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27/11/2009
Car giant General Motors (GM) is testing an electric vehicle fitted with a device which creates noise to alert pedestrians.
The safety move from the American manufacturer comes after electric cars have come under the spotlight for being too quiet for pedestrians - and particularly the blind - to hear.
GM-owned Chevrolet is trialling the device in the US on a pre-production version of the all-electric Volt, after partnering with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) to pin down a safe level of sound that would alert visually-impaired pedestrians, while preventing unnecessary noise.
Engineers working on the Volt have adapted the car's horn to sound warning bursts when the vehicle detects a pedestrian, experimenting to find a volume that alerts but does not alarm them.
Chief engineer Andrew Farah recently demonstrated the system to a delegation from the NFB at GM's Milford Proving Ground, showing how it worked at different speeds and from different angles.
Deborah Kent Stein, chairperson of the NFB's automobile and pedestrian safety committee has noted that the silent operation of electric vehicles can be a potential problem for all pedestrians - regardless of whether they are visually-impaired or not.
"We don't want it to be startling, we want it to be more of a pleasant sound - more of an 'excuse me' sound, as opposed to a 'hey you' sound," said Farah.
"And we also want something though that is still automotive in nature - we don't want it to sound like birds, we want it to sound like a car."
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