier By Law
msgtomatt writes "The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act would require electric cars and hybrids to make noise, and would fund the Department of Transportation to create a set of rules for automakers, who would be allowed some leeway in how they carry out the guidelines." Downloadable and do-it-yourself car-tones are the future: my own snoring could keep deer and toddlers off the road.
I want a recording of an eight year old making car revving noises.
t
they generally dont make any audible noise at all from close distance. that would be rather dangerous on roads for pedestrians.
Read radical news here
With the recorded sound of a blown 454.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They're squishy and walk into traffic alot.
all the cool noises would cost extra.
then you'd have to root your car to get the noises you want
Mine will say "boom chug a luga boom chug a luga boom"
Get one of those tail-pipes that goes Woooo! Woooo!
Task Mangler
Obviously, the below statements do not take into consideration those that are visually impaired. But that final point (Road Noise) probably already handles most of that.
I'm sorry, but I never trust my ears when deciding whether to cross the street. Even if I'm in a fairly quiet suburban road off away from the main streets and such, I always look. And you want to know what? I learned to do that at a really young age.
If you're an adult, you should know better. I see adults cross the street without looking while on the phone and not even notice me beeping at them. And this was back when I drove a beat up car that sounded like a Boeing 747.
As for kids, I'm sorry to say but a lot are either stupid or their parents are doing a really poor job raising them. I've seen the whole "chase the ball into traffic" scenario when they SEE the cars coming and assume that magic fairy dust will make the SUV go from 25-to-zero in less than 3 feet. Often times these kids are really old enough to know better: by the time your kid reaches 10+ years old you really should've educated them to not do that.
Besides, lastly but not least... unless the car is accelerating the biggest noise is the road noise (pavement vs vulcanized rubber). Last I checked, electric cars don't solve this problem. If you're relying on Engine noise to determine if a car is coming, you're already fairly screwed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylNwSv6c7m0 What, were you expecting the ST NG Enterprise or something?
Life is not for the lazy.
More than once I've had to side step quickly to avoid a Prius in a store parking lot - I'm used to audio cues of my environment, and they just weren't paying attention while backing out.
Sound-makers on Prius and others is already being done in Japan
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Every different colour of car should make a different 80's arcade style sound effect.
...cuz that's hoe I roll.
So here we are on the verge of winning the war against noise pollution, and those motherfuckers WANT cars to be noisy?
Circumcision is child abuse.
Brilliant. Legislate away the possibilities for innovation before the new market has a chance to solve the problem. Is it only in America that "leaders" push science and math and the entrepreneurial spirit, and then quickly make it illegal to innovate lest anyone gets hurt? sheesh
What this country needs is a good five cent nickel.
This whole thing could be solved by:
a] drivers watching for pedestrians, like they're supposed to be doing [but who actually follows the laws these days?].
b] pedestrians checking for traffic before they walk into areas that might be occupied by cars; as it would actually be smart [this may be too much to ask].
c] lawmakers passing laws that actually benefit a majority of people, not just a small minority.
If this does go into effect, though, my car is totally going to have the TIE Fighter sound.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A la the "General Lee."
Their they're doing there hair.
Do people really have problems with this kind of thing?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Personally, I'm between the Jetsons car noise or a running horse.
Same comments...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
They better include an option to link the playback sample rate to to the accelerator pedal.
I dream of a nation where a man is not judged by his skin color but by an number assigned by a credit rating agency.
Than this versatile groove (played quietly, and w/o vocals or string synth).
You didn't read the first sentence of his post? Are you blind?!
Just saying....
Whoa there dude! Check your keyboard, somebody might have slipped you a Dvorak.
Custom cartones sound good now, but just wait until you have to pay the auto companies for making your electric ride sound like a Ferrari.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
It makes perfect sense. Everybody knows that most people are either blind or walk around with their eyes closed. It's just the way the world works.
My problem is that gas cars aren't loud enough. I mean, what if somebody was blind AND hard of hearing, or walking around with their eyes closed while listening to death metal? Is it okay for them to die? Of course not. What we need is mandatory 200 decibel sirens on every car. That will keep our blind, hard of hearing children listening to deathmetal safe. Just think of the children.
I see adults cross the street without looking while on the phone and not even notice me beeping at them. And this was back when I drove a beat up car that sounded like a Boeing 747
Amen to that brother.
The thing that floors me is that people get hit by trains. TRAINS! We're talking like five-thousand plus tons of steel rumbling down a track, and people don't notice. How is this even possible? How self-absorbed do you have to be to notice a freaking TRAIN. I used to live not far from a freight line and the whole bloody ground shook when a train went by...
A chainsaw would likely scare just about anyone enough to grab their attention.
I vote ThE MoSt AnNoYiNg SoUnD In ThE wOrLd!
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The "whistle's go whoooo" guy becomes an overnight entrepreneur. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnzw_i4YmKk
How do hearing impaired people address this problem? How about something visual?
But then again, the visually-impaired may become targets.
The AntiJoey
It seems unnecessary to make things nosier for everyone when the number of people that need the noise is very small. Why not just have an electronic transponder system so that people can know where cars are relative to them. It would even work on vibration for those that are blind and deaf. It could give out more information, like speed and direction, and it it could work from further away if necessary.
I want the "Ferrari from India" sound.
What one fool can do, another can. (Ancient Simian Proverb)
This is really about people too lazy to look. I see them all day long in LA. People that step out into the street without looking. I see a 100 of them for ever blind person I see. We have to deal with car noise because people can't be bothered to look both ways.
You don't rely on the sound alone, but it does help especially as you said, with people who are visually impaired. Cars make quite a bit of noise at highway speeds but at lower speeds, there is less noise produced from the interaction between the tires and pavement. As far as peoples' behavior is concerned, it probably doesn't justify their deaths.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cVlTeIATBs
great... just what we need... an excuse for people to put speakers on the outside of the car..... The cars that you can hear two blocks away while blasting the stereo weren't loud enough... Imagine how loud they will be now!
Heck I live over a mile for a train track and I can still hear them coming at night.
WTFH?!? If my muffler was broken and making undue and disturbing noise; I'd get a fix-it ticket and have to quite the thing down. Actually I wish they'd be more stringent on this; and especially to crack down on the jackasses who purposely disable their mufflers so as to be as loud and obnoxious as possible. (Fairly common, it seems, among motorcycle riders... ugh.)
But now we actually finally have cars that are going to put out LESS noise pollution, and make the city a more pleasant place to be... give us MORE peace and quiet... and the government wants to screw it up and require cars to make MORE noise.
hatehatehate...
> Want your green car to rev like a Ferrari or BMW?
> Just buy the right drivetone and crank up the exterior
> volume.
I weep at the thought. I really do. I, for one, keep my car well-maintained, including the muffler. And I'll bloody well find a way to disable any artificial noisemakers added to any car *I* ever drive.
Imagine all the people...
what about the deaf and blind? If Helen Keller were alive today, she would surely be struck down by these silent invisible menaces. I propose we add omni-directional microwave emitters to these vehicles, so that pedestrians can be made aware of their unsafe proximity to oncoming traffic by the severity of the burning sensation in their skin!
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Two halves of a coconut being clopped together.
All the above suggestions are good but they don't go far enough. Our forefathers had it right when the first horseless buggy came out, requiring a man with a red flag to precede the vehicle. And as a bonus, think of what that would do for unemployment!
Wanted: A better sig than this one. I have neither the wit nor motivation...
As others have noted, it's big in parking lots, where otherwise the only indication you have that something is about to START moving is brake lights going off--which doesn't help if you're in front (they backed into a spot or pulled forward). If you know the car is running (insofar as that applies to electric cars), you can give it a wider berth on principle, or at least know to check the lights / make eye contact with the driver.
Agreed that not looking before crossing a street is a good way to win a Darwin award, but that's no reason to have silent multi-ton vehicles either. Sound has the benefit that you might hear it even if you don't see it, or the driver doesn't see you and comes up behind you unexpectedly, or whatever. A good example where sound would be useful (albeit for a different vehicle type) is when some idiot cyclist comes up behind you and passes you on a sidewalk, and all you see is suddenly a bicycle a few inches from you zooming by.
I want my car to make the sounds to 'Frogger' game. Then throw in there every so often the sound when a frog gets hit. That will stop pedestrians.
Here is Sydney, the trains are quite large, double storey and mainly 8 cars long but even with that they are almost silent as they approach.
Secondly, even if you see a train, the stopping distance is so long that if you trip, fall, whatever while it is approaching, it won't likely stop in time to not hit you.
Finally, you would be surprised about how many accidents involving people and trains are not accidents at all.
The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics (BTRE) suggests that the main issues for rail safety in Australia are suicides, level crossing accidents and pedestrians struck by trains (BTRE 2002).
This is directly from a report published using data obtained (link to full PDF) from our Bereau of Transportation.
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These brilliant people that drive around with loud speakers stuck out there windows so every one in a nine mile radius is required to here there crappy music have already solved this problem
sorry for my comments, I'm drunk
80% of the people I see on the street these days are either listening to PMPs or on the phone not paying attention to any noise around them.
