Ok, I know it is lame to reply to yourself but I wrote this letter to the editor of the "Los Angles Times," the major news paper of the area that includes UC Riverside. It is time Prof. Rosenblum face the facts and data and a newspaper, letter to the editor does just that:
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by myself
Dear Editor,
A bill introduced in Congress following articles published in the LA Times about the risks of hybrid ("Blind pedestrians may not hear hybrid cars" 03/29/2008, "Bill aims to protect blind people from dangers posed by hybrids" 04/09/2008) will only make hybrids as dangerous as the existing cars. Today’s cars kill 5,000 pedestrians and cyclists per year but only six blind died in 2006 and only by engine powered vehicles. It is junk science to claim that noisemakers on hybrids will make anyone safer, either the blind or sighted.
Researchers for the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) published results in March showing that a hearing aid for the blind, 8 dB of gain, would let the blind detect hybrids at the current distance of today's deadly engine cars. It would nearly double the distance for detecting the engine-powered cars that killed six blind in 2006. Now the NFB researchers are adding additional background noise, other engine car noises to make more bad science claims about hybrid risks. Will they also add people talking on cell phones, noisy children, and delivery trucks?
Every year another five thousand pedestrians and cyclists die because we need effective solutions to accident avoidance but adding noisemakers to hybrids is not it. It would be a terrible waste if the last sound heard was a noisemaker that made a hybrid as deadly as today's cars.
|
If you live in the Riverside CA area, your letter to the editor
IN YOUR OWN WORDS would carry more weight. I don't mind sharing my thoughts but you really need to write and speak in phrases that match your style. They really don't like to see a 'blizzard' of copy-cat notes.
GOOD LUCK!
Bob Wilson