American safety regulator NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) has finally decided on a new rule for hybrid and fully electric vehicles that will necessitate them to emit a sound at low speed (up to 30km/h) to make their presence aware to pedestrians.
The ruling itself took quite a while to conclude since the issue was first brought up in 2013. The implementation, however, will stretch to September 2019, which is when automakers will be required to have low-speed sound emitters installed on cars sold in the United States.
That’s a staggering 9 years from proposal to reality for a simple device to solve a simple problem that, should it be instituted earlier, could potentially save lives or prevent injury. Put simply, EVs are too stealthy for their own good and pedestrians or bicyclists (especially so for those with visual or hearing impairments) are not easily made aware of their presence.
The same rings true for hybrid vehicles, which tend to operate in full electric mode at low speeds as that’s when internal combustion engines are at their most inefficient. It’s a problem that, minus the regulatory red tape, have ostensibly been solved by children attaching spoke flappers to their bicycle wheels.
The NHTSA, according to Electrek, estimates that the probability of electric or hybrid vehicles being involved in a low speed accident with pedestrians are 19 percent higher than louder fuel burning variety.
A study concluded that pegged an approximated 2,400 incidents could be prevented if hybrids and EVs were made more audibly conspicuous to those around them while on the move. In a few year’s time, be ready to identify a Tesla from a Nissan Leaf from a Toyota Prius to a BMW i8 from what kind of sound they artificially produce as they roll along the road.
We’re not sure how quickly this new rule will spur other countries and regulatory bodies to consider mandating some sort of sonic warning to be in use by hybrid and fully electric vehicles, but their safety benefits should be immediately obvious to anyone who has been around such a vehicle particularly in an already loud urban environment.
Let’s hope vehicle manufacturers will rally around the cause to increase the preventive safety measures such as these and place them well into the fore of their priorities.