Forcing cars to make noise is dumb as bricks.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
so they want these advanced electric vehicles to spit out noise where ever they go? Are they really trying to put a weakness of combustion engine technology back into electric, under the guise of safety on top of it.
Any deaf person knows that before you cross the road, you look both ways... you don't take your earphones off and listen for noise, then blindly dart across the street.
... I read an article on this very subject in "Co-Evolution Quarterly".
Haven't you heard this again and again " The IQ of a group is equal to that of the least intelligent" . I guess it applies for the kids also. When you are in a social euphoria, rarely do you care about your surroundings or the interests of the being in the surroundings. Think about the noise and scenes we make when we meet a dear friend after a long while is a public place. I am not presuming that a small noise from the car is goining to gain their attention for good, but rather it would be advisable to the driver that he better stop if doesnt want to make a genocide.In my opinion, the cell phone also will put you into such a social euphoria at times, and you will loose your sense or manners in the public. I have seen a guy kicking a post while talking on the phone. Who in their right sense will do that in public! Perhaps, the right manners to teach kids would not be how to cross a road properly, but how not to embarass yourself while using a mobile phone, since mobile phones will be a part of our life for the forseable future...
Besides, lastly but not least... unless the car is accelerating the biggest noise is the road noise (pavement vs vulcanized rubber). Last I checked, electric cars don't solve this problem. If you're relying on Engine noise to determine if a car is coming, you're already fairly screwed.
Apparently not. From the study linked to from the article:
A variety of crash factors were examined to determine the relative incidence rates of HEVs versus ICE vehicles in a range of crash scenarios. For one group of scenarios, those in which a vehicle is slowing or stopping, backing up, or entering or leaving a parking space, a statistically significant effect was found due to engine type. The HEV was two times more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash in these situations than was an ICE vehicle.
So a car without engine noise is in some situations twice as likely to hit somebody. Therefore relying on your ears is somewhat effective when dealing with normal cars in certain situations.
If you're an adult, you should know better. I see adults cross the street without looking while on the phone and not even notice me beeping at them. And this was back when I drove a beat up car that sounded like a Boeing 747.
For every adult pedestrian who's been hit for jaywalking while talking on their cell phone without looking, there's another who got hit in a signaled crosswalk by a driver on a cell phone who checked only the oncoming vehicle traffic before pulling out, a guy who had a car door opened in his face while riding a bicycle in a marked lane, or a pedestrian who got hit by a car on the god damn sidewalk. I've been hit all three of those ways.
I'm sick of self-righteous, insouciant comments such as yours (see also http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/19/2026211) about how stupid pedestrians are, about how it's just legislation to protect idiots, etc. If you're driving 4,000 pounds of steel you have to be more careful than the guy driving 175 pounds of meat, and guy driving the meat deserves some extra warning, including an auditory warning, when you're not doing your job. If he walks out without looking, you hit him and he dies. If you fuck up, you hit him and he dies. Staying alive is all on the pedestrian, no matter who would be legally at fault if they get hit. Don't act like they're all idiots and pedestrian safety is a trivial problem and this just one more step into a total abdication of personal responsibility. This is serious stuff and I believe the majority of people who get hit by cars were not stupid and not doing the wrong thing. Your snarky anecdotes about idiot children and cell phone users are a strawman, drawing all attention away from the thousands of pedestrians who get hit and killed by bad drivers while the pedestrians were doing everything right.
I take it you never bike. Knowing if a car is coming up behind me or not is pretty damned important, especially if I need to pass somebody on the road or there is someone coming the other direction. In fact I get really pissed off when I see cyclists wearing headphones, being able to hear is an integral part of bike safety.
Monstar L
Instead of taking away one of the most pleasant features of an electric car, why not have all blind people and cell phone texters wear giant flashing light on their heads.
Lets be honest no amount of noise is going to save texters, one of these idiots walks out in front of me every day, and my muffler is shot...
This makes perfect sense. At least in the Idiocracy I live in.
My tax dollars are spent adding speed-humps to otherwise perfectly smooth and already expensive roads.
making a silent car noisy would fit right in. Unless it was low enough that it made a nasty scraping noise when it failed to clear the speed humps...
Watch out for that Bus ! !
We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
I have a black Nissan Titan with a 6 inch lift and a winch bumper that is made from 1/4 steel. My tires are 35x ProComp Xterrains and my truck has a Banks exhaust (not my choice, it's annoyingly loud, rumbles even at idle), The truck is huge, ominous and pushing 400HP with a wide open exhaust. People step in front me all the time in parking lots. In fact the one thing I don't like about my truck is that the windshield edges are huge blind spots. Some lady tried to walk in front of me today in the parking lot of a local box store. HEY STUPID, IF YOU CAN'T SEE THE DRIVERS FACE, HE CAN"T SEE YOU. [anyone with issues with guys that drive big trucks; I am in Alaska, I am a volunteer medic and wilderness rescue tech. I have used the winch on my truck no less then 120 times to pull stuck cars out of snow banks, rivers, etc since I bought it in 2006]
I do not play in the middle of the road
lastly but not least... unless the car is accelerating the biggest noise is the road noise (pavement vs vulcanized rubber). Last I checked, electric cars don't solve this problem. If you're relying on Engine noise to determine if a car is coming, you're already fairly screwed.
This is really just not true. I spend a lot of time on a road bicycle during the warmer months, so cars are passing all the time; and hybrids in electric mode are dead silent coming up behind you, frequently scaring the crap out me and my team mates. All other vehicles make audible noise. Not sure if it's the engine, the engine fan, or what. But you definitely hear it on internal combustion engines and not on hybrids in full electric mode.
Only works if they ban pedestrians from using mp3 players and mobile phones.
Otherwise it is a waste of time
Quite some time ago OSHA required that all construction equipment (and commercial vehicles) emit a warning sound when backing up. Their assumption was that the operator couldn't see very well when backing up and this would warn people to be aware of a machine moving in reverse. Now when you walk past a reasonably large and busy construction site, all you hear is is a cacophony of beeps, clanks, bells and other assorted warning noises. The result is that the warning noises serve little or no useful purpose since it's impossible to distinguish which of several different machines might be backing up toward someone who isn't aware of it.
Any sort of continuous noise from electric cars would have the same result in a busy traffic situation. If there isn't much traffic, a noise maker might help. A better solution was suggested by someone else, above, of using a transponder and receiver or something similar. This would be a better solution for the hearing impaired while the rest of us just need to get used to the idea that electric cars are really quiet. In the mean time, Darwin gets a chance to get a few of the clueless out of the gene pool.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
My electric car is sooooo going to sound like a Hemi at stop lights!
Just require every vehicle to be "pimped out" on "Pimp My Ride." The Bass noises and similar will make more than enough annoying noise to make that EV noticeable.
Loud pipes save lives.
what you've described is either suicide or natural selection.... both being forces that we cannot 'fix'.
awareness is tied to common sense; common sense is less common every day it seems.. no wonder we 'need' a mommy government. I'd prefer the lower noise pollution and the reduced population of idiots --- but I know I'll get modded down for calling an idiot an idiot. who cares, mod me down -- idiots are idiots. We learned to look both ways before kindergarten.
Pedstrians who step on to the road without looking are a real danger to cyclists. It happens a lot on busy inner-city roads, and it's obviously caused by their assumption that vehicles make noise, an assumption that is wrong for both cyclists and EVs. The last thing I want is for that assumption to be reinforced by legislation. The better option is to mandate quieter (or silent) conventional cars, or just ban cars altogether. (OK, I know that aint gonna happen, but it would certainly make the streets safer. Quieter too.)
Raymond Scott's Powerhouse should be mandated by law to play from all electric/hybrid vehicles.
It's probably smarter and more cost effective to equip the visually impaired with a sonar-type device than to force *every* (i'm thinking future) vehicle to maintain noise pollution for such a small number of people.
If you're relying on Engine noise to determine if a car is coming, you're already fairly screwed.
I agree with your post completely. I would like to add that in the city, I am primarily a cyclist; thus, my vehicle is even quieter than an electric vehicle (even when freewheeling). You would not believe the number of pedestrians who dart out onto the street in front of me without looking. Luckily, unlike a car, I am (in good weather) usually capable of going from 20 to 0 in a ridiculously short distance.
The real solution to this problem is to look before you cross the street. I realize this doesn't help visually impaired individuals, but this proposed law is relying on the incorrect assumption that noise should be a cue for oncoming traffic. It never has been. Use other cues instead.
R.Mo
I have read a few comments here that downplay the importance of our perception of sound when realising danger. The ear plays a massive role in our perception of our environment from the location of objects through binaural location. The location of a sound source via the difference in the frequency spectrum in the left and right ear as well as the acceleration of a sound source through the Doppler Effect. I welcome this legislation in many ways as it can help influence a pedestrians decision making whether they are wearing headphones or not (the discussion of the effect of in ear headphones is something the medical world should take up with the audio industry. In ear headphones have developed a situation where my generation and my childrens generation will be deaf before our grand parents, sad times but sadly no one gives shit. Yet.) Lets not forget that an in ear headphone has very little external sound dampening and that road noise is often around 70-85dB. Louder than most people can reasonably cope with in, in ear headphones. My only real worry with this is that traffic police are still exposed to consistent dB levels for the sake of pedestrian safety and i think that is something that needs to be considered. Lets not forget that you have some very accomplished acousticians informing this proposal and they certainly know what is safe. New technology is one thing but I get the impression that slashdot doesn't really care what affect this technology can have.
