[adaptivetec] e: Hybrid CarsFw: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
- From: marigold meriweather <wildthread@xxxxxxx>
- To: adaptivetec@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2007 11:07:42 +1200
Pat, the attachments came through fine.
Marigold
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pattynash@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <pattynash@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: "adaptive technology list" <adaptivetec@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date sent: Sun, 30 Sep 2007 16:07:15 -0700
Subject: [adaptivetec] Hybrid CarsFw: hybrids cars pose safety
threat.
Rob Simon,
Here are the two reports
----- Original Messag which Mark Seelig did on KCBS on Hybrid
Cars. I hope the attachments are attached.
Patty Nash -----
From: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: Pattynash@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, September 07, 2007 8:37 AM
Subject: Fw: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
----- Original Message -----
From: Seelig, Mark C
To: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Thursday, September 06, 2007 10:51 PM
Subject: RE: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
Myra....
Here are my reports....let me know what you think.
Mark
-----------------------------------------------------------------
---------------
From: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sun 9/2/2007 9:07 PM
To: Seelig, Mark C
Subject: Re: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
Hi Mark, I was wondering when the interview would be airing?
Sorry that I was not able to help. I hope you and Jennifer are
having a nice rested weekend.
Myra
----- Original Message -----
From: Seelig, Mark C
To: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 9:38 AM
Subject: RE: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
Myra-
This is Mark Seelig...Joann Maloney's Son in Law. My boss
is finally interested in doing the news story about Hybrid cars.
I would like to interview you or anybody else who can talk about
the issue tomorrow ... Thursday, the 30th of August. Email me
back, or call me at the station....415-765-4074
Mark
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
From: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Sun 7/29/2007 5:24 PM
To: Seelig, Mark C
Subject: Fw: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
Hi Mark, I hope this gets to you!
Myra
----- Original Message -----
From: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: myracarey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2007 10:48 PM
Subject: hybrids cars pose safety threat.
The Media Weigh in
From the Editor: As Monitor readers know, we have been
increasingly
concerned over the past several years about the growing threat
electric and
hybrid cars pose to all pedestrians, but particularly to those
who depend
on hearing the sound of vehicle engines to travel safely. For
the most part
we have been something of a voice crying in the wilderness with
next to no
one listening, but in recent months several reporters have
written stories
about the problem, most notably Raymund Flandez in the Wall
Street Journal
edition of February 13, 2007, in an article titled, "Blind
Pedestrians Say
Quiet Hybrids Pose Safety Threat." Then, on February 22, the
NPR program
All Things Considered did a fine interview and demonstration on
the street
in which Robert Siegel talked with NFB First Vice President
Fred Schroeder
about the dangers of these stealth cars.
In late May two more stories appeared, and we can only
applaud this
indication of growing media recognition of the problems
associated with
quiet cars. Any optimism that this coverage might have
engendered, however,
is tempered by a worrisome decision on the part of automobile
manufacturers. We have been urging individual carmakers to
discuss the
quiet car problem with us in the hope that one of them might
agree to
develop a low-cost, relatively nonintrusive method for belling
the
automotive cat. Neither Toyota nor General Motors has indicated
interest in
such a meeting, but Honda expressed willingness to come to the
National
Center to discuss the issue in May. Four days before that
meeting, however,
a Honda official called to cancel the meeting. He explained
that the
Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, an
industry trade
association, had assumed responsibility for dealing with this
issue, so
Honda officials had decided that it would not be appropriate
for individual
manufacturers to discuss it. Needless to say, so far the
Association has
said nothing to us about the matter.
It begins to look as if the manufacturers will not take
the problem
posed by quiet cars seriously until the National Highway
Traffic Safety
Administration mandates that they do so.
We are hampered in bringing this matter to the attention
of federal
officials, however, because we are working to solve the problem
before
people are killed or severely injured when they did not hear a
quiet car
coming. This means that we do not have statistics demonstrating
beyond
doubt that silent cars pose a genuine threat to pedestrians,
particularly
blind ones. We request that readers be diligent in passing
along personal
experiences of problems with quiet cars or media reports of
pedestrian
accidents caused by these vehicles. You should contact Debbie
Stein,
chairperson of the NFB Committee for Automobile and Pedestrian
Safety
(CAPS), <
dkent5817@xxxxxxx
, (773) 631-1093.
Below are the two articles that appeared in May: the
first in the
Albuquerque Tribune and the second in the Vancouver,
Washington, Columbian.
On the whole both these stories are balanced and lay out the
problem
fairly. One does wish, however, that reporters would press
manufacturers a
bit harder when they respond to questions by acknowledging that
they are
aware of the problem and therefore urge drivers and pedestrians
alike to be
more careful at intersections. One wonders how they expect
blind
pedestrians to use greater care while crossing streets when
ambient noise
completely masks the approach of virtually silent vehicles.
