TRAVELERS’ CHECK : Quiet cars pose threat to the blind
Posted on Monday, August 25, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/235360/
The quest of American motorists to find fuel efficient vehicles is leading them to hybrid cars.
Hybrids don’t make much noise. They whisper — if that — when the combustion engines shut off as they stop at intersections. For those who take off slowly after a stop, the hushed electric motor barely hums.
That’s all bad for blind people who rely on noise from car engines to decide when it’s safe to cross streets.
Even worse: There’s no clear solution.
“The problem is we don’t really have a good answer for how to deal with it,” said Bill Jacobson, a University of Arkansas-Little Rock rehabilitation education professor who’s an expert in orientation and mobility of the blind. “The best we can tell people is if you are in doubt, don’t go. You have to wait for that noise.”
Hybrid car owners should play a role in the solution. Many love their hybrids because the electric motors allow them to spend less money on gas but also because they are so quiet.
“If I hear a car, I don’t cross,” said Mark Rotramel, a blind Siloam Springs man who’s the pastor at First Pentecostal Church in Springtown. “If I don’t hear anything, I assume it’s safe.”
There are incidents in which blind people have been hit by hybrid vehicles, said Chris Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind in Baltimore. White canes have been knocked out of the blind people’s hands, and a California man’s foot was run over, Danielsen said.
It’s not just blind people who are affected by quiet hybrids, either. An 8-year-old boy on a bike turned in front of a hybrid in Minnesota and said afterwards he didn’t hear it, Danielsen said.
Moreover, how many times has someone started across a street while talking on a cell phone only to pick up the pace after hearing and then looking to verify that there’s a car that’s too close ? Without the noise, there’s no reason to look and then hurry up and get across.
“We don’t believe it’s a problem only for blind pedestrians,” Danielsen said. “All pedestrians use the sound of traffic.”
Federal and state governments are working through this issue in a bid to break the quiet of hybrids, electric cars and scooters.
The California legislature, for instance, passed a bill this month that creates a committee to study ways to help visually impaired people cross streets safely.
At the federal level, the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008 has been proposed by U. S. Reps. Ed Towns, D-N. Y., and Cliff Stearns, R-Fla. They want Transportation Secretary Mary Peters to study how to protect the blind from so-called “silent engine” technologies.
The issue is expected to intensify in the coming years as more Americans buy hybrids, plus electric cars and scooters to contend with high gas prices.
More hybrids will mean more instances in which blind pedestrians will be crossing a road and there will be a hybrid headed toward them.
A little hybrid noise appears to be in order, but surely it can be done in a way that doesn’t flood neighborhoods with too much noise.
Can’t it ? Robert J. Smith’s column about people on the move in Northwest Arkansas appears each Monday. He can be reached at rsmith@arkansasonline. com.