It might be well and good to play a crazy sound from the car, but this idea can be taken farther. How about we tape a kinect to each side of the car, have it recognize humans optically, and play the metal gear "BWEEP" whenever the car gets close. Bonus points if it automatically records the person jumping a foot in the air and diving in the nearest bushes.
You guys don't have reverse lights?
Also, why not just do as the rest of us and require lights to be on at all times when driving?
Simpler solution: Make turning on your headlights mandatory when the car is moving. We've had that for a while now, allegedly it also helps avoiding accidents during twilight (ya know, the time JUST before you turn on the headlights because you need them) because it's easier to see cars coming.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I am not presuming that a small noise from the car is goining to gain their attention for good, but rather it would be advisable to the driver that he better stop if doesnt want to make a genocide.
I want a car like that!
If I buy an electric car in the future, install an aftermarket sound system and go blasting it, the police can just go fuck off. No more pulling over, tickets, or court cases. How about that? After all, by making so much "noise" while driving down the street, there's no way in fuck anyone but the deaf can't hear it. And even they would probably *feel* the vibrations produced.
Hey, those Harley-riding assholes get along with far noisier machines on the road than my sound system has ever been--and I doubt there's a law to pull those showoffs over and give them a ticket for the noise.
"Mechanic, can you turn my horn louder?"
"Sure, but first we should address your breaks, they're really worn out!"
"No, that's too expensive. Why do you think I want a louder horn. Duh..."
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I agree. Gas engine based cars have become really quiet. I used to play to determine the brand of a car near me, when walking anywhere by ear. I've been aware of the noise cars produce and some cars are so quiet that sound like hybrids if you don't pay careful attention.
I would assume that they would have to start imposing noise levels (on the low range) for gas cars too.
I have a prius and there are a large number of small cars that make as much noise as mine while idling around a car park. Stupid laws to protect stupid people.
My late uncle had a Chevette, under the hood of which he mounted an air horn from a Mack Truck. Just in case anyone was in his way and "couldn't hear him."
A red GMC grille badge somehow found its way onto the 'vette, too.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
.
Yet they can pass a law to require cars to be noisy.
Nor do I, but people make mistakes. Maybe I looked, saw that there were no cars, but didn't notice someone peeling around the corner or out of a parallel parking spot. My ears have a chance at catching what my eyes miss. That increases my safety, even though I do not rely upon it.
It's primarily for blind people, because road noise only works in certain environments. On a clear road with an electric car coming at reasonable speed and no background noise, You can easily tell that there is a car by ear, however:
-Judging distance is just as important as judging whether or not a car is there. I personally find it much harder to work out how far away a car is just by the sound of the tyres, after many years of listening to the engine.
-In a city, there's always background noise. If you add in some road works, a few honking horns, people talking to each other and on the phone...suddenly, you might not be hearing the cars as well as before.
-There'll be a transition period of petrol to electric lasting decades at least. A Diesel bus will drown out the sound of any nearby cars based purely on road noise, let alone something like trucks.
And anecdotally, I was nearly hit by the first hybrid I ever saw. I was crossing the street, when suddenly the parked car next to me pulled forward and just missed me. Bright sunlight, dark tinted windows, headlights turned off, and exactly zero warning to indicate the car was anything but parked until it moved.
I see adults cross the street without looking while on the phone and not even notice me beeping at them.
Well its entirely possible they thought they had as much right to walk across that street as you did to drive down it.
There are starting to be a rather vocal and militant group that insist the North American traffic laws are simply wrong headed when it comes residential streets and shopping areas, and one citizen's right to cross a street should not be subordinate to another citizens right to drive down that street. There is a perception (somewhat based in law) that the pedestrian always has the right of way.
Clearly this is a recipe for traffic gridlock.
But it has been brought on by total disregard for pedestrian deaths over the years. In 2008, 69,000 pedestrians were injured in motor vehicle crashes in the United States, and 4,378 pedestrians were killed. Pedestrians comprise about 12 percent of motor vehicle crash deaths each year.
The accident rate is actually falling in recent years.
Not wanting to start a flame war here, this is not necessarily my viewpoint, just reporting one possible reason people don't automatically yield to motor vehicles.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
spokie-dokies
Didn't they do a study where they found that wearing a helmet (pushcycle or motor?) caused more accidents, because people felt they could take more risks?
I really think we just need to get used to the idea of a noiseless motor-car. Everything seems to like to make noise, from the microwave, to the heater, to the computer fan etc.. To have a chance of removing one major source of noise like cars would be great.
What could be an interesting test is to have noise-emitting cars for 3 years, and then silent ones for another 3 years. See which people prefer (make sure every car is electric first off all though).
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
The "kadunk-kadunk" of freight trains is pretty much limited to freight trains, because the thumb is really annoying for the passengers. Modern passenger trains on a modern railroad track are awfully quiet and awfully quick. Plus if you're trying to hold a conversation on the cell phone in a noisy environment, you often mentally shut out everything else to focus on the voice. So it's not so much "there's noise" as in "this noise I *shouldn't* ignore". Same as in my office landscape when people think holding a conversation across the room is a good idea, I just mentally shut it out. For the office it'll save your sanity, on a railroad crossing it might kill you.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Having both of my grandfathers working for the local rail company at some point, and living about 50m from a heavy-duty rail line the first years of my life, I can safely say that most people have just no imagination as far as the physics of a moving train goes, and why you should double- and triple-check if you're free to cross the line even if it has traffic lights which say you're free to go.
On the negative side, I don't need to imagine the consequences of when you don't check properly ... and I cringe every time expecting another bloody mess whenever I see people doing stupid stuff like ignoring railway crossing gates being down.
I can't take it anymore!! Stop the insanity!! Hybrids are too quiet! Wind farms are bad because they kill birds! Transmission lines ruin the environment! The record freezing is a sign of global warming! You can't smoke cigarettes in a fucking HASH BAR!!
You are all nuts!!
so what difference will it make. Maybe have ipod makers make them detect cars nearby and make annoying sounds. ;-)
I guess it all depends on trains and tracks. Here, in Poland, you hear the train a good minute before it passes by. "Silent rails" exist, but are expensive and require well-maintained "fleet" to survive - if you hear one-two cars literally jumping with each turn of the wheels the whole empty metal box resonating, meaning likely the bearings of the axis damaged, you can hear them from faaaar away. The rails squeak loudly. The engine whinies quite a bit. Nope, not nearly quiet enough.
There is a case where you can get hit by a train easily though. A single engine, or one pulling 2-3 cars, on a side track, appearing from behind some trees, going quite slowly, drowned out by cars. I remember seeing one maybe 10 meters from me, startling me totally.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
You've overlooked parking lots. When walking in a parking lot, you often can't see if someone is in a car. The engine sound provides an important clue that a car might start moving.
Electric cars aren't the fist industry to be effected by this. They aren't the first electric vehicles around pedestrians in the wild, nor are they they first to find too silent means people get run over.
Ever wonder why so many electric vehicles make that nice annoying beeping when backing up (say, forklifts and such)? That is because so many people got backed over and severely injured even with alert drivers. Tire noise? Yea, that will work in so many places where the noise (even if everyone was electric) is high enough you can't hear the gravel crunching (and woe be to any place that smooths surfaces). Want to have to driver watch - do you *really* want the guy with 4 hours of sleep last night and two beers being the primary responsibility you can walk the rest of your life (again note that tire noise isn't that loud when in most public places)? It may be a moral victory that he was in the wrong, but I would rather have working legs than a moral victory and needing to navigate by pushing a small rod with my tongue.
I've been in more than one place where an electric vehicle pulls up behind me and the drivers voice makes me jump. They have been with cars, forklifts, and simple golf carts. The only ones that have ever truly scared me are the cars - they have been the only ones that *both* of us jumped when it was noticed (and in all cases they were backing - I'm not counting someone focused and alert trying to scare me, those are irritating but not severe accidents due to accidental circumstances). The others all had audible cues when they were moving in any way other than forward, even then being the person outside the reinforced steel cage I wish they had some audible cue they were moving. Whilst I've certainly been one inside of said cage (that is - driving forward whilst alert in an attempt to make someone jump), I've also felt the idea of if the driver had been distracted and rolled a 2 ton monstrosity over me due to inattention so we could be extra quite to be, well, not really a good idea. I rather suspect that most people would feel the same way - that a life in a wheel chair (and I have to note that this is being optimistic and assuming you live through the accident) wasn't worth everyone else not hearing a slight hum.
But hey - lots of people here do not want that noise!!!!
Quite is certainly good and a reduction in noise pollution is certainly a plus for electrics (and hybrids - where most of us have experience with a vehicle running under electric power). Yet one can get too quite when you are talking a high fraction of a metric ton (or usually greater) moving at speeds enough to kill. Tire noise isn't that much and with most electrics that is all you get. Even were it only the blind I would argue for it, however for those of us gifted with sight we *still* use our ears more than our eyes for situational awareness. There isn't *anyone* on this planet that this wouldn't benefit.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Road noise is wasted energy. Electric cars need to do everything they can to squeeze out the maximum range, so their tires are specifically designed to minimize noise. Any car will be noisy at highway speeds, but on an asphalt residential street where cars don't go very fast, an electric car can be nearly silent. Of course the speed at which you can easily hear the car is much higher than the speed it becomes dangerous, so this isn't complete nonsense.
dom
Ok, but those Sydney trains you site are not FREIGHT trains.
