When things get ridiculous they tend to become hilarious.
Or, pathetic – and aggravating.
Example: The government wants to require that hybrid and electric cars be fitted with devices that make them noisy, so that the blind will be aware of their presence. See here. Apparently, there is an epidemic of blind – whoops, visually impaired – people being run over by hybrid and electric vehicles.
Well, no.
Hard data is hard to come by, but I did find a 2009 NHTSA Technical Report (here) on the subject. According to this document, over a seven year period (2000-2007) 72 pedestrians were “involved” in crashes with hybrid-electric vehicles. Another 48 bicyclists were struck by a hybrid-electric car (or the reverse) over the same period.
The study does not break down how many of the 77 were blind.
One assumes none of the 48 cyclists were.
I could not find more recent data, but unless there has been an Vesuvius-like eruption of the number of blind folks being flattened by hybrids, it is probably still a very small number.
But the individual cases, when they do occur, make for highly combustible Oh-the-humanity! media coverage. Just as the individual cases of an addled, sail fawn-gabbling parent inadvertently backing their car over a toddler did … and became the source waters of yet another Safety Jihad that led to yet another obnoxious, needless and grossly expensive new law, this one requiring that every single new vehicle be fitted with a rear back-up camera. Which all new cars now have – and which we all get to pay for, whether we even have a toddler to potentially run over being entirely beside the point.
Now, the jihadis are ululating that the hundreds of thousands of hybrid and electric cars sold annually be fitted with noisemakers – waterproof speakers, which will eruct some sort of faux IC engine sound, at an estimated cost to the car industry (that is, to you and me) of $23 million in the first year … because a dozen or maybe a score of blind people have either been run over by – or walked into – a hybrid or electric car.
The latter was italicized for good reason.
Just as as backing up over Baby arguably involved negligence on the part of the parent/driver as much as a “defect” with the car (ought not parents of toddlers be obliged to be aware where their toddlers are at all times or at least, before putting the gear selector into Reverse?) so also the assignation of at least some of the blame for incidents “involving” the blind and hybrid-electric cars lies with the the blind themselves.
That is to say, does blindness absolve the blind person from taking care to not place his body in the path of a hybrid or electric car?
Is it entirely up to the owner of the hybrid-electric car to not only pay attention to his driving and exercise due care, but also to pay for an annoying gewgaw to alert, let us say, a jaywalking or oblivious blind person to the presence of his vehicle? If the blind person is crossing the street legally, then traffic – hybrid and otherwise – ought to be stopped. If, on the other hand, he is crossing against traffic, which has the legal right-of-way, then how is it the hybrid driver’s fault if the blind guy suddenly appears in his path?
In any case, this whole business is much ado about … nothing.
Despite the minimal – the almost nonexistent – actual body count, NHTSA has postulated that a hypothetical 2,800 pedestrian and cyclist injuries (not deaths) would be avoided by imposing $23 million in first-year implementation costs on the car industry.
That is, on car buyers.
NHTSA – government, generally – loves to confect victims in the absence of actual ones. It helps to justify the jihad. It’s slightly embarrassing to insist that $23 million be spent – that is, imposed – on the car industry, on car buyers, because less than a 100 actual people (a fraction of whom are blind people) over say a seven-year period have had some kind of unfortunate interaction with a hybrid or electric car.
So let’s say 2,800.
The cost per incident is still astronomical. And thus, farcical. Lives are infinitely valuable to those who possess them. But imposing infinite costs for the sake of others’ lives is perhaps something that sounds sweet in theory but is madness economically. The plain fact is we do place a value on lives – ours as well as others.
This is called cost-benefit analysis.
Certainly, it is tragic when a blind person is struck by a car – hybrid or otherwise. But $23 million to prevent it? It might be cheaper to just walk.
But if we must be saddled with waterproof speakers in our hybrids, perhaps we’ll at least be allowed to choose the soundtrack. How about the sound of a solid lifter-cammed 1968 L-88 427 Chevy big block? The blind – and pedestrians generally – would surely notice that.
But then, someone will bitch about the noise.
And it’ll be time for another jihad… .
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Sooooo…this explains the rap music fans who share their love for the medium by blasting it out of their car’s front grill, using the cheapest speakers in the known universe.
