Asymmetrical Information

This phrase should strike terror into everyone's heart:

Ring tones for your car.

Imagine where everyone gets to choose the noise that their car makes, and is LEGALLY OBLIGATED to play that sound on a continuous loop for everyone to hear.

I'm not familiar with the workings of hybrid cars, but I wonder if there's anything about their electric signal which might produce radiation at a frequency that blind folks could pick up on, given a special device.

Or if we get really desperate, these hybrid cars could have devices installed in their steering wheels so that drivers could make an loud noise if someone was in their way. If we could only get car manufacturers to do this...

Simple.

Require them to have spoked wheels, and issue a pack of playing cards every couple of months.

That reminds me of taking drivers ed. in Kansas. The class taught that pedestrians have the right of way in crosswalks or if they are legally blind.

So in Kansas, sighted jaywalkers are fair game.

There's a natural selection joke in there somewhere...

Smiles to Brian. Right of way is a legal premise. All the law is saying is that certain pedestrians are presumed to have the law upon their side if there is a problem. And others are not.

As to the blind/hybrid. Some device will be mandated sooner or later. I favor one carried by the blind that turns off the power in any nearby vehicle, hybrid or not. The vehicle is then automatically braked to a halt.

The police already want a similar turnoff device so car chases can be ended.

Anyone think of a problem with such a device? Gee, maybe ambulances and police cars shouldn't be affected?

K,

The police already have EMP devices at their disposal. It is tripped when a vehicle passes over it. It is equally effective against all types of vehicles.

It would be easy enough to have a transmitter that a blind person would carry, similar to the currently used transmitter in fire trucks and other vehicles that radar detectors pick up and sound an alarm to alert you to their presence.

Just give every hybrid a sound system like an ice cream truck. After a 2 hour commute of listening to an endless loop of "Turkey In The Straw" Your average Prius driver might actually lose the smug little smirk.

WHAT? The law cared about excessive noise in the first place? Oh, then why are people still allowed to play huge subwoofers next to me in traffic or when driving by my home? Or have extremely loud unmuffled engines?

Seriously, take care of those guys. Whatever noisemaker they're proposing for electrics, couldn't possibly hold a candle to them.

This same debate occurred when Andy Granatelli ran gas turbine cars at the Indy 500 in the late 1960s. People thought turbines would be quietly speeding down Maple Street in a few years. One proposal was to have loudspeakers playing engine noises.

But road and air resistance noises will probably be enough without such measures. If not, yep, people will be buying "Porsche" and "P-51 Mustang" enginetones.

"Blind people"? WRONG, you insensitive swine! The politically correct term is "people who are visually challenged".
As I myself am as visually challeged as a bat, this really touches a raw nerve in me.

The lobbies for various "physically challenged" groups have a history of really, really pushing things. Read _The Death of Common Sense_ sometime.

The one that really made me want to puke was when "hearing-impaired" people protested against cochlear implants for deaf children, saying that it would "rob them of a heritage of silence" and gradually eliminate "deaf culture." On the one hand, they want the bennies that come with being "disabled," on the other hand, they deny that deafness is a real disability---instead, they say it's a different culture and doing anything to make it go away is like genocide.

And some people wonder _why_ I want to shriek and pound my head against the wall...

""Blind people"? WRONG, you insensitive swine!"

Actually, I think they are concerned about fully blind people, since they won't see/hear a hybrid coming. My dad is "visually challenged" in that he can't see out of one eye but can out of the other sort-of, but he could see if a car was coming... my point being that "visually challenged" is not descriptive enough.

And chalk me up in the proud-to-be insensitive swine group.

Mr. MacPete I think is spending way too much time enjoying the smell of his own farts for his own good!

Metis has a good point. To be "legally blind" simply means that your maximum corrected visual acuity is low. My uncorrected visual acuity (something like 220/20) would constitute legal blindness if it could not be corrected. I could see if a car were barreling toward me then, though :-P

Robert Lowe: I think the 'visually challenged' people are those who are not invisible.

I have been challenged on numerous occasions merely because a guard could see me.

It was my understanding that bats have excellent vision. But in caves there may be zero light and no quality of vision would suffice. Likewise when snagging a flying insect at night. The SONAR scheme some bats use lessens such problems.

I suppose I'm admitting to a citable offense here but I regularly commute to work on my bicycle, wearing in-ear headphones and an iPod[tm] where the volume bar is about half way.

