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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: 3, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:25PM
There has got to be a better way. One of the great promises of electrics is reducing the noise pollution, especially in cities. Tire and engine noise are, by far, the largest contributors in that respect. We need to find a way to accommodate blind citizens while still working toward "social goods" such as reducing noise pollution.
I had one of those ding-dong road road crossing buzzers that signal that it is safe to cross close to where I used to live and it was absolutely obnoxious. Maybe a personal RF emitter that looks for large, metal objects moving at speed? I'm not sure what the answer is but adding noise emitters to cars should not be it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:30PM
"I don't like the only valid solution that anyone can think of! Waaaah!"
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Wednesday November 16 2016, @04:54PM
How about "Prove to me that there's a problem"?
or
"Prove to me that every car on the street making noise is going to make it easier to detect the noise that's coming at me?"
For the gp's post about obnoxious street crossing beeping for the visually impaired - how about requiring the people who NEED the crossing to beep carry a transponder that tells the infernal beeper "OK, you're needed now", rather than beeping every time the light changes, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week hoping that there might be someone who needs it's services? Or, perhaps, the personal device could be equipped with a GPS, and an electronic compass, and perhaps some local RF communications allowing it to know where it is, and what direction the owner is looking, so that the personal device could indicate to the owner when it's safe to cross the street? We could call it a "cell phone", and sell it, in quantity, at maybe $100.
This rule is blatantly anti-EV - many modern cars are also very quiet when idling along; why isn't the rule written as "your vehicle must make as much noise as a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda with a 426 Hemi (or choose your own noise standard) while traveling at less than 18 mph", so quiet ICE vehicles are subject to the same requirement?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:07PM
I wonder what the brainstorming sessions sounded like to come up with this?
This meeting is to come up with some kind of anti-EV regulations. It's got to be something that will encourage people to stick with fossil fueled cars. As a bonus it should make owners of EVs feel ashamed. Even better is if it makes everyone hate EV owners.
Don't pedestrians cross in well marked crosswalks? Even if they don't, isn't it always the driver's responsibility to avoid hitting pedestrians?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 17 2016, @06:54AM
It makes the driver's job a lot harder if even more pedestrians do incredibly stupid things.
My guess ( Stetson-Harrison analysis ) is that 90+% of pedestrians look before they venture into a roadway, while the remaining 10% are kept from being terminated by darwinian methods via very heavy penalties. My cat seems to have more sense concerning roadways than some people I know.
When it comes to consideration of probabilities of a really bad outcome for them, well, some people seem to completely lack this ability. The phone trumps the path of a ton of steel on a given heading.
( I knew of another cat that didn't have much sense about the roadway and thought the roadway was a nice warm place to curl up for a nap. That particular cat never fathered any offspring. Darwinian elimination at work. )
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 17 2016, @03:57PM
People don't know they are entering roadways if they are busy looking at FaceTwit on their phone while walking.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Aiwendil on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:20PM
Or do the opposite - require the cars to broadcast a signal, give noisemakers to to the blind (to alert them) and also create a smartphone-app and mix a warning in with whatever is playing on the headphones.
Also have a setting for emergency services to blast a request for a free path far ahead (hopk it up to smartphones and cars' entertainment systems)
And also set it up to warn for cars just starting (different code transmitted) so you can warn at parkinglots.
Seriously, I see lots of uses for having cars transmitting a shortrange signal (preferably with a model-id, or with info about how far to each corner of the car the transmitter are)
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:23PM
I prefer separating pedestrians from cars entirely. Place all sidewalks at the 2nd or 3rd story level. No more crosswalks, have it all be bridges. Can use tunnels too.
But I know that won't happen soon, if ever. We can't even be bothered to change all railroad crossings into underpasses or overpasses. Requiring school buses to stop at railroad crossings is a weak, band-aid solution.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Wednesday November 16 2016, @10:36PM
Would be better to place the cars in tunnels - it would deal with the noise from traffic, allow sub-city loading docks, and keep the nice outdoors available for the cyclists and pedestrians (would also cut back on effects of weather on traffic), and get rid of all those parking lots.
But yeah, I agree that fast-/bullet-hispeed-trains, trains, trams, subways, roadvehicles and cyclists/pedestrians should all be separated. (Possible exception being buses and emergency-services to run at pedestrian/cyclist-level)
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Thursday November 17 2016, @02:55PM
Tunnels are subject to flooding, and pedestrian/cyclist bridges are much cheaper per mile.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by Popeidol on Thursday November 17 2016, @03:52PM
Both you and the parent are missing one key thing: You're now placing the personal freedom and life of an individual in the hands of a small, battery driven, electronic device. It's prone to failure, interference, and anything covered by insurance will be a separate unit and cost thousands. You're also suggesting that most blind people go around with earphones in all the time, reducing the effectiveness of their primary sense.
People have been predicting electronic devices to support the blind for years. Electric cane prototypes have been around for quite a while. The fact is that most blind people rely on very manual means to get around: guide dogs, canes, or just their own senses. This isn't because nobody has produced an effective electronic equivalent, it's because the old options have very good failure modes. You aren't going to be away overnight and have your cane suddenly stop working half way home, and a dog usually gives some warning signs before it quits on you.
Right now, some governments are pretty good at mandating what cars can do. There are already a stack of required standards, and a noisy car helps more than just the blind: inattentive kids playing next to the road in quiet areas, people who just get distracted, etc. This is probably the best way to handle the problem right now without killing a bunch of people. Standards will change in the future but are unlikely to go away completely - Look at mandatory lighting on boats and planes, we could have dispensed with that long ago but having an obvious sensory reminder is useful.
