Hybrid cars are quiet - too quiet for blind people trying to cross a street. Michael Osborn, a blind marketing consultant from Laguna Beach, Calif., and his guide dog, Hastings, were in the middle of an intersection when Hastings stopped short.
Osborn took the cue and halted just in time to feel the breeze from a car passing right in front of them, reports the Wall Street Journal. “Half an inch and it would have hit us. It wasn’t making any noise,” says Osborn, 50, who has been blind for 12 years.
Witnesses say the car was a Toyota Prius, a hybrid vehicle.
Hybrids deliver better mileage and less pollution than traditional cars by switching between a gasoline engine and an electric motor. But when operating on the electric battery, especially when idling at a stop or running at low speeds, the engine in a hybrid is almost silent.
“I’m an environmentalist, and I’m all for quiet cars,” says Osborn. “But it poses a particular problem for somebody who has no vision.”
Blind pedestrians using a guide dog or cane are largely dependent on the sounds of traffic to cross streets safely. For a blind person, “It’s very important to be able to gather auditory and tactile cues from the environment,” says Sumara Shakeel, a rehabilitation teacher for the New Jersey Commission for the Blind.
The U.S. National Federation of the Blind says all hybrid vehicles should emit a sound while turned on and be loud enough to be heard over the din of other ambient noise. Quiet cars pose a problem not only for those with limited vision, but also for sighted pedestrians, cyclists and the elderly who rely on sound to gauge the position and speed of cars, the NFB says.
Several guide dog schools are planning to use hybrid vehicles when training animals to acclimate them. Guide Dogs for the Blind Inc., with campuses in Oregon and California, uses electric golf carts to simulate the quiet cars.
