This afternoon, I found a lovely article from Wired's Autopia blog sitting in the inbox of my RSS reader. Naturally, the title caught my eye: "That Blissfully Quiet Electric Car Might Just Kill You." As a self proclaimed environmentally-conscious person, I soldiered on, through the article.
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the blogosphere, studies from the University of California at Riverside* show that
"even slow moving hybrids can get 40 percent closer to any pedestrian than a combustion-engine car before they are detected.
What is the NHTSA to do? Well, they decided to go with the simplest answer: have those electric cars make noise. Yep. Sounds oddly similar to the "useful" backup chimes in large trucks and vans that everyone loves to hate. Hopefully, they'll come up with a more inventive way of preventing injury.
* Coincidentally, UC Riverside is uniquely qualified for the job, since the campus is right next to the freeway.
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