This may be a transient problem as people get used to new technology. It's like using Filmlook to put scratches and grain on HD video.
The 2013 Lotus Evora, a series hybrid vehicle with an electric motor and a fixed gearbox, took this to the point of silliness. Not only did they provide fake engine sounds, they provided shift paddles and required the driver to shift software-simulated gears. They even provided a momentary loss of power during simulated gear shifting. (http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/22/lotus-pondering-fake-shif...) The driver could select different sounds, or turn all this off and just let the electric motor do its thing, which yielded better acceleration. Here's a demo of all the sound options: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1CzoqEyACQ). Options include simulated straight-6, American V-8, and V-12 engines, plus some turbine-like sounds.
After some snickering from the automotive press, this feature was dropped from later models.
Many electric cars already have an outside noise generator, mandated by law in the EU and US. These switch off above 25 MPH or so, so they don't contribute to freeway noise.
It would be good to have a rigid specification for this kind of thing, same as for the colour and blink frequency of signal lights, road sign designs and number plate fonts. Predictability and standardisation is super valuable on the road.
However, I see no reason why the specification can't specify a particular electronic burbling noise from The Jetsons.
It will probably sound enough out-of-place to get attention.
But it doesn't help with the stigma of electric cars being toylike.
Go with something menacing, like the sound a TIE Fighter makes. Attention getting, futuristic, and you won't feel like you're riding around on Scooty-Puff Jr.
While browsers can't decide on a format for the Internet I can't imagine what kind a mess the auto industry could come up for custom sounds for cars. But the arguments would be funny to listen to, 2 guys in a pub, the first boasting about how his Mustang is lossless, the other disregarding due to background noise and file size.
What digikata said. The law doesn't require outside noise for your benefit, it requires it in the hopes that the people in front of you will hear you coming and get out of the way.
> Surely you are not using the term "ricer crowd" to refer to Asians?
No, he's using it to refer to Asian vehicles (and colloquially, people immersed in the culture surrounding them). It's a bit racist, but more of a subcultural epithet.
Really? I always thought that "ricer" was a word play on "racer", a funny term used to describe idiots in their pimped out cars who think they are racers.
(This is more my personal opinion, and less sourced)
I think the "rice" word (aside from the racial connotations) came from the stereotypical first modification being an absurdly large exhaust to try and lower the frequency of the typically smaller, higher-rev'ing / turbo'd Asian engines.
A noticeably large cylinder shoehorned on to the back of your car? Rice cooker.
To me, the term "rice burner" has always evoked a comparison to rice-cookers, which are typically cheap, small appliances. Its the kind of term that was more apt when Asian automakers mainly imported compact cars to the US, and is becoming less so as they branch out to other models. (e.g. Toyota Tundra) In the pantheon of racist terminology, its about the least-bad.
I just had a look at the legislation. It wisely includes that the noise has to sound similar to the engine noise produced by a similarly sized combustion vehicle. I was wondering if we would start to see the equivalent of ringtones for cars (though with some people's ice setups that already sort of exists).
They contribute to being heard by walkers and cyclist relying on their ears to know whether a car is coming, which is the legal point of adding these things (and why they can be disabled at high speed)
As someone who lives in a place where cycling traffic (i.e., completely silent traffic) is massive (Amsterdam), I would suggest this is just a matter of careless habit in a car dominated society.
The only people not looking, relying in their ears and therefor constantly causing dangerous traffic situations over here are tourists. Those are the only ones blindly stepping into traffic because they don't hear the bicycles coming and therefor assume there is no traffic.
The need to have traffic go "vroom, vroom" in order to avoid accidents is just pathetic, and utterly unsustainable in a future where all traffic is likely to be silent by nature.
Imagine living a place that would be as nice an quiet as a village on a sunday if it wasn't for all those vehicles creating artificially amplified noise pollution. Ridiculous.
I agree. It's just a matter of getting used to checking for cars visually. You already have to do that with bikes when crossing bike lanes.
