Quiet Cars Make Some Noise

President Obama indicates the environment is not an issue, it’s part of all issues.

This is The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.

During President Barack Obama’s inaugural address, he talked about the environment… but not as one issue among many. It wasn’t a bullet-point.

When he spoke to other nations and people of the world… he acknowledged wealthier countries are using more than their share of the world’s resources…

“We can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect.”

That’s quite a contrast to the previouse administration’s response after the terrorists’ attack on September 11th … when we were encouarged to go shopping.

President Obama also seem to make reversing global warming as urgent as preventing nuclear winter.

“We will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet.”

Wayne Fields at Washington University has written extensively on presidential speeches. He agrees Obama’s approach to environmental issues is integrated with other issues.

“Nothing can be separated from them,’ not our economic well-being, not our relationship with issues of terrorism or national security, not our relationship with one another, that all these are bound together and we take them on all at once.”


That’s not something we’ve heard from government recently.

(((STING)))

This is The Environment Report.

A lot of people who drive gas-electric hybrid cars love how quiet they are. But others say hybrids are so quiet they’re hazardous. People in the blind community say they can’t hear hybrid cars coming... and they’d like to have sound added back into the cars. Rebecca Williams has the story:

(SND tap tap tap)

Fred Wurtzel can’t see them... but he knows cars by their engines.

(SND car rumbles by)

“That car had tweety bird under its hood, probably a loose belt... there’s another car going in the other direction.”

But he can barely hear hybrid cars. That’s because the electric motor is very quiet. And when a hybrid comes to a stop, the engine shuts off.

“If you don’t know there’s a hybrid car waiting, it may start turning and you may step into its path.”

Wurtzel is president of the Michigan chapter of the National Federation of the Blind. He says the blind community wants some sound added back into hybrid vehicles.

Patrick Nyeste (knee-ESH-tah) has been thinking about this. He’s a researcher at North Carolina State University. He tried out 18 different sounds on his test subjects.

Everything from sirens (SND)... to whistles (SND) ... to engine sounds (SND under).

“I had a horn from a Beetle – you know, meep meep, and I would just get giggles from that.”

But he says... to make a quiet car safer... the sound needs to be continuous – like in a traditional car.
Nyeste says that engine noise we heard earlier was one of people’s favorites. They also liked white noise (SND), and the hum sound (SND). He says that’s because we’re used to hearing those kinds of sounds when a car goes by.

He says a sound added to a hybrid also has to be loud enough to be heard above lawn mowers and garbage trucks.

“You want to make sure the noise is heard, especially by the blind around corners, around objects.”

But some people are worried about adding sound to our cities and suburbs... they say they’re already so noisy.

Lotus Engineering says it has a solution for that. They added a four cylinder engine sound to a Toyota Prius. But the volume’s adjustable.

Colin Peachey is an engineer with Lotus.

“You could set the sound to be higher or quieter in some circumstances – we could make the sound to be whatever we fancied.”

Spokespeople for Toyota and the Big Three say their companies are working on solutions. And some states and members of Congress have been talking about requiring hybrid cars to make some minimum level of sound.


(SND: quick montage of engine sounds)

That music came from MadKap Studios… with little added help from The Environment Report. I’m Lester Graham.