Oh, Yeah, That Will Work
The Washington Post reports on The Deadly Silence of the Electric Car
After years of trying to make cars sound as if they were riding on air, engineers are considering how they might bring back some noise. They’re trying to make some of them — those silent hybrids — more audible.
But how?
Apparently Japanese auto makers are looking at chimes, ringtones, and the whirring noise made by vehicles in Blade Runner.
So, they think they are going to be alerting blind people that a car is coming when it sounds like a cellphone or a berserk hair dryer.
I already covered this, and my solution was to make cars – sound like cars. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it.
6 comments
Bryan, with your speakers, front and rear, it won’t be long before the mechanically minded jimmy up their own sounds and pipe through modified stage speakers. Before you know it, those guys who even now turn up the bass on their audio systems loud enough to shake the teeth of adjacent car occupants will rule the streets and highways.
If your idea catches on, then I’m going to promote a new federal law prohibiting any external automobile sounds other than Eine kleine Nachtmusik. If you close your eyes and suspend belief, you can almost hear the sound of an approaching car when you click on this.
John, people already do that, I’m talking about making cars sound like cars so that blind people know they are cars.
Mozart is not associated with cars for most people, nor is it associated with “Danger! You are about to be run over!”
of course, if all the cars are electric, the blind people will still hear them. they aren’t silent [not the ones i’ve heard anyway].
i was overwhelmed [for about an hour] with the noise level in nyc when i first got there. the first thing i did was try to imagine what the place would sound like if all the vehicles were electric.
.-= last blog ..What’s it like to be an American living in England and using their socialized medicine? =-.
If you get nailed by a Prius in a parking lot you may come to different conclusion. I have a relative with retinitis pigmentosa in late stage so he only sees things directly in front of him, extreme tunnel vision, and he almost got creamed by a Prius.
If you are expecting engine noise, you don’t pick up the other sounds, and you may even screen out everything except engine sounds to protect yourself.
Try jamming a baseball card in the spokes….
.-= last blog ..Bush’s Legacy still continues =-.
I haven’t had spokes since my ’67 MGB-GT.