Electric and hybrid cars have been a staple alternative for eco-conscious motorist for some time, though there might be a chance you’d be involved in an accident more often than that of a standard car. This is obviously due to the fact that electric and hybrid cars produce a very minimal amount of noise as compared to a normal engine.
This poses lots of problems especially for sight impaired pedestrians. Thus automakers and campaigners for the blind are looking into presenting the US Congress with a proposal for minimum noise levels that future cars have to produce.
This problem isn’t just restricted to blind people as a study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that hybrid cars tend to hit pedestrians more often than cars in situations where the car approaching cannot be seen.
I wonder if the Road Safety Department in Malaysia has any studies showing a high pedestrian collision rate with hybrid cars here in Malaysia. Technically only the Prius (and the grey import Estima Hybrid) would qualify as it is the only hybrid in Malaysia that can run on an EV mode – the Civic Hybrid’s combustion engine has to be turned on all the time when it is on the go. But with Malaysians tendency to “settle sendiri” I doubt any meaningful statistics can be collected here.
Anyway, the coalition group has suggested a ‘car language’ that would be a new safety standard for electric and hybrid cars. This would produce some sort of minimum noise when the car is moving at low speeds. When the car speeds up wind and tire noise usually make the car detectable and by then the car would probably exceed the speeds of EV-only modes anyway.
The group would like the sound to be a standardized noise and owners should not be able to customize the sound of the car the same way they do with mobile phone ring tones. In the end it would be up to the NHTSA to determine the minimum sound level or what exact sound would be allowed. Though you can expect this to run through out the motor industry eventually reaching other global markets.
We blogged about this issue in the past and some auto suppliers such as Lotus Engineering have a few proposed solutions to this problem such as the Lotus Sound Synthesis technology. A road speed signal is obtained from the car and a waterproof speaker is positioned near the front of the car to emit a realistic sound based on the throttle and speed of the car.
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there will be no problem in India then
It wont be required in India cos’ it’s standard to keep one hand on the horn anyway ;-)
Cool!! Now add some kepish kepishh turbo sound!!
Imagine we can choose different sound preset like Subaru, Porsche etc. heheh.
And while they are at it, why not put some jerking generator with some torque to simulate gear change at different speed?!! That would be awesome.
Gud suggestion dude, I want Superbike sound
Me too, ah, to hear the growl of a superbike,… its just music! Just to make it more wicked, how about a jet turbine sound and a T-Rex roaring for its horn! That’ll scare some mat rempits for sure.
hybrid with a ferrari or harley V twin rumble or even a RXZ 2 strokes engine note anybody?… ; )
wow..now we can have american v8 and ferrari sound electric car.
I want my car to sound like a chicken crossing a road..
Can I have Lambo V12 or V10 thunder in my hybrid ??
Cute little doggy. xoxoxox
after this all electric cars will have that “bunyi mcm ribut, pegi mcm siput” sound, hahaha..
I want my hybrid sound like kapchai……
HOW ABOUT SUPERSONIC JET SOUND?
SONIC BOOM FTW!
I wonder why they didn’t figure this out at the first place…
In the future, your EV sound synthesis system will be able to be hooked up to your favorite PS3 games like Gran Tourismo series and download any car sound profile in the game to your EV. You probably have a library of different car sound in the EV sound synthesis system and just pick and choose any sound you like according to your driving mood :)
For Proton cars no need such fake sounds. The aircon fan sound already loud enough like hair blower woohhh woohhh woohhh! Stupid aircon.
Haiisshhh, I would’ve hope that Proton doesn’t get dragged into this but then, well, can’t blame you either Jumbsuck. Proton is not perfect anyway especially when you compared to a VW.
