Mandatory Hybrid Noise?

Can somebody tell me why it is that I keep hearing people say (not necessarily in this thread), "when the ICE is running the Prius isn't much quieter than any other car." ?

Who here thinks that when the Prius ICE is running, that it is ANY quieter than any other modern, quiet car?

Sorry, this whole thing just confuses the hell out of me. I'm at the point of thinking that we should keep burning more gasoline and assuring the deaths of thousands... to make sure that we protect the lives of... well, a few.

In all these great studies, does anybody consider the deaths caused by burning gasoline? There are easier, and less messy ways of killing people with cars. Has nothing to do with running over them.

 

Good point. That would be the people who I hear really wanting the 18.4c gasoline sale for the summer, right?

 

Precisely. I'm planning to add a speaker with an MP3 player and some pre-recorded effects for different situations.

I figure some loud muscle car revving noises will get all the parking lot mums and dads grabbing for their kids hands quick !


For town driving around blind people, what do you do ? Generate normal car sounds ?

Perhaps if you can show your audio generator is making noise of the same type and volume as some "normal" car (even a really quiet one), you'll have a moral and legal defense against any stupid laws that might require obnoxious beeping or some such.

Something natural like crickets might be cool, but I wonder if that will warn the blind or confuse them ?

I guess cartoon-ey spaceship noises might go over well with the geek and neon sets...

 

I'm going to have the cowbell sound for parking lots and the whistle tip sound for normal traffic speed.

The whistles go wooooo!

Hey Darell, what street did you say you live on? :evil:

 

I still have visions of that idiot tearing down the street smoking the tires... on the wrong side of the road! And uh... his whistles weren't working were they?

Anyway, yeah. I'm really bummed that those will never work on my EV. Let me send you my address offline. Warning, it is in East Hell.

 

Do are politico's have nothing better to due? We should fix them them so they cannot reproduce.

 

Yeah, well, look at what's mowing them down -- mostly pickups and large cars. When it comes to serious injury, noise isn't the issue, it's size. Your Prius driver has to be umpty percent stupider to kill a pedestrian than your average full-size pickup driver, just from the difference in the masses of the vehicles.

Not that I'm suggesting that intelligence is randomly distributed among car owners, by brand. The evidence suggests the contrary. Here's data from about 120,000 vehicles from the 2001 National Household Transportation Survey:

Percent of Car Owners by Education Level, Among Those Reporting (NHTS 2001, unweighted, not all categories shown):
Brand; High school or less; Bachelor's or advanced degree
GM (all brands); 50% ; 22%
Toyota ; 33% ; 41%

In all seriousness, reading through the accident data, most people who cause accidents of this sort are in the process of doing something extremely stupid. Not that a college degree is any vaccination against that, and I don't want to sound elitist, but when it comes to driving around town drunk and speeding, I'm guessing you're more likely to see that in a high school dropout than in your average doctor, lawyer, or business executive. So I think the GM bias, to the extent there is one, is more the driver than the car.

 

I think I've been there before.

 

How about the Harley sound while idling in traffic? After all, some one might walk right into my car because they couldn't hear it.

So far I've got:

Harley sound: loud arrhythmic combustion engine idle sound while stationary

Cowbell sound: loud arrhythmic clanging sound while traveling at slow speeds

Whistle Tip sound: annoying high pitched shrieking sound while traveling along normal streets at speed


Yeah, that's the ticket. That will make the world safe from the hybrid and EV menace. hwell:

 

How about a horn that says "Hey! WHAT, ARE YOU BLIND?!??!?!". That would take care of the blind and stupid.

Buck

 

I really don't want my car to be any louder so I propose hot lasers that are mounted on the front corners of the car crossing over about 500 metres up the road. If a blind person steps out in front of the car their foot would instantly fall off, they would fall down because their foot was suddenly missing so I couldn't knock them down, and the Prius would roll right over them. I can't help it if these people lay across the road where it's hard to see them.

 

What about deaf people? If cars have to be louder for the blind, then they should be more visible for the deaf. Maybe big flashing neon lights so they don't get missed. Smart cars will have to be outfitted to look bigger so they will be seen.

 

I still personally liked the horn that moos...

<sarcasm>
If you want to go for true safety borrow a page from the American railroads. A couple of toots on a really loud air horn should wake the dead and let every one for several hundred yards know that you're there. You know how difficult it is to a 400,000 lb locomotive that shakes the ground when it's moving, don't you?

How would we expect someone who needs that kind of warning for a huge train to need any less for a relatively diminutive hybrid car?

The stock horn on a GE AC4400 is really quite effective.
</sarcasm>