Despite that, I can hear cars overtaking, hybrid or not, well before they sweep into my vision. Most of the noise from relatively slow-moving vehicles with good exhaust systems comes from the tire noise on the pavement. Fast-moving vehicles generate a bit more engine noise as well as more tire noise, but hybrids' engines run when they're going fast.

-dk

"And if you could say anything about hybrid drivers, they are more aware of their surroundings than other drivers," Mr. MacPete says.

And they sure think highly of themselves.

Having hybrids make more noise is all fine and good for blind people, but it's not going to help deaf people at all. Or people listening to their ipods. We need a law to add noise and bright flashy lights to our hybrids. Then, finally, everyone will be safe.

The problem is not on the road but in parking lots where hybrids idle silently. Not only the blind have had problems with silent hybrid backing into them.

Megan, you might want to stay out of the District, because pedestrians have become Enemy # 1 to Metro bus drivers recently.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/18/AR2007021800489.html

Thaaaanksss!"

Sev MacPete reminds us all again to be wary of all true believers.
He so badly doesn't want to consider any downsides to his new religion.

You know those things you can put on your car that creates a sound that deer can hear, making them run away? They need to make those at a frequency that only blind people can hear.

How can a get the P-51 engine noise system installed on my Miata?

As several people have pointed out, the premise of this complaint is factually wrong. Even a car with a silent engine makes noise. I rely on my hearing a lot, and I can always hear the rubber on the road and the air rushing by the body. At least, I haven't been run over yet.

Much ado about nothing. I'm with Person: legal enforcement of car noise limits is -- from my small sample of every major intersection in the greater Los Angeles area -- non-existent. Any legal tussles for the blind would only be caught after the fact and questions for any "audio witnesses" to an accident would be high comedy ("... and when did you actually hear the other car, Mr. Jones?").

And just to pile on: Don't tires on pavement still make noise? My (albeit limited) experience with the blind informs me that many of them hear awfully well. I smell an "advocacy group"/tort-baked pie in the oven ...

When I rode a bicycle to work, I would usually hear the tire noise of cars coming up behind me long before I heard the engine. I wasn't in an urban area, so it's possible that in a city with non-traffic noises and so many cars around, blind people have trouble telling where the nearest cars are and which way they're going from the sound - but I don't see how adding a noisemaker would help that.

However, Prices has a point. Very slow-moving cars don't make tire noise, in parking lots and at stoplights. A Walmart parking lot is probably more dangerous for the blind than crossing a busy street at a crosswalk, because drivers stop for the blind, but in a parking lot half the vehicles in motion are quietly going backwards and their drivers have pretty restricted vision. Many commercial vehicles have a beeper that goes when they are backing up. It might be a good idea to make those beepers standard equipment - and not just for hybrids.

There were similar complaints about steam cars in the early years of the automobile.

Another vote for across-the-board reverse-mode warning beepers. Perhaps these could be designed with a somewhat lower volume, and a slightly different pitch and pulse rate, than commercial beepers -- so that you can immediately discern that it's a nearby passenger vehicle, not a commercial vehicle that may be over a couple hundred feet away.

Very cheap, easily integrated into all existing vehicle designs, and it benefits everyone.

I drive a hybrid Highlander and I am still waiting for the first time I can travel at any speed faster than a crawl when the engine doesn't engage. It only seems to shut off when I am going down hill at speed (and if a blind person in on the highway at that time, he or she has a lot of other problems) or when I am stopped at a stop light for more than thirty seconds.

When I start up in the parking lot, the engine engages and I am no quieter than any other new car out there.

I am still waiting for someone to jump out of their skin at seeing my car move without any noise.

I can just imagine walking through a walmart parking lot hearing beeping all over the place. How can you be sure where the beeping is coming from? Worst case I imagine people tuning out the beeping and us just having to deal with lots of beeping in the name of making our lives better. Sounds like one of those fun features I have to deal with in my Microsoft programs everyday...stupid features that make things harder and more obnoxious to use because some condescending person wanted to make my life better....

no thanks

There was some talk about using an EMPs to disable cars, and how the police want them. Just thought I'd mention that you can protect yourself from an EMP with a Faraday cage.

