No matter what happens in the world there is always going to be somebody who is offended by it. We are trying to curb green house gas emmitions with hybrid cars. Sounds harmless, well thats the problem. The lack of sound generated by hybrid cars is creating alot of noise from the National Federation of the Blind. The NFB did a study that showed Hybrid cars pose a larger threat to blind people or other people who are not paying a attention to their surroundings because they make less noise than other cars.
How on earth are we going to get anywhere, if everyone complains about everything? It seems to me that despite the potential gas saving and environmental saving insentives, hybrid cars still havent caught on with the masses or to an extent car manufacterers. Why not have cars that make less noise? Luxury cars have always been advertised as quiter rides, why not use the same to market Hybrid Cars.
I sincerly hope that in the interest of the environment nobody gives in to the NFB. Its great to be considerate to the disadvataged, but if the world is covered in water the blind are going to die too. As a group we need to demand from car manufacters more efficient vehicles, with less emmissions that are much quieter!
just going out on a limb here, imagine a world where cars just made less noise? imagine a world where its not such a big deal to live near a major highway or in a city because the cars make no noise and no pollution? what a wonderful world that would be! As for the blind . . . we will figure something out.
Yeah, I'm not certain that blind people being less likely to hear it coming is a reasonable argument at all against hybrid vehicles. We don't standardize our lives around things like that, we help when disabled people require it, and when we can. We don't divert our attention away from real problems in favor of small personal ones. I'm all for the little guy, but I'm not for this complaint from the NFB. Im certain they could make better use of their organization.
You are so right…… everyone has something to complain about. No matter what someone will say is not right but I agree with you. Save the world as a whole and start demanding lower emission cars.
Also do lower emission cars really cost $25,000 more to make??? I don’t think so. So why does a new Hybrid cost so much more than a new regular gasoline car??? Their needs to be standards in pricing as well, so that the consumer is not gouged.
The National Federation of the Blind is not opposed to hybrid cars or other more environmentally friendly vehicles, nor are we necessarily opposed to cars being quieter. However, a Toyota Prius, when operating in electric mode, makes virtually no sound at all. If cars made no sound at all, blind pedestrians would find it difficult to travel; there is a difference between quieter cars and cars that don't make any sound at all. We are trying to get in front of this problem while there are still relatively few hybrid cars on the road, so that by the time there are more a solution will have been devised. You may disagree with our current proposed solution, but please don't mislead people by claiming that we are anti-environmentalist.
whats wrong with cars that make no noise? isn't that an incentive to by a hybrid. clearly these environmentally friendly cars have not caught on with the public and the manufacturers the way that they should. companies need to put billions of dollars into creating hybrids that are efficient and reliable. They also need to market their product properly in order to make enough profit to encourage themselves and other competing auto makers to research and sell more hybrids. everyone ones a quieter car, and no noise is better than less noise and sells better too. the hybrid cars lack many of the appeals of their gas gussling cousins but one of the only materialistic characteristics they may have is their sound. auto makers are already reluctant to help out the environment do not give them more fuel!
Hybrid cars are good for the environment, but so is people walking when they can, instead of driving. Blind people are de facto environmentalists; we walk whenever we can do so instead of using public transportation or hiring a cab; we use public transit when we must, including environmentally friendly solutions like trains and subways; and unless we have families, we don't tend to buy cars, hybrid or otherwise. We are simply asking that hybrid manufacturers do not make it difficult for us to walk instead of drive. If you want totally silent vehicles, what is your solution for blind pedestrians?
sometimes in life you cannot satisfy everybody, actually most of the time in life you cannot satisfy everybody, because a couple of blind people MIGHT be hurt because they cannot hear hybrid cars by no means outway he benefits of a silent car.
The hybrid car has been around for a couple of years now and i have yet to hear of this pandemic of blind people dieing because they are being hit by silent cars. remember there is also a driver in the car who we should have a little faith in not to hit crossing pedestrians.
Frankly as a non blind person i find it difficult to understand what life must be like. I also cannot understand how a blind person knows when to cross the street, whether or not there is noise. if there is a four way intersection how does a blind person know which direction of traffic is going? do they listen for it? i find that hard to believe. maybe in the suburbs when cars coming from all sides is less common but not any semi- frequented intersection.
at what locations are all these hords of blind people consistintly crossing the street relying solely on the sound of the oncoming vehicles?
