Watch out, battery car coming through!
The Senate wants motorists to sound off. Or, to be more precise, it wants those driving a battery-electric vehicle or a hybrid operating in electric mode to provide a little warning to avoid taking pedestrians by surprise.
The good news for motorists, it seems, is the bad news for casual strollers. Anyone who has driven one of the new battery cars can’t help but notice that they operate in near silence. Gone is the racket and roar of the internal combustion engine. All that’s left is the sound of crunching gravel under the tires, the rush of the win, and the occasional whir and pop of onboard accessories.
When you’re walking across the street, however, that’s a problem, all the more so for the sight-impaired who count on hearing oncoming traffic. So, the new Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act will require that future battery-based vehicles make a minimum amount of noise when driving through town to give those on foot a heads-up.
How much noise? Well, that’s yet to be determined, and federal regulators have already turned to the industry for some help and advice determining how to meet the mandate – which has now been approved by the Senate but must yet get the nod from the folks at the other end of Capitol Hill.
But the basic language of the bill suggests that the standard will be a “minimum level of sound emitted from a motor vehicle that is necessary to provide blind and other pedestrians with the information needed to reasonably detect a nearby electric or hybrid vehicle operating at or below the cross-over speed.”
The Act, as it stands on the Senate side, would give manufacturers 48 months to meet whatever the mandate determines.
Several makers are already taking the issue seriously. The new Nissan Leaf, for example, provides a low-speed warning – as well as a truck-like beep when put into reverse. For now, Leaf owners have to activate the forward warning tone, but under the Pedestrian Safety Act it will become a requirement that automatically operates below a pre-determined speed.