WOW, i can see the future…. downloadable engine car sound~! Rm 2.50 (altho can dl for free from pirate bay)
I’ll dl the C8 competezione engine sound with the burble on the overrun….
i think ev cars are good for technological purpose..it will won’t come into reality for some time , atleast 30 years more..this statement already mentioned by honda few days ago..future cars will be hybrids..actually ev cars will come upp with safety problems if it comes to use…think
Can I get mine to sound like a Fokker Friendship? :-)
Shouldn’t there be a speaker at the back too to emulate exhaust noise? :-P Then we can download farting sounds for it.
why do i have this feeling people will somehow abuse this system in the future? Snatch thief will use this to their advantage by disabling the sound while ah beng will ‘tune’ his speaker to sounds like a jet fighter.
Snatch thief buy hybrid cars? Wah, snatch thief business damn good wei.
MIROS don’t have data on Hybrid crashes because hardly ever see on the roads. Maybe once or twice (even saw Polis Civic Hybrid once!) but in a sea of millions of cars, a few just doesn’t cut it
Actually same problem with electric scooters. But on a modified electric scooter, snatch thieves will also have the silent advantage as well.
i want autobots(Transformers) sound, can ahh??
Hi,
We have nearly 700,000 Prius in the USA dating back to 2000 and the total number of hybrids easily exceeds 1,000,000. Yet in spite of these large numbers, the NHTSA has yet to publish a pedestrian accidents per 100 million Prius miles that shows there is a hybrid hazard. If there was a hybrid hazard, we would see it in the accident statistics.
We do know the Prius has half the fatality rate, 0.64 per 100 million miles, over the same 2001-2007, as the average NHTSA fatality rate, 1.37-1.51 fatalities per 100 million miles. This seems to hold true with the pedestrian accidents based upon earlier analysis. For details: http://hiwaay.net/~bzwilson/prius/Prius_Fatal_Accidents/index.html
This most recent NHTSA report, DOT HS 811 304, April 2010, includes some cases where the non-hybrid car was more difficult to detect than the Prius. But in all cases, the cars were identical at 20 mph (32 km/h.)
We are sympathetic to the problem of the blind but making all cars noisy simply extends the current USA practice of killing 5,000 pedestrians per year by ordinary cars dating back before there were any hybrids. The irony is the pedestrian deaths per year have been decreasing every year hybrids have been sold although this is likely to be just coincidence.
Bob Wilson, Huntsville, AL, USA
good info..thanks Bob.
Thanks for the info, Bob.
I do feel that making the hybrid sound like a normal car may be somewhat pointless as the number of pedestrians getting knocked down because they’re on the phone or listening to their mp3 player is increasing. If they can’t notice a normal car or bus, what’s the point of making a silent car into a noisy one if not only to maintain noise pollution levels.
Maybe tire manufacturers can start making noisier tires again. :-)
batmobile sound prefered!..open windows to new bizz selling autoTone (aka car ringtone)…
I think the driver should aware on the pedestrian rather than pedestrian it self.
unnecessarily additional cost and driver can just honk what..
Honking is useless when some idiot listening to his mp3 steps out in front of your car.
Actually I think the car should be aware that it is about to impact a pedstrian, another car or object and apply the brakes automatically. The driver and the pedestrian are the weakest link so lets extend accident avoidance systems to all vehicles.
Bob Wilson, Huntsville, AL
I’d rather just install an airbag to the front of my car, so inflate upon sensing object at high velocity + near distance (<1m, I guess?). At least rather the poor pedestrian go boingggg rather than go BANGG. I agree with the comments about pedestrians on handphones. You have no idea how many times I've nearly knocked down high school students standing in the middle of the road talking on handphone. Seriously wtf.
Vroom…Broommm.. VTEC is comming… No, is just Toyota Prius with Fake ‘VTEC’ sound….
Survival of the fittest. If blind people can’t hear the car coming and get run over than that’s natural selection. Republicans might not believe in Natural Selection, but I do.
Adding an artificial sound to a car is just silly and would add to noise pollution. What about the wild-life that one can see with a near silent car (deer and so forth). With a louder car such wild life is startled and you don’t get to see it?