1 The bigger problem is that they also drive.  How many times have you seen Chatty Cathy happily wandering along in the passing lane at 48 mph?  Totally unaware of the 30 cars piling up behind him/her.  Head-up-the-ass pedestrians is just culling the herd.  It's those who "drive" while yakking it up on the phone who are the real danger. 

2

Looks like Monty is stepping all over another cob-logger again.

At least his new post isn't a pretentious list of books he claims to have read

3 Notice the first link is pure speculation (could ... might ... may) without even a single reference like "Billy Joe Smith, 63, of Hahira, GA, who was hit by the only Prius in the county while checking his mail in 2008 ..." I'm calling bullshit on the "quiet hybrids are mowing down the blind!!!11!" meme right now. "Killer SUVs" are all played out, so the MFM needs a new horse to flog. On a related note, it's funny how all those Toyotas stopped suddenly accelerating about the time oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. I guess they got the problem fixed after all.

4 The plight of the blind is a genuinely tragic case of unintended technological consequences, and the slow response of the hybrid makers to it is shameful.

What are they supposed to do? Attach a set of tin cans on strings to the bumper after the car comes off the assembly line? I'm certainly no fan of the greeniemobiles, but sheesh.

5 The killer quiet hybrid issue has failed to catch on with the average Joe on the street for the simple reason that everyone has had the experience of hearing how quiet a new car is.  For the past 20 years or so, engine noise has been so minimal in any quality car at low speeds (at least when they are relatively new) that if this was going to be a real problem, it would already have happened.  Also, most reasonable people probably think reducing traffic noise is a GOOD thing.  As for the texting, chatting, clueless types...didn't your Mamas ever teach you to look both ways!

6 It's those who "drive" while yakking it up on the phone who are the real danger.

Especially if you ride a motorcycle, as do I. It's brutal out there.

7 The correct term for such people whether driving or attempting to walk is obliviots.

8 since when is it the responsibility of car manufacturers  to make sure the blind can hear the car?

Seems to me some bright blind engineer should make a device the detects ALL types of silent objects and alerts the user.

THAT is the american way, not weighing down a car and it's operator with the responsibility of making noise so the blind MIGHT hear them. That's nanny stateism and we have too much of that now.

I remember social scifi stories about how in the future those with talent would be given artificial handicaps so that those not as talented wouldn't feel bad about their lack.

What happened to exceptionalism? The nanny staters buried it under 5,000 pages of rules and regs deemed necessary so that some one's precious self-esteem isn't damaged by the realization that they are unskilled and untalented.

BOO HOO. Wah, wah. Mommy that mean ol driver there has a car that I can't hear. I might walk into it so make it sound noisy. wah, wah. Hey Mommy, I don't have enough money so how about you pick someone's pocket for some cash for me?

Wasn't it here that all you free market cowboys were all gungho cause the Reps stalled the unemployment compensation? Didn't I get some flack for chiding the Reps for drawing the line in the sand over it. (I never said they weren't right just they picked the wrong fight and the wrong way to go about it but that's the Reps -- the stupid party)

Let the free market reign. Survival of the fittest. Let's toss old people out when they're no longer useful. We're creating a race of weaklings. Always looking for some way to bring someone else down.


SEE WHAT I MEAN? It's hard to respect people that on one hand preach about how we should let the banks go bankrupt and let the market correct itself. Meantime let's create some new laws about protecting protected classes of people from their own foibles, faults and liabilities.  Kind of hard to talk out of both sides of one's mouth and make any sense.

9 In many states when these new fangled "horseless carriages" were first introduced they were required to have someone walk in front of them swinging a lantern to warn pedestrians, horses, and other unsuspecting types they were coming. The more things change the more they stay the same.

10 Just put a cow scoop in front of the hybrids.

11 I'd pay to watch some twitter idiot step into an open manhole.

12 Ok here's another thought...The Blind don't randomly walk out into the street. They cross at intersections with traffic lights and usually, since their blind, have a dog.