I live right next to a train line as well and since my window is facing the opposite direction, I rarely notice the passenger train go by.
But when the freight train rolls by at 10pm and midnight, it shakes the place.
Well, I'm ready to get modded down myself for calling an idiot an idiot, because awareness doesn't have a fucking thing to do with common sense, and you're an idiot for thinking it does. Awareness is a function of mental alertness and fatigue levels. If you're tired, it takes more effort to focus on your task at hand, leaving you less capacity for awareness of other factors. Further, modern society blasts a person with constant visual and aural input, increasing mental fatigue more quickly than in previous generations. Lastly, the human brain itself is hardwired to disregard any noises that it doesn't deem immediately necessary (in a room with a ticking clock, how many times have you suddenly become aware of the ticking, having paid it no mind previously while you were concentrating?), which can easily include traffic noises if they've been constant for a while.
The only possible role common sense can have in awareness is helping to determine in what direction they should focus whatever mental reserves they have. So, by your own values, and lacking the common sense to see how common sense applies in this case, I'm pretty sure you should go lie down in front of a speeding train.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
... have a piece of stiff cardboard flap against spokes on the wheel
Trains are hard to miss. The actual train itself, well it isn't all the loud. The big diesels are very low frequency and the wheels make surprisingly little noise. You feel it, more than hear it, and then only as it is passing you.
HOWEVER you do hear them because at every rail road crossing they blow their horns and those things are fit to wake the dead. They are required by law, and they do, to sound their horn as they approach a crossing. You cannot miss the sound. At close range it is over 120dB, so you can hear it for a mile or so (I grew up in a town where trains came through over every 15 minutes, every day, all day).
Also all crossings are clearly marked, and have lights (and nearly always gates as well) which are activated by a switch on the rail, well in advance of the train's arrival. The tracks are quite visually distinct too. The road looks very different where they are since they have to be heavily reenforced to handle the weight. it is made of different materials. Then there's the fact that the trains are MASSIVE. You can see them quite a long distance off. Now they move fast, so it isn't like "Oh I can see a train in the distance I'll cross leisurely," but you can see one and then not get on the tracks.
Remember that in America with very, VERY few exceptions all trains are freight trains. America has nearly no light rail. It has some subways in a few cities, but those are underground primary (as the name implies). There is Amtrack in a few places but like I said, rare. However the US has a massive, probably the biggest in the world, heavy rail system. Trains move around materials and goods of all kinds because it literally takes 0.5-1% of the energy as moving by truck. They are massive, and the make a shitload of noise when they wish to. Also, as all trains do, they travel on defined courses.
So yes, people do get hit, but they are dumb as shit. The trains do not sneak up on you. You are being oblivious if you get hit. Like I said, I grew up in a town that had thousands of trains a year. Tracks cut right through the middle of town too. Despite that, there were not people dying all the time to the trains because of all the safety features I mentioned. Only time people tended to die was when they were drunk and wandering on the tracks.
I live right next to the tracks in Sydney mate. there is no more than 200 feet between my television set and the first track. I know when every train is going past unless I have music blaring. People know on TS when I am in the back room when a train goes past. So even in my back room it's noisy. If you are closer to the city, Strathfield to North Sydney you won't notice the noise as they have sound barriers (they also don't travel as fast as they do once you get west of Parramatta) and traffic noise to compete with. Even when they coast into the station they make enough noise I can't talk in my front yard, pulling into the station they can quiet off quite a bit due to the noise being bounced away from you by the platform.
Your dead on about stopping distance.
Well done. Yes, safety regulation is about finding the proper balance between risk and inconvenience.
"Well done" :-), you completely missed the historical reference and hence the joke.
Commercial electric vehicles have had noise making devices for decades for this very reason. The fact of the matter is that the human mind is animal at its base, and split second decisions like "Jump back out of the street!!!" are decided by that animal part of our mind. Our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors would assume that something that weighs 2tons and his hurtling at you at 60mph should be making some sort of noise. So you see such a thing out of the corner of your eye, and your defense mechanisms decide it's probably an optical illusion due to the silence so it turns the whole affair over to the logic part of your brain, so you turn your head to review the situation just in time to an old lady in a Prius with murder in her eye.
Some of the first cars was deemed dangerous and to silent so in order to drive them in town you had to put a bloke infront of it walking in advance with a ringing bell to warn eventual pedestrians. I guess we have now gone full circle and arrived at the same place of utter madness.
HTTP/1.1 400
if you have the right of way, legally, you shouldnt take it. because.... some morons driving cars think that it is their right to have the way, DESPITE they are not legally entitled to it over others.
Read radical news here
Crossing open roads probably isn't the main issue here. Nothing helps against stupidity and/or lack of a solid upbringing here, I agree.
However I do wonder how much experience you have as a pedestrian in a city environment. Road and tire noise is certainly very audible at speed, yet the main problem are cars moving below 25 MPH or so in crowded areas with lots of other noise sources, IE. other cars moving on the road. For instance without some kind of noise from a vehicle, it is impossible in most situations to know if it is about to back out on a crowded parking lot, a situation where even the most attentive driver will be plagued by blind angles and visual obstructions from other cars around him. Today we rely on the engine noise and possibly the lights to see which cars may be about to back out.
It is the same reason why large trucks, entrepreneur machines and the likes has a back-up warning sound. Lots of blind angles and loud external noise sources, making it hard for both driver and pedestrians to spot each other.
Finally, we don't have 360 degree vision. When car noise at low speed can be drowned out by people talking next to you, then there is a problem. Whether you realize this or not, then we all rely heavily on sound to warn us of approaching vehicles behind us, and when we happen to be looking in the wrong direction.
Keep track of all blind people
Post their positions on the internets using a searchable API.
Construct a car that is noisy when close to a blind person
Profit
Our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors would assume that something that weighs 2tons and his hurtling at you at 60mph should be making some sort of noise. So you see such a thing out of the corner of your eye, and your defense mechanisms decide it's probably an optical illusion due to the silence
Even a fully electric car, at 60MpH is making a lot of noise. Road noise. That makes up a large percentage of the noise generated by a car and tends to even drown out most of the engine noise unless the car is revving/accelerating. I was watching a special a couple of years back about noise pollution and didn't realize that fact.
So yes, noise IS an important part. Which is why someone with a hearing disability has to take a little extra care over an average person when in public.
So the only place it's really a danger is when the car is doing like 5-10 MpH in a parking lost: slow enough so the road noise is drowned out by ambient noise.
If a company wants to put it in. Fine. Even if every company decides to put it in.
But the government saying "You MUST do it" just seems silly.
Bicyclists must now go VROOM VROOM! so they can be heard by the blind and wear carnival heads so they can be seen by the deaf. They are also offered the alternative of going Brrrrummbumbumbumbum! and waving flares in the event a carnival head is not available.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Are people really more likely to get hit by a car if they can't hear it? If so, someone can point me to the studies showing that currently there is a significantly larger percentage of deaf people getting hit by cars than people who have perfect hearing.
Until then, I don't think electric cars should be made noisy. Just use common sense: Surely pedestrians can walk on the sidewalk. If they need to cross, they can find a zebra crossing, look both ways and cross. In case of an emergency, the driver can honk.
If the deaf get hit by cars more often than people with good hearing, what about we fit all current cars with big arrays of flashing lights? Would also go with the season.
Listen to the sounds of my penis smacking you in the forehead. MAWAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Road noise is wasted energy. Electric cars need to do everything they can to squeeze out the maximum range, so their tires are specifically designed to minimize noise. Any car will be noisy at highway speeds, but on an asphalt residential street where cars don't go very fast, an electric car can be nearly silent. Of course the speed at which you can easily hear the car is much higher than the speed it becomes dangerous, so this isn't complete nonsense.
dom
While true you can make a lot of noise with very little power, particularly at higher frequencies. Anyone who has one of those battery-powered personal alarms can testify to that.
Now they just need to capture all the pollutants from the fossil plants that produce (at least, California is the best case) 80% of the electricity for these abominations, and have them pump it out of them as they drive.
Honest to god, I can't decide whether (current) photovoltaic cells or (current) electric cars are the bigger greenwashing scam, but they both boil my piss. Take fossil fuels, add a liberal dose of my tax money, and hey, you have something that will never, ever recoup the energy costs it took to make it in its working life. SCIENCE!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
When I was a kid, I used to attach a playing card to a spoke on one of my bike's wheels. Just a thought...
"Sarcasm is for *winners*, Alan." - Charlie Harper (Two and a Half Men)
but I'm hopeful the vuvuzela requirement is forthcoming.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You should use your eyes. In the Netherlands you are not allowed to overtake someone unless you know it's safe to do so, whether you drive a car or a bike.
Someone coming the other direction? WTF? Are there no rules on which side you should ride a bike where you live? The only case you can have a problem with someone coming the other direction is on a separate bike lane, where the car isn't an issue.