They’re just being safety-conscious. They’re doing that not because they’re self-absorbed assholes, but out of kind consideration for their visually-impaired neighbors. They’re way ahead of the curve on this particular issue.
lol people do that? Install speakers behind their grill?
Hey Eric, I love, love your website/blog. Have been coming here for several years and really enjoy your articles. I have learned so much reading your articles. (I’m a middle aged housewife with too much time on my hands.) My husband is frequently on the road. He has to drive I-75 between Alabama and Kentucky every two weeks. He gets behind a lot of clovers going over those mountains. Just when he’s trying to get his speed up or maintain it (to go over the mountain) a clover will slow him down. He suggested that maybe you ought to make some stickers that say, ‘I am a clover”, to stick on clover cars!
Anyway, do enjoy your site and all of your hard work. Enjoy reading the comments too from the ‘regulars’, i.e., eightsouthman—shout-out to you!
The sapiens I live with all looked at the ads, made great plans. And then executed none of them. Of those in our immediate circle who did go, most balked at the lines, and just moved on empty handed.
Times are tough (well in a relative not absolute sense, anyways.)
Best thing to buy on Black Friday is nothing. Especially when it only costs you $5. Such a bargain, for such a great product.
http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/27/cards-against-humanity-has-made-over-54k-selling-nothing-on-black-friday/
I have an electric bike. I outfitted my bike with an annoying horn which screeches (no melodic sounds here) at people who are strolling along the bike path with their baby carriages. There is no mistaking the sound for some agreeable little bell tinkling joyfully at the public announcing my presence like tea time. Nope. My horn screeches at people. They turn their heads towards me and pay attention.
A couple of years ago, I had been summoned to my wife’s workplace on a mission to rescue her sail fawn which had slipped into a watery grave. I hopped on my bike, was less than a half kilometer/quarter mile from home, hit my top speed of about 32kph when a moron decided she would jaywalk across the street in front of me. I immediately started honking, and she watched me approach her as she set a collision course to intersect with me. She literally lept smiling in front of me as I swerved into the curb to avoid her, honking all the while. I knocked her down and I went sailing.
This left me unconcious, four broken ribs, a cracked helmet (thank god for that) and damage to my vehicle. Later the idiot prosecuter denied me my day in court because, as she said, pedestrians have never caused an accident. I asked her, then why was there a law that specifically sanctioned pedestrians who cause accidents?
I never received a penny in compensation. I had to dismantle the twisted remains of my bike, find some mechanical shop to straighten (more or less) my axle, and pay for it, and endure about three months of recovery for my broken ribs.
So, if they make you install a noisemaker on your vehicle, make sure it’s as nasty as possible. The people who cause accidents will love it so they’ll be aware of every second of their imprudence.
Unbelievable,just unbelievable.Has anyone noticed when someone crosses in front of you now the contempt they have for you.When I cross the street ,I go fast.Not people now they go as slow as possible and try and stare you down.”I have the right of way and I am gonna take full advantage” The best is at night they cross and don’t look because they have “the right of way”That is not gonna help when they get run over because nobody sees them.People just suck and are getting worse .Just look at the fights at all the malls today to save a little money that they don’t have to spend in the first place
Hi Getcha,
Yeah, I have noticed this also. I suppose it is the training. I learned civility and so try to practice it. This includes trying to not impede cars, whether on foot or in a car myself.
I don’t grok this business of “staring down” cars and trying to show who’s boss… or rather, who’s the biggest asshole.
The best at night is the dumb hood rat in all black who didn’t even look twice. (It’s possible he and his companion were drunk, but still…)
Smile or something, dude. No street lights, no cars on your side of the road (couldn’t leverage oncoming headlights), and you have to wear all-black tracksuits or something? You is black as midnight, man…. Wake up!
I saw movement from some white piping or something, and got the driver to stop, and the monkeys ambled across the road, NEVER EVEN REACTED TO THE CAR…. Hammered, stupid, arrogant, or some combination of the above.
Speaking of dumb street signs: We sure do have a lot of them!
The horse and buggy sign with another sign just below it that says: “Share The Road” as if the reason for the horse and buggy/ automobile accidents are due to road greed!
