> I'm a cyclist and often hear the noise of tyres on the road
Right, but can you hear the tyre noise of a car stopped at a stop sign at an intersection? A car that is about to accelerate away - you need to know there is an 'active' but stationary vehicle so that you can anticipate a potential moving vehicle in a few seconds.
Or a car slowly backing out of a driveway or parking space? Do they produce enough tyre noise to hear? Even if they produce enough tyre noise when moving slowly, when walking along the footpath pierced by driveways, it's nice to be able to get notice that a car might be about to start using that driveway by being able to hear an 'idling' car in the driveway, which signals that there soon may be a slowly moving vehicle.
This proposal seems to be about vehicles moving at less than 30km/h - including stationary idling vehicles - for situations where tyre and wind noise may not be adequate to signal that there is a slowly moving or soon to be moving (in the case of stationary 'idling') vehicle.
Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 141 requires electric vehicles to produce a pedestrian alert sound when stationary, reversing, and in forward gear up to a speed of 30 km/h.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
