Noisier Cars for the Blind

[General Zod]

Good point i actually didn´t think about.
However, is the noise really a decisive factor? As far as i´ve seen, Hybrids are mainly marketed as producing less emission and saving money by using less gasoline.
After all, according to the opening post there are non hybrid engines that are very quiet as well.

Don't hybrids generally have a higher sticker price than regular cars?

[Kanastrous]

Don't hybrids generally have a higher sticker price than regular cars?

Yes; I don't know if that reflects higher manufacturing costs, or simply charging-what-the-market-will-bear because, y'know, hybrids are like, rilly, rilly kewl (and their environmental virtues are a convenient side-benefit).

[General Zod]

Yes; I don't know if that reflects higher manufacturing costs, or simply charging-what-the-market-will-bear because, y'know, hybrids are like, rilly, rilly kewl (and their environmental virtues are a convenient side-benefit).

Unfortunately most consumers tend to be big on appearances. If the car is less noisy than another, that's a decidedly obvious benefit as opposed to something you won't necessarily notice without a lot of equipment to measure it with (eg - emissions). So making it intentionally noisier will drive away a decent amount of buyers.

[salm]

Good point i actually didn´t think about.
However, is the noise really a decisive factor? As far as i´ve seen, Hybrids are mainly marketed as producing less emission and saving money by using less gasoline.
After all, according to the opening post there are non hybrid engines that are very quiet as well.

Don't hybrids generally have a higher sticker price than regular cars?

Why is that relevant?

[Kanastrous]

So making it intentionally noisier will drive away a decent amount of buyers.

I wish that guy who keeps driving his chopped and rodded Mustang with 5,000 dB glasspack mufflers past my house, was one of them.

[General Zod]

Why is that relevant?

When comparing cars, do you think most people will be paying more attention to the noise, mileage, and power steering or less obvious things like emissions and its environmental footprint if one model is going to cost them more than another? Assuming someone can afford either, they're probably going to go for the one with the most immediately obvious benefits if it costs less.

[salm]

Why is that relevant?

When comparing cars, do you think most people will be paying more attention to the noise, mileage, and power steering or less obvious things like emissions and its environmental footprint if one model is going to cost them more than another? Assuming someone can afford either, they're probably going to go for the one with the most immediately obvious benefits if it costs less.

Emissions are not less obvious. Hybrid cars are marketed specifically as low emission cars. Low emissions are, in fact, one of the most obvious characteristic of a hybrid car.

Furthermore cars with a regular engine would not have an engine that is quieter. A mandatory noise machine would only make sense if all cars that are below a certain decibel mark were equipped with such a device.

However, this is all pretty theoretical since there are probably better ways to keep blind people from getting run over.

[Kanastrous]

Of course, what's been missing since the initial article that inspired the thread, is any data on how many blind people actually get hit by cars, because the cars were too quiet...

..sorry about that.

[General Zod]

Furthermore cars with a regular engine would not have an engine that is quieter. A mandatory noise machine would only make sense if all cars that are below a certain decibel mark were equipped with such a device.

I probably wasn't clear on that part. I wasn't suggesting the regular engine would be quieter. I was suggesting that if a quieter engine is made more noisy, then it would be harder to distinguish the hybrid with the quieter engine from a regular car.

[Stark]

Wait, so blind people just walk alongside roads, assuming cars will be loud enough to hear? Are you serious? Don't they have dogs for this sort of thing? Even many modern ICE cars (well, maybe not in gas-guzzling US) are damn quiet, certianly compared to regular cars. Roads are dangerous places.

[Kanastrous]

Worse than that, they apparently cross roads, under the assumption that the cars will be loud enough, to hear...

[Stark]

I wonder what the average time-to-cross is for a blind person. Blind people without dogs seem to move at quite a slow pace (for obvious reasons) and on a middling-busy road, even if there's no cars NOW, there may well be while you're crossing at 1/2 walking pace. The faster they go the more vulnerable they are to the shocking state of some roads and falling.

So what I'm saying is, what does 'hearing the car' do when you're in the middle of the road already? Their safety doesn't come from THEIR SENSES, it comes from DRIVERS SEEING THEM AND SLOWING DOWN.