Or how about the falling rock signs? The smart-ass in me gets tempted to stand at the edge of the road peering upward through binoculars toward the rocks on the edge of the cliff.
Or how about the “Pass With Care” signs? The smart-ass in me wants to add the word ‘out’ behind the word ‘with’ on those signs.
Or the “No Jake Brake” signs. The smart-ass in me wants to find Jake Brake parts, and hang them on the sign so that it now has them.
Or those giant signs by exit ramps which say “State Police Headquarters”. Hmmm, Yeah, I can just imagine tourists that travel across the country in RVs to go see all of the State Police Headquarters buildings.
Or the “No Center Stripe” signs that one reads after already noticing the lack of stripes on the road. Perhaps a center stripe should be painted downward on the sign itself, covering up the word ‘No’ completely.
Or those pathetic highway construction signs with stick figure children saying “Please Slow Down. My Daddy Works Here”. Smart ass solution: How about placing signs that say “Please drive recklessly because none of the workers here have children”.
Brian
Oh, and I strongly believe that most stop signs should me removed and disposed of properly. Yield signs are more appropriate at intersections in most cases.
Stop signs? Oh yeah, I sorta remember those. But hustling 40 tons will blind you to stop signs. The worst thing a big rig can do is stop when no traffic is coming. When you stop, you then have to attempt to START again and then whatever speed you might have had you have to regain instead of doing your best to get up to some speed to avoid being a hazard, and not of Hazard county. I have never understood a stop sign from a purely traffic safety point of view. It’s only a means of collecting revenue as I see it.
A couple months back a DOT guy, actually a decent person doing an indecent job, stopped me, in a very bad spot. I tried to speed the process up and finally told him the place I had to unload was less than 1/4 mile and had a large area he could do whatever he wanted without blocking traffic and putting us both as risk. He was smart enough to take my suggestion so we both left there and tore off(west Tx. speak)for a better spot. I was only 40 feet or so from a stop sign and when I could see down the access road there was no traffic I did what I always do, grabbed another gear and hauled ass to get into the lane going as fast as possible so if somebody exited the interstate I’d be going much faster as opposed to going much slower(this is laborious I realize). But you see where I’m coming from. A vehicle, esp. a heavily loaded big rig, is much safer when doing 20 mph than 5 mph. I ran the stop sign, not even thinking about a DOT guy behind me, and gained speed as fast as I could so I could pull over and quite literally, educate the guy. He was very nice and told me he appreciated me telling him what was wrong with the trailer I was using. I didn’t even try to deny it since it was obvious to anyone who could see level that it was fucked up. We stopped and I showed him what was wrong. it was only later I thought he never even mentioned my blowing through the stop sign since it was the safe thing to do.
I don’t know, you just can’t teach this. You can either understand differences in traffic speed or you’re just an idiot, like clover. We worked it out and he allowed me to go back to the yard and fix the problem. it was nice of him to do that since I left with it fucked up and was, not to my liking, using it that way. To be honest, what could I say? It was a dangerous trailer and if it had been mine, would never have been on the road. This is the very reason his complaint was legitimate and my boss is a fucking idiot. When I owned my own rigs, I would never have even considered operating shit equipment like this. The DOT officer was not only worried about public safety but my safety as well. While he overestimated the safety hazard to me, he probably didn’t underestimate it for the average dumbass who might have been operating the rig. I was compensating for that trailer but truth be said, there is only so much compensating that can be done and then you have a bad wreck, hopefully with me being the only casualty. I won’t make excuses. My boss should be hung for shit like this…..and I hate cops……. There is no excuse for being a dumbass who doesn’t care what happens to other people. BTW, all it took was lifting the trailer, taking a bolt out, dropping the suspension back to where it should have been and installing the bolt. Of course that wasn’t a true fix. The trailer had been wrecked and not properly repaired. I won’t get over it because the onus was on me, I was/am driving it. And that trailer fucked up Wed. again and is now back to where it’s been before. I’ll fix it once again next week before I use it again. Of course, it will do this again and I’ll have to fix it again. Brian, where are you? I need a new job.
The problem is that some of us who do what is legal even when it is stupid know it’s stupid but the threat of needing to deal with cops trumps the alternative.
