I can't help but contribute to this anti-sense. Sorry; I can't help
myself! :-)
If the point is that people should be able to detect the presence of
cars by their sound, then they'd have to come up with an approximate
"standard sound" that all cars must make. Otherwise, we'll have add-on
car sounds that people have no trouble hearing, but that will *not*
alert people to the fact that it's coming from a car.
There is also the risk of starting a noise pollution war, just like the
light pollution war that emergency vehicles have experienced. First,
police cars started with one blinking light. Since no other car had
blinking lights, people noticed it. But soon, lots of cars have blinking
lights. So you add more, and brighter blinking lights. So now, emergency
have more blinking lights than Christmas trees.
If you allow any sort of add-on noise, it won't take long for Marketing
to set in. Just as we have deliberate vehicle sounds like sirens and ice
cream trucks, we'll have companies selling all sorts of novelty sound
effects. The carmakers will realize that they can make their vehicles
make marketable noises, that "advertises" their products.
You know what I'd like to see? Robert Heinlein used a gadget in a
science fiction story called a "Fenton Silencer". It picked up undesired
ambient sound, inverted it, and re-broadcast it to cancel out the noise.
It *reduced* the noise level, instead of adding more noise pollution.
Today, we have the technology to actually do this. So let's put these in
cars, to make our streets *quieter* instead of noisier.
For the blind or handicapped, I would suggest that there may be other
more appropriate technologies than mandating car noisemakers. Why not
consider radar or sonar based devices, which are far more accurate at
detecting and locating a potentially dangerous approaching vehicle?
These can even detect a silent bicyclist, or man on a horse!
--
The greatest pleasure in life is to create something that wasn't there
before. -- Roy Spence
--
Lee A. Hart, http://www.sunrise-ev.com/LeesEVs.htm
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