GreenHybrid - Hybrid Cars - View Single Post

rmorrow · #29 (**permalink**) 10-06-2007, 08:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gumby

The complaint is NOT total nonsense. Are YOU blind? Do YOU know these things? Having lived with a blind person a number of years, I can attest to their powerless feeling about their surroundings. The OTHER senses HAVE to make up (as best they can) for the lack of sight. The Federation for the Blind does many good deeds, and is far too busy to be farting around with a matter of total nonsense. They, and blind people have a point, and people need to contemplate the issue. This is NOT a new issue for the blind, but it has increased the danger somewhat by the quietness of the hybrid running fully on electric power, mostly at slow city-block and parking lot speeds.
There may well be a better, different, safer solution, involving the blind person rather than the car - wearing a device that detects large moving objects' and warns if they are within x seconds of the wearer. This device would be useful for potentially many more situations and people. Blind & deaf could possibly use a device like this if it vibrated, rather than having only an audible warning.
Someone walking out in front of you when you didn't expect them to (even after seeing the person standing at the corner, for instance), or someone changing direction suddenly. You cannot tell me with certainty that you or any of multitudes of other drivers could always react in time to avoid a collision with this pedestrian. The pedestrian must (and usually desires to) assume some of the responsibility for their own safety. I certainly don't want my life in a random driver's hands.
Whatever, the issue is real. Minor in number and situation probably, but still real. I was almost run over by a golf cart recently, and I both see AND hear quite well. So does the driver of the golf cart. The issue was me darting to the right side of a parking lot drive (from the left side). I heard nothing. This cart was merely a few feet away from me as I made my maneuver. Cart driver yelled and swerved just in time. Had it not been for my (lightning

) reflexes AND good hearing/vision, I might have made the emergency "get away" maneuver in the wrong direction, and into the cart.
Just don't be sure sure that you are ALWAYS such an attentive and alert and responsive driver that you could never hit a pedestrian. It happens - with pedestrians that can hear AND see. Some are at slow enough speed that the person struck actually does live. And, no, they weren't ALL wearing Walkmans or iPods. Were they all just oblivious to their surroundings and walked right in front of a car anyway? Maybe many were. But you're telling me that YOU could've avoided that oblivious pedestrian.
You are much surer of your driving skills than am I.

Perhaps nonsense was too strong a word - unsubstantiated would have been better. I apologize for phrasing this in a way that led you to take offense. I point out merely that unless one is hearing-impaired (and there is no sarcasm intended in saying that), one can easily hear a hybrid vehicle in EV mode due to road noise. I am happy to qualify that statement by saying I agree with Bob that reasonable and demonstrable experiments should be done to prove the point one way or the other.
As to the rest of your response - I believe you didn't entirely understand what I wrote. I never said that I could never hit a pedestrian. I only said that at speeds where the car is quiet enough that it truly could not be heard, that it is going so slowly (walking speed) as to provide lots of reaction time. To be fair, I was also assuming that anyone reading ths post would also have read my earlier post, and take what was written there as implicit: "if you're getting close enough to someone that they could get in the way, give a short honk of the horn". Perhaps if I had repeated that, you would have better understood my whole argument.
Incidentally, I have both worked with and lived with blind people in the past, enough to lay claim that I am certain I am no less familiar with the condition and the inherent problems than you.