During a transition period I can see it being a problem since listening for cars it can be a strong habit. I had problems with cross walks in the US at first since many of them don't emit a sound when it's green. I would often stand around subconsciously waiting for the sound to indicate that I can cross, and I'd miss my turn.
I am a former Los Angeles bike commuter, and a current walking-commuter (can't think of an elegant word for that). I very much appreciate knowing when a car is coming, but the constant roar on the every street means that conversations have to stop when a truck drives by, you can't hear people talking even when they're only 6 or 7 feet from you, and any sound quieter than an internal combustion engine is diminished. It has left our city streets' as sad, desolate landscapes in many places. If we want to add noise to cars, let them have a bell, like bicycles.
I could walk around screaming at the top of my lungs to warn people when I'm walking by, but maybe I should just try not to hit them instead (and face prison time if I kill someone by doing so.)
>but maybe I should just try not to hit them instead
There's one situation where drivers don't face penalties if they hit and injure/kill a pedestrian: if that pedestrian caused the accident and the driver had no way of preventing it.
For example, if a pedestrian assumes there is no traffic and steps into the road without looking, just feet from an oncoming-but-silent car.
You don't believe what? You don't believe that pedestrians can step into traffic? Or you don't believe that drivers can get away with no punishment if pedestrians step in front of them without giving them time to stop? I'm not looking up a source because it's so ridiculous that I'm not even sure there's a law on the books about it, but if you walk into the side of my (moving) car and get hurt, that's your fault, not mine.
You know those tire commercials where a kid goes running out into traffic between cars in a residential neighborhood and the driver is happy they had Michelin tires because they were able to stop in time? Imagine the kid ran out half a second later. Should the driver be charged?
Again, I'm not sure what's unbelievable about anything I said.
I know people can run in to the street without warning. I know drivers get away with no punishment if somebody darts in to the street.
In fact, my point was that drivers get away with no punishment _almost every time they kill a pedestrian_. In NYC they have less than a 5% chance of even being arrested, much less convicted. Driving a car is probably a great way to commit murder.
Also, yes, I think the driver should be charged for driving so fast in a residential neighborhood that they can't stop in time to prevent killing a kid. If I recklessly [flew my helicopter/drove my tank/rammed my hovercraft/ran my bobsled] in to a child it would be met with outrage, so why do we apply different rules to automobiles? (Spoiler - because automobiles are convenient and while we claim otherwise, we just don't care enough about dead kids to change culture).
I think you're disagreeing with something I never said. From what I understand, you're asking me for a source stating that drivers can hit someone and not be at fault, while your argument is that drivers are never at fault? I guess I still don't get what kind of source you're asking me for.
But apparently you believe there is such a thing as a speed so low that you cannot hit a pedestrian. Have you ever watched some Russian dashboard camera footage where pedestrians throw themselves at cars that are sometimes completely stopped? Or my previous example of someone walking into the side of your car? I've had that happen, where a bicyclist ran through an intersection without looking and ended up in the back of my pickup truck. Tell me that's my fault. The responding officer sure didn't.
This is apparently a downvote magnet but to clarify, you wrote:
"There's one situation where drivers don't face penalties if they hit and injure/kill a pedestrian: if that pedestrian caused the accident and the driver had no way of preventing it."
This is the statement with which I disagree. There are many situations where drivers don't face penalties if they hit and injure/kill a pedestrian, not just one. Anyway, my views on this are clear and I am obviously in the minority. Regardless, I still think that if one operates a heavy, dangerous vehicle near people who may be killed by it the onus of responsibility for not killing people falls on the driver.
If a person leaps in front of a big rig in order to kill themselves, then no, the driver is not responsible. If a kid runs after a soccer ball in the street and gets run over because they driver didn't stop in time, then the driver was probably going too fast for the circumstances.
Mind you, I like cars. I may walk to work but I drive very quickly on the autobahn a few times a year and it's a blast. Limited access roadways with _incredibly_ good visibility and road conditions are great places to go fast. Cities and towns with cars, bikes, walkers, and anything else you can imagine all using the same street space are great places to go slow.
