The hybrid fake engine sound is annoying, thank goodness there's a fix

[GPSMan]

Plus, it's not very practical when it's 8º outside...

I find this whole discussion ridiculous. The hybrid noise is not at all loud or annoying. Inside my hybrid Maverick I can barely hear it, and outside it's certainly not loud enough to "wake the neighbors." My garage door opening makes 10X that much noise!

I'm going to read ALL the data, not just parts before commenting on the DATA.

However,....

A) people who are "hard of hearing" will be hard of hearing of both Hybrids and ICE's.

B) the people who claim "the hybrid noise is not annoying or is barely noticeable" may overlap a large degree with group "A".

C) different people have different sensitivities to different frequencies of sound, and amplitudes of sounds.

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[Chris_G]

I don’t know what compelled me to read all 7 pages of this at once, but lessons learned:

Disabled Canadian deaf kids refuse to bike in the Country side, and there is increasing demand to replace the fake hybrid noise with a more realistic “woodpecker on the window sill” hammering sound to tick off the neighbors first thing every morning.

I found this under the hood, makes perfect sense!

 

[JimParker256]

I'm going to read ALL the data, not just parts before commenting on the DATA.

However,....

A) people who are "hard of hearing" will be hard of hearing of both Hybrids and ICE's.

B) the people who claim "the hybrid noise is not annoying or is barely noticeable" may overlap a large degree with group "A".

C) different people have different sensitivities to different frequencies of sound, and amplitudes of sounds.

Well, here's some data, albeit gathered with a phone app, so the calibration might be suspect...

Using a dB Meter app on my phone, with vehicle turned "ON" in electric mode and stationary, the interior dB level inside the Maverick cab is around 67-70 dB. A good bit of that noise comes from the A/C blower fan, which is on 99.5% of the time I'm in the vehicle. So that's my "baseline" noise level observation.

Placing the vehicle in reverse to activate the beeper, the interior sound level pulsed to a max of 71.5 dB in time with the beep. That's about a 1.5 dB increase from the baseline. Certainly noticeable - roughly equal to turning your radio volume up one "click" on the dial - but not objectionable at all.

Outside the vehicle, the "baseline" sound level was closer to 65 dB. The beeping sound (again measured right next to the driver's door window) pulsed the dB meter to 72.5 dB in time with the beeping. It can definitely be heard within 50 feet of the truck, but not a lot farther.

By contrast, opening my garage door registered at 78.5 dB. Since a 6-decibel rise in loudness means the sounds are TWICE as loud, my garage door is TWICE as loud as the backup beep... Which do you think is more likely to wake a sleeping neighbor?

Then the kicker... At one point during my testing, the ICE kicked on, and at the side of the truck, that "start up" peaked the meter at 80 dB - louder even than the garage door opening. So backing out with your hybrid (beeper on) would appear to be considerably more quiet (less than half the volume) as doing the same thing with an ICE vehicle.

 

[Benilla]

Plus, it's not very practical when it's 8º outside...

I find this whole discussion ridiculous. The hybrid noise is not at all loud or annoying. Inside my hybrid Maverick I can barely hear it, and outside it's certainly not loud enough to "wake the neighbors." My garage door opening makes 10X that much noise!

Well then your heat should be on which kicks on the ICE engine! Yet, another thing you can do to avoid the annoying hybrid sounds

 

[commadorebob]

I need more popcorn. This has been fun to read.

I'll say this much: you open yourself up to personal liability if you futz around with a built-in safety feature and then run someone over. At least if they don't hear it and it is the stock version, it is Ford's problem.

My wife is deaf. As in has cochlear implants and cannot hear a thing when not wearing them deaf. As a result, she is more likely to "feel" an ICE engine nearby based on it vibrating the air than anything the hybrid puts out, even with her implants since it could be outside the frequency range of her processor. So, ICE engines tend to be safer simply on that front.

However, my policy is very simple: look before I back-up. Ford gave my Escape an 8" screen, a backup camera, and annoying warnings for a reason.

 

[RDS]

Never forget- 50 percent of all people have below average intelligence.

Actual 50% of all people have below MEDIAN intelligence. 80% of people do not know the difference.

 

[jsus]

Well then your heat should be on which kicks on the ICE engine! Yet, another thing you can do to avoid the annoying hybrid sounds

The ICE is the source of all the "annoying hybrid sounds" on a properly functioning (Ford) Hybrid.

 

[Nunyabiznus]

The first person who shows me 10 people hurt because a hybrid was too quiet, I'll send $100 via PayPal.

I'm neutral on the noise makers.
Have them if you like them.
Take them off if you don't.
They are present for a hypothetical problem. A 1 in 100,000,000 problem. It's exactly like buying life insurance before getting on an airplane. It's almost certainly NOT needed but no matter how illogical it is, some people buy life insurance before getting on a plane.

So you're saying that 1 person getting killed is ok when it's preventable. I think you're right but why not get down to 1 in 1000

 

[OrangeBlue]

We should probably cure cancer first too.