In AU, there are areas designated 'blind crossing areas', usually just off busier roads across side-streets. Now it goes without saying that these have lights and crossing-buttons (with awesome ping noises). The ironic part is, I can often not hear the damn ping noise over the traffic noise.

[Darth Wong]

So what I'm saying is, what does 'hearing the car' do when you're in the middle of the road already? Their safety doesn't come from THEIR SENSES, it comes from DRIVERS SEEING THEM AND SLOWING DOWN.

So you should rely on drivers obeying the law, being responsible and aware, etc? You can't be serious.

As for road-crossing speed, the slowest people across the average street are really old people and really young people. The really old people can't move any faster, and the really young people (by which I mean high-schoolers) are fucking stupid, so they stroll across the road really slowly as if they haven't a care in the world, even if the light goes yellow before they even took one step into the road. Sometimes I wish I could just run the fuckers over.

The worst are actually the people who should theoretically be the fastest: fit, healthy young teenaged males. They seem to deliberately walk slowly for some reason; I think they believe it makes them look tough.

[Stark]

Well what I'm suggesting is that whether they can hear cars before they start to cross isn't a guarantee of safety, as more cars are likely to come down the road while they're in the middle. It's not like they'd be able to tell what lane they're in etc until they're quite close and their slow walking speed makes it impossible to avoid them, so it's got to be the drivers that avoid them/slow down? And that this would continue to happen with the Silent Deadly electric cars?

Are controlled crossings rarer in the US? Here they're fucking everywhere, and sticking to the controlled (ie, safe) crossings doesn't limit your ability to move around on foot at all.

[Kanastrous]

So you should rely on drivers obeying the law, being responsible and aware, etc? You can't be serious.

I spend most of my time on a motorcycle, and therefore operate under the assumption that every car-operator on the road, is waiting for an opportunity to kill me, and make it look like an accident.

[Molyneux]

Depending on what you use to make it I guess. Either way making a car noisier doesn't really seem like the right solution. Seems like more of a way to drive off customers who buy a given model because it's quieter.

Good point i actually didn´t think about.
However, is the noise really a decisive factor? As far as i´ve seen, Hybrids are mainly marketed as producing less emission and saving money by using less gasoline.
After all, according to the opening post there are non hybrid engines that are very quiet as well.

@Molyneux: I´m not arguing that.

You're right; sorry, guess I kinda jumped on you there.

[Sea Skimmer]

Wouldn't it be more logical to mandate some kind of low-powered low-frequency EM transmitter in the car that can trigger a proximity alarm that deaf or blind people carry with them? That would cost very little, be more effective, and accomplish the same function without making pointless noise that everyone is forced to hear.

How would such a simple device tell the user what direction the car is coming from, particularly in a situation involving multiple vehicles? The only solution I can see is GPS on every car, and in every device, which is going to push up the pricetaq a great deal.

But anyway, noise reduction is already a major selling factor for cars, and they have extensive soundproofing, so the odds of any automaker adding deliberate noise is about zilch.

[RogueIce]

Are controlled crossings rarer in the US? Here they're fucking everywhere, and sticking to the controlled (ie, safe) crossings doesn't limit your ability to move around on foot at all.

In my experience, they're prevelent enough, being at just about any intersection with a light.

Although by "controlled crossings" I'm assuming you mean just the marked crossings with those Walk/Don't Walk signs. If you mean ones that make noise and stuff, I don't know.

[Kanastrous]

Wouldn't it be more logical to mandate some kind of low-powered low-frequency EM transmitter in the car that can trigger a proximity alarm that deaf or blind people carry with them? That would cost very little, be more effective, and accomplish the same function without making pointless noise that everyone is forced to hear.

How would such a simple device tell the user what direction the car is coming from, particularly in a situation involving multiple vehicles? The only solution I can see is GPS on every car, and in every device, which is going to push up the pricetaq a great deal.

But anyway, noise reduction is already a major selling factor for cars, and they have extensive soundproofing, so the odds of any automaker adding deliberate noise is about zilch.

No GPS required; all cars are equipped with a low-power FM emitter, and all blind people carry a small pager-sized receiver that beeps when a moving car comes within a certain distance.