Just put a large bacon strip in front of the hybrids. The dogs will smell this and alert their party.

Alternatively since that would reduce the amount of bacon for the rest of us we can put these lights, let's say Red, Amber and Green to regulate traffic at intersections, then the silent vehicles would be forced to stop when the light was...red?..The blind could then cross.Safely.With a Dog.Without Bacon.

For the obliviodts,

Natural selection.

13 The safety/environmental goons want everything both ways. Cars are noisy things and must be made silent. But oooooh, quiet cars kill; we have to give them beepers (not to be confused with the tweeters incorporated in crosswalk signs).

In every case, the wackos' "cure" is more laws. People must be protected from themselves, while not losing the right to do things that endanger others.

As Chuckie Darwin might have said: "kill all the weaklings, and let God sort 'em out."

14 It's settled, then.  Hybrid cars are a deadly threat to public safety and need to be banned posthaste!

15 I can agree with Insomniac there; they should be banned.

Clearly, there are not enough blind pedestrians out there to warrant the use of the word "carnage".  But there are enough bicyclists.

They *do* pose a danger to bicyclists who follow the rules, riding with traffic, on the shoulder, at every intersection.

16

My idiot teenager walked straight into traffic with earbuds and iPod in place last month, aboiding being killed by only the slimmest of margins.  (He wrecked the mirror of the taxicab he collided with, but himself sustained no injuries.)

That situation strikes me as a lot more common than blind people not hearing hybrids. A few years back I had to slam hard on the brakes when another idiot teen , similarly distracted, steppped off the curb straight into my path.

I also think the "noiseless hybrid" thing will go away over time, as their drivers start to loudly whine and moan when they realize they're driving a machine with little resale value as soon as that $10K battery needs replacing.   

 

17 You can hear any car unless it's a magnetic-flying type. Because cars have tires. And tires make a clear and distinct sound when in contact with pavement.

18 Havin' a hard time getting on board with the idea that car companies increase their production costs by a significant amount, thereby driving up cost to the consumer to possibly prevent a tragedy that might happen every once in a great while in very few places.

19 SILENCE!

_{It keels you!}

20 The key is to look for the mouth hanging slightly open.  It's the sign of the distracted, the puzzled, or the adolescent male.  They don't have a clue.

21

The gene pool is in desperate need of a cleaning. We have so much Nanny Statism going on that millions of unfit mouth breathers are continuing to survive and bear their mutant, deficient offspring.

BRING BACK THE PRUDENT MAN PRICIPLE!

Ever since the courts rejected that tennet of law we've been suffering a plague of idiots. To prove the point, think of the McDonald's coffee lady, the clowns who picked up a running lawn mower to trim the hedge and lost all their fingers, etc., etc., etc. QED.

22 They *do* pose a danger to bicyclists who follow the rules, riding with traffic, on the shoulder, at every intersection.

Posted by: joe at July 05, 2010 10:15 AM (/4mzW)

Excluding, of course, the "Direct Action" idiots who were riding their bicycles en masse through main roads, blowing through red lights and pretty much violating every rule of the road you could name for someone on a bicycle.  They needed to be run over with a cow-catcher-equipped semi, then backed over for good measure.

23

Posted by: Juicer at July 05, 2010 10:23 AM (sGJ4L)

I'm going to disagree here. Yes, tires do make a noise, but if there is a lot more (and louder) ambient noise, then no, you won't hear them. I've had electric cars buzz by me back in the day, and if I hadn't been looking, I would have been hit. Of course that's the point. Look! And remember they are coming AT you, so sound can kind of trail.

Ok here's another thought...The Blind don't randomly walk out into the street. They cross at intersections with traffic lights and usually, since their blind, have a dog.

Funny story. When I first visited D.C. I was walking on the Mall one morning. A group of squirrels were sort of hopping along in front of me. There was a cross street. I ll be damned, but the squirrels stopped at the curb. The light turned green, and they all hopped accross.

I just started laughing.

