Hybrid cars quiet and deadly for the blind
Gas-electric hybrid cars such as Toyota’s Prius have become increasingly popular worldwide but US research has demonstrated that because they are so quiet that they present a new danger for blind pedestrians.
Because the hybrids make almost no noise at slower speeds when they run solely on electric power they are seen as posing a real threat to blind people trying to determine if it is safe to cross the street or a parking area.
The US tests involved people standing in parking lots or on footpaths and being asked to signal when they heard several different hybrid models drive past. Many people kept asking when the tests would begin after the cars had sometimes done two or three drive-bys.
The chairwoman of the US National Federation of the Blind’s committee on automotive and pedestrian safety, Deborah Kent Stein, said: “I’m used to getting sound clues from my environment and negotiate accordingly. I hadn’t imagined there was anything I really wouldn’t be able to hear.”
The federation has said that it does not want a return to gas-guzzling cars but would like the fuel-efficient hybrids to make discernible noise. Approaches have been made to the US auto industry and to federal and state agencies without any concrete success so far.
A US Toyota spokesman, Bill Kwong, said that his company was studying the issue and trying to find the “delicate balance”. But he said that “one of the many benefits of the Prius, besides excellent fuel economy and low emissions, is quiet performance. Not only does it not pollute the air, it doesn’t create noise pollution”.
