Brickbat: Loud and Proud

Marc Bruxelle / Dreamstime.com

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says electric vehicles are too quiet at low speeds. It has ordered manufacturers to add artificial sounds so that pedestrians and bicyclists can hear them.

Comments

[Rat on a train]

I want my car to play Jaws.

[mirssa9753]

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[I am the 0.000000013%]

lol. Perfect...

[Get To Da Chippah]

Put some playing cards in the spokes of the wheels.

[Fist of Etiquette]

...they're calling for two or four tones between 315 and 5000 hertz, separated in one-third-octave intervals.

Wait a minute. Unless I'm mistaken, that tonal sequence translates to the first few bars of Dixie. Duke-Boys-inati confirmed.

[sarcasmic]

"Vroom! Vroom! Electric car coming here!"

[Rat on a train]

How about a Jericho Trumpet?

[sarcasmic]

Or some Wagner.

[Rat on a train]

Charlie don't surf!

[Get To Da Chippah]

Make sure nobody taped over it though.

[Leo Kovalensky II]

Benny Hill theme song aka "Yakety Sax"

[Radioactive]

fart noises....really loud and add some stink factor, for the really hard of hearing

[Get To Da Chippah]

Stop this crazy thing!

[Rockabilly]

Fuck you commie ass hats. Take your fucking regulations and stick them up your fucking commie ass hat ass hole.

[I am the 0.000000013%]

That's the sound I want coming out of my car. Maybe in De Niro's voice...

[Roger the Shrubber]

This is the appropriate response.

[Radioactive]

fucking Mcfuckface...

[Will Nonya]

This is just more of that loud pipes save lives bullshit.

The root issue is that people are simply stupid and don't look around them before stepping into traffic. Since we seemingly can't fix stupid lets make electric cars even more ridiculous.

[sarcasmic]

This is just more of that loud pipes save lives bullshit.

I fucking hate loud motorcycles. You don't hear them coming. But you hear them going, and going, and going, and going...

[steve walsh]

And all the folks looking at their phones while crossing the street will continue to not notice. Whatever happened to the admonition to look both ways before you cross the street?

[Radioactive]

when was that on instagram?

[Z565]

I've encountered this problem myself. It's funny because the closer you get to the person, who's generally walking or riding away from you, the slower you move and the less sound you make. They're like ninja cars which could be really useful for a teenager trying to sneak out at night.

[Longtobefree]

I never tried to sneak out at night, but sneaking IN at night was a frequent occurrence.

[Shirley Knott]

I remember this nonsense being seriously proposed while electric cars were still a future plan, not an actual product.
Idiocy. The sound of an oncoming car is as much tire-on-pavement and air movement around the vehicle as it is engine noise. Even if electric cars were totally silent, people would either learn to look or earn their Darwin Award.
It's safe to say the people advocating for this are also first in line to insist on better mufflers for auto engines. "Not too loud, not too quiet."

[markm23]

Downtown where the most interactions between bicycles, pedestrians, and cars occur, you can't hear normal engine noises or the car's motion, because there's too much noise from everywhere. So they want to add to the racket...

[Fuck you, Shikha (Nunya)]

For me, I'll take the Pacman sound.

[markm23]

LOL. But I'm afraid a texting addict would ignore even an approaching chomping noise. OTOH, if you put a few "Soylent Green Collections" trucks on the street with actual chompers on the front, we'd either convince people to start looking before crossing the street, or improve the species.

[Longtobefree]

NHTSA, like OSHA, should be shut down so Darwin can get back to work. Stupid people shouldn't live long enough to breed.

[$park? leftist poser]

Kazoos in the tailpipes.

[Radioactive]

my nickname in college...

[brec]

Tailpipes? What tailpipes?

[Juice]

Nowadays at low speeds, many ICE cars are totally silent. I can't hear the engine or anything.

[Brandybuck]

I don't think this should be the regulation, but I do understand it. Electric cars are too damned quiet. I've almost been backed into by a couple in a parking lot. It's not so big an issue that there needs to be a law though.

[Vernon Depner]

I vote for the sound effect of George Jetson's flying car.

[crufus]

The noisemaker is not a new thing. My 2013 hybrid has a noisemaker that activates when it is running on battery alone at low speed. Not very loud or annoying but you can hear it.

I think it was the decision of the automaker (Toyota) to avoid lawsuits.

[Gindjurra]

I want mine to sound like a TIE fighter or KITT.

[OBAFGKM]

"Rather, they're calling for two or four tones between 315 and 5000 hertz, separated in one-third-octave intervals."
Imagine the racket a busy intersection or mid-town traffic jam! It's going to be absurd beyond anybody's power of imagination.