You’d love the “WARNING LOW FLYING OWLS” road signs in my suburban area.
Hey Eric,
You might want to look at this.
https://www.hum.com/
I didn’t need a noise maker on my old ’67 Malibu sleeper and got ticketed for various things just for the way it sounded at idle. It was essentially, the SBC version of an L 88, 12-1 CR and the elusive Duntov solid lifter cam. It didn’t need no stinkin beeper. You could be deaf and still jump when it fired.
Wish I’d thought to tell those coppers always stopping me the sound was to alert people so they didn’t get run over by the silent whirring of the gears. Hell, that musta been the raison d’etre of that rock crusher……safety…….re: Two Lane Blacktop
that makes a lot of sense…. motorcycles are, at law, limited by the noice output standards applying to cars and trucks. But they, large numbers of them being rebels at heart, have concocted this faux “safey issue” alledging that the NOISE of their exhaust is a safety feature. They’ve adopted the rant ‘loud pipes save lives”. Well, maybe… one or two per year. When those pipes are so loud it HURTS when I am inside my car and the hawg is a hundred yards in front of me, I’ve got the windows rolled up….. that’s NOT a safety issue. BUT…. you could tell that copper next time that the exhaust sound helps to make your presence and location known to other motorists round about you.
Had a DPS stop me for the alleged “loud mufflers” bs once(had new mufflers). It was obviously because I had long hair. My car could be construed to be loud but not even close to the truck I drove down that same road that DPS had never noticed being driven, esp at night, by a long haired devil. So I asked him why he chose to pick on me in a car when I regularly drove down that road in a semi that made much more noise. He said it was because the semi just made more noise and couldn’t be helped. I pointed out the same was true for my car. The mufflers weren’t loud, just louder than his. He was a really nice guy and let me go……fuck him. If I hadn’t had my GF with me I would have simply outrun his stupid ass and been done with it. Too bad a Harley didn’t come by and knock our ears out during the conversation.
Now I regularly have Dodge Cummins pickups with no mufflers and some with gas engines(seems like this is a Dodge thing, rarely another brand pickup with those really loud exhausts)pass by and they’re twice as loud as that ten axle crane doing its WOT thing.
In west Tx. it depends on upwind or downwind whether you can even hear a vehicle. Obviously, we need to do something about the high wind. EPA is working on it I’m sure. Is it quieter on the downwind side of a windmill farm? I haven’t thought to take my decibel meter with me.
I’m sure some lawyer could wax all superior about your account of this encounter, giving you the inside baseball about all the nuances and issues here involved that a layman such as you, are woefully ignorant of.
But you rightly, have the wisdom to be unimpressed, keeping firm your understanding, that it’s all garbage.
The same garbage and flim flam that is all politics. And finance. And corporate financial statements, which you rightly called out for being lies wrapped in enigmas clovered in gigatons of manure, and then lightly coated in candy coated festive nonsense packaging once a year for the share of a pig and a poke holders of record.
Yes, I’ve been inside the castle walls of local businesses, such as insurance companies and the like. But what does any of it really mean. Or really does anything denominated in green monopoly money, really mean if anything.
A truck is always real, the loads it delivers are real, it performs its functions without need for language, numbers, customs, role playing, and generally accepted asinine principles of fee fo fum faux finance beancountings of giant corporate fields of magic beanstalks.
Count on a cheap scot like ol’ Adam Smith to call out the BS of the man of the system. Or of anyone like me, even in the moment, pretending like financial statements are even worth the price of the pulp their fictions are printed on.
As Adam (as on the fly updated) once said:
The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government and finance, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it.
He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it.
He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board.
He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature or chief executive might choose to impress upon it.
If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction, the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful.
If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
This all smells of the Vision Zero nonsense, which is really just the rebirth of what Brock Yates dubbed the Anti-Destination League.
It’s painful to see a video of the Zeppelins. This world is a lesser place, due to the loss of this magnificent mode of transportation.
Jihad is exactly the right word.
Mystical Middle Eastern Jihad and primitive and colonial African Jihad is not such a big loss. Because what were these societies going to accomplish, Jihad or no Jihad.