If you trust your ears to know whether a car is coming up from behind you are an idiot. There may be a bike coming up from behind.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Read the post again, I said your ears are the SECOND most important tool behind your eyes. Obviously you should look but it's not always possible or even that accurate. As per another bike coming up behind you, they are supposed to ring their bell before passing you, thats common courtesy. Again, ears augmenting the eyes. Please actually read posts before going on a rant next time, ok?
Monstar L
When crossing streets I pay no attention to noise whatsoever. There's already so much of it that there's no information in the din. Vision is the way to go if you can. If you're blind, you're already used to taking precautions - using a guide dog, relying on crosswalks, etc. Is that a perfect, foolproof solution? No. You can't protect everyone from everything, and we haven't figured that out as a society.
Nobody has demonstrated that blind people being run over by electric vehicles is a real problem, yet here we are championing a legislative solution. What about the 400k people dying every year from smoking related lung cancer? What about the ginormous budget deficit? Declining quality of public education? Wars abroad? You'd think our legislators would have some idea of how to prioritize. Instead, they're coming up with silly solutions to non-problems. If this proves to be a big problem in the future, then by all means, we should deal with it. But until then, we're fixing what isn't broken.
An even more dangerous issue is iPod Haze. I was driving slowly through a parking lot in a noisy car looking for a parking spot. I scan to my left looking for a spot and forward to keep from hitting something. On one forward scan there appeared a girl directly in front of me. She was engrossed in her iPod. She had walked out of a side aisle from behind an suv without pausing or looking. I stopped in time and she continued on her merry way. I ended up in line behind her at the coffee shop and asked her if she knew that had I been going a bit faster she would have been run over. She never knew I was there.
When one has music blasting into one's ears a noisy car does not help.
This sound like a good opportunity for Spokey Dokes to broaden their product range.
Pedestrian on phone killed by truck
Toronto Police say the woman was standing on the northwest corner of Front St. and Blue Jays Way just before 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, waiting to cross to the south side of the street, when a southbound delivery truck pulled up to the intersection and turned right in front of her as the light changed.
"The victim was on a cellphone at the time and she literally walked into the side of the truck as it was making its turn," Sgt. Tim Burrows said yesterday. "She was knocked down and the rear wheels of the truck drove over top of her."
"I think society is in a sad state if it needs to pass a law to protect people from this," Burrows said, adding a little common sense should be all that's needed.
Noises from rattling of loose metalwork or unbalanced rotating elements would also be welcome. Backfiring interspersed at irregular intervals, along with the odd component dragging the ground or falling off. The brakes should cause squealing and skidding noises.
A car should sound like a real car!
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I'd be more likely to step out in front of such cars so I wouldn't ever have to hear that again.
There may be more of a future in that than you suppose. I expect that we'll regress to having a person walk in front of such vehicles, waving a red flag to warn bystanders of its approach.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
How about one of those wailing sirens like a Stuka used to use on a dive? Operated by the wind blowing through them .. faster they go, the more noise they make. Mind you if the wind were in the right direction, a car park would sound like a herd of dying animals.
No, still can't find anything about "second". Chrome search function can't find it either
'Round here it's not common to ring your bell when just passing someone. It may even be illegal (since it's supposed to be a warning sound. No one is in danger), but I'm not sure about that. Just as you are not allowed to honk your horn when overtaking someone.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Ah, a fellow dutch biker.
You don't use your ears as the only system, but you use it as an early warning system for cars. You still need to look. If you want experience with how this works then get your bike to Arnhem and bike trough the city. Soon you'll start to notice something is "off", there are these big ass buses that don't make much noise. They aren't as silent as small electric vehicles, but they are also electric and don't make the noise you expect from something that large. Even after years of biking there I they still managed to scare the crap out of me, and I got almost hit by one once.
It's large, blue and creeps on you: The god damn Arnhem trolleybus.
Yet, every time the subject of cycling comes up on slashdot, there is no shortage of IDIOTS who insist that cyclists should use the sidewalk...
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
This will make electric cars more expensive. And in addition, it will make them sound annoying and stupid, especially if lawmakers get involved in choosing the beeping sound.
I don't know which lobby was involved, but I don't think that the regular petrol engine car industry opposes this silly new proposal.
The "kadunk-kadunk" of freight trains is pretty much limited to freight trains.
Umm. Not always so. The 'Kadunk-kadunk' is the wheels passing over a rail joint or switch frog. Welded rail takes care of most of it, but even passenger trains are subject to this noise. The other noise often related to moving rail cars is the 'tunk, tunk, tunk, tunk.....' of a flat wheel. These also occur on passenger cars. The most annoying is the flange squeal. Flange greasers help but it does not make it go away completely. Anyway, a friend of mine toasted a pickup truck with a locomotive today. He was on the horn the entire time - up until the moment of impact. The driver and passenger in the truck were not injured, but the truck was a total loss. The guy said that he did not see him. Ummm. Yeah. Right. The truck driver was a railroad worker as well. This happened in the yard. It is clear to everyone around that he was trying to beat the train through the crossing. Stupid.
Why is it that most of the people that I encounter seem to have been shat from the Sphincter of Mediocrity?
http://www.a1freesoundeffects.com/animals12557/horseneigh.wav
Sesame street has a toy with a steering wheel and various sounds. One is Cookie Monster saying "Me Drive car!".
Come on! The gov't seems to be slacking off in the outrageously-false-backronyms department!
how is babby formed?
Well, say you've got a high-speed passenger train coasting at 300 km/h. If you hear it coming from 1 km distance, you've got about 10 seconds to live unless you figure out what the noise is and move out of the way -- ideally with a bit extra distance since I assume standing next to the tracks as a 300 km/h train drives by isn't safe, either. Ten seconds is a fairly generous amount of time, but I also think 1 km is fairly generous example, in many situations you might not hear the train until half a kilometer or less. Since high speed rail tracks are usually quite straight, you do have a good chance of seeing the train coming from a long way, at least.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
If joints between lengths of welded rail are tapered there's hardly any "cluck" when a wheel goes over. photo. I'm not a railway engineer, so I don't know if this is the typical kind of joint, but I do know that I don't hear "clunk-clunk" from most long-distance trains I've used in the UK, except when crossing points (switches).
Ah, I've found the Wikipedia article.
Sloping the track (one rail higher than the other) presumably helps reduce flange noise.
What happens if it's a bicycle or a coasting car producing little sound coming up behind you? Sound is a useful indicator taken along with all other available cues, but relying on sound to such a high degree is a bad idea from the get go, you either need to turn and look or use a mirror - every other road going vehicle has to be fitted with them. Forcing everyone else to accept noisy modifications to their vehicles just so you can continue to fool yourself that you are safe relying on sound is not the answer.
Almost every single item upgrade I do recently (clothes, electronics, car) has very dubious improvements for me, but a lot of changes which the sole purpose to improve the bottom line of a big fat ass company that makes this tool.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Exactly - the answer is not to put in place incredibly fallible systems that lead people into a false sense of security. That won't do as much to reduce accidents as raising awareness of the need to take care when crossing, there are other ways to address the visual impariment question that don't rely on making things noisy for everyone else. This just sounds like yet more knee-jerk legislation that fails to provide time or thought for investigating better solutions (and once every car has these things it will be too costly to change to a better system).
Mu.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I went Christmas shopping yesterday and I walked across the car park because the pacements were icy - I can tell you that once you have even a handful of cars moving around you the ability to distinguish that a car is suddenly about to pull out of a space falls to practically zero. I had to be extremely vigilant and twice had cars pull out right in front of me (and it's not like I wasn't visible, it was daylight and I was carrying a pretty big box). I still think there are a handful of situations where having a noisy vehicle is in any way useful and in almost every other situation it's just an annoyance. If we can find better solutions to that handful of situations (have moving cars have to use their headlights, like in large parts of Europe, for instance, to give you an indication that someone is in the parked vehicle ahead and may be about to pull out) then we can eliminate a massive source of noise pollution in our major cities over the next decade or so.
I do hope only a few motorsounds are permitted, otherwise it will be a hell as we all know a lot of people will have very annoying sounds.. Personally I don't think a car should have to make noise at all, it's not like a bicycle makes a lot noise.. Pedestrians should just watch were they are going and not just cross a street without first checking (you learn that as a toddler)..
The rails sing when a train's approaching. I've waited at level crossings a few times when the barriers have come down, and well before you can hear the rumble of the train, you can hear a fairly high pitched tone from the tracks, similar to running your finger round a wine glass. In my experience, that's the first and most obvious sign of an approaching train.
Two words: "Parking lot."
It's not to protect the blind at street intersections. Toned signal posts already do that. It's to protect pedestrians in parking lots, where there isn't significant road noise to warn you, and you're likely to be distracted by task loading.
Or, at least, that's where it's useful, anyway.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Couldn't you just make cars broadcast some kind of signal that can be picked up by a receiver the visually impaired can carry, thereby getting rid of most noise pollution?
Here is Sydney, the trains are quite large, double storey and mainly 8 cars long but even with that they are almost silent as they approach.
