Electric vehicles pose concerns for blind pedestrians {Autoblog Green}

Sep 22nd 2006 4:18PM As a middle aged person with normal sight and hearing, I had my first close encounter with an electric car (a new Prius) yesterday in a McDonald's parking lot. I was astonished at how silent it was; I had now idea it was near me until a got sight of it visually. My immediate reaction was that these cars present a real safety hazard to me and to other pedestrians, who for their entire lives walk in the vicinity of vehicles and depend in major part on soound cues rather than visual cues to avoid contact. This easy to foresee problem should have been solved by manufacturers before bring the cars to market. Vehicles which would otherwise be silent should be required by law or regulation to emit sound cues that are proportional to both speed and acceleration, as internal combustion engine vehicles do.