But Western Jihad. White suburban. Industrial urban Jihad. That is a new Dark Age disaster kind of Jihad.
Through some dark process, all of Western Society has become a scourge upon the lives and freedom of the exceptional man, all the way down to the peaceful, meat and potatos simple man.
People that work for free are indeed a hindrance to the productive.
But people that accept the yoke of Jihad are a far worse pestilence.
When I read someone making an analysis of whether the latest Jihad will be a benefit or a detriment. I want to run them off the road into a ditch, just like any murderous meddling clover, who’ll kill me every chance he can, as long as he can say “it’s the law.”
No man with dignity and self-respect should accept the primitive savagery that is at the root of any kind of Jihad.
Probably nearly all 1.7 billion Muslims are incompatible with individualist live and let live freedom, that is needed to create and invent.
But there is even more billions of Christians and Seculars of all stripes who are equally as unwelcome, because of their submission and willingness to be thralls of the Ruling Class’ Jihad.
The problem isn’t Islam. The problem is the stupid fuck-wits destroying their countries: what did Hollande think would happen when he bombed Damascus and murdered Syrians back in September?
The NATO morons seem to believe they can attack anywhere with no consequence.
Switzerland doesn’t have this problem.
I don’t believe NATO is actually a coalition of nations that wish to create peace or stop war. On the contrary, it’s a bunch of bureaucrats for the main part that represent TPTB, the real movers and shakers, warlords for the most part, whether of high-browed countries like the US or their lackies they pay off to go along……to get along.
It may have started along those lines, though nearly never so noble as they wanted to project it in its infancy in WWll. In the 50’s though it quickly morphed into a coalition of butt-lickers who wanted in on the spoils of the atomic powers, i.e., the US and it’s CEO butt-licker brethren of old Europe bankers and military/corporatists/power-seekers, a consortium of those who wanted fascism but knew they had to put a different face on it. Some old school politicians in the US actually saw what the CIA was doing and where it was headed and feared what would happen to the world. Truman and Eisenhower, neither one saints but still, with some realization what was happening in this country, the ones getting ready to bring the rest of the world they desired(and fuck the rest)into submission. Back then that simply meant the oil producers, the easy to produce oil and that was the middle east.
There’s been nothing pretty about it since and there wasn’t before but it’s(CIA,NSA,DIA)taken on a life of its own(boom, thunder in November….with ice, excuse me, a local weather report). This has included banana republics and the mass executions/genocides of people wanting to take back their govt.’s worldwide, people simply seeking freedom.
Hitler was a fool. Musolini wasn’t but had very little going for him since Italian military competency was an oxymoron. Now they do it the right way and call it “democracy”.
Some of us saw the light to some degree, enough to stop the Vietnam debacle, but that was small potatoes TPTB let us have since the really big bucks were elsewhere and there were plenty other places to make the military/corporate powers much more money. It’s always the same…..follow the money. Nothing going on in the middle east right now that doesn’t apply to. And in S. America, the same is true since mucho oil has been discovered, that’s easily and cheaply produced. Meanwhile, I and millions of others, work for chump change getting it out of the ground…..and wonder why it’s such a struggle to keep one’s head above water.
The largest oil reserves in the world are in Russia. It’s obvious, Putin has to go….but the sumbitch has all those nukes, the reason so many in Congress want war, since they know they will be some of the very few left alive. It could still happen but I worry about Russia less than the US firing the first round.
Clip baseball cards to the fender so they slap against the spokes. Mandate all hybrids and electrics have spoked wheels, most already have open alloys so no big deal. Cheap, easy, nostalgic.
And if you can find a slick enough surface you can spin them, one pump at a time or maybe several pumps and make that prrrttthhhhh sound…..real fast…
Ever made fun of a Prius to somebody who knows better? They go ballistic, can’t stand it or either act like a clover who’s lost her voice. Hey, get your nose outta the air, you’re blocking my sun.
I nearly caused a 67 year old man to have a coronary when he suggested to his clover buddy some righteous rims made a Prius look good and I said “Really? So that’s all I’ve missed looking at the ugly fuckers, some rims?”