I used to work for the National Federation of the Blind, and while I was there, the organization actually rented a Prius for a few weeks, did some noise-level testing, and tried driving it past some focus groups. (I was also present at the Dallas test mentioned in the WSJ article, which was conducted by the automobile-safety committee.) The Prius isn't totally silent, and when the engine kicks in, it's easy enough to hear. However, it was definitely *different* from what people had been trained to listen for, and there are circumstances where some hybrids can be tooling along fast enough to seriously hurt an unsuspecting pedestrian without the engine kicking in -- you don't have to be going 30 mph to mess someone up.

The biggest problem was noted at a noisy intersection -- if the Prius' engine wasn't going, it was very difficult to just pick out tire noise over the ambient sound level. We particularly noted problems when trying to hear a car that was turning right at the noisy intersection, or that was making a left turn towards us. Parking lots were also an issue, but blind people always have lots of trouble there. If you'd like to get a better idea of the problems faced by a totally blind person, try putting on sleepshades and doing some normal getting-around tasks; you'll be surprised by how much you actually do rely on vision, even if you think you don't.

The problem with mandating a personal sensor is that funding them would be tough to guarantee, and blind people have just as much stuff to carry as you do (and generally more -- try carrying a cane everywhere you go in addition to everything else you've got). What if the sensor breaks down, or its batteries run dry while you're away from a place where you can easily replace them? What if it gets stolen by some loser who thinks it's an iPod Shuffle?

As to the behavior of various advocacy groups... it's important to note that while some groups may claim to speak for "all" blind (or deaf, or mobility-impaired, or whatever) people, they rarely if ever actually do. The politics of these groups is sometimes vicious, and is often focused on some obscure political point or benefit, or even a personal squabble in years past. The "Deaf" community referenced above by Technomad is a case in point; while many deaf people find cochlear implants useful (albeit with limitations), there are those who see deafness as fundamental to their identity, and who resent being seen as potentially less of a person than a person who can hear.

When I was learning abut the NFB, they took pains to say that while it's perfectly respectable to be blind, it also required significant training and skills in order to bring blindness down to the level of a "major inconvenience". They were very aware of what they could and could not do (and what it took to make them able to do it), and didn't try to pretend the limitations weren't there. I met successful blind lawyers, computer programmers, teachers, and scientists during my time there, and I'm glad to have gotten the opportunity to have met them. I appreciate the chance to see their perspectives on many political issues, and it made me modify some of my own political stands somewhat.

There are more cars than blind people. We should have the government mandate that blind people be made noisier and more visible so that the cars more easily avoid them.

Many commercial vehicles have a beeper that goes when they are backing up. It might be a good idea to make those beepers standard equipment - and not just for hybrids.

Oh please God no. I am already at the point where I'm ready to aim a rocket launcher at the early-morning sound of "Alert! Alert! There is a truck somewhere within a quarter mile that is not in forward gear! Alert! Alert!" Put those damned things on all cars and it will be metallic carnage out there, plus we'll have to massively fund construction of new mental hospitals for the millions who will crack at the incessant loud BEEP!BEEP!BEEP! that will permeate the country.

Seriously, a neighboring house a block away used to have a van with one of those things, and it did nearly drive me out of my mind. That was one such vehicle, a block away. Imagine twenty of them on the same block. BEEP! It will be crazy-making even if the sound isn't required to be quite as loud as the one on the trucks.

Interestingly, some equipment operators are disconnecting their backup beepers, because the volume creates a noise-level hazard for the operator.

Reading this thread gave me an idea. Give every blind person a bat. Put it on a leash tied to its leg. Then the bat could warn the blind person of oncoming traffic by ummmm....ummmm...

I think my idea needs more work...

The above commenters are all off-base, owing to the usual blog groupthink with which libertarians are so identified. They willfully turn away from this crisis caused by DANGEROUS SEMIAUTOMATIC VEHICLES, ignoring the hazard to our children and those of differing abilities. The problem is as old as the removal of the horse from in front of the carriage, but has always been ignored by President Bush.

The real answer is to return to the original practice for the horseless carriage, and have a person walk ahead of the DANGEROUS SEMIAUTOMATIC VEHICLE carrying a solar-powered lantern, having that person shout out loud the manufacturer, the type of DANGEROUS SEMIAUTOMATIC VEHICLE it is, and license number of the DANGEROUS SEMIAUTOMATIC VEHICLE in question.

It's only right. It's only fair.

-- Snarcrates.

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