According to a study presented at the Acoustical Society of America me even with manufactured sounds, electric vehicles remain loud enough to be a safety risk, especially for visually impaired pedestrians.
The findings showed that none of the evaluated vehicles achieved a 100% detection rate in the study, in which participants were requested to hit a button when they heard an oncoming electric vehicle on a nearby route.
Artificial noises added to the vehicles, on the other hand, boosted detection ranges or the distance at which they could be heard, and all of those tested exceeded current National Highway Transportation Safety Administration minimum standards, the researchers said.
Study co-author Michael Roan said in a press release that “While the additive sounds greatly improve detection distances over the no-sound condition, there are cases where pedestrians still missed detections.”
Roan who an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech University said “However, there were cases where the probability of detection, even at close ranges, never reached 100%,”
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In terms of study, electric vehicles are often quieter than vehicles with internal combustion engines, even once the sound is included.
According to Roan and his colleagues, numerous countries have passed legislation forcing manufacturers to add fake sounds to their vehicles to provide an extra means of detection.
Vehicle sounds must be heard at particular distances at certain vehicle speeds in the United States, for example, with faster speeds corresponding to longer detection distances.
Roan and his colleagues at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute tested how well people detect electric vehicle sounds.
Participants in the study were seated next to a lane at the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute’s Smart Road facility and were asked to touch a button when they heard an incoming vehicle.
This enabled the researchers to measure the probability of detection versus distance from the vehicle.
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