Just as a thought-exercise in how it might work.

Not like it's going to happen.

[Darth Wong]

Wouldn't it be more logical to mandate some kind of low-powered low-frequency EM transmitter in the car that can trigger a proximity alarm that deaf or blind people carry with them? That would cost very little, be more effective, and accomplish the same function without making pointless noise that everyone is forced to hear.

How would such a simple device tell the user what direction the car is coming from, particularly in a situation involving multiple vehicles?

Your hand-held receiver can determine what direction the signal is coming from, and that's obviously the direction the car is coming from. Multiple signals can be handled the same way. Obviously, if there are a shitload of signals coming from various directions, you might want to stay on the sidewalk and not step into the street. The point is that the device on the car can be pretty dumb, and the intelligence is in the receiver which analyzes whatever signals it can pick up. A low-end receiver would have nothing but a proximity alarm, and a high-end one could probably identify many signals, which direction they're coming from, approach velocity, etc.

The only solution I can see is GPS on every car, and in every device, which is going to push up the pricetaq a great deal.

Remember that you're not trying to get a precise fix on every car's location; you just want a device that will tell you that a car is approaching. With a simple short-range transmitter on each car and a reasonably intelligent device in your hand for picking up those signals, it should be fairly easy. The trick is to mandate the installation of those transmitters.

But anyway, noise reduction is already a major selling factor for cars, and they have extensive soundproofing, so the odds of any automaker adding deliberate noise is about zilch.

Definitely.

[Broomstick]

The potential problems with the transmitter/receiver tech solution are several. First, the blind person might not have this device with him. Second, either end of this could malfunction, and said malfunction may not be obvious.

Blind people do not need blaring, loud devices. They need sufficient sound to locate objects in space. Since the sounds made by the average person in walking around/existing are frequently enough to enable them to determine people are nearby, approaching, receding, crowding around, whatever it's obvious these sound levels need not be deafening.

They don't need cars as loud as present gasoline motors - what they need is something that will indicate that there is an object and provide doppler effects when approaching/receding. By making this an audible signal you let the human brain do the calculating, which it is wired to do and which blind people have as standard equipment. It also makes it very easy to tell if the signal-generator is malfunctioning.

There would also be greater utility for sighted (non-deaf) people who, whether they realize it or not, also use sound to help locate objects in space.

In other words, you could reduce the noise level from what is currently present yet still have sufficent noise to increase safety.

[Civil War Man]

The thing is, if it weren't for all the noise generated by loud gasoline vehicles, electric and hybrid vehicles would be trivial to hear. The cycles I work on are only silent when they are either sitting still or moving very slowly, but generate an electronic whine when driven at higher speeds (sounds a little bit like ROTJ speeder bikes). It's quiet when compared to most gas vehicles, but frankly if you don't hear it the bike is either moving real slow or you are not paying attention.

Oh, and just so you all know, the reduced noise is one of the major selling points. Potential buyers will often approach me asking about it being so quiet, and it does not even occur to them that it is an electric vehicle until I bring it up.

[Molyneux]

The thing is, if it weren't for all the noise generated by loud gasoline vehicles, electric and hybrid vehicles would be trivial to hear. The cycles I work on are only silent when they are either sitting still or moving very slowly, but generate an electronic whine when driven at higher speeds (sounds a little bit like ROTJ speeder bikes). It's quiet when compared to most gas vehicles, but frankly if you don't hear it the bike is either moving real slow or you are not paying attention.

Oh, and just so you all know, the reduced noise is one of the major selling points. Potential buyers will often approach me asking about it being so quiet, and it does not even occur to them that it is an electric vehicle until I bring it up.

...if all cars were made silent but for sounds taken from Star Wars vehicles, it would be amazing.

[Sephirius]

Stop greening it up and get a >5.7L V8.
Problem solved.

[Ma Deuce]

Even many modern ICE cars (well, maybe not in gas-guzzling US) are damn quiet

This coming from someone who lives in the Land of the Holden Commodore . Seriously though, even full-size SUVs are fairly quiet when cruising or idling, with most of their noise output coming from the tires.