Noise for Quiet Cars

            Ever since the government got into the car manufacturing business with its bailout of GM and Chrysler, it has salivated at the chance to tell Detroit how to build cars.

             I couldn't believe my eyes when I read about this beauty of a directive: By the end of next year it seems car manufacturers of hybrid and electric cars will have to add noise to their vehicles because they are too quiet. The reason is that blind people rely on sound to know if a car is coming. And pedestrians too consumed with their cellphone conversations might not check for oncoming traffic before stepping off the curb.

             I kid you not.

            So manufacturers of quiet cars are now scrambling to come up with the right sound to alert people trying to cross the street. A bird's tweet? A jet's roar? An engine's growl?

            To top it all off, the government is thinking of requiring quiet cars to have noise-makers at the rear as well as the front, because blind people need to know when a car has gone by.

            But I'm not finished. The warning noise will come on automatically whenever a quiet car slows below 20 miles per hour. Can you imagine the annoyance of neighbors in a peaceful suburb who will have to endure these warning sounds whenever a "quiet" car rolls down the street or into the driveway next door?

            I'm all for making sure the blind can cross the street safely. But since moving to North Carolina nine years ago, I haven't seen a single blind man trying to cross the street. I'm sure I can say the same for most people living outside of urban areas.  So, rather than mandating that manufacturers install on every quiet car hundreds of dollars of equipment that may never serve their intended purpose, might there be a more sensible and economical way of warning pedestrians?

            How about a horn? Doesn't every car have one of those?