Here are the
two articles:
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Art Schreiber]
Hybrid Cars Silent, Deadly, Advocates for Blind
Warn
by Peter Rice
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Albuquerque Tribune
Art Schreiber took a walk in his Old Town neighborhood
recently--he
often does while on the hunt for a bite to eat or just to run
some errands.
Approaching the corner of 12th Street and Roma Avenue
Southwest, he stopped
to do what all blind people do at intersections: listen for
cars. Hearing
none, he started to walk across the street.
"Suddenly, I hear a horn and a screeching of brakes," he
said. "The
driver swerved to miss me. Fortunately, there was nothing
coming the other
way."
Schreiber had nearly been injured or killed by what is an
increasingly vexing problem facing the visually impaired and,
some say,
pedestrians in general: super-quiet hybrid cars. "I didn't hear
anything,"
Schreiber said. "It's going to be, more and more, a problem. I
don't know
what we're going to do."
At lower speeds hybrids run off of batteries, which means
the engine
makes almost no noise. A louder gasoline engine kicks in at
higher speeds.
The cars are proving popular, and manufacturers are struggling
to keep up
with demand. But worries grow right along with the popularity.
"The strides that we've made in terms of training blind
people to
travel independently are in jeopardy," said Greg Trapp, the
executive
director of the New Mexico Commission for the Blind. "This is
an issue of
life and death."
Imagine another scenario: Someone with 20/20 vision is
putting
groceries in the back of a car. He hears a conventional car
behind him,
then looks over at it. "That's the reaction that keeps you from
backing up
into the path of a car," Trapp said. "I really think this is an
issue that
goes beyond people who are blind and visually impaired."
So what to do? One obvious solution is to install some
sort of noise-
making device on the cars. "Everybody that we've talked to on
the
engineering side says that there are technical fixes," said
Fred Schroeder,
a vice president at the National Federation of the Blind. But,
"we've
contacted the major car manufacturers many times and really not
had a
response from them."
The big fish in the hybrid pond is Toyota, which has sold
just over
500,000 hybrid cars in the United States since 2000 and leads
the world in
manufacturing the vehicles. "Toyota is aware of this issue, and
we are
studying it," said Sam Butto, a spokesman for the company. He
said it was a
matter of balancing concerns about the visually impaired with
concerns
about noise pollution.
One Albuquerquean is offering what could become a
technical solution
to the problem. Mike Langner, the retired engineer of KKOB
radio, says an
enterprising company could put together a motion-sensing device
that could
give a sound-based clue about approaching objects. Pack it all
together,
and it could act as a kind of flashlight that blind people
could use to
avoid hybrids. "It's all commercial, off-the-shelf stuff,"
Langner said.
"It just needs to be put together."
Trapp called it a laudable idea, but said it's a long way
off and
could present some problems, such as what would happen if the
batteries
died. "I tend to favor low-tech solutions," he said. "We really
need a
solution that will solve the problem that we're encountering
today."
[PHOTO/CAPTION: Outside the hotel at the 2006 convention
Federationists
gathered to listen for the passage of a hybrid car They were
instructed to
raise a hand when they heard the vehicle. In this group of
about twenty-
five people, one person heard the car coming.]
Silent Threat
by Brett Oppegaard, Columbian staff writer
Taken from the Columbian of Vancouver, Washington,
Friday, May 25,
2007
Each weekday morning Nick Wilks crosses just one street.
That's how
the seventeen-year-old gets from his dorm room at Washington
State School
for the Blind to classes at Hudson's Bay High School.
The intersection of East Reserve Street and East
McLoughlin Boulevard
is quiet most of the time. But about 10:35 a.m., when Wilks is
on his way
back, it's an obstacle course. Parking lots at nearby Clark
College are
filling. Young drivers on lunch break from Hudson's Bay are
often whipping
through that intersection from all directions. Wilks has almost
been hit by
cars there twice this school year. What's saved him? Hearing
the
uncomfortably close chugs of combustion engines.
Yet what if cars were silent? That sounds like a
futuristic dream, a
pleasing idea to those irritated by contemporary noise
pollution. But it's
a frightening prospect to those, such as Wilks, who rely on
sounds to
survive. Hybrid vehicles are not only emitting less toxins in
the air and
consuming fuel more efficiently, but they are reducing ambient
clatter. A
Toyota Prius running on its electric motor, which it typically
does at low
speeds, is virtually silent.
The National Federation of the Blind has been voicing
concerns about
the unintended side effect of that silence since shortly after
Toyota
introduced the Prius, the first mass-produced hybrid, in 2000.
The group
says these quiet cars are a hazard not only to blind people but
also to
anyone who needs sounds for safety, including children, the
elderly, and
bicyclists.
