From Treehugger:
Some of you might have experienced this as a driver, others as pedestrian or cyclist: Hybrid vehicles, when they operate in electric-only mode, are very quiet, and sometimes people rely on their ears to know if they can cross the street or if a car is about to move. The Mercury News has an article about it. It seems that the extent of the problem is not yet quantified, but frequent enough for people to start wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to add an "artificial" sound to hybrids to make them a bit noisier. We're not against the idea and would much rather see (hear?) that happening than a debate on the hybrid technology itself (some people will throw the baby with the bathwater at the first occasion), but we also think that pedestrians and cyclist will have to lose some bad habits and use their eyes. That's simply safer.
Link and more discussion at Treehugger: Are Silent Hybrids a Problem?
I agree -- education is the solution here. Adding noise to these cars doesn't get to the root of the problem, not to mention how sad it would be to add more unnecessary noise to our already noise-polluted environment.
A related problem is headphones: more people are wearing headphones when walking or jogging and (most dangerously, and in some places, illegally) when cycling or driving. At the very least people need to be more careful about using headphones designed to allow in outside noise.
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