Electric cars have to make noise on purpose because otherwise it would be a silent car. And most of these noises are are weird futuristic WEEEE-00000 UFO sounds. Therefore I posit that we should be able to change the noises our electric cars make
EDIT: These suggestions are Top-Notch! Keep em coming!
The sound from a car is mostly tire noise.
True but that’s not relevant.
So we need noisemakers on gas and EV cars.
Yes because drivers of EVs hit pedestrians and this helps save lives.
If cars (EV and gas) are travelling at road speed, tires are the loudest sound. If cars (EV and gas) are traveling at very reduced speed, neither make a sound. I have no idea what you are talking about.
The engine and everything in an ICE car make sound at reduced speed. It’s not the loudest on new cars but its still like 40db. I have no idea what you are talking about.
I’m saying a gas car travelling at low speed doesn’t make a sound. Does it help if I repeat myself?
That’s wrong. It very much makes sound.
I always wanted to mod my car so the stereo plays different pod-racer sounds depending on rpm, but it never got past the idea phase. Wonder if you could do the same for EV’s
They’re the same for safety. People need to build a subconscious mental model of what a car sounds like so they can be safe as pedestrians and cyclists.
If there were 1000 different sounds, that mental model would never form.
F=forward, R=reverse, D=Don’t move.
F= fast, R= real fast D= dangerously fast.
What do we got on this thing, a CuisinArt?!? LUDICROUS SPEED, GOOOO!!!
“silent car”
lmao nope those things are loud as fuck because of the tires and weight
really loud bubbles.
TIL nobody listens to their environment while they walk outside.
can nobody else hear the sound of the tires on the pavement? or can nobody else hear the sound of the environment being reflected differently off the cars coming down the road?
When you’re habituated to the sound of ICE engines, if you’re not focused on your environment, the quieter tire sounds absolutely can sneak up on you.
And when you’re just strolling, it’s pretty natural for your attention to wander. Just because you can hear something doesn’t mean you’ll notice something.
sounds like a pedestrian problem. just because you’re walking doesn’t absolve you from remaining attentive to the flow of traffic just as much, if not more, than when driving.
In 50+ years I have never had a vehicle sneak up on me. no car, no motorcycle, no bicycle.
Congratulations!
The rest of us, flawed creatures that we are, sometimes slip - we may even think we’re actively attending to our environment while also chatting, thinking, or paying attention to something else. It’s a shortcut our brains take: when they get accustomed to things working (or sounding) one way, they’ll focus on those cues instead of other, potentially subtler, cues. Even if we’re actively trying not to
“Hit by a car!? What a jay!” You sound like a 1900’s baron.🧐 Go live in car city and kiss cars and suck tailpipe since you love them so much!
fuckcars is leaking I guess?
I live outside of the US in a very walkable urban area, so this comment is breaking my brain.
In suburbia, sure.
In the town centre, there’s so many vehicles around that it’s very easy for an electric vehicle to creep up on you.
Is your argument that we should make these vehicles quieter because you personally don’t experience this issue?
no, my argument is that it doesn’t matter what sound it makes as long as it makes a sound.
pedestrians need to be more aware of their surroundings, this doesn’t absolve drivers either.
pedestrians often just blindly assume because they have the right of way that means they don’t have to pay attention, and that’s how they die.
Completely impractical. Standardise noises for warnings. I’m not going to react to the sound of Nyan Cat played on the Bagpipes and think “oh that’s a car coming”.
Also, pedestrians DO have the right of way. How do I know? I got hit by a driver at night in the rain, with his lights off, coasting in neutral. Couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him. Court settled in my favour.
Also, pedestrians DO have the right of way.
I wasn’t arguing that. pedestrians DO have the right of way, but that doesn’t absolve them from ensuring their own safety. just because you have the right of way in a vehicle when the light is green doesn’t mean you just floor it and hope for the best.
How do I know? I got hit by a driver at night in the rain, with his lights off, coasting in neutral. Couldn’t hear him, couldn’t see him. Court settled in my favour.
now imagine how much better you’d feel if you were a bit more attentive to your surroundings! no splashy splash of the wheels on pavement? no bouncy bounce of the rain off the car? you were probably distracted by trying to stay dry.
100% of all accidents are caused by a lack of information that could have been resolved by better observation.
You don’t have right of way in a vehicle when the light is green - pedestrians still have right of way.
There was no “splash splashy of wheels on the pavement” because the car was in the road, not the pavement.
There were plenty of “splashy splashy” noises around, because there were lots of vehicles. The “bouncy bounce” of rain on that car was easily confused with the “bouncy bounce” of rain of every other car/surface/building/person in the area.
I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being moronic, or if you genuinely feel like you know more about the situation of my accident than I do. The fact remains that electric vehicles shouldn’t simply be able to make some random noise. They need to be audible and recognisable to prevent accidents.
tell me. how would the outcome of your accident change if you were deaf?
I bet you would be much more observant if you couldn’t hear anything.
I’m not deaf.
We’re digressing from the original disagreement
no, my argument is that it doesn’t matter what sound it makes as long as it makes a sound.
I believe it is important for vehicles to sound like vehicles, so they can be easily identified. They shouldn’t be randomly changed by their owner to something whimsical.
I want to do this very thing if/when I have an electric car. I specifically want that old school cartoon jalopy sound. Put put put put BANG BANG put put put put
If I had an electric car, I’d turn my sound into Jeremy Clarkson yelling “POWER, MORE POWER!!!” over and over again so people would know I’m coming.
Horn goes arOOga.
This reminded me of how I read the Grapes of a Wrath in its entirety before learning that it’s ja-LOP-ee, not JA-la-pee. Also, “oncet” is not On-set, it’s wunst.
