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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
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.
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.
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.
Do people really have problems with this kind of thing?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Really, to be consistent, it should apply to all cars, not just electrics. Even with the motor running, a coasting car can be hard to hear.
Someone had to do it.
You didn't read the first sentence of his post? Are you blind?!
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...
Even better: how about 'It should apply to all OBJECTS'. Every single object, mobile or immobile should emit a different tone constantly.
That's why futuristic cities are built out of glass: the whole mass is one great big set of chimes.
The "whistle's go whoooo" guy becomes an overnight entrepreneur. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnzw_i4YmKk
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.
Two halves of a coconut being clopped together.
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.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
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 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.
Loud pipes save lives.
I saw an all electric vehicle once. It was crazy. I was replacing the water pump on my 1996 Geo Prism in a restaurant parking lot that was next door to a hooker hotel (literally, a hotel frequented mostly by hookers). When I looked up, there were ten SWAT guys jumping out of a black APC-looking thing. Fully armored, the works. I never even heard it pull up and I was only 20 feet away. I was talking to one of the cops after the SWAT truck left (the crime scene still had to be taken care of, and the criminals carted off in regular cop cars), and she said that it was all-electric and just wonderful for serving no-knock search warrants on drug dealers. They never get the chance to flush. So I guess the noiselessness might actually be an advantage in some circumstances.
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.
Really, huh? Last time I checked they still taught "FIRST look left, THEN look right, THEN cross the streets" to our kids, did they forgo that in your country?
I honestly don't get it. How is it safer for pedestrians if cars make noises? First, are there not traffic lights in your country? At least where it counts, i.e. where there's actually a chance to meet a car on the road? Are there no pedestrian crossing areas on your roads? Along with pedestrian traffic lights telling you when it's safe to walk? Are drivers in your country so reckless that they ignore those traffic lights that LOOKING ain't enough to cross the road safely, you have to listen?
And most of all, are there still teenagers in your country that remove those iPod earphones from time to time from their ears?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Great idea, and to be able to sleep within city limits all you have to do is get your eardrums punctured.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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
Pedestrian crossing points with audible signals telling you when it's safe to go. Why, they don't have that in your country yet?
Frankly, is it safe NOW for a blind person to "listen for traffic" and then cross a street? Be honest.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Because where I live honking is strictly forbidden except in absolute emergency situations to reduce noise pollution. Duh.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Have you worked in a construction site? The sound of a truck 25 feet away backing up in your direction is much more noticable than a truck 100 feet away. The warning sound is especially useful in a busy construction zone where you have trucks in front, behind and to the side of you and you're concentrating on your task at hand, so you're not always facing the truck that is backing up toward you. The backup alarm is typically a directional horn - it is much more noticeable directly behind the truck than to the side.
Likewise, if you hear a cacophony of electric car noises, that probably means that there are a lot of electric cars in that direction so you should pay attention.
High tech solutions like a transponder and receiver have many failure points. A speaker is easy to hear, easy to verify that it's working, and the recipient (which could be a child, a bicyclist, or just a distracted pedestrian) doesn't need to buy and care for a transponder receiver.
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?
Even better: how about 'It should apply to all OBJECTS'. Every single object, mobile or immobile should emit a different tone constantly.
They already do. Every object in the universe already emits its own vibrations. Your sensory apparatus just needs to be tuned correctly to detect it. The extremely narrow range of oscillating frequencies detectable by the auditory sense of earth humans is only a tiny slice.
On Optheria they have a musical instrument (inadequately called an "organ") that plays to many senses, not just hearing. Some would say it plays directly to the soul and bypasses the senses entirely. That's another story altogether.
Wimpy Earthling: if you can't detect objects because you can't sense the vibrations they already radiate,
GET A HEARING (or whatever) AID!
Or use your other sense organs. Whatever. Or maybe, just maybe, DON'T WALK DOWN THE F**KING MIDDLE OF THE ROAD WITHOUT LOOKING BEHIND YOU. Sheesh!
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they rarely are.
I disagree.
No cars should make noise. Its an arms race.
Instead of taking the advent of electric vehicles as an opportunity to quiet our cities, requiring them to make more noise seems counter productive.
Make them all quiet enough and you will be able to hear the tire noise.
Cover that noise with a louder noise and pretty soon all you know is its noisy and you can't hear the cars because they disappear into the noise.
