[nfbmi-talk] Quiet Cars

Thu May 17 05:13:55 UTC 2012

"Hybrids and electric cars are too quiet for the blind or even the fully 
sighted to hear them coming."
Oh boy, don't get me started.  Good article otherwise.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Marcus Simmons" <marcussimmons at comcast.net>
To: "NFB of Michigan Internet Mailing List" <nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2012 9:46
Subject: Re: [nfbmi-talk] Quiet Cars


> SHHHHHHHH
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Fred Wurtzel" <f.wurtzel at att.net>
> To: "'NFB of Michigan Internet Mailing List'" <nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Cc: "'George Wurtzel'" <gmwurtzel at gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 11:02 PM
> Subject: [nfbmi-talk] Quiet Cars
>
>
>> The Silent Killer
>>
>> Hybrids are so quiet that pedestrians never hear them coming. Now 
>> automakers
>> are
>>
>> racing to make the car of the future sound like the gas guzzlers of old.
>>
>> By
>>
>> Paul Collins
>>
>> |
>>
>> Posted Tuesday, May 15, 2012, at 7:07 AM ET
>>
>> A Toyota Prius car.
>>
>> The quiet engine of hybrid and electric cars at low speeds poses a risk 
>> to
>> pedestrians
>>
>> Jed Leicester/Getty Images.
>>
>> Forget gas mileage: The most striking aspect of the new Ford Focus 
>> Electric
>> is what
>>
>> itdoesn't
>>
>> have. "Battery-powered cars are intrinsically quiet, the motor sound 
>> falling
>> between
>>
>> a whir and a whisper," marvels
>>
>> aNew York Timesreview of the car
>>
>> . "But the Focus is deep-space silent, the quietest of the many electric
>> cars I've
>>
>> driven."
>>
>> And that, it turns out, is a problem. Thanks to the
>>
>> Pedestrian Safety Act of 2010
>>
>> , by this summer the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration 
>> is
>> required
>>
>> to initiate a rulemaking process for minimal vehicle noise-not how quiet,
>> but how
>>
>> loud
>>
>> a car must be. That's because NHTSA studies in 2009 (
>>
>> pdf
>>
>> ) and 2011 (
>>
>> pdf
>>
>> ) confirmed what many long suspected: Hybrids and electric cars are too
>> quiet for
>>
>> the blind or even the fully sighted to hear them coming. Though the NHTSA
>> found little
>>
>> statistically significant difference in collisions over 35 mph-when wind 
>> and
>> tire
>>
>> noise negate the difference in engine noise-at lower speeds, hybrids and
>> electric
>>
>> vehicles are 37 percent more likely to hit walkers and 66 percent more
>> likely to
>>
>> collide with cyclists than traditional gas-powered cars.
>>
>> The victims didn't hear it coming-but did automakers? As counterintuitive 
>> as
>> adding
>>
>> car noise may seem, we've long had comparable safety laws in place: For
>> instance,
>>
>> we add foul-smelling Butanethiol to natural gas so that it doesn't sneak 
>> up
>> on us
>>
>> in our homes. But there's an even more apt comparison: sleigh bells. Back 
>> in
>> the
>>
>> age of real horsepower, the jingling of bells had little to do with 
>> winter
>> cheer,
>>
>> and plenty to do with not getting trampled to death. As early as 1797,
>>
>> Baltimore slapped one-dollar fines
>>
>> on anyone who didn't make their sleighs noisy enough. Other cities 
>> followed
>> suit,
>>
>> and even the future Motor City had
>>
>> a tough sleigh-bell ordinance
>>
>> that could land silent sleigh drivers in jail.
>>
>> Advertisement
>>
>> The problem that electric cars posed was apparent from the dawn of the 
>> motor
>> industry,
>>
>> when primitive gas and electric vehicles were already battling for 
>> primacy.
>> As early
>>
>> as 1900, journalist Cleveland Moffett was hailing the electric car as
>>
>> "the automobile of the future"
>>
>> -a status it has held ever since-in no small part due to it being "free 
>> from
>> noise."
>>
>> A
>>
>> contemporary electric car guidebook
>>
>> noted that construction had already advanced to the point where noise was
>> "scarcely
>>
>> perceptible." But by 1908, an
>>
>> electric car guide warns
>>
>> "with the silent electric car, especial care is needed to avoid running 
>> down
>> incautious
>>
>> pedestrians." After the death of a pedestrian that same year, one EV 
>> driver
>> was moved
>>
>> to write to
>>
>> theCommercial Motor
>>
>> magazine with the question that has haunted the industry ever since:
>>
>> "Is Some Noise Desirable?"
>>
>> :
>>
>> I would like to raise the question as to the expediency of noiselessly
>> running motor
>>
>> vehicles. Not that I wish to commend the present terrible clatter of some 
>> of
>> them;
>>
>> but, so much having been made of this quality of noiselessness by the
>> electric-vehicle
