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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.
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?!
Those things don't add to noise pollution, and they address *real* problems. Walking through a parking lot these days you'll notice that very few cars make any engine noise audible from more than a few feet away. I hear tire noise long before I hear engine noise. The fact that electric cars have no engine noise isn't really a significant change.
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...
Do people really have problems with this kind of thing?
Yes. I don't feel any "safer" when I'm awakened by a dump truck backing up a quarter of a mile away. Do you?
Consider the rapid growth of hybrid/electric cars' market share. If the same epsilon-minus bureaucrats responsible for backup beeper regulations have anything to do with this law, it will almost be worth moving out of the city to avoid the racket.
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
Loud pipes save lives.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?
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
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
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?"
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.
+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
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.
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'