Ok, Won't somebody please think of the Blind!!??
Yeah. Why not equip the blind with the sensors that they need to detect large/fast moving objects instead of equipping all large moving objects with noise makers to be drowner out by other noise makers.
Relying on everything that might hurt you to carry a warning is just counter-productive and costly. Hear nothing, step off the curb and get hit by a bike messenger, or a car with a defective noise maker.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Ignoring the visually impaired pedestrians (which another poster has already pointed out), a distracted pedestrian/bicyclist is not necessarily a stupid one, and probably doesn't deserve to be culled from the herd by silent electric cars.
More than once I've been startled by a silent Prius pulling out from a parking space in front of me. A little noise might make walking through parking lots a bit safer.
Most accidents where the silence of the car is an issue apparently occur in parking lots and on driveways onto streets. It's not about crossing streets, it's about situations where cars move in places where pedestrians usually have priority. That does leave blind people in the lurch.
You don't have blind people in your country? People always look left and right properly and are never alerted by the sound of a car?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Almost ALL of the demand for noise makers on cars comes from the blind lobby.
In a quieter world, the blind would hear the tire noise just fine.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I've noticed this funny trend in California (particularly, the part of California that I live in). It's especially odd after moving here from somewhere that this just seems so ridiculous.
Pedestrians assume they have the right of way (legally, they do), and so just walk out into the middle of the street, regardless of any kind of signal that they should or shouldn't at that particular point. If they get hit, then it's the car's fault, and to them, it doesn't seem to matter if they even gave the car a fighting chance at braking to stop from hitting them. Seriously, I've been out walking the town with a group of friends who just ran across a 55mph, 6 lane road with a crosswalk maybe 50 feet away that they could have gone to and waited on the traffic light to give them the ok to go, and they justify it by saying that they have the right of way and the cars have to stop anyway. I also have to slam on my breaks to keep from hitting similar idiots semi-regularly. Where I live before moving here, pedestrians would get cussed out for crossing on the crosswalk a little early or a little late. It's fucking backwards, but it's the way of life out here. And some of these people consider the cars they don't hear to be a huge inconvenience to them--forget that they're an even bigger inconvenience to the driver of those cars.
The other poster got the whole blind people part as well...
All you need is one overly noisy vehicle (I'm looking at you, motorcycles) and every other vehicle becomes effectively silent and deadly. So not only will electric vehicles have to be mandated to have a sound, how loud it is will have to be legislated as well.
Supporter of the +1 Over Dramatic mod option. In memory of apk.
Instead of taking the advent of electric vehicles as an opportunity to quiet our cities, requiring them to make more noise seems counter productive.
Yeah, that's ridiculous. Why don't we make electric cars stink as well so that the deaf can keep on hating them too ? And while we are at it force all cars owners to have a buggy whip.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
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.
The blind should be equipped with radar/sonar based sensing equipment.
For the rest: If you don't look both ways evolution is at work.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
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.
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.
This is actually an old story. Originally marketing and PR firms noted that cars produce distinctive engine noise that promote the label and with electric cars this would be gone, hence they worked on the idea of electric cars making marketing driving noise and seeking excuses to force it on customers.
This bit of legislative douchery is the means by which they can enforce it. They admit that above 20km per hour tyre noise is sufficient to alert pedestrians and below 20km per hour, well excuse me but if you hit a pedestrian below 20 km per hour your not paying attention. Even at low speeds rolling resistance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_resistance is a measure of tyre flex, hence abrasion and noise.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Just because you have the right of way doesn't mean you should take it. Common sense and consideration for other people should at least play some part.
Natural Selection at work. Quiet cars are a good thing.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
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
I know people have no problem hearing the tyre noise from my bicycle as I approach, they often turn round, see that there's plenty of space for a bicycle to pass them, and continue.
However, they can't hear it if there's noise from other cars' engines. But if there's that much background noise, I don't see how adding to it helps a blind person.
Care to tell me what a blind person is doing alone in a parking lot? Looking for his car?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I drive a diesel around the city all day every day. Pedestrians walk out in front of vehicles no matter now much noise they make.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
Well first: i drive a prius.
Only place where the silence of the car was a problem was driving at a camping site at very low speeds. Setting the airco fan to max fixes that enough.
If they actually asked blind people they would know that bikes are a bigger problem for them. How about downloadable tunes for your bi-cycle?