Yes, blind people do cross many intersections, including four-way stops, by listening for the direction in which traffic is flowing. Blind people have been traveling safely this way for quite a long time now. The fact that you are not aware of blind people traveling safely simply means that you do not know any blind people or don't happen to have seen a blind pedestrian. Blind people are about one percent of the population, and hybrids are about one percent of the vehicles on the road. This is probably the only reason that you have not heard of accidents involving blind pedestrians and hybrid cars; right now, it takes a pretty big coincidence for a blind person and a hybrid car to be in the same intersection. However, as more hybrids are on the street, there will be more accidents, involving the blind as well as other pedestrians. Intersections are not the only problem. In a quiet neighborhood, a blind person walking along the sidewalk will not be able to hear a Prius backing out of a driveway.
Like most of the public, you don't understand how it is that blind people travel, and clearly that's a public education gap we'll have to fill. You also clearly don't believe that every human life has value, if it's worth it to you to see a few blind guys get killed so that you can have your environmentally clean, noise-free world. I guess some people are just so devoted to a cause that they refuse to see the down side of anything of which they are in favor.
Why have you have resorted to unfounded personal attacks against my and my beliefs rather than attack my view of an issue?
To say "You also clearly don't believe that every human life has value" is outrageous. What is the danger of global warming? umm maybe hundreds of thousands of deaths and displacements world wide, and you want me to alter my position to be concerned about 1% of the population?
You know i did not know that there was 1% blind rate, and you further illustrated my point with the car backing out of the driveway. Do you think that in this rare case of Hybrid and Blind person meeting that the not blind driver, who usually looks in the direction he or she is driving in will not notice this passing pedestrian blind or not? I back out of parking spaces and driveways and plenty of other places and i have ACTUALLY STOPPED for people who were behind my car. what i preposterous idea right? i guy driving a car not hitting people walking by!
I do understand that nothing is perfect and that is my point. Sometimes to win in chess you need to sacrifice the queen, and in this case we are not sacrificing a queen we are endangering a pawn. thats a risk I as a person who values human life on a grand scale am willing to take.
If you want to get personal, based on the statement you made about my "environmentally clean, noise-free world" i would say its not farfetched to say it is you who do not value human life. you are not concerned with the threat of world wide mayhem as a result of climate change and elevated world temperatures. maybe we have failed to educate you on the dangers of a "dirty" environment. furthermore silent cars SELL BETTER! thus giving reason to companies to make more o by the way they are also good on gas. . . where does gas come from. . . Terror Alaska, texas oo ya our good friends and allies venezuela and Iran, Iraq, Sunni Terror funders Saudi Arabia, Russia. More Silent Hybrids means less gas revenues and demand. less demand lower prices, less volume of purchase means much less money to people who fund other people who kill us. And i value the lives of our soldiers and the civilians who get killed as collateral and in terror attacks in their own countries. but you just keep on believing that i do not value human life because im not gravely concerned about Blind people and hybrids.
You specifically said that the possibility of blind people getting hurt is not an argument against hybrid cars. In other words, if a blind guy has to get run over to save the world from global warming, so be it. Furthermore, you have personally attacked me by claiming (1) that I am uneducated about the danger of global warming and (2) that I don't care about it. As I said, I'm not opposed to hybrid cars, personally, nor is the NFB. We are suggesting a design change to hybrid cars that will make them safer for pedestrians. You are, by contrast, insisting that our suggested design change will result in everybody drowning as the seas rise. That's a ridiculous logical leap. None of the environmental benefits of hybrid cars have to be sacrificed in order to protect blind pedestrians and others, so your argument that the safety of the blind has to be endangered in order to protect the environment is simply ludicrous. Furthermore, to make such an argument is in my opinion irresponsible. Now, if it were impractical or impossible for hybrid car manufacturers to accommodate the blind in order to put their vehicles on the road, then you might have a point. But it isn't, so why put blind people in danger just because some people would like cars to be quieter, when the real issue is putting cars on the road that don't pollute the environment? Also, your argument about drivers has no merit. I'm glad you're a responsible driver, but you and I both know that not all people are, and somebody who is drunk, on drugs, or just plain careless is just as likely to be driving a hybrid as anyone else, especially if more of these vehicles are manufactured.
