Do blind people really cross the street without guide dogs or white canes to help us identify them? Do hybrid drivers look for ways to run down blind people?

Detroit has an answer- let's cut out all this crap about hybrids and electrics and go back to building crappy little cars with crappy little ICEs.

Why do you hate blind people?

Apparently they think I hate them because I drive a Prius. From their website:

The only time a hybrid is completely quiet is when running in electric mode but not moving. I could hear the Prius at lunch today just fine while the tires were rolling. Actually, we come up several times. They noted in one article that to insure that the Prius was quiet (and it was only Priuses they're worried about), they didn't go over 5 mph or the ICE would come on.

The only answer they propose is to make hybrids (they don't mention electrics) sound just like an ICE, with the appropriate sounds of idling, accelerating, and decelerating. The only way to do that is to ban electrics and require that our ICEs always run. And not one peep about all the 4 cylinder (or less) ICEs that make no noise in idle mode.

Take a deep breath and think about it. This sounds like something that could come out of Rush Limbaughs mouth

"Finally, if blind people obey pedestrian laws and cross only at ross walks they will be as safe as sighted people."

An undercurrent of the old "Personal Responsibility" rant. How about children? If they aren' careful should we let Darwin sort them out?

Why not an artificial noise? No one is proposing prying your hybrid from your cold dead hands.

Where I live, the majority of people who are killed while crossing streets are hit by big-ass pickups, driven too fast, by people who do not observe pedestrian crossing signs.
I've not seen a news story yet about anyone being hit by a Hybrid vehicle that was driving slow enough that the ICE was off.

Dave, I would submit that your prior comment (why do you hate blind people) sounds more like something that would come out of Rush Limbaughs mouth.
First, it is more about unneeded and unhelpful solutions that will cause unnecessary cost.
No blind people have been harmed. I have yet to see any comparison of number of injuries/deaths due to hybrids vs non-hybrids. I am guessing there are actually more for non-hybrids.
It so far looks like a bunch of political bluster which has politicians trip over each other trying to help the poor blind people before their opponent can.

There aren't that many blind people crossing streets and there aren't that many hybrids. I think the risk to children is greater.

Couldn't your arguments be used to oppose seatbelts too?

What's wrong with a warning sound? Granted I hated the backup beep but it did serve a purpose for the neighbor's kids who are always riding their bikes down the sidewalk and across my driveway. Noises do catch their attention.


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The beep did catch the kids attention when I was pulling out of the garage. They're small kids and they often use my driveway to turn around in, it's as far as their mom let's them go. What's so bad about a beep when moving forward? I just don't see the negative consequences of adding a forward beep.

Dave, just show us the data.
How many deaths/injuries are there per year to pedestrians as a result of Hybrids and as a result to other vehicles.
You can easily extrapolate based on the percentage of hybrids on the road.
This extrapolation may not be 100% accurate. But it will be a lot better than 'Johnny almost got run over by a hybrid after he ran out in the road without looking...'

Why did they put in a backup beep without data ?

I've watched this hit PC hard and I'm really shocked that this is such an issue.

You could hear it outside my car with the windows open.

I think you need to register as a right winger if you hate the gubmint so much that you get anal about it.

Don't you???

Why would the National Federation of the Blind lie about this.


"There are incidents in which blind people have been hit by hybrid vehicles, said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore. White canes have been knocked out of the blind people’s hands, and a California man’s foot was run over, Danielsen said."

It's a safety feature but it was done without accident data. Just logic. It's a red herring that nothing is done without data.

Take a look at what the Federation for the Blind said above

They neglected to point out how many were hit by sound emitting vehicles and that number is much, much larger. We know for a fact that in the five years of available Prius accident data:

• 25 - blind died at from ordinary sound emitting vehicles
• ~60 - blind were admitted to hospital
• 0 - blind died from a Prius accidents, so far
• ~125 kids - died from back-over accidents
• ~125 kids - required hospitalization from back-over accidents

The blind are already suffering at the wheels of sound emitting vehicles BUT our blind friends are only addressing the hybrids. They seem content to ignore the sound vehicles that already kill and wound them in great numbers.

There is a type of lie by omission and that is what the blind and their advocates are doing. It doesn't make it less of a lie, it simply means they are not telling the whole truth so the ignorant will be suckered in to something that is ultimately expensive and more hazardous than addressing the real problem, "Pedestrian Safety."

Let me put it this way, would you trust your life to a parachute packed by the blind? Because that is what these noise makers are, a blind designed and packed 'parachute'.

The real question is why does "Dave_PH" hate blind people? Why do you want them to live in a more dangerous world, a catophony of sounds that today kills them stone cold dead. It could be because you have failed to do the research.

In June 23, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) held a hearing in Washington DC on the "Quiet Cars" issue. You can read the research you missed by going to www.regulations.gov and searching:

• NHTSA-2008-0108-0018.1 - Les Blomberg of Noise Pollution Clearinghouse who discusses "noise masking" and the "cocktail party effect." Both kill the blind today with regular noise making vehicles.
• NHTSA-2008-0108-0012 - All presentations, including Paul Goodes, Sound Answers, Inc. who pointed out how difficult it is to extract any signal from the background noise that already exists.
• NHTSA-2008-0108-0011 - Dr. Christopher Hogan's analysis of the available traffic accident data covering the Prius
• NHTSA-2008-0108-0022.1 - the badly done transcript that is missing the last line of each page but gives some sense of what happened at the meeting
• NHTSA-2008-0108-0020 - my submission detailing the problems with HR 5734 and what needs to be done to fix it.
• NHTSA-2008-0108-0020.2 - the Chidester report on back-over accidents went the engine exhaust pipe knocked down and killed 25 kids.

Ignorance is one thing but your hatred for truth, facts and data simply shows how little you care for the kids killed by:

No my friend troll, it is you who hate life. It is you in your abysmal ignorance have come here to face the facts and data. Stay, for we are not done with you, yet!

Bob Wilson