I used to work in a neighborhood with a college (I don't remember if it was a college or a high school, right now) with a large number of blind people.
Street crossing had a different kind of texture in the walkway. The traffic lights would make noises like "cross", "stop". While it was possible to cross it made a distinctive tone, changing it's pitch as time goes.
It worked. Way better than blind people jaywalking and relying on car noises.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Sesame street has a toy with a steering wheel and various sounds. One is Cookie Monster saying "Me Drive car!".
I wondered whether the cars could emit a sound that's not in the generally audible spectrum, but could be picked up by a hearing device. That way everyone (including the blind) can enjoy the benefit of a quieter city life, but crossing the road wouldn't be a risk, just pop in the hearing aid. Even better, using directional sound technology you could have a different sound depending on whether the car is approaching or moving away from your position, and maybe even a range of sounds to indicate speed - actually an enhacement to the existing noise that gives it some semantic meaning to the blind that helps them to determine, "okay, I hear a car but it's pretty far off and going slow or heading in the opposite direction, it's safe to cross now".
I recently visited Italy and there, even where you are crossing in a specially designated area where pedestrians do have the right of way, the cars won't stop to let you cross unless you walk out in front of them. Coming from a country with a reasonably sensible approach to pedestrian crossings (if you're waiting it's your right of way and traffic almost always stops to let you cross here) the first few days were pretty terrifying, but literally everyone does it - when you see 80 year old grandmothers step out into traffic doing 40MPH you feel pretty silly for not wanting to do it, but the self preservation instinct is pretty hard to overrule. The first couple of days our only way of crossing a busy street was to find a local who was about to cross, wait for them to step out and quickly follow in their wake - we got a little braver after that but it still felt insane (and even crossing at pedestrian crossings that had traffic lights was touch and go - we met a tour guide who said, in the north of Italy, traffic lights are generally obeyed, in Rome they're more of a suggestion, and in the south they're purely decorative).
Even with the motor running, a coasting car can be hard to hear.
Making noise is the shittiest of workarounds and by no means a fix.
Our local approach, now that's a solution: we build infrastructure for different types of traffic while minimizing yet clearly marking level crossings. There are virtually no busy roads without sidewalks within city limits where I live, most even have parallel bicycle lanes as well. I can safely frollick across town with earplugs in playing loud music: other than the designated crossings I simply don't share infrastructure with bikes or cars. And therefore am not at risk of running into them or vice versa in the first place.
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).
Police and people driving Ambulances are talking about increasing the noise levels of their sirens because many people do not hear them. The reason is better sound insulation in cars.
So on one hand manufacturers will be trying to reduce the sound inside, while the government will ask them to increase the sound outside so it can be heard inside.
And this is just because of sound insulation. I am not talking about people walking around with iPads or having the music too loud.
So I would suggest that there should be LESS sound coming from cars. That would mean less sound insulation. If all is quiet, special things will be picket up better.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Walking from the bus stop to the store entrance.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
+1 Harrison Bergeron.
Really though, precisely how loud is NY City without auto noise? It might just be a rustle of footsteps, but fairly quiet and peaceful.
Maybe it would stop crime because you can hear someone holler when a purse gets snatched.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Really, to be consistent, it should apply to all cars, not just electrics. Even with the motor running, a coasting car can be hard to hear.
Totally disagree. When I was in grad school, the busses at the school had a diesel engine in the rear, making them pretty much impossible to hear approaching until it would be too late. Why are electric cars different? What makes blind people able to deal with busses like that but not electric cars?
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.
In India and other places, they use horns to "warn" people and it is so unbelievably noisy, and people are so used to the horns that it becomes white noise almost. You honk and the person(s) you are issuing the warning to, COMPLETELY ignores you and does whatever the hell they wanted to do in the first place. When I come back to US, it feels like bliss, nothing having to listen to that. Imagine, hundreds of thousands of people just honking all the time. I think this is just a bad law, and hope it does not pass.
You can solve this mostly with a rising bollard when the light is red.
Of course, no system is 100% idiot proof. If someone "mows down pedestrians" then they should be sued and suffer the consequences of this, util people learn that they should be attentive to the road while driving.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
Yes,
I think parking lots are the single most likely place for anyone, deaf or not, to be clipped by a silent car.
I was almost clipped when a Prius suddenly started backing up as I was walking along the parked cars.
But this could be fixed by requiring a 'backup beeper'