For people with sight loss listening is vital when crossing roads – but the quietness of new electric and hybrid cars could prove to be a problem.
Electric and hybrid cars are 40% more likely to be involved in a collision that injures a pedestrian than cars with a conventional engine. Guide Dogs, a charity which provides guide dogs and support to bind people in the UK, is attempting to make sure that electric cars can easily be heard while on the roads – something which will benefit all pedestrians. In the words of one guide dog owner: “My visual impairment means that what I see is unreliable so I rely on the sound of a car to judge if a vehicle is approaching and when it’s safe to cross.”
The potential dangers that electric cars pose to blind people are explored in the video ‘Electric Cars and the Blind’, produced by Robert Llewellyn (Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, Carpool) and Blind musician and audio expert Andre Louis.
Guide Dogs has already won a promise that from July 2019 manufacturers of these vehicles will fit new models with sound generators but now they are taking it one step further and have launched a new petition to make sure this promise is fully kept and to find out further details about how these cars will sound.
You can sign up to their petition here .