Those are passenger trains. They're relatively light and as you say, you don't really hear them. The GP was talking about freight trains, which is mostly what we have in the US. I camped near a rail line once for a couple days, and the difference between the two was night and day - the freight trains rumbled like nothing else, but the passenger trains felt like it was just an engine rolling past.
Eh? I have mirrors on bike precisely to make it always possible.
Cheapskates who won't spend $10 on a mirror to safeguard their own ass (literally!) deserve to be run down -- they're right up there with all these ninja cyclists I see riding after dark with no lights.
Impress your friends by pretending to have an awesome sound system! Try to time the earthquake in some movie with the train schedule!
c++;
But... why are you standing that close to the tracks in the first place? We KNOW where trains are going to be: in the places with tracks (unlike cars which can drive on some unpaved terrain). Why would you be standing on/walking on the tracks or close enough to the tracks in the first place?
Make the cars hover, above our heads.. I mean come'on already... ofcourse, all hover cars have to make that "whirr whirrr whirr" 1950's hovering car noise... its the law
We've had a rash of bus fatalities recently. The solution, at first, require buses to honk when turning. This was a stop-gap until they had time to install the real solution. Loud speakers that say, and I quote, "Caution, pedestrian. Bus is turning. Bus IS turning." And the beauty, it's automatic. So any little bump, sharp enough curve and it says this. Not only that, downtown Cleveland has buses all over the place saying this constantly.
Headlights on at all times cause more motorcycle deaths though.
How about we just make it a law that you are more than welcome to have one of these new fangled quiet cars, so long as you employ someone to walk in front of it carrying a large red flag.
Well, I can assure you when you've got a multi-engined 200+ car freight passing your house, even if it's over 1/4 mile away (sorry mate, that's 400 meters), you definitely know it's there. Even the 90mph passenger trains are obvious, if only because they have to lay into the horn well in advance of crossings in order to warn off the idiots (I have to agree with the grand-parent; how can you not notice a train?)
Is there no end to the level of control this government thinks it should impose on people of this country? The fact that this seems to be taken with humour rather than concern says a lot about the mentality of this audience. Wise up kiddies, Government's natural desire to intrude (gain power) combined with the monitoring and control capability that can be achieved with today's technology should scare the hell out of everyone. I would think the people that read a site like this would appreciate that more than most. Laugh stuff like this off and you can look forward to a future where you can't take a breath without the government having control over it.
There are two sides to this equation. Since there are fewer blind people than there are cars, same effect could be achieved at a lesser expense and city noise pollution.
I knew about the red flag act, and GP still totally made sense.
I've finally found a purpose for all those fart apps on my iPhone.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Most of the pedestrians I've read about that get hit by trains were either there on purpose (ie, attempting suicide), or walking down the tracks away from any marked crossing (and maybe even with headphones in, drunk, or otherwise distracted).
There are also cases of railyard workers being struck by a loose railcar rolling around (which can be all but silent), or pinned between two of them.
But most train accidents I read about are train vs. vehicle, where the driver of said vehicle did something stupid like stop on the tracks, go around the gate arms, or try to beat the train and cross before it got there.
A large, modern diesel train can be surprisingly quiet if it's not blowing the horn, especially if it's moving fast.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
I had the idea about 5 years ago for an implementation of downloadable sound packages for electric vehicles and speakers in the car's exterior to play them for just this very reason. They'd respond the the car's velocity and change in velocity so you could get the sounds of associated with changing gears, or switching from a trot to a gallop.
I toyed with the idea of patenting the whole thing, but decided that the risk was too high (risk that there'd not be enough electric vehicles before the patent expired, risk that you'd barely make back the investment in the patent process, etc.).
Still, I think it would be popular to wirelessly download a CruiseTone into your Nissan Leaf and make it sound just like a Porsche 911, or perhaps a stampeding elephant.
My father used to talk about this. There were still a few electrics around in the 1920s when he was a kid. He said you had to be a little careful of them, as they were so quiet they could start moving without you realizing it.
The trick is coming up with a sound that pedestrians will notice, but doesn't become terribly annoying compared to the good it does.
(Vibration activated car alarms are a good example of being quite annoying while doing little worthwhile.)
One opportunity for automotive marketers and startups is the emerging business of supplying drivetones, the automotive equivalent of cell-phone ringtones. Want your green car to rev like a Ferrari or BMW? Just buy the right drivetone and crank up the exterior volume.
Wonderful. Not only do we currently have morons that think they need to put those large, echoing mufflers on their crappy little Nissan's even more morons are going to go out and buy these things and crank them up to 11.
How about instead of legislating more noise, they legislate an automatic system be built into the vehicle that brings it to a safe stop when it detects something in front of it? That or we keep the cars quiet and allow Darwin to do his job and cull the herd.
Yes, I suppose that would be the lesson to take home. :)
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I wish there was a law against interfering with natural selection...
yeah ! They don't make noises so their are dangerous ! We need to force them to make noise like fuel cars. And we need to force them to emit smoke and steam, like even older cars,so they can be seen approching from afar. And we need to make it mandatory that they regularly drop some artificial poop like a real horse, to make it easy for law enforcement to trace them~
--
seriously, I think we have a good contender for the most stupid law of the year. Come on ! Get on with your times : as technology change, so change it carracteristics.
and as far of security is concerned "look both ways" has always worked with past technology and will still work with silebt cars.
instead of getting distracted by your latest shiny smartphone/mediaplayer hybrid.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I won't go as far as a [Citation Needed] but I will ask how the hell being able to see cars better increases motorcycle deaths.
I definitely prefer meeting (aside from those damned blue headlights, they can die in a fire (not involving my motorcycle)) cars with headlights on when riding. And I really appreciate cars with good headlights when following them.
The problem with the Prius is that it doesn't announce that it has been started, like say a standard gas car does. It makes a click when it moves. The gas car makes a starter noise. I'm not that concerned about noise from a car while it's rolling down the road (there's tire noise), but when you're on a bike riding in the bike lane with parallel parked cars to your right, it's nice to have an audible warning.
I had a Prius try to hit me once while I was walking. The driver took off, but unlike a gas car, there was no starter or running motor noise. I heard the click, but by then the car is actually moving. With gas starter and engine noises, there's communication from the vehicle.
Donald Norman notes in at least one of his books that electronic devices tend to be rude compared to their mechanical counterparts which give more visual and audio clues as to what they are doing. Electric cars (which is what the Prius starting from the curb with no gas motor running effectively is) vs. gas exhibit the same problems. The gas car notifies with the starter "Hey, I'm starting" and then with the motor "I'm running and could move at any time". The Prius is quiet, and when the click of the electric drive engage is heard, it may already be coming for you.
I think it might be cool if your car played the theme from Shaft, cause he's a bad mutha... ... shut yo' mouth ... ... but I'm just talkin' 'bout Shaft.
... I can set the sound that my electric car makes be the one that the Jetson's car made. I can live with that level of government intrusion into my life. What I expect to happen is that some "standard" sound will be mandated resulting in city dwellers having a loss in hearing at the frequencies contained in the standard car noise after being subjected to it for a time. (Rather like folks who spent too much time in noisy work environments like factories, data centers, etc.)
One has to wonder, though, if a mandated minimum noise level is even necessary. Much of the noise that the cars make is a result of tire contact with the road (with the exception of the car with the busted muffler that the teenager down the street drives home after getting off the late shift; everybody's got one of those living on their block). With most of the roads in the US being more pothole than road there's already plenty of noise so I'm not sure that a minimum sound is really even necessary. What's next? All cyclists must put playing cards in the spokes of their bikes like we did as kids? That actually makes more sense than a mandated sound for cars. I can be very stealthy on my bike while in my car... not so much.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
...introducing intelligent car noise. Have electric cars make a 'beep beep' sound as they are backing, similar to the way a larger truck might. Whilst driving forwards, change the volume and/or pitch of the audio produced at various speeds to reduce noise pollution but maintain awareness of the vehicle. Also, make the noise directional! If you focus the sound forwards, it will reduce automobile noise in neighbourhoods, (you tend to drive forwards, not sideways, so focusing the audio in the direction you are driving should help reduce noise pollution as well).
Just some thoughts.
There are two types of people in the world; those who believe there are two types of people, and those who don't.
We do; but people will start their car, in reverse, and hold down their brakes. They'll put on their seat belt, etc., maybe sit there for a little while to make sure things are clear behind them. The reverse lights AND the brake lights are on, and the only signal that the car is beginning to move is the break lights going off. A pedestrian walking down a lane, happening on the car, either has to stand until the car begins backing up, or move past it and hope it doesn't back up over them.
In the long term we can fix blind people too, don't forget
I just learned that around 800 pedestrians per year are hit in San Francisco alone. Forgetting jokes about bums and jaywalkers, I'm guessing a significant percentage of those people were doing exactly what they were supposed to and the car just didn't stop for the red light, or didn't yield, or they didn't see that car coming from behind in the six-way intersection. If there were no audio cues I am sure these unfortunate rates would just go up. If you're thinking in binary and believe we ONLY need one sense (sight) to protect us from accidents... give me some of what you're smoking, please...
*** DRINK MORE COFFEE ***
Meg Ryan's orgasm scene in When Harry met Sally will be the sound my electric car makes.
