Blind Say Hybrid Cars Are Too Quiet

Can't people just fart while driving? It should be loud enough.

AnneMarble said:

That didn't stop an environmentalist from e-mailing the present of the NFB and saying "that the members of his group should be the first to drown when sea levels rise from global warming."

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Tacky.

We have hybrid busses is the Twin Cities, and come to think of it, they are pretty quiet. It shouldn't be hard to have them make a sound. Even if they did, they wouldn't be as loud as most cars, but it would be enough for a blind person to hear them approaching.

Seems like it shouldn't be too difficult to find a noise level that is well below standard car noise that is still loud enough for the blind (or distracted) to hear it.

Celia Cyanide said:

Tacky.

We have hybrid busses is the Twin Cities, and come to think of it, they are pretty quiet. It shouldn't be hard to have them make a sound. Even if they did, they wouldn't be as loud as most cars, but it would be enough for a blind person to hear them approaching.

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The Twin Cities? Somehow I just can't picture you talking like Marge Gunderson. lol......

On an unrelated note supposedly Electrolux once made a vacuum that was almost twice as strong as what was available anywhere on the market but it was very quiet. Housewives wouldn't buy it though because it didn't go "VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and rattle the windows when it ran. Amazing...........

RumpleTumbler said:

The Twin Cities? Somehow I just can't picture you talking like Marge Gunderson. lol......

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Um...I don't.

It's generally people in rural Minnesota who talk like that.

Celia Cyanide said:

Um...I don't.

It's generally people in rural Minnesota who talk like that.

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Fargo is one of my favorite movies. I don't know why. I love the characters I think. Anyway.....sorry marble head...back to topic. Vrooom!

Just because you can hear it coming -

doesn't mean it won't hit you.

maestrowork said:

Can't people just fart while driving? It should be loud enough.

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And the odor would work as a secondary warning system, but I suppose that would depend on which way the wind was blowing and the blind couldn't rely on it to keep from getting mowed over.

On a serious note, I can see that this would be a problem for the blind. And the solution shouldn't be all the hard. Come on, we can put men on the moon, we can have a car make enough noise to warn people it's there.

Susan G.

maestrowork said:

Can't people just fart while driving? It should be loud enough.

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Methane, dude!

We'd just as bad replacing gas guzzlers with gas emitters.

Bird of Prey said:

I like the idea of little tunes, like the ones the cell phones play. So here's the plan: motion detector on front of hybrids. As soon as a person walks by: a little electronic tune. . . But maybe an octave or two different than a cell phone. We don't want everybody holding up traffic, searching their pockets. . . .

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Or worse, running over blind people while they search for their phones.

I always thought blind people had supersonic hearing.

Okay, I'm going to qualify the remark I'm about to make by saying that I have nothing against blind people and I've known two very nice blind people. And I'm all for helping them out.

That said, I think one of the big BENEFITS of hybrids is that they ARE quiet. Wouldn't it be fantastic if we could cut down on traffic noise, particularly in cities? I think it would be a miracle. I mean, I'm sure there are all sorts of studies about how constant noise like that can get to you after a while. I think it would be a huge benefit to the general population.

So my point is... should we really make these cars NOISER, inconveniencing everyone, just for a select minority? I mean, what about deaf people? They can't hear cars at all! Should we require cars to go around with flashing lights?

There's got to be a better solution. Maybe someone could invent a motion sensor that blind people could carry, to alert them when a car is coming. Maybe it could be hooked into some device in the car that would register itself when it got close enough.

I mean... really. There has to be a better way to solve this problem than simply, "Make cars loud again." That's just stupid.

I'm 46 and I've seen one blind person crossing the street in my life. That was about 3 months ago.

Roger J Carlson said:

Seems like it shouldn't be too difficult to find a noise level that is well below standard car noise that is still loud enough for the blind (or distracted) to hear it.

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I'd hand that to a bunch of acoustical engineers and see what they could come up with. Maybe we could program our "car tones" as we can program our ringtones.

The Seeing Eye is in this area, and I see people using dogs to cross the street on a regular basis. Not everyone who is legally blind can or wants to use a dog, however.

AnneMarble said:

Blind Say Hybrid Cars Are Too Quiet

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and the deaf think they look stupid.

RumpleTumbler said:

I'm 46 and I've seen one blind person crossing the street in my life. That was about 3 months ago.

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I see it all of the time.

According to Ray Charles' autobiography, he drove, but I digress.

I read Judith Vido's blog. My favorite blind author. She mentioned this many months ago. It's not something I'd think about, seeing -- no pun intended when I wrote SEEING, hahaha -- seeing as how I haven't driven a motor vehicle since December 1999. I bicycle all over Asia. No cars for me, thank you very much. But hell, if the blind can neither see nor hear the hybrids coming, that's something to think about.

WendyNYC said:

I see it all of the time.

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Maybe I don't see blind people. Weird. I must be too quiet.

Solution

It's been years since I saw an ice-cream van (no, not a van made out of ice-cream, but rather a van traveling through neighborhoods selling ice-cream).

They used to have little jingly-music playing all the time (so that when the kids playing in the street heard the jingly-jangly version of Yankee-Doodle-Dandy, they would clear the street and go ask for money to buy an ice-cream.

There must be a surplus of these Yankee-Doodle-Dandy-Doohickies, so just raid the jingly-mountain and slap on on all the hybrid cars.

Problem solved.

Of course, any blind folks as old as me, might well step up to said hybrids, as they idle at stop-signs, and request a cone with two scoops, raspberry sauce and crush-nuts. But I think that's a small price to pay.

I drive a hybrid and it's really not all that quiet. But the straight up electic cars make almost no noise at all.

I suggest we go with a waka-waka-waka sound.

billythrilly7th said:

I always thought blind people had supersonic hearing.

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That's only true with Daredevil, Billy...

RumpleTumbler said:

Maybe I don't see blind people. Weird. I must be too quiet.

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You should start wearing jingle bells. Like Santa.

WendyNYC said:

I suggest we go with a waka-waka-waka sound.

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lol....can we have noise canceling interiors?