News: Maryland legislators may require cars to make some noise

[MetroMPG]

Via ABG: Maryland legislators may require cars to make some noise

You've probably read about the plague of Priuses silently mowing down platoons of pedestrians across the contentent as they sneak around parking lots in stealth mode.

Thankfully, one state is ready to apply a solution: force quiet cars to make some noise!

A Maryland Senate committee will hold a hearing this coming week on a bill that would create a task force to study the issue and possibly impose a minimum noise level for vehicles in the state.

I think we would all be better off if they just took a cue from Transport Canada and decided it would be best to ban electrically driven vehicles altogether. For our safety!

[WaxyChicken]

^Hahahaha

I have a better idea - limit max noise. Make every car quiet. This way people will get use to the idea of "WATCH WHERE YOU'RE ****ING GOING!!!" and it'd help kill the noise pollution from engines and radios.

Us USAmericans are just so bloody stupid. How else do you explain that article?

[Frank Lee]

^Totally with you on that one.

[Ryland]

ban bicycles for that same reason! why not just ban people walking?

[Frank Lee]

We need to have them introduce a bill requiring bicycles to be equipped with playing cards flicked by the spokes.

[WaxyChicken]

^--- that would make a cheap EV horn.

[basjoos]

If they do end up passing this type of crazy legislation, it sounds like an opportunity to have some fun. Just like people have gotten wild with ringtones on cellphones, the owner of an illegally quiet EV, hybrid in shealth mode (or FAS'ing nonhybrid) could install a small speaker and broadcast the operational sounds of their favorite real or fantasy vehicle. So your car could sound like the Batmobile, a Star Wars landspeeder, TIE fighter, George Jetson's ride, or even like a team of Clydesdales. For added fun, link the volume and/or tempo to the position of your accelerator. Change the legally required sound to match your mood. The sky's the limit since, they legislated that your car MUST make a noise. I wonder if there will be a maximum dB level to the noise that your car must make to let people know that it there.

[WaxyChicken]

Brilliant Idea -
i'd go out of the way to make my car look like the bat-mobile but have it play Ice-Cream truck music!!!

[NoCO2]

Maybe people should watch where they are going? I can't tell you how many times I have wanted to hit someone just wandering in the middle of the parking lot lane. I usually just honk at them when I'm a foot behind them to scare the crap out of them which usually makes them move, but some of them just stand there like I'm not going to hit them...if I wouldn't go to jail for vehicular homicide I would so do it sometimes!

But really, I'm with Waxy, just ban the loud cars so people will get used to not hearing cars so they will have to rely on their other senses to stay out of the way...or better yet, maybe they should just stay out of the way of cars and only cross in designated areas...that's a better idea.

[Thalass]

Deaf people seem to do quite well around moving vehicles. Surely the rest of the population can adapt, too.


But I do like the idea of driving around in a car that sounds like something from the Jetsons!


That, or a big V8

It would also finally give a practical use for those damn stupidly huge exhaust tips: Speaker housing!