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it by not dying. - Woody Allen
Cars making a noise to alert people to their presence is only really an issue in cities and other areas where there are likely to be pedestrians. In practice, however, the engine noise is not really that loud, unless the car muffler is broken, and in my experience, the only places that engines generally really do make more noise than just the sound of moving tires on the road is on freeways, where the engines are running fast enough that they can get quite loud, and you aren't liable to be dealing with pedestrians. Even there, however, the sound of the car tires on the road is fairly loud, and may still be something you hear before you hear the engine as a vehicle approaches... particularly if it is a newer vehicle and the muffler is working very well.
The only argument that then remains IMO is that electric cars don't make any noise while stopped, and blind people may not be aware of them. But consider also that horses came before automobiles, and they didn't necessarily make any noise when stopped either... by the same reasoning that requires noisemakers in electric cars, in hindsight should it also have been required by law to have noisemakers installed on horses as well, which operate whenever the horse is at a standstill? Never mind the technological issues that may have existed... does that requirement not just sound totally absurd?
What studies can they point to that show that cars whose engine doesn't make noise are more dangerous than cars that do? Is it not even remotely possible that the creators of this idea are seeing problems where none actually exist?
Hey, if they want cars to make noise, then shouldn't car mufflers also be outlawed? After all... you wouldn't want somebody making their car more silent than it should be... [/sarcasm]
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...than a Prius sliding silently past while you are cycling at speed. The first time this happened I only knew the car was there because the road vibrated differently as it approached.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
I LEGALLY HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY.
Careful son, that gun is loaded.
This looks like a safe place to camp."
"I NEVER need to use a condom."
Trust me. I know what I'm doing.
OK
What happened to looking both ways before crossing anything? Trains could be whisper quiet, but there's still no excuse for getting hit by one. I mean really, they can only come from one of TWO directions, the tracks never move, and if you move 5 feet to either side of them you're in the clear. They also tend to make these real loud honking noises that you can hear for miles. If you're crossing tracks, why would you not take the 2 seconds to turn your head 90 degrees to the left, then 180 degrees to the right? Is that so much to ask in this day and age? Getting hit by a train is about as stupid as the steamroller scene in Austin Powers.
I installed a back alarm in my service van after I almost hit a pedestrian that walked out behind me because they were to busy talking on their cell phone. You know what? A month later another person walking out behind me as I was backing up! My backup alarm is not a polite sound and I am self conscious about it. So if people still walk out behind me when I backing, they'll still step out in front of a moving car regardless of the noise it makes.
Always good to create legislation from pseudo-research. "Future analysis using larger sample size would provide better estimate of the problem size." Also, the Prius - at least mine anyway - makes a REALLY LOUD beep when in reverse. This is by design.
[url]http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811204.PDF
I remember when Top Gear tested the Tesla on their track, and the loudest sound it made was the whir of its tires. It was a bit spooky, but I suppose people will get used to it eventually. As others have mentioned, the makers of gasoline-engined cars used this as marketing FUD to discredit electric vehicles (which were viewed as quiet and civilized, as well as reliable) in the early part of the 20th century.
There is an active electric vehicle club here in Vancouver, and their vehicles are all very nearly silent. Again, the loudest sound they usually make is their tires.
The new electric trolley buses here are actually quite noisy. Their chopper controllers make a distinctive groaning sound. The old Brill trolleys, once again, the only sound they made was their tires.
...laura
In 2008, 69,000 pedestrians were injured in motor vehicle crashes in the United States, and 4,378 pedestrians were killed.
That's terrible. Who can we bomb about this?
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
People have been struck here by freight trains. You can't miss a North American freight train; they're huge, they're diesel, they rumble like hell, and the engineer lays on the horn if he so much as thinks he sees something on the track. I put it down mostly to suicides and drunks.
aren't you guys ever tired of these governments regulating everything for you?
I think you vastly underestimate how many visually impaired people there are. We're not just talking about full on blind people, there's a huge range of legally blind people, including the elderly.
Personally I think it would be better to just get rid of personal automobiles altogether.
OMG someone needs to write one of those adaptive music players like games have that get more intense as things get exciting and can like play people out when they get out of your car..
I want mine to be an ice cream truck sound and I'll have a big sign that says "c'mere little kids"
It takes common sense to know when you are overdoing things; it takes common sense to know where to direct your awareness. My point still stands, and with sless words, too. Sorry you wrote so much only to reaffirm my point in the end.
Still, the number is miniscule when next to "every car out there" (like I said, future thinking here).
index page and PDF
I paid the going retail price for a Windows screen reader and got a free Unix computer!
Have you ever lived near an electric commuter rail line?
Sure they might carry 150+ people and weigh several tons per car, multiplied by three or four cars per train, but holy crap, you literally can't hear those things until they're literally right on top of you.
This is so dangerous that the transportation authority in my area (SEPTA) requires all their regional trains to honk their horns at every single road crossing they go across. Additionally, when they're doing track work, they need a guy standing a quarter mile down the track holding up a sign with a giant red W on it, warning train engineers to honk their horns to let the work crews know a train is coming.
Despite their weight and size, they're surprisingly quiet, up until they're about 10 feet from where you are.
Maybe pedesterians and cycleists should take personal responsibility for their actions and make sure they are aware of their environment. Sadly, I know that this is probably asking too much from the "y' generation.
Will drive the neighborhood kids crazy.
People don't believe just how quiet hybrids are. A friend of mine had a Prius that we called the ghost car. He took delight in sneaking up on us in parking lots and blasting the horn; sort of a way of counting coup. We took to jamming small pebbles in the tire treads to give us some warning...
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
Sure they might carry 150+ people and weigh several tons per car, multiplied by three or four cars per train, but holy crap, you literally can't hear those things until they're literally right on top of you.
I just want to provide a counter example. I can certainly hear electric passenger trains carrying over one-hundred-fifty people while I am next to, not under them. Bold applied to the quote above for clarity. Perhaps you meant virtually?
If you can't see whether it's safe to pull out to overtake don't overtake. If you can't look behind yourself when you're cycling practise off-road, or buy mirrors (I've never tried them, some people like them). Your ears are useful for alerting you to some things, but they can't replace your eyes. Ears are useless when there's a noisy car coming the other way, or an aircraft overhead.
(Back in the summer I was on my way to a friend's house, there's a nice road through a big park which is closed to cars on Sundays. There was a parked car at the side. To check it was OK to move out, I turned to look behind me, and stuck my arm out to signal that I was overtaking at the same time. I almost pushed the "recreational cyclist" (lycra, age 40, 5kg bike, etc) guy slipstreaming me off his bike, he was following so close. Fortunately he got the idea very quickly and hit his brakes before I used mine (I hadn't been able to see if there were any cars following, so I didn't pull out). At the point I'd turned round his front wheel was adjacent to and centimetres from my back wheel. He apologised.)
...would be my choice if I had an electric car.
I agree with everything you said except that 10+ is way too old - children should have learned to look and not to step in front of moving objects by the time they are 5 and if they haven't and are not mentally impaired then the parent(s) are doing a pretty crappy job. I find it amazing how many times I'll see a parent with a small child just step off the curb in the middle of the block and jaywalk their little kid across a busy street with little or no effort to check for moving cars. It really is mind boggling.
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I usually walk/cycle around trying to cause as little inconvenience as possible. If there's plenty of time to walk across the street I won't press the button for the lights to go red. If there's a car looking to pull out and it's clear behind me I'll let him out to save him overtaking 10 seconds later.
My propensity to do this depends on the other vehicle. I'll avoid inconveniencing a bus. I don't care much either way about a normal/small car. I don't bother trying to be nice to SUV-like vehicles. I'll go out of my way to inconvenience a stretched Hummer. (This is based on what vehicles I consider appropriate for the area I'm in. SUVs and stretched Hummers aren't appropriate vehicles for cities.)
Clearly this is a recipe for traffic gridlock.
Not really -- not long-term, anyway. Once journeys become too inconvenient people change their route (or mode of transport). It should make walking more appealing.
(I do this myself all the time. I'll cycle through a park or along the river to work, but I don't use that route at the weekend if I'm in a hurry. There are too many people, especially unpredictable children riding their bikes/scooters all over the place. I have a route across the city for normal times, one for night (for 3am on Monday, etc) and one to avoid swarms of drunk clubbers (for 3am on Saturday, etc). My dad will drive here on a Sunday, but on any other day of the week he'll take the train.)
Do trucks in Canada have railings along the sides at wheel level to stop things going underneath? They obviously don't prevent things like this, but they can make them less serious.
Picture here (the one at the top, and sort-of on the road tanker near the bottom). American ones don't, in my limited experience.
I've seen electric car drivers write into the paper saying that they are constantly having to honk at pedestrians who get in their way even though they can see the car coming. Some pedestrians even look at the car coming straight towards them but carry on walking on a collision course. People have become so accustomed to cars making noise that apparently they don't connect the dots when we see a car coming towards us that isn't making any noise. Maybe they think that because there's no noise, the car is decelerating or something. I've been known to be startled by Priuses in parking lots. There's something about the combination of noise and visual warnings that we've gotten used to, and suddenly taking one of those away is going to have an impact. (Please, no lectures about how petrol-engined cars are just as quiet as electric cars. They're not. Shut up.)