AMIRITE?

Yes.

Because there are bigger fish to fry.
Motorcycles do more harm (by other means) but still do more harm to humans by a factor of 1000 compared to "quiet hybrids".

Once you solve the motorcycle death problem and a few other "big fish" by all means move on to the little tadpoles like quiet hybrids.

 

[OrangeBlue]

Lol.
My god, you are thicker than a whale omelet.

People who are partially hearing impaired (like millions of older folks) will likely NOT hear anything from a slow moving hybrid with the warning noise disabled.
They would hear SOMETHING when a slow moving ICE vehicle or hybrid WITH the warning noise goes by.

That SOMETHING may save them from stepping in front of a 4000 lb vehicle.

However,....

A) people who are "hard of hearing" will be hard of hearing of both Hybrids and ICE's.

 

[GPSMan]

Actual 50% of all people have below MEDIAN intelligence. 80% of people do not know the difference.

And you can't please 100% of the people 100% of the time. Or you can please 100% of the people 0% of the time, if you please.

 

[GPSMan]

Imagine fingernails scraping on a chalkboard.

Imagine your fingernails doing the scraping.
Imagine someone else scraping their fingernails.

Imagine eating a whole really hot pepper in your mouth. Habañero. Ghost Pepper. Scorpion Pepper. Chew it up. Let it linger a few moments.

Suck on really potent raw lemon flesh.

Everyone will have a different experience. But you will experience something even just thinking about it.

Same goes for artificial noise makers on cars. The Toyota Rav4 Hybrid / Venza is OBNOXIOUS and VERY annoying to me. The Maverick, much less so. The Toyotas EV are over the top LOUDER than any conventional ICE at residential speeds. Hands down, they swung the pendulum too far on those.
Maverick is more moderate.

But nails going down a chalk board don't bother me, and I enjoy hot peppers. People experience stimuli differently.

Just saying "loudness" is different for everyone.

 

[GPSMan]

If you want you can look at the NHTSA studies on it that resulted in the legislation. To wit they found that hybrid electric vehicles were statistically more likely to be involved in incidents of crashes with a pedestrian than regular ICE vehicles.

Kudos for taking a serious shot at providing a serious study. Partial credit earned. But how trusting of that "study" are you?

For example, screen shots taken directly from:

Keep those DMV record dates above in mind when reading the following:

Two "comparable groups of HEV's and ICE's were selected for analysis (case vs. control)". Sounds all scientific.

HEV Case Group:
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Camry
Toyota Prius
Honda Civic
Honda Accord

ICE Control Group:
Toyota Corolla
Toyota Camry
Honda Accord
Honda Civic

Prius had no "partner" but hey, they "tried" to compare apples to apples right? WRONG!

Toyota Prius hit the streets in 2000.
Honda Accord Hybrid in 2005.
Honda Civic Hybrid in 2005.
Toyota Camry Hybrid in 2007.
Toyota Corolla not until MY2019!

How can these "hybrids" be studied that did not exist at the time?

Also, sales of the Accord Hybrid was miserably low, and was discontinued in 2007. Honda Civic Hybrid, and Toyota Camry Hybrid sales were also low in the years under study.

So basically, upwards of 90% of all data in the study came from Toyota Prius accident data.

Q: Why "pretend" this was a well rounded peer reviewed study?

Q: Why "pretend" they had substantial numbers of data points to compare?

Q: Why flat out lie about having Corolla Hybrids in the study? I just don't get that part.

They probably had a handful of Accords, Civics, and and Camrys.
Vast majority had to be Prius.

Q: Could there be a design issue with the Prius other than sound, such as blind spots, poorly places mirrors, small mirrors, tiny rear window, etc also contributing to car vs. pedestrian incidents?

 

[Darnon]

It's because that study was from 2009 (that's also why there's a bit that says pure EVs are statistically insignificant, because they were at the time)
. Here's another from 2011: https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/811526

These contributed to the 2013 proposal for requiring pedestrian alerts for H/EVs. There's a few other studies that they cite in the final action ruling, but I'm not here to do your homework so I didn't go through them all exhaustively.

 

[GPSMan]

Q: Is it fair and statistically correct to compare 8,387 Hybrid vehicles to 559,703 ICE vehicles?

They used 8,387 Hybrid vehicles because that's all they could find in the study's time frame.

Had more hybrid been used, pedestrian incident rate per 1000 might have gone down. Had fewer ICE cars been used, rate per 1000 might have gone up. It is possible the two rates, only slightly different to begin with, might converge.

Flip a coin 100 times to determine if "Heads" (hybrid incident) is more prevalent than tails, you might get 53 - 47 and conclude heads (hybrid) is more dangerous.

Flip a coin 500,000 times and you will get close to 250,005 - 249,995 and conclude they are essentially equal.

The NHSTA says several times they realized the sample size was small, but all they had, and cautioned readers about making broad generalizations.

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