There's this wonderful Amrican tradition called compromise. As a blind person, I'm more than willing to support the environmental agenda, as long as doing so doesn't endanger my own personal safety. Selfish of me, I know, but then again, I'd like to enjoy this clean, brave new world myself, if you don't mind. And you will get your cleaner environment, it just might be just slightly noisier than you imagined. sounds reasonable to me. So how's about not acting like the fate of the world depends on having the blind keep our mouths shut abour our concerns?
I did not say you didn't value human life. I said you didn't value *every* human life. Blind people are not pawns on a chessboard; we are human beings. Your position is that blind people will have to sacrifice our safety and independence in the name of environmentalism, that our concerns should not be heeded because we are a minority. That's a weird position for a progressive to take. What happened to the idea that society has obligations to people who are not protected by their majority status?Finally, I don't think the silence of Prius hybrids is their main selling point, and that hybrid cars being silent is critical to putting more of them on the road and thus saving the environment. I realize that there are noise pollution concerns, but the blind are not arguing that every vehicle needs to sound like a 1958 muscle car without a muffler. There's a difference between sound and noise. Finally, and after this I'm done, let's not forget about cyclists, and small children who are told to "stop, look, and listen" before they cross the street. And as the baby-boom generation hits senior citizenhood, lots of them will be losing their vision due to macular degeneration and the aging process. So in the final analysis, we're not even talking about one percent of the population, but significantly more than that, and some of them our most vulnerable citizens. But I guess us blind guys are supposed to stay at home, instead of being productive members of society, so everybody else can zoom around in cars we can't hear.
to try to accomodate everyone, how much noise is sufficient for people to hear it, because my main concern is the business aspect of the hybrid. there needs to be potential for growth in order for companies to manufacture and sell more hybrids, silence in a car is just another area that makes the hybrid car attractive to a wider demographic of people. so my question is how much noise does the prius have to make that you would be comfortable, but would still be something worth buying? . . by the way how on earth do you use a computer if you are blind?
I agree 100%. It seems like nothing can get accomplished without someone getting hurt. I think thats one reason why the people in this country don't know what to do. If you think about it, someone who wants to make this happen to become a better person for example, and then theres another that thinks doing it would make her worse.
The question of how much noise is enough is a valid one, and one to which I don't have a ready answer. Tests will have to be done to determine what noise level is safe for pedestrians and at the same time not annoying to the driver of the vehicle or to the public. First of all, though, we have to get car manufacturers to acknowledge that this is a problem. At present, we have not been able even to meet with any of them to express our concerns.
I agree with you that this is a delicate balancing act. But until technologies that make cars smarter and therefore able to avoid accidents by themselves, including pedestrian accidents, become more advanced, I don't know of a more practical solution than more sound. The NFB Committee on Automobile and pedestrian Safety has discussed all kinds of options, including some kind of transmitter in these vehicles that would send a signal to a device worn by the blind person, but then how would you get such devices distributed, what about folks who couldn't afford one, etc. We are still open to any alternative suggestions, but we've put forward the one we think will work the best.
I use a computer by way of a special software package that allows what is displayed on a computer screen to be read out loud in synthesized speech or displayed in Braille on a piece of equipmen that can fit under a computer keyboard. I usually just use the speech component, though I read Braille very well. So, technology has solved all kinds of problems for the blind and it may yet solve this one.
Sorry this debate got a little personal, which was my fault. I was just a little annoyed that you seemed to think this problem could simply be ignored. But as you said in your first post, we will probably figure something out.
So the other day i drove my friends prius for the first time. i have to say because of our debate as i was getting ready to start the car, i was getting ready to listen to how silent it was. It was so silent that i did not know the car was on! i only noticed the ready sign in the dashboard indicating to me that the car was ready to drive. As i drove the car i noticed a couple of things. first off all it was one of the most fun cars to drive. secondly the only sound i heard the whole time was the tires on the pavement and the wind! now that was a total pleasure it made less noise than any luxury car i have ever been in. i was very impressed and it made me want to buy the car (which i hope i will one day have the chance to do). but it also made me understand that if one was relying on the sound of cars to tell if they were coming they might not hear it. i just have no idea how to solve that problem without sacrificing the edge it had.
and sorry i got personal back. .