I think that's a misunderstanding, or a misinterpretation of what I meant. I didn't say "there is only one situation", I said "there is one situation".This could be interpreted as "only one" or as "one of many". I meant it in the context of "one of many". There's an implied "there's (at least) one situation", but without that explicitly stated, you're right that there could be an implied "there's (only) one situation".
So allow me to clarify my original post: There's at least one situation where drivers don't face penalties.
And then let me word it a little more strongly: There's only one situation where drivers, under the law, don't face penalties: when the driver was not at fault. Because the situations you listed are those where the driver legally could have faced penalties but did not.
I think the counter-argument is "This is guaranteed to save a few lives over the years". It may not be great for every condition, particularly mid-town Manhattan or Los Angeles, but in other cities, having a car engine sound does alert people walking that something is coming.
not to turn this into a debate about street safety, but it's rarely prosecuted unless there's another crime attached (being drunk/leaving the scene/etc) or some motive beyond "i wasn't paying attention".
I have traveled extensively in the city, both on legs and bike, and I commute on my bike daily. The noise polution is already at a point where you cannot tell if a small efficient cars is approaching. Hell, you can barely hear a Mercerdes AMG with a massive 6L engine. Unless the goal is to make people aware of a car in otherwise reasonably quite environments, it's pointless to require. That said, Teslas do not have to emit any fake noises in Denmark, and I can STILL hear the tire noise when it's driving past me.
As a cyclist, I can confirm that, unfortunately, the pedestrians do rely on sound quite a lot in figuring out whether a vehicle is dangerous: if you're silent, they won't try to avoid you that much. Sometimes it becomes ridiculous: a pedestrian looks in your direction and proceeds walking across, in the middle of the street, forcing you to brake to a halt. They don't do that to cars.
Clearly not scalable in the future, where amount of electric vehicles will keep increasing (not just cars: scooters and e-bikes too). I'm a fairly passionate pedestrian but we can't expect to be able to stay safe by hearing alone.
Consideration for blind people is an important argument but it seems so much saner to require quiet vehicles to have a radio transponder that can send exact speed and direction rather than having people identify these by hearing beeps or fake engine noise.
Not following. How do radio signals help a kid stepping off a curb? Not everybody owns a phone; not everybody has it on and running the 'don't get run over' app.
We've been trained as a people to respond to environmental cues. The learning period to adjust to different cues (beeps, phone apps etc) is another phrase for 'lots of people get hit by silent cars'.
I'd suggest a period of dual cues - make noise, AND whatever else we imagine could help us not get run over. Eventually the noise part might fade away.
A car would have to be some sort of magical hovercraft to approach silently, because tires rolling on asphalt make lots of noise whether the engine contributes or not.
This is true, but as a cyclist, often the sound of my own tires on the road, plus the wind in my ears and sometimes even my own breathing, masks the road noise of an oncoming electric car.
I was almost run over by a Nissan Leaf 2 weeks ago because it crept up behind me on soft snow. It was only going about 5-10 km/h. They could definitely manage to kill a child.
The 2013 Lotus Evora, a series hybrid vehicle with an electric motor and a fixed gearbox, took this to the point of silliness. Not only did they provide fake engine sounds, they provided shift paddles and required the driver to shift software-simulated gears. They even provided a momentary loss of power during simulated gear shifting. (http://www.autoblog.com/2013/01/22/lotus-pondering-fake-shif...) The driver could select different sounds, or turn all this off and just let the electric motor do its thing, which yielded better acceleration. Here's a demo of all the sound options: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1CzoqEyACQ). Options include simulated straight-6, American V-8, and V-12 engines, plus some turbine-like sounds.
After some snickering from the automotive press, this feature was dropped from later models.
Many electric cars already have an outside noise generator, mandated by law in the EU and US. These switch off above 25 MPH or so, so they don't contribute to freeway noise.