[Willie Green]

Silent, but deadly.

[traumer]

Or these....

[FrankR]

[njslim]

Around here have idiots walk out in middle of street
without looking - almost daring someone to hit them

Few less morons clogging up gene pool....

[CharlesWayneCT]

Makes you wonder how these people have avoided being run over by bicycles all these years.

I’ll believe this is a problem when someone presents an actual STATISTIC showing that these new vehicles are disproportionately represented in accidents involving the blind.

Meanwhile, maybe someone should ask how the deaf people manage not to be plastered all over our streets. It seems that some people actually know how not to step in front of moving things without having to HEAR them.

I’ve been watching this issue for a while now, and while I’m not doing a lot of research, I’ve yet to see a story that actually tells of a blind person being HIT by a hybrid. Just stories about how dangerous it is and how many of them WILL be hit.

[GeronL]

I’d rather have silent cars than hear the bass thumping from a quarter mile away.

Ban radios and speakers in cars!

[stylin19a]

they just threw this in for no apparent reason

More than 4,300 pedestrians were killed in 2008, according to the most recent data available.

1. how many were blind?
2. how many were killed by hybrids?
3. how many blind pedestrians were killed by hybrids?
4. how many of the dead blind were also deaf ?

[CharlesWayneCT]

BTW, a search on "blind people hit by electric cars" will show that people have been TALKING about the "danger" for years now; there are stories from 2005 about this hazard.

On the other hand, no headling "Blind person hit by electric car".

There is this gem of a story: Silent cars sneaking up on pedestrians:

NFB President Marc Maurer said that “I’ve had probably 25 blind people in the country tell me they’ve almost been hit by these cars.” He further added that vehicles brushed up against some or crushed their white canes.

I wonder about the danger of hybrid cars being hit by these white canes when they are stopped at intersections. I'm guessing a bicyclist being whacked by one of these blind canes while waiting for a green light could be seriously impaired.

Maybe we should hang sound-devices on blind people, to warn us when they might whack us with their white canes.

[discostu]

Peds need to pay attention, the tonnage game is against them. Back in my walking days I always had headphones on, none of my walkmans ever knew a volume other than all the way up, when it was a Black Sabbath day I couldn’t hear a semi at 10 feet. But I understood I’d limited my inputs and used my eyes to check all directions when coming up to driveways or cross streets.

[DoughtyOne]

Folks, I wish I could get you to agree to resist this, but evidently that's not in the cards...

What is our primary duty as pedestrians?  Isn't it to look both ways before entering a vehicle through-way?  Yes..., it is.  And yet here we are talking about a problem that already has an obvious solution, as if it didn't exist.  If you're walking into the street, look around.  If you're walking out from behind your car in a parking lot, look around.  If you're talking to a friend that is with you, look around.  Don't ignore traffic.

Those of you who try to determine if there is a car there or not with sound alone, what do you do on days when there is a 15 mph wind?  If silent cars cause a problem when there is no wind, then even cars that can be heard are a problem when the wind blows leaves or whirls around existing vehicles to drown out the sound of vehicles.  So if silent cars are a real problem, then every car is a real problem too often for pedestrian safety.  If silent cars must have some form of noise production to protect the public, then every car must have one so that when atmospheric conditions warrant it, pedistrians will be protected.

What person wants to live in a world with every vehicle producing a chirping noise in parking losts or even on city streets just to protect people who won't look out for themselves?  And don't tell me that natural engine sounds would fix the problem.  If there's some wind, it won't.

As for people who have problems with sight, drivers are already trained to keep them in mind.  On city streets people with white cains, or a seeing eye dogs are quite noticable.

At the present time in our nation, we have city streets with huge bumps built-in, so that vehicles will either reduce to a near stop to cross them, or suffer severe damage to your car.  When driving down these streets at 2:00 a.m., there aren't any pedestrians within a mile, yet every vehicle still has to deal with these bumps.  Places with no pedestrians 99.99% of the time, still have bumps.

We have grown into a society that is helpless.  Big mamma government has to protect us, and the absurdity to which she has to stoop to do it, is seriously troublesome.

I can't keep my kid from walking out in front of cars, so damnit, all drivers must be made to pay.  I can't look both ways, so damnit, all quiet vehicles must be made to pay.

Pretty soon we'll need a government supplied nanny to help us out of the front door and to our destination, to protect us.  Oh that isn't really true, they'll just enact hundreds of new laws to do it.

Today in my town it takes about five minutes to traverse less than a mile across town when there is no traffic.  Why?  Because there's a stop sign or a traffic light on every single corner in town.  Why?  Well to protect me of course.

Protect me less Madam Government.

[Richard Kimball]

On one episode of South Park, Cartman said he was going to kill himself.

The next day he showed up and the other kids said, "Hey. I thought you were going to kill yourself."

"I tried. Locked myself in the garage all night with the motor running. Hybrids just can't get the job done."

[ModelBreaker]

LOL. This is similar to when cars first started being driven. A number of municipalities passed ordinances that a person on foot swinging a lantern had to walk in front of the car so that the car would not spook horses. I suspect carriage manufacturers were behind the ordinances.