"If cars don't make noise, blind people can't safely
navigate
streets. This really is a problem," said John Paré, the
National Federation
of the Blind's director of public relations.
A blind woman in California recently reported having her
foot run
over by a Prius. She commented that she didn't even know the
car was there
before it hit her. Several other blind people have described
minor injuries
or near misses to the National Federation of the Blind, though
the
organization hasn't kept detailed records of the complaints.
The group
forecasts even worse accidents ahead, as the cars become more
prevalent,
unless automakers develop some sort of noisemaker for these
vehicles.
Hybrids have become a growing trend in American cars.
There now are
about 400,000 of them on U.S. roads, according to market
researchers R.L.
Polk & Co. New registrations doubled from 2004 to 2005, the
most recent
data available. No pedestrian death has been linked to these
cars. But,
National Federation of the Blind representatives note, there is
no tracking
mechanism either. Representatives for the two most prominent
producers of
hybrid cars, Toyota and Honda, say they are aware of the sound
concerns and
are considering options.
Aerospace materials engineer David Evans, who tested
hybrid and
electric vehicles at Stanford University in the 1970s, has been
lecturing
on this topic, including speaking to the National Federation of
the Blind.
He says early developers of the technology quickly learned that
pedestrians
couldn't hear the cars, and his group used whistles to solve
the problem.
But carmakers are hesitant to add noise to the
environment and to
incur that expense, said Denise Morrissey, a spokeswoman for
Toyota Motor
Sales USA. "The [industry] trend is toward quiet powertrains in
all sorts
of vehicles," she said. "That trend has raised the need for
other drivers
and pedestrians to increase caution and to be more aware of the
surroundings."
Honda spokesman Sage Marie says this topic is a broad
manufacturer's
concern, not something that each company should be pursuing
individually.
He says the solution invariably will come through a
collaboration among
government regulators from the National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, concerned groups such as the National
Federation of the
Blind, and the industry's trade associations, including the
Association of
International Automobile Manufacturers. Michael Cammisa,
director of safety
for that auto trade group, did not return multiple telephone
calls
requesting an interview for this story.
Stein [Debbie Kent Stein, chair of our Committee for
Automobile and
Pedestrian Safety] of the National Federation of the Blind and
others
already have begun lobbying the Society of Automotive Engineers
to develop
protocols for minimum sound levels for vehicles sold in the
U.S. Stein said
her group is proactively navigating the bureaucracy before
someone gets
killed or seriously injured in an accident that could have been
prevented.
In the meantime blind pedestrians feel vulnerable.
Wilks, the Washington State School for the Blind's
student body
president, said sound signals are particularly important to
alert
pedestrians to cars making right turns across walkways Wilks
was in the
crosswalk between his schools a few months ago when two cars,
both turning
right, pinned him in the middle. In another incident in January
he was
about to step into the crosswalk when a driver decided to speed
up and make
a right turn directly in front of him.
"That was really scary," he said. "I was just a couple of
feet from
the car." Both times, he said, the sounds of the combustion
engines helped
him to avoid injury.
The National Federation of the Blind has become concerned
enough
about this perceived threat that it conducted an experiment
this year at
its annual conference. About thirty blind or visually impaired
members
waited at an intersection in front of the group's headquarters
in Baltimore
and were asked to signal when they could hear a car approach. A
Prius went
by undetected. They repeated the experiment in a quiet alley.
The Prius
that time could be heard, but only at about fifteen feet away.
Stein said, "I was aware, in the abstract, that we were
going to have
electric cars that are very quiet, and something would have to
be done to
make those pedestrian-friendly. Then, all of a sudden these
things were out
on the road, and nothing had been done."
Stein said the National Federation of the Blind supports
hybrid cars
and their benefits. But the group also wants to ensure they are
safe for
pedestrians. The organization is pitching for a device that
makes the usual
engine noise: "We want something that's not going to be
irritating to
people. We're hoping for a low-tech, inexpensive solution that
can be an
automatic add-on."
The Washington State School for the Blind, meanwhile, has
a dilemma.
As a state agency, its staff reports directly to an office in
Olympia. That
means four or five road trips a week from the Vancouver school,
plus the
300 to 600 miles a week that teachers drive to serve students
throughout
the state. The staff makes those trips in a fleet of four
hybrid vehicles.
Principal Craig Meador acknowledges the irony. "I kind of
look at it
this way: The technology is here, whether we like it or not,"
he said. "The
issue isn't so much that we are doing a good job with our gas
mileage as,
are we supporting something that can be a danger and sometimes
lethal to
the blind community? That concerns us." He added, "We're
probably going to
see more of these kinds of things on the market. We need to
teach [blind
students] to operate safely around these cars, rather than to
bury our head
in the sand."
To keep up to date on this issue, check out the CAPS Web
site at
<quietcars.nfb.org>.
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