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from the fake-engine-noises-FTW-Vrrrm-Vrrrm! dept.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said the rule was needed because battery-powered vehicles are very quiet.
It said the rule would particularly help blind pedestrians, or those with a visual impairment, detect electric cars and hybrids on the road.
The new safety rule could help prevent 2,400 injuries a year, said the NHTSA.
The rule demands that the cars make a noise when travelling either forwards or backwards at speeds of less than 30kmh (19mph). The regulation covers vehicles with four wheels that weigh less than 10,000 pounds (4.5 tonnes).
The safety specification requires car makers to use a two-tone signal similar to that currently emitted by heavy vehicles when they are reversing.
It would be more fun if drivers could customize what that sound is, such as "La Cucaracha" or the whine of a Shadow vessel.
Electric and hybrid cars are to include a noise generation device for travel at low speeds with no internal combustion engine: http://www.nhtsa.gov/About-NHTSA/Press-Releases/nhtsa_quiet_car_final_rule_11142016.
There goes my quiet electric future.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:09PM
The noise from regular motors is bad enough when you live near a busy road that gets regular traffic jams. This would bring a whole new joy to living in affordable housing. And think of the children no longer able to sneak home late at night without waking Dad! Won't somebody please think of the children!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:34PM
Yeah, and forward as well as backward. In may cities, you rarely ever go above 19 mph so the vehicle will be doing this constantly. Same for traffic jams. Queue people moving further away from roads, erecting/demanding more embankments between their homes and roads, etc.
Ironically housing might actually be more palatable close to major arteries which have very infrequent slowdowns.
2400 injuries sounds like a lot but in a population of 330+ million this affects 0.0007%. Will this rule affect more? How many people get injured by bicycles in similar circumstances? Making noise costs energy, which is sort of the entire thing these cars are trying to minimize. How much will this affect mileage? Applied population-wide, even a small efficiency hit means huge and costly energy waste. Is it worth it?
These are the questions we should demand the NHTSA answer in full.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:40PM
And how many of those 2400 injuries would have happened anyhow even if the car sounded like a freight train? People are dumb.
I sneak up on people at intersections all the time in my 6 cylinder suv. Its a Honda, so its quieter most other cars in it class, but seriously how can you miss this thing?
Its a matter of eye contact. If a pedestrian does not look directly at you, assume you are invisible.
For pedestrians and cyclists, assume you are invisible even if a driver DOES look directly at you.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bob_super on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:51PM
> Its a matter of eye contact. If a pedestrian does not look directly at you, assume you are invisible.
> For pedestrians and cyclists, assume you are invisible even if a driver DOES look directly at you.
How can they look directly at the driver, through his giant cell phone?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:18PM
Pedestrians and cyclists can also be damn quiet. They should be required to make a sound when going below 19mhp, too.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DeathElk on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:40AM
Pedestrians and cyclists can;t crush you to death in an instant.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Thursday November 17 2016, @07:48AM
You are more likely to survive collisions below 40km/h (23MPH) anyway.
IIRC, it is an 80% survival rate.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:50PM
I was thinking along similar lines. This will encourage drivers to go faster than the noise threshold resulting likely in more serious accidents in those places they really ought to be rolling along at 15 mph for example.
(Score: 1) by shipofgold on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:10PM
It seems like an awful lot of effort to save 2400 "injuries" when the total number of injuries per year in the USA is in the millions.
I wish they would take into account how many of those 30000+ deaths that occur per year would be saved by simply requiring forward looking warning systems instead to the Driver.
I always marvel that our regulators are OK with the annihilation of what is essentially a medium sized town every year in the USA alone. Yea, they will argue that they are not OK with it.
But this type of thing seems ridiculous.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:22PM
Great point - electric cars will be among the first to incorporate systems to automatically brake in these scenarios, making the entire argument moot.
This is entirely unnecessary and wasteful red tape.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:27PM
In a quiet environment, this isn't needed. We lived in a quiet neighborhood with a couple of Prius owners, you'd hear them coming from far away due to the tire noise, even under 20mph. Prius also has some inverter whine when producing/recovering power - but that may be mostly out of some people's frequency range.
However, in a busy city environment, I can totally see the electrics sneaking up on someone when there's a crowd of IC engines around.
I'm sure it would be too much to ask for the standard to require x-dB above current background noise instead of a simple x-dB minimum that's adequate for safety in midtown Manhattan.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:53PM
midtown Manhattan, you say? "Get the fuck outtathaway" would work.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 16 2016, @11:19PM
Might not pass sensitivity committee... but, I'd propose a continuous Bronx cheer.....
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:44PM
I can't wait for all those cars to be lined up outside of schools ... it's going to be like a symphony. And every parking lot in America is going to be a choir ... especially in apartment complexes.
(Score: 2) by Osamabobama on Wednesday November 16 2016, @07:04PM
Can the cars wirelessly coordinate the timing of their noise? I suppose it could be used to make music like a symphony, but it would be more interesting if they could all stay in phase, so multiple cars got louder linearly, rather than the usual logarithmic increase.
Imagine how annoying that could be, especially as a listener moved through the inevitable peaks and nulls in the combined signal...
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:54PM
That would be fun. Hack them so that they produce a building atmospheric sound to induce terror, like in horror movies before Jason strikes.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @02:42PM
I forget what it's called, but that mix of varying tones that start low and get higher in pitch as they fade away. The net effect is that it constantly sounds like it is getting higher and higher in pitch, without really changing much. Great for inducing anxiety...