Hybrids deemed dangerous

Petrol-electric hybrid vehicles, the status symbol for the environmentally conscientious, are under attack from a group that does not drive: the blind.

Because hybrids make virtually no noise at lower speeds when they run on electric power, blind people say they pose a hazard to those who rely on their ears to determine whether it is safe to cross the street.

“I'm used to being able to get sound cues from my environment and negotiate accordingly. I hadn't imagined there was anything I really wouldn't be able to hear,” US National Federation of the Blind's committee on automotive and pedestrian safety chair Deborah Kent Stein said. “We did a test and I discovered, to my great dismay, that I couldn't hear it.”

The tests, admittedly unscientific, involved people standing in parking lots or on sidewalks and being asked to signal when they heard several different hybrid models drive by.

“People were making comments like, `When are they going to start the test?' And it would turn out that the vehicle had already done two or three laps around the parking lot,” Stein said.

Officials with the National Federation of the Blind are quick to point out they are not advocating a return to non-hybrid vehicles. They just want the fuel-efficient hybrids to make some noise.

Federation president Marc Maurer said he received an email from an environmentalist who suggested that the members of his group should be the first to drown when sea levels rise from global warming.

“I don't want to pick that way of going but I don't want to get run over by a quiet car either,” Maurer said.

The federation, the leading advocacy group for 1.3 million legally blind people in the US, made pleas to motor manufacturers and federal and state agencies, with little concrete success so far.

Manufacturers are aware of the problem but have made no promises. Toyota is studying the issue, Toyota spokesman Bill Kwong said.

The Association of International Auto Manufacturers and the Society of Automotive Engineers are considering “the possibility of setting a minimum noise level standard for hybrid vehicles.”

Officials with two separate arms of the US Department of Transportation, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Highway Administration; said they are aware of the problem but have not studied it.

Both sides agree it would not be too expensive to outfit cars with a noisemaking device. “It's cheaper than an airbag or other safety devices,” Kwong said.

The blind, however, will have to win over some hybrid owners, as well as advocates for reduced noise pollution.

“To further expose millions of people to excessive noise pollution by making vehicles artificially loud is neither logical nor practical nor in the public interest,” said Richard Tur, founder of NoiseOFF, a group raising awareness of noise pollution.