Natural selection, I guess...

 

24

[crap!]

that was supposed to read "PRINCIPLE", the damn autogarbler was turned up again

25
"Seems to me some bright blind engineer should make a device the detects ALL types of silent objects and alerts the user."

Already been done. It's call a "horn".

26

Already been done. It's call a "horn".

What's that other thing they use? "Proximity device"?

Which could kind of make for a bad scene when the blind person blows up and takes the car with him.

OTOH, less blind persons and electric cars.

Upside, less liberals.

Downside, market shares for white canes decline.

27 Dudes. Ever hear of a little thing called evolution?

A few generations of electric cars and we'll be a race of fighter pilots. Heads on a swivel, eyes on the threats, hands on the controls.

28 I've almost been nailed a few times in the parking lots at UC Berkeley.  You can't hear a damn Prius coming up from behind and the idiot liberals don't use their horns. They're elite.  They're entitled.  They just run you over.

29 A few years ago near here a guy was hitchhiking in a blizzard, earbuds in, arm out, walking along the shoulder with his back to traffic. A van waffled him, and when the coroner was checking his effects, he found the tape in the guy's walkman was Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party.

30 Greetings: I think that hot babes have to be added to the list of dangers also. Back in the mid-60s, I was walking down the avenue when a hot babe on the other side of the street caught both my eyes. After feasting those same eyes on all of her moving parts, I turned to look in my direction of travel just as I walked into the pole of an alternate-side-of-the-street parking sign. Seven seconds later, an egg-sized swelling began to form on the center of my forehead. I have been suffering in silence, lo these many years, waiting for a proper progressive government to come to my rescue. All hail Obama.

31

There isn't ANYTHING that Hybrid car makers can do.  Damn, good ole gas guzzling Amercan made SUV's still run over pedestrians in NYC while said pedestrians are busy on their cell phones or texting.

Cell phones CAN be a blessing in any sort of Emergency; texting is nothing more than a way to be "social" without actually, you know, having to MEET someone in  person.

32 If liberals really believed in evolution, they'd let it work and weed out the stupid. Of course, maybe they realize that they would be a large share of the culls.

33 Why, yes, I am a misanthrope. What was the first clue, Sherlock?

34 As somebody who has checked his e-mail on a laptop while in a crosswalk I'm probably not someone to throw the first stone. I don't get the bit about quiet cars though. All those horns were perfectly audible...

35 "Already been done. It's call a "horn"." If you use the horn on a Prius the car slows down...

36 since when is it the responsibility of car manufacturers  to make sure the blind can hear the car?

When cars became silent, and society litigious.

37 If I'm too busy playing with my cell phone to pay attention to traffic and other surroundings, then I politely request that one of you mow me down whether you're in a silent Prius or a gas-guzzling, lifted F350. Please. Before I breed and lower society's average IQ another dozen points.

38

I nominate @38 by Richard McEnroe for thread winner! ROFL

I'm going along reading all this semi-serious chatter and then... BAM! the mental picture of the words pops right up and I'm spewing my adult beverage.Thanks Richard for the laugh.

39 It's the other hybrid drivers who are texting that worry me the most.  Personal experience trumps press conjecture.

40 Natural selection has gone away !  A lot more of those self absorbed oxygen theifs need to get splattered while texting or talking on the phone .. That is the only way we can get these "saftey hazards" off the road... I think a 500 dollar fine for the first time offence would open a few eyes...Have it double on each offence .. After 3 times they get banned from driving for life...

41 Well.. the proposed solution is usually some kind of tone from speakers on the car. Blind people are hardly to blame for the proliferation of stupid over-heavy 'safe' hybrid cars. Tyre noise isn't really a solution- hybrids generally have not-very-wide (unsafe, and quieter) tyres with low-rolling-resistance (lower friction, less grip) rubber compounds that reduce that noise, especially in comparison to other cars on the road. Anyone who drives a Prius deserves a shame beeper anyhoo. Not that there aren't better solutions.