I just got a 2022 and now that you say it, I don't think I have heard the beep. Granted I got so used to it I may have tuned it out a bit.
I picked up a 2022 Prime XLE yesterday and no in-cabin backup beep. Not while reversing. Not even 1 beep when you shift into R. I did not need to dig out and buy a 1 week pass for the Carista I bought a few years ago to adjust the settings on my 2016 Prius. The outside pedestrian proximity sound seems to be louder when in reverse. The noise itself is also changed from my 2016 Prius Four and 2013 Prius Two. On my earlier prii it wasn't as obvious where the sound was coming from but it is pretty clearly coming from the front of the engine bay area on the 2022.
Please do not tamper with the pedestrian proximity alert sound! You could easily run over a cat, dog, or other animal if not a human. It's not to mention that you are also breaking federal law.
have you been mowed down by a silent killer prius today? No. You knew it was coming. It couldn't sneak up on you in that alley. It knew you knew and thought better of it.
No! The pedestrian proximity alert sound goes on when the vehicle is put in drive or reverse, not when the vehicle starts moving. Without this sound, if pets are next to tires, it will be too late for them to hear them rolling by the time they start to roll.
Is there evidence that the sound causes the animal to move? Or does it cause them to freeze where they are? A police department that had installed those deer repellers on their cars found no difference in the incidence of the cars hitting deer, because the would also run into the road upon hearing the noise. There was no evidence that blind people, or any pedestrian, were getting hit more often by quieter cars when those law was proposed. There was even ICE cars at the time that were quieter than the Prius, which wouldn't need the noise maker under the laws language. This whole 'protect the blind' thing may have been started by a hybrid detractor, and now we have more noise pollution in our neighborhoods.
Apples vs. oranges. You're comparing deer horns at high vehicle speeds to the sound of a vehicle that starts moving from standstill.
It was an example of doing something under an assumption instead of actually researching if the fix would work, or if there was actually an issue to begin with. The noise maker requirement is doing something under an assumption without evidence of a fix being needed, or if the fix would work with other background noise in the area. Proof that this is the case is that it didn't apply to quiet ICE cars, and some of those were measured quieter than a Prius. @bwilson4web followed the 'bell the hybrid' process closer than me.
You don't need research to show that a silent ton of mass sneaking upon you is capable of killing you or some animal. Remember, you mentioned the sound of tires rolling. So, you acknowledge this fact. In addition, this is something there can't be a research done on. How are you going to do this research? Line up a bunch of pets and pedestrians and see how many will get run over in a controlled study involving EVs equipped with and without sound alerts?