Eric, you asked, “Is it entirely up to the owner of the hybrid-electric car to not only pay attention to his driving and exercise due care, but also to pay for an annoying gewgaw to alert, let us say, a jaywalking or oblivious blind person to the presence of his vehicle?”
The proposal to require a noisemaker to alert pedestrians to otherwise noiseless hybrid and electric vehicles can be looked at in another way. It is one of the first rules that will specifically include driverless (self-driving) cars. In fact, I’d say you have to look at this proposal in that light. Because…
With the noisemakers in place, you can look for changes to follow in liability rules that would place primary blame for injuries on the pedestrian who has been hit by a self-driving hybrid/electric car. This would turn most established law on its head, because today generally the driver is considered at fault if (s)he hits a pedestrian under most conditions. But if there is no human driver, then we must blame the human pedestrian. This would absolve potential deep pockets in a lawsuit, such as the car manufacturer. This proposal could actually end up saving some companies big bucks for a small added price per car if this liability rule does change. Hmm…
Quick aside: at work I use relatively quiet electric forklifts a lot. We who drive them tap the horn periodically when moving to alert those on foot of our location, and those who train and license forklift drivers strongly advocate the practice for safety. So this proposal for electric cars has a precedent.
The relevant question is, how to build a redoubt where you just buy a menu board for your restaurant, and don’t bother with any kind of hand-wringing about what the local ordinance allows.
And do it as peacefully as possible, if you can.
Probably this happens because your ordinance supply is of superior caliber, to the “official” ordinance enforcers.
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How about the McDonald’s drive-through that has braille on the menu. Yes, braille.
In an episode of Married…with Children Kelly is totally excited since she anticipates the mailman bring her high school diploma. She runs out and steals it from the mail truck, brings it into her father and ecstatically says to him ‘Read it to me daddy”. Of course a guy could overlook a few things when it comes to Kelly.
DIY cheap fix right here
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/02/60/71/026071bc1b223dc2ae6724e66bbf5a89.jpg
The problem with that: its cheap, practical, easy.
Government “solutions” must be hard, expensive, unpractical, annoying, more dangerous then the problem it solves, involve lawyers and the courts, and employ at least a handful of “regulators” who will changed the standards often at your expense.
Why stop there? One can’t help but notice a “coal roller” spewing thick black smoke out the tail pipe. Why not come up with some sort of visual indication such as thick black smoke so that the deaf will not miss these tiny automobiles, many of which are a similar color as the road.
Indeed!
Let’s make them loud and smelly… but, wait, wasn’t the whole point of creating hybrids that they weren’t loud and smelly?
eric, I got a good laugh from the bridge sign. About a month ago a couple of us were delivering loads of base material. After one truck had dumped a long line, an operator on a new Cat backhoe was enlisted to move some of it before the other load was dumped.
That backhoe was almost silent, damndest thing I’d ever seen. Well, lots of noise causes ear damage so I can understand making one quiet…..but then the thing is put into reverse and I literally had to stick my fingers in my ears because of the back-up beeper. It was akin to having the Northern Pacific driving by you at a crossing. I had to move away, like 40 feet further away and still hold my fingers in my ears. The beeper faces away from the backhoe but the backhoe was working between a building and a belly dump. The guy should be totally deaf in a couple months or so if he’s the only operator. When a sound causes you pain just through the bones in your head, I’d say that’s a bit over the top or a lot over the top. So the backhoe is now so quiet you can barely hear it run and the back-up beeper is likely going to cause someone to have convulsions and I’m not exaggerating. Imagine having that thing work right beside you all day. You finally get nauseous and have to move away or pass out. It was beyond ludicrous.
On another note, sure glad it doesn’t get cold in Tx. Temp has dropped 15 degrees in an hour with 30 mph wind and rain is beginning to freeze. yeeeoooowww…….3 more days of it in the forecast…
If it saves just one life…
I’ll be surprised.
Wait now, wasn’t one of the many, many, many benefits of electric cars preached at us that it was quiet?
“The study does not break down how many of the 77 were blind.
One assumes none of the 48 cyclists were.”
Eric, you know you should not make such rash assumptions.
True! 🙂
The answer is SoundRacer! Now they just need speakers on the ‘outside’ of the car. http://www.soundracer.se/?p=98&p2=128