NHTSA Delays "Quiet Car" EV Ruling

Rhetorical question: What happen to hitting the horn manually?

 

Best if all plug-in drivers simply install obnoxiously loud diesel truck ICE sound blasting speakers. You never know how loud some folks need - so ear piercing volume is the only way. Maybe throw in some sky-blackening rolling coal (simulated only, of course) smoke - so they can see & smell you as well.
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Pedestrians would hear hybrids and EVs if it weren't for all the racket coming from the ICE vehicles!

 

Around here, some are oblivious to even freight train horns. Especially when listening to portable music players or gabbing on the phone with friends.

 

don't they all have it by now, anyway?

 

No

 

It you have time to honk the horn, you probably have time to brake and not hit the pedestrian. Lots of distracted driving involved with these auto to pedestrian or auto to cyclist.

My problem is I really doubt this will be effective at all. Hybrids and Bevs make up less than 2% of cars, and bob can probably tell us how many, but it is probably a small percentage (19% higher?) of these accidents, but slightly higher than louder cars. It would be interesting if age not hybrid is the reason hybrids have more of these accidents and they have a higher average driving age.

I have also seen situations where cars hit people on purpose on bicycles, using their cars as a weapon.

 

Last I checked, numerous very quiet traditional ICE cars need these noisemakers just as much as the hybrids and BEVs, but none yet have them.

 

when i'm in a parking lot, pedestrians can't hear the noisemaker. i'm afraid nhtsa will find this out and make it louder.

 

Hey...let's outlaw smartphones. Then the dumb-sses that aren't watching where they are walking and the other dumb-sses texting while driving...well you get the idea.

 

Its nice to blame the newest thing, but fatalities are lower than 2001. If smart phones were the only distraction then fatalities would have gone up instead of down. There weren't many drivers or pedestrians using smart phones on the streets in 2001.

Driver training, sidewalks, shoulders, and proper controlled intersections would be the most likely ways to reduce these accidents.

 

fatalities are a misnomer. it's really accidents that count. and how many people sitting in a traffic line fail to move with traffic because they are looking at their phone?

 

That futuristic noise maker sounds like a bad air compressor bearing, or something. The first time I heard my wife driving away in our new (used) Prius I thought it was broken,. I research all the time, so within an hour I was up to speed on our "special" noise machine under the hood.

I don't like it.

 

In other news, preliminary figures for the first half of 2015 show traffic fatalities up significantly compared to the same period last year. Though it is still to early to point any fingers of blame.

http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/812217.pdf

 

My brother is a retired cop. You should hear his stories about people pulling or walking out in front of him, while his lights and sirens are going.

 

Posted the whole thread for context. I've been hit twice on my bicycle, both minor with damage to the bike and bruses that didn't require a doctor. Neither were reported, the drivers at fault paid to repair my bike (different bikes years apart). I've since had an aquantance killed on his bicycle in houston. Believe me the fatalities are much more painful, even though the hits caused the personal bruises.

Its not to say that some of these are not phone distractions or quiet cars, but these distractions were going on long before smart phones and hybrids. I don't know how many people I've seen putting on make up, eating, or yelling at their kids in the back seat. I've been hit twice in my car by distracted drivers - one was talking to her three friends in the car, the other was getting yelled at by his wife. If it was only the phones then fatalities would be much higher than before phones were out, but that is not what the statistics say. Our distractions may be changing

One year does not make a pattern, and the press is so hungry for the story that they aren't even waiting for a full years data. Likely explanation is lower gas prices and higher employment. There was a drop after 2007 as the recession hit and gas prices went up, and some of that may be unwinding. The bell the hybrid laws and no texting while driving seems to have little impact, and to be clear I'm against the noisemakers but for the phone restrictions.

 

I've had numerous occasions where pedestrians wander in front of me in parking lots. If my Prius made a little more noise, most would move aside and let me pass. It's not a big enough deal to blast the horn, so I just wait. So from my driver's perspective, a little noise is useful.