One of the things I like about certain neighbourhoods in San Francisco is the fact that you can sit outside a cafe and hear yourself think even though a bus is going past and labouring up those hills. That's because they're trolleybuses and they whisper along. I'd hate to imagine having to recreate the sound of a noisy diesel engine to make up for that.
When they reintroduced trams in Manchester about 20 years ago they added these nice little horns that give off a soft hoot rather than an aggressive honk. It's like almost like a soft whistle. Very easy on the ear, not threatening, but enough to let you know that the tram is there (they're so quiet you wouldn't believe it), which is necessary in some of the more confusing street layouts where pedestrians and trams mingle.
I think it's worth looking into rather than leaving it up to natural selection as many people are sure to be suggesting below. It wasn't so long ago that safety features on automobiles were a novelty and the know-all "I call bullshit" /. crowd's reaction in those days would probably have been "if they get killed in a car crash then it's their own tough shit". You wouldn't get away with that now. That's one thing I suppose we should thank Ralph Nader for.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
You would not believe the number of pedestrians who dart out onto the street in front of me without looking. [..] I am capable of going from 20 to 0 in a ridiculously short distance.
Sorry, you're doing this wrong - how are they going to learn?
Use your fucking horn. that's what it's for. Otherwise, let us live in our cities without constant bullshit noise.
Make driving tests more stringent.. don't dumb down society, expect more from it. Bring people UP. Don't let people continue to slip into this pathetic world of perfectly quiet cars with a stupid fucking SPEAKER playing FAKE car noise...
30 years ago this might have been relevant, when cars sounded like heavy machinery, but modern gas engines make nearly zero noise on their own. Electric cars are not exactly silent either. The difference between the two is far, far less than people are pretending.
combine that with the fact that cars are only dangerous when they're coming towards you, and that's where they make the least amount of relative noise. All this would do is cut down on stupid blind people from being hit by electric cars...and still getting hit by GAS cars.
This is just another political agenda of a politician or two wanting to push easy feel good laws through to bolster their career, at the expense of rational and sensible legislation.
"I always look".....well, even you sir, are a member of the human race and as inconceivable as it is to your young mind you too will forget to do routine activities like look both ways before crossing. There are also those odd situations where cars are in unexpected places sneaking up behind you, like unmarked roads, parking lots, a service vehicle driving on a sidewalk, airport vehicles, back alleys (where there may not be enough space for a person to walk and a car to pass safely).
You may want to pass on parenting, BTW, if you expect kids to be controllable automatons like a computer...they just do random things. Make it safer for them, put sound on electric cars.
What is the purpose of having some car noises, just to know that your car is coming along, so that someone can hear you instead of see you??? I am unsure, but if I had a choice, I would try to get the noise of the jetsons ship, sort of a bubbly noise....you know the one i am talking about!
The thing that floors me is that people get hit by trains. TRAINS! We're talking like five-thousand plus tons of steel rumbling down a track, and people don't notice. How is this even possible? How self-absorbed do you have to be to notice a freaking TRAIN. I used to live not far from a freight line and the whole bloody ground shook when a train went by...
I live in the chicago area. And people do indeed get hit by trains of a fairly regular basis. And I'll explain how it happens.
It's very difficult to get hit by a train at my station. My station has only one track. Farther out in the suburbs, most of the trains are inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening. There's a few places with double tracks and points where trains going the other direction can let other trains pass. At most stations, there are parking lots on both sides of the track. When my train stops, people get out, then walk behind the train, crossing the tracks, so they can get to their car. They do this with the arms down and lights going. This is arguably safe because there's one train and one track, and the train is heading the other direction. So it's impossible to get hit by a train unless the train backs up. And trains aren't exactly known for their acceleration. Of course, this doesn't stop the local police from writing tickets for this behavior. :-/
Closer in to downtown, the train stations have two or more tracks. Here's how people get hit. Their train stops and they get out. The arms are down and flashing. They cross both sets of tracks behind the train. They think it's safe because the train is stopped and will go the other way. What they don't see is the express training passing next to their train on the other track. They think it's their train causing the lights and arms to come down. Their view of the express train is blocked by their stopped train. And they can't hear the train horn because of the crossing arm bell, and the sound is blocked by the stopped train. In this way, people will step in to the path of a 50mph express train. The result is body parts scattered everywhere.
There's also the occasional suicide which can be accomplished at any station where express trains don't stop.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
1. Maybe you should consider looking down the tracks to see if there's a massive, moving, double-story vehicle bearing down on you. I don't know, but I'd think the equivilant of a thin, 2-story house moving towards me might catch my eye. And if they're somehow notorious for being magically quiet, then yeah, I'd maybe glance down the track to make sure I'm not going to be hit by this massive thing!
2. If you're trying to leap across the tracks in the 5 seconds before it reaches you, then maybe you deserve to be hit by it if you trip and fall. If it's 20 meters away, maybe, just maybe you should wait for it. ESPECIALLY if it's only 8 cars long. Oh no... leap in front of a moving train, or wait then 20 fucking seconds for it to pass! Hmm... THERE'S a tough choice.
3. The whole topic of the thread is being hit by accident because of noise. Suicides are irrelevant, and can be discarded from the thread.
We've always told our kids to look both ways AND listen when crossing. They're pretty good about it most of the time, but kids are prone to distraction and excitation.
One day they were playing at a friend's house when an SUV came barreling down the (residential) street and ran over their friend's dog without even attempting to slow down, and without stopping after the fact. The guy must have been either drunk, highly distracted, or both, but as unfortunate as it was, they certainly learned a healthy fear of the street after that incident.
In case there's any confusion, yes, I'm suggesting we start using dogs for live training exercises.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
... must be happy. I can see an auto firm suing another because their sound his too similar to their trademarked copyrighted sound.
Sorry, you're doing this wrong - how are they going to learn?
I'm too nice to do anything more than a scowl (or, at intersections where they have a red hand and I a green light, an eye-roll or barely-passing-through-because-you-shouldn't-be-here now).
However, I do so with great frequency. It is my home that they will learn ... sometime. (Note: I work on a university campus, so foot traffic--both at legal and illegal times--isn't all that uncommon.)
R.Mo
Suppose that different actions of a car have different sound effects - turning right, left, or going straight. Forwards or backwards. Accelerating or braking. Then suppose that for IP/copyright reasons, different car manufacturers have different sounds - perhaps even down to the model.
SOMEONE will take a bunch of these cars in a huge parking lot and make performance art out of it.
"The Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act would require electric cars and hybrids to make noise"...
And to facilitate this request, Toyota will be installing standard a special horn that plays when you press on the steering wheel... also known as "The Horn".
The problem is in the hindbrain. Our inner reptile expects that the car will step around or over us just like everything else did in the past 100MY.
I once heard that most car/train accidents involve local people - who have grown accustomed to the trains and the crossings and take chances that someone unfamiliar with the crossing wouldn't take.
I suppose the same could be said of pedestrians using the tracks as a convenient path. I used train tracks in the winter as a kid as a route home after delivering newspapers. (The rails provided a snow free path that made the 1 1/2 mile trek back home significantly easier. I only had to jump off the tracks into the snow filled ditch once a month or so. More frequently, I only had to jump to the other set of tracks going the other direction.)
When I bicycle, I try to use the road, but given the idiot drivers (and I do drive occasionally, so I know that one can drive non-idiotically), it's often idiotic not to use the sidewalk. I generally ride on to the grass and allow pedestrians to come by, since in my mind they have the right-of-way.
My guess is that if motorcycles have their headlights on, and cars do not, then the motorcycles stand out more. If everyone has their headlights on, motorcycles blend back in. Not sure if it make a big difference, especially nowadays when many cars already have daytime running lights.
When you're on a country road (or in the suburbs at 2 o'clock on a Monday night) and a single car approaches from a distance, you usually hear the noise of the tyres, not the engines.
From many (most?) cars, the noise that really carries, is the noise of the tyres.
Now imagine the noise in a city where all vehicles are fully electric. You would actually hear the sound of tyres on the road so much better. In fact, you would hear everything else so much better too. Added noise from electric vehicles would not be necessary, as tyres might be the source of most noise anyway.
That said, there will still be decades of overlap from now until a time of only electric vehicles.
And as others here have already pointed out... look before you leap. (Applies to everyone involved in traffic.) As it is now, with all the noise, you can't rely on your ears to pick up the noise of that one car that is currently hurtling straight towards you. So I don't really see the need for added noise.
Feel free to google for AA and RAC studies in the UK that show this.
As of a few years ago, motorcycles have been manufactured with their lights on at all times that the engine is running. Even before that, it was advised that you run with your headlight on.
This meant that you stood out more. And fatality stats generated showed that this made a big difference.
New studies show that when cars have their lights on, motorcycles blend back in and are not noticed.
Loud Batteries Save Lives
Save Your Life, Be Aware, Quiet Running Priuses are Everywhere
I'd Be Quiet If You Had Paid Attention
Then just please don't do like me: I swerved on my bicycle, doing ca 55KPH (30MPH?), due to a pedestrian walking without looking or thinking, and ended up with a broken back :(
I will guarantee that she did not understand that she caused the accident...