Just mandate all the auto companies drive their hybrids for 150,000 miles or so, to put in the required panel rattles, suspension squeaks and other noises an aging vehicle makes, before they're allowed to sell them to the general public. Then everyone will be able to hear them coming and going from the reapir shop.

People *could* look both ways before crossing the street. These hybrid cars are quiet, not invisible.

I recommend a sign on the dash instructing drivers to roll down the window and yell out every 50 feet or so. Failure to do so would result in a ticket. Of course, insults would be permitted (indeed, protected) - "Get out of the way, you slug!"

I own a Prius. The problem for me is shopping mall & supermarket parking lot. Pedestrians have been used to listen for car to judge speed and distance away from them. If there's something that's too quiet, they will not hear it.

For my part, I went out of my way to make sure no one is in my way.

Or get one of those huge stereo systems that all the kids love installed and blast hiphop out your window.

But you can hear on your cell phone better.

It should be required that they be proceeded by a man on horseback (holding a lantern at night).

As for getting hit by one backing up: Well, there are those little "backup lights" that come on when the car is put into "R". That should be a warning that the driver wants to head in that direction. And is beeping really going to work with the morons obliviously plugged into their cellphones and ipods?

Dumb. Flatline dumb.

Everyone who has been professionally involved in accident investigations is familiar with the "He came out of nowhere!" lament.

"Of course I was looking," the flatliners insist. "He was going so fast that I couldn't see him!"

Hard-up ambulance chasers will argue anything. What they do is to take absurdly unmeritorious cases, such as a that of a fool who claims he didn't see what could be plainly seen because it had been too quiet.

Then they string the client along about what a great case he has, use the chump as a runner for the cases of the chump's friends and relatives for a couple of years until the case finally goes away, probably for a nuisance settlement which covers the shyster's expenses.

We see these pigs advertising on television, openly asking for cases which other attorneys have declined.

People who don't like lawyers are going to snicker at my next statement, but this sort of practice gives the profession a bad name.

OSHA has already solved this problem: Install backup beepers for reverse gear and a vroom-vroom sound for forward gear.

To quote Calvin, Sheesh.

Gives the term "SBD" an entirely new meaning but I call BS on this. With modern cars, most of the sound you hear from a car approaching is tire and wind noise, not engine noise, unless the car has exhaust problems. Stand on a street corner and see if this is not so. If course, OJ may be in for a wait in his neck of the woods.

Maybe modify and attach some of those deer whistles so that only conservatives can hear them.

Rather cars will have the new equipment that stops them when they get to close to stuff.

Hybrids pose another risk: they can zap a fireman or paramedic with 650 volts of electricity if they're not careful during a rescue.

Probably right, and you can't help but wonder what types of accidents the new gear will lead to. I'll guess relatively high-speed collisions in parking lots, since people will be driving faster there and letting their cars worry about the stopping-in-time part.

Some one please send the link that "proves" that people drive more aggressively when wearing seat belts.

It seems to be another one of those absurd studies that a few drops of common sense will destroy.

It's nonsense on its face.

Rick T is correct.

"Hybrids pose another risk: they can zap a fireman or paramedic with 650 volts of electricity if they're not careful during a rescue."

OK: considering who buys the things, we should tell the rescue squads to wait.

Bruno: It's a pretty well known effect (I studied it in college in the 80s), and seems to make perfect sense on its face: seatbelt wearers drive faster, faster drivers cause more injuries to those outside the car. Google will give you a bunch of links, of which this is merely one of the first.

OJ:

They already do. The new Lexus LS460:

"Another feature that elicited wows from the audience was a system that would allow the car to actually park itself. You simply pull up to a parking space and place the Intelligent Park Assist system into self-park mode. After that, all you have to do is keep your foot lightly on the brake pedal. The car will do the rest, automatically steering into the space for a perfect park each time."

Just about all the luxury brands have intelligent cruise control that brakes or speeds up according to traffic conditions. Also, at least Infiniti has a lane departure warning system as well.

Bruno: the seminal study is here: The efficacy of seatbelt legislation by John Adams, University College, London, 1981. This is an area of much interest and controversy. Google "risk compensation" or "risk homeostasis" to get a feel for the lay of the land.

Thanks gents,

I'll read the links and see what to make of them. My first attack of common sense produced this...

Given the risk of injury regardless of seat belts, the financial impact of accidents, the emotional impact of injuring another and/or messing up the second biggestinvestment in most people's lives, land tertiary matters like the cost of insurance, etc etc, what sort of idiot would think "Hmmm, I'm wearing a seatbelt, so I can drive worse than normally would."

No one. Except....

..and here is where I had my second attack of common sense...

Absent the impact of "being studied" (Quantum Mechanics anyone), no one is conscious of whether they are wearing a seatbelt or not.

They either do, or they don't wear them, and drive the way they would under average circumstances.

Therefore, if these results aren't manufactured out of whole cloth, the only other reasonable explanation for these results that they were participating in a study, and some how conscious of it.

The fact that the results are used by uber-libertarians to complain about seatbelt laws makes the results suspect as well.

I've been in accidents with and with out seat belts. The idea that you are safer with out them is absurd on its face.

Even if one where to buy the "unconsciously driving more aggressively" stuff, you can't account for what happens when a van full of 20 somethings selling magazines hits an ice patch, and they all go flying through the air like so many rag dolls.

Bruno: nobody is arguing that drivers or passengers are safer without seatbelts. (Though I remember one race car driver from the '60s [Stirling Moss?] claim he'd rather be thrown free of the car in a wreck.) It's just that wearing them can (unconsciously, probably) influence people to drive faster. Some say airbags can have the same effect.

... has a lane departure warning system as well. This is a scary thought.

Will we drive any old way relying on a computer saying, Warning, warning, warning to keep us in our lane.