Hi,
As some of you know, I've been applying my engineering skills to fixing some Congressional nonsense, HR 5734, the "Bell the Hybrid Act" that proposes to put noise makers on all hybrid electrics. With the Congressional recess, nothing will happen until Congress returns in September. So this is a good time to share what has been going on including some background.
When I got my Prius in October 2005, the office 'earth mother' was nice (she reminds me of nurse Rachet from "One Flew Over The Cookcoo's Nest") but told me that the blind can't hear it coming. This surprised me because the Prius and the blind were so rare. How did she come up with this specific report to repeat? But over time, I started hearing more buzz about it and in April 2007, I started monitoring a blind advocacy mailing list. I wanted to find out what requirements were driving this and began monitoring Google news alerts for "blind" and "hybrid."
One thing I quickly learned was there weren't a 'bunch of bodies.' The blind would often describe some horrible experience with traffic in the past and smoothly, without dropping a stitch, rail about quiet hybrid electrics. They would seek out any report, even those that obviously didn't apply, but claim they proved hybrids were deadly. I would only post to correct errors of fact but otherwise, kept wondering, "Where's the beef?"
In April 2008, a US congressman introduced HR 5734 that mandates noise makers on USA hybrid and electric cars. This changed my efforts from one of curiosity to something more serious. A quick reading of HR 5734 revealed some disturbing errors in the facts and data:
- the blind use only hearing (no cane, guide dog or helper) to move about
- hybrid electrics are too quiet for the blind to hear them safely
- hybrid electrics are too quiet for other pedestrians too
It did not take long to find the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration traffic data and quickly learn there were very few hybrid electric accidents and fatalities. Fortunately, Dr. Christopher Hogan, a statistician and Prius owner, provided a detailed analysis of Prius accident data from 2002 to 2006. The Prius was first sold in 2001 and the data showed:
- no blind has ever been killed by a Prius in these 5 years
- the Prius has the same pedestrian accident rate as all other vehicles
- only 5 blind die per year and mostly by ordinary vehicles (pickup trucks in particular)
So here we have three lies embedded in the language of HR 5734 versus the facts and data. This would be easy and then in May, 2008, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced "Docket No. NHTSA-2008-0108" with this introduction:
"NHTSA is having a public meeting to bring together government policymakers, stakeholders from the blind community, industry representatives and public interest groups to discuss the safety of blind pedestrians encountering quiet cars including hybrids, all-electric vehicles and quiet internal combustion engine vehicles. This public meeting and the request for information, is an opportunity for an exchange among interested parties, as well as the public, on the technical and safety policy issues related to increasingly quieter cars and blind pedestrians."
Great! "...
an opportunity for an exchange among interested parties, as well as the public, on the technical and safety policy issues ..." we can bring the statistical data and point out the blind don't travel without canes, dogs or helpers and this nonsense will be put to rest. For good measure, let's return the favor and propose some sort of noise maker equivalent for the blind, a radio beacon. So I sent a request to present for the "hybrid electric owners who will have to pay for this" and was turned down. But I was invited to attend the discussion and submit my materials for the record.
I thought about it and to some extent, this might make sense. The world has plenty of marginal folks whose dreams out run their reach (i.e., flakes.) Mostly harmless, they can eat up time at a microphone. But I'd offered to let them see my charts before the meeting and they still turned me down so I resolved to take up their offer: (1) discussion time and (2) submittal. But I needed to be there to show commitment.
I also called my Congressman's office but they were pretty much "hands off" on this meeting. This makes sense, an agency deserves to have a chance to 'do the right thing.' Congress should not micromanaged unless all other options fail. But we do have the right to petition Congress so I asked for help getting some petitions signed ... Eric and Richard came through! I was planning to visit Congressional offices after the meeting with petitions.
A couple of days before the meeting, I came across the April 2008, special report on back-over accidents by Augustus "Chip" Chidester of the NHTSA. Backover accidents are where the rear bumper and running, engine exhaust pipe, run over pedestrians. If noise is a significant safety feature, the exhaust pipe ought to be one of the safest areas ... it is not. The drivers, some parents of the kids, didn't know the kids were there because they could not see them. Twenty-five kids died in one year, mostly pre-schoolers, and HR 5734, a bill in Congress, is there for five, dead blind per year! Worse, the blind designed, Congressionally mandated, "noise maker" would not have saved one of these kids!
Without going into a lot of unnecessary
details, I drove to DC for the hearing and returned, solo, 750 miles (1,200 km) each way. We started a petition drive to "give hybrid electric owners a seat at the table." Two of my fellow moderators at GreenHybrid.com passed petitions around that weekend and e-mailed the digitized versions. I had them for the meeting and was planning to visit some Congressional offices but my wife was still in the hospital in Huntsville.
Instead, I returned to Huntsville and using these first petitions, prepared a 'mass mailing' to all of the USA Congressional co-sponsors of HR 5734 about the failure to include "hybrid electric owners who will have to pay." I also sent copies to the sub-committee members and letters to the Alabama Congressional delegation.
The Constitution gives us the right to petition Congress so I got a booth at Hybridfest and collected another hundred or so petition signatures. Again due my wife's health, a solo, weekend trip, 750 miles (1,200 km,) each way. But this increased the number of congressmen whose constituents signed the petitions. I send a follow-up, mass-mailing to each of these congressmen identifying their voter(s) and key facts and data about HR 5734.
Now the way a typical 'hearing' works in the USA is there is some formal way to submit your materials to the record before a deadline, August 1. Sure enough, the web based, collection of these submissions is at:
http://www.regulations.gov/
Enter "NHTSA-2008-0108" to see the current entries. However, you won't find mine, yet. I submitted mine by registered letter on a CD-ROM to arrive July 29.
This late submittal means my comments won't be up until after the August 1 close of submissions ... they aren't subject to counter claims by others. But I may have made one screw-up ... I didn't tell everyone I know about the web-based, submittal system. A few individuals found it already but we really could have had some fun ... stuffing it.
I have proposed an alternate, pedestrian safety system based around having a universal keyfob for the shoes of pre-school children and 'special' pedestrians. It uses the existing keyfob receiver and interfaces to briefly 'bleep' the horn and flash the lights when small kids are in the area. This gives the driver, the pedestrian and any by-standers an alert to avoid an accident. All it takes is a software change to the keyfob receivers.
This approach is "noise on need" versus "noise all the time." It establishes a wireless 'safety zone' around the shoes of pre-school kids and even the blind. It also works for the deaf, wheelchair and mobility challenged pedestrians. It also moves us one step down the road to the "smart highway" with a deployed, wireless safety network.
There is more work remaining. There are 58, Congressional co-sponsors who are either ignoring or remaining ignorant of the facts and data. They may also need to staff a calling-bank for the November election, something the blind are very good about doing. But maybe some hybrid electric owners need to let these representatives know what they think.
Until this Congress ends with HR 5734 still in committee or fixed, we have to remain vigilant. There is work remaining.
Bob Wilson