Pedestrians who blinder heedlessly into the road are a serious menace to cyclists so need to be taught to use their eyes/brains, and fast.

If electric cars are an effective way of either educating or culling said dunderheads, then bring it on.

The quieter vehicles are, the more pleasant our streets will be.

Ian

As we migrate away from internal combustion engines, \"problems\" like this will crop up again and again. Inserting a pseudo-noise is exactly the wrong solution. Ian is right, let\'s cull the dunderheads and make some progress towards a quieter world.
Cliff

Of course, they will have to advertise the specific sound this alert will make so people get used to it and know it for what it is, but it\'s a great idea nonetheless. What they should do is market this alert system to private airplane owners too, so that in the event they lose power and need to land on a beach, road, etc., they can let someone in either location know and not kill them.

Ian, I\'m fully in agreement regarding the idiot pedestrians, and anyway many petrol cars are very very quiet already. Apart from unsighted people, what\'s to stop pedestrians using their eyes before making a change of direction just as motorists do? Perhaps we should go back to having guys carrying a red flag in front of a vehicle.....but even they didn\'t have a bell! Ian.

Funny, I always thought it was the vehicle driver\'s responsibility to see and avoid pedestrians, inasmuch as they always have the right-of-way. I have seen this bogus issue before and am quite frankly disappointed that Toyota has given it credence. Does this mean that clothespins and playing cards will be required for bicycle wheels to make the \"motorcycle\" sound we wanted when I was a kid? How about requiring aircraft-like strobe lights so the deaf can also know a Prius (or any other car, for that mater) is coming? This article just shows how PC and illogical a company can get.

Yeeah, just bring\'em ! We\'ll learn how to deal with them, we\'re bright enough, don\'t worrry;-)
joke aside, this will be huge, i tell you. i mean, the EV overtaking, if this (approaching pedestrians without mking noise) is the only annoyance, man, i tell you, i wanna be hit by an ev, right now !!

and couple this with that Honda innovation of making the front end of the vehicle software so that *WHEN* you hit a pedestrian, it won\'t snap their legs like twigs! Come on people! is there an epidemic of hitting pedestrians with cars in this world? Aren\'t there more important things we should be dedicating our accumulated brain power on fixing?

It should have a voice recording in a deadpan way... \"Hey. Car here. Could you like, not walk in front of me?\"

Surely technology must be close to being able to detect that there\'s a soft target in front of the car and honk a horn or something. I\'d rather see transport getting quieter as do many others in here.

While I agree that cars should be as quiet as possible, and love how quiet the Prius is when in full EV mode, there are pedestrians other than alert full grown adults that deserve a little extra protection. There are several Prius\' in my neighborhood, amid dozens of children who rightfully occupy the normally quite streets with games of stickball and bike riding. I have seen the look of shock and terror when a quiet EV creeps up in the middle of their games, and even seen a child loose control and crash when a car suddenly appears out of nowhere. Even when the drivers are safe in the knowledge they aren\'t going to run over anyone, it takes a few precious seconds for the shocked children to process this fact.