The method that you are suggesting would also mean that, for a group of people with no choice in the matter, their freedom of movement and safety is limited to a device as reliable as a three-year-old smartphone. Give it a decade or two and we might get there but right now there is no way a half-decent government would consider it.
(Score: 2) by Aiwendil on Thursday November 17 2016, @05:30PM
That is actually also a definition of the cars themselves, but an rf-emitter is less likely to be tampered with (by its owner) than a beeping speaker.
No, I didn't, I suggested a noisemaker for the blind, and also using this system to warn others as well.
As an aside - I know more blind people with smell as their primary sense rather than hearing.
.
I never suggested smartphones for the blind (I did suggest noisemakers for them).
However, I have yet to meet a car (and I have met a few PEVs) that is quiet, the noise of tires are very loud once you've learned how to spot it (I tend to hear bicycles over the music I'n listening to (in-ear earphones) when I'm out walking, and I am sighted) - I would be curious to hear from a blind reader about this.
/Aside/
Come to think about it - can't remember the last time I noticed the sound of a non-stationary car's engine prior to the noise its tires made (ICE are vastly more common where I walk)
/end aside/
(Also, another advantage with an rf-to-noisemaker, you can warn for other stuff as well - like tables on the walkway, signs, fenced of areas, motorcycles and such)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Wednesday November 16 2016, @06:56PM
I think there is an issue for a subset of the population: namely, the elderly and those with eyesight issues. For the elderly, they are used to cars making noise and changing 50 years of habits with regards to walking around parking lots and crossing streets does not happen overnight. There will be elderly people walking in front of EVs because they did not look, were careless or, just did not notice the car for some reason. When that happens, it will be national news: "ARE SILENT KILLING MACHINES STALKING THE SAFEWAY NEAR YOU? FIND OUT IF THE MACHINES AR COMING FOR YOU TONIGHT AT 11". The problem will have to be addressed so thinking about it now is certainly a step in the right direction.
I think the long-term answer is changing everyone's expectations - you should NOT expect cars to make noise, etc... My guess is that, in the long-term, this will be a bit like cell phones: 15 years ago, there is was a lot of effort expended on managing cell phones ringing in places they should not such as churches and movie theaters; it took a good 10 years for the expectations that cell phones ringers are silent in those spaces to be firmly entrenched within the culture. I would even call it a cultural more at this point, rather than a folkway.
Etiquette with regards to electric cars will follow suit. I am not sure what the solution will be; for cell-phones, it was the vibrate / silent switch. For cars, there may be some simple technology like enabling the pedestrian cross button to turn on a beeper as-needed, a more complex system as parent suggested, or, a I suggested above, a simple RF emitter carried by the blind person that starts buzzing when a vehicle encroaches into its field of view. I do believe technology and etiquette with regards to electric cars and more vulnerable members of our society will come to a solution and, in 20 years, we will look back at car noisemakers as a funny, if misguided, solution.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:24PM
My guess is that, in the long-term, this will be a bit like cell phones: 15 years ago, there is was a lot of effort expended on managing cell phones ringing in places they should not such as churches and movie theaters; it took a good 10 years for the expectations that cell phones ringers are silent in those spaces to be firmly entrenched within the culture.
Reminds me of when I was attending an opera back in the late 90s. True story -- cell phone starts ringing on a guy sitting in front of me. Not only does he not turn the ring off, but he takes it out, and then answers it. I swear, the exchange went something like, "Hello!? Yeah -- I'm at the opera! WHAT!? I can't HEAR YOU! Can you talk louder?! -- I'm AT THE OPERA!!" At this point, I think some random stranger next to him literally grabbed the phone out of his hand and closed it.
Yes, it took a while for social standards to emerge. And frankly, I think they're still evolving. Some people still don't know how to make their devices silent, and I still hear them occasionally at concerts or in other places where you'd expect relative silence. But frankly, I'm not sure many people actually adopted a new etiquette for calls as much as we've moved to a "texting society" for many folks. It's much more common to hear a single "beep" or something for a text these days than a cell phone ring.
I would even call it a cultural more at this point, rather than a folkway.
Minor usage note -- "mores" has no English singular. The Latin singular is "mos," but no one would know what you meant if you said that. So, "mores" only tends to be used in plural. But I take your point.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday November 17 2016, @12:46AM
my father grew up in the last days of trams, before we ripped them all up (Australia is very good at following some of the worst bits of US transportation policy)
We are now busy putting bad trams (now called "light rail", for some reason) everywhere..
They used to call trams "whispering death"
None of the new ones have extra noise-makers.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Wednesday November 16 2016, @05:09PM
Noise pollution isn't just a "social good" it has measurable health impacts see for example: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/integration/research/newsalert/pdf/187na2_en.pdf [europa.eu]
If it has measurable health and economic impact then it should be possible to calculate life-years-lost for comparison with the cost to the blind of having less noise, but this doesn't seem to have been done. We do need to support the disabled, but it shouldn't be at the cost of other people's health.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:35PM
I don't think a little car noise is that bad, I have zero problem with regular passenger car noises, the majority happens to be the tires on the road anyway! Noise pollution occurs with loud engines, not the quiet ones. Find a better way for emergency vehicles to travel without blaring sirens, helicopters and planes routed around major city centers, the streetlight stuff someone mentioned, etc. THOSE are way more of a problem than the quiet gas powered vehicles.