>>
>> people in particular, I will so far as to assert that the worship of
>> noiselessness
>>
>> will result in motor vehicles becoming too quiet.
>>
>> In the absence of much regulation, automakers responded with ... well,
>> bells. Newspaper
>>
>> columnist Frederick Othman marveled at driving a
>>
>> Rauch-Lang Electric Brougham
>>
>> through St. Louis in 1916: "you went silently like a panther. ... [A 
>> pearl
>> button]
>>
>> caused a tinkle, like a peculiarly melodious doorbell. The car was so 
>> quiet
>> that
>>
>> it was inclined to sneak up on pedestrians, and scare 'em. So there was a
>> good deal
>>
>> of tinkling."
>>
>> Though electric cars were to disappear under a sea of petroleum for the 
>> next
>> 60 years,
>>
>> even a brief resurgence of interest in 1964 spurred the
>>
>> Long Beach Press-Telegram
>>
>> to note that pedestrians would soon need "agility and good peripheral
>> vision." When
>>
>> the oil shocks of the 1970s hit, the renewed interest in EVs quickly
>> revealed the
>>
>> problem again, with one 1979 Department of Energy report generating
>>
>> nationwide headlines of "Electric Cars Too Quiet?"
>>
>> Automakers were not exactly helpless to respond. The ill-fated
>>
>> Solargen Electric Motor Car Company
>>
>> was already selling electric-conversions of the AMC Concord which were
>> "remarkably
>>
>> silent," as the
>>
>> Syracuse Post-Standard
>>
>> put it, "the only noticeable sound being an electrical 'whine' 
>> intentionally
>> engineered
>>
>> into the design to warn pedestrians during acceleration of up to 18 mph."
>> The following
>>
>> year, the equally ill-fated Amectran Exar-1
>>
>> boasted
>>
>> "a noise generator that emits a harmonic tone at speeds under 30 mph." In
>> Pennsylvania,
>>
>> when a Gettysburg-area power company used modified electric Dodge Omnis,
>> Chevrolet
>>
>> Citations, and Volkswagen Rabbits,
>>
>> "a noise generator was added to alert pedestrians."
>>
>> Despite these efforts, and years of complaints by the National Federation 
>> of
>> the
>>
>> Blind-Honda was aware enough of the problem to file a
>>
>> 1994 patent for an EV noise-generator
>>
>> -automakers could not or would not hear the problem creeping up behind 
>> them.
>> The
>>
>> complaints became harder to ignore when, presaging the NHTSA collision
>> findings the
>>
>> next year, studies in 2008
>>
>> from UC-Riverside
>>
>> and
>>
>> from Western Michigan University
>>
>> showed electric vehicles are hard to hear at low speeds.
>>
>> The response of the industry was clumsy. Many, including Honda and 
>> high-end
>> manufacturer
>>
>> Tesla Motors, doggedly continued to manufacture hybrid and electric cars
>> that ignored
>>
>> the issue. One motive for Tesla becomes apparent when you read their 2011
>> SEC filings:
>>
>> The safety feature
>>
>> "could negatively impact consumer interest in our vehicles."
>>
>> Nissan Leafs made a half-hearted effort by installing a grating
>>
>> boop-beep sound
>>
>> -but featured a mute button, something the new law wouldn't allow. Toyota
>> and Hyundai
>>
>> have been more proactive: This
>>
>> 2010 Japanese video
>>
>> shows Toyota tinkering with the Jetsons-style sound that is now standard 
>> on
>> 2012
>>
>> Priuses.
>>
>> The most likely sound of the future, though, may be the sound of the 
>> past.
>> Advocates
>>
>> for the blind have long asked for sounds that mimic other cars, and a 
>> recent
>> NHTSA
>>
>> study (
>>
>> pdf
>>
>> ) shows that simulated conventional engine noises can effectively warn
>> pedestrians
>>
>> at lower overall volumes than conventional vehicles. Audi's
>>
>> new R8 eTron sound
>>
>> , for instance, emits a familiar growl. Whichever standard emerges, by 
>> 2017
>> new hybrids
>>
>> and electric cars will need federally mandated noisemakers installed-and, 
>> in
>> a little-reported
>>
>> catch in the law's language, by then the NHTSA may already be moving on
>> extending
>>
>> the law to
>>
>> all
>>
>> cars that run too quietly, no matter what kind of engine they use.
>>
>> But that still leaves a fleet of over 1 million quiet cars already on the
>> road. This
>>
>> includes the new "deep space quiet" Focus Electric:
>>
>> Ford says it won't install warning units
>>
>> on the ones now shipping out. "We just don't want to be too hasty," one
>> executive
>>
>> informed the Autotrader website.
>>
>> Considering that they've now had about a century to solve this problem,
>> perhaps they
>>
>> can avoid haste with a tried-and-true solution: Might we suggest the 
>> sound
>> of sleigh
>>
>> bells?
>>
>> \
>>
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