Wunst!? I know the joke with reading something before hearing it is you won’t always be right but wunst??? vaguely gestures at everything😩😂😩
It’s a regional way of saying “once.” As in, “oncet I finish this, I’ll start on that.” The spelling is a crime though.
that’s mostly what I was getting at lol. who came up with that spelling??
It’s for grammatical reasons. It’s the same “t” as whenst. From whenst you came ~= from oncet you came
It’d be better spelt as “once’t”
For me, once’t in an oakie vernacular would be a contraction of once and it:
I’d grab a beer once’t finished.
but of course that’s just me and I left the Central Valley a long time ago and am not a professional linguist, I’m just telling you about my perception of the vernacular from where I grew up.
You say that as if “whenst” is a word we would’ve encountered before.
I was teaching my native English speaking students German and explained that woher and wohin are like whence and whither, and the looks of utter unrecognition made me realize I was doing this. I tried for a moment with “thence and thither? Hence and hither?” And 4/7 knew “hence,” but that was it, and it’s not really used in the same sense as the others, anyway (I mean, it is, but it’s metaphoric and most people saying it probably aren’t thinking of it in that sense).
It’s an archaic version of whence.
But then wouldn’t it be “onest”?
Whence/whenst, once/onest
But I would pronounce that o-nest, so six of one, half dozen of the other I suppose.
If I were to affect an oakie, I would produce “onest” to mean something like “singular” or “unique”, or possibly “solitary” or “lonely”. I would mean it as a superlative of the ordinal “one” and it would be pronounced slightly differently.
This is very funny for me. The phrase “floppy jalopy” to mean flimsy still gets a lot of play in the region, and so I’d heard the word many, many times before I read it. It wasn’t until I read the Grapes of Wrath that I found out it referred to a car.
That’s a great idea! I would just record myself making car noises and use that.
That’s the best idea!
Brbrbrbrbrbrb
Rutabaga Rutabaga Rutabaga Rutabaga
This is a you think you want this but you don’t moment. If this is allowed you will constantly hear ads or people saying check out my channel at annoying.TV as they use driverless cars to circle your block.
They already do that with moving billboards. In my neighborhood the billboards are louder than my tv at half volume. Really pisses me off when they roll by.
That vehicle seems to have six vulnerable tires.
I see three and can imagine where a fourth would be, but where are the 5th and 6th?
Double tires in the back.
Double tires in the rear.
Slightly behind the front ones, they do seem to be slightly obstructed from view though.
https://billboards-n-motion.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/GregHart-002-2048x957.jpg
These seem to be the same trucks from the same company, so the other guy saying double wheels in back is more likely correct
What the fuck, is this real? Moving billboards that make noise? That is just fucking insane
I’d finally have a use for all those ringtones I bought in the 2000s
8-bit linkin park here I come!
Motorola put out pc software that allowed you to transfer any mp3 file you had to your phone and use it as a ringtone. AFAIK it only worked with their devices, but it felt awesome doing that and then checking how much money I didn’t just spend.
I wish we could bring back custom ring tones. Some people use the same sound for calls that I use for wake-up alarms. It’s jarring when I hear it, especially since my phone likes to fuck around on its own in my pocket sometimes (even though I use a biometric lock, it still finds a way.)
What do you mean “bring back”? At least with Android, any audio file you can transfer to your device can be used as a ringtone.
You can do this with any android phone and probably any iphone. My text notification is the “!” Alert noise from Metal Gear Solid.
Do you have one of those old people limited phones or something? Every phone supports custom ringtones lol.
I have an iPhone, about 5 years old.
You can load your own ringtones, but you have to use a Mac or Windows computer with iTunes. I did this years ago to help my old rocker mum to have Born To Be Wild as her ringtone on her iPhone (13?).
I’d argue the sound should be standardized across all models. It needs to be immediately recognizable to nearby pedestrians.
Yes, because that is actually the purpose of those sounds. Not to sound “cool” but to warn pedestrians the otherwise nearly silent car may be moving.
That’s why Harleys are noisy.
Harleys are not noisy until assholes remove the mufflers.
Then why are Kawasakis much less noisy? I thought it was for the Harley’s owner’s inflated ego?
Yeah it’s like saying that you think we should be able to customize our headlights to show the bat signal or something.
Like people die because of this shit, I frankly could not care less about what you wish your car sounded like.
I don’t think the manufacturers want to open that can of worms. You do have a choice of different sounds on some cars. I think it’s good that they all sound similar, making them more recognisable.
Old hybrids didn’t have those sounds and they’re dead quiet at low speeds which is creepy.
Also, if you can customise the sound, you can remove the sound, which would defeat the purpose of the regulations.
You can remove the sound anyway. Some cars will throw an error if the speaker is missing, but you can buy hardware to fool it. Just a resistor with the right connector. Easy peasy. I’m pretty sure it’s not even illegal, it only has to be sold that way.
Ever snuck up on someone in a seven thousand pound chungus-mobile? I have. It’s hilarious.
Of course it can be done, but that doesn’t mean that it should be made easier to do.
It is my car. I should be able to do with it whatever I want!
I can remove the airbag, but do I really want to do that?
I can remove the exhaust (on an old car) and drive without it. It’s not efficient and not legal but I can do it. I won’t do it because if I get caught I have to pay a fine and I want a good car. Same for the sound. If I get caught, I’d have to pay a fine.
I won’t do it because if I get caught I have to pay a fine
Yeah maybe this is a problem. Maybe you should have actual reasons to not remove your exhaust beyond “I don’t want to pay a fine”
I can remove the exhaust (on an old car) and drive without it. It’s not efficient and not legal but I can do it.
Then you “can’t” do it by the same logic. Because it’s not legal.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ftJX_HZ5S4g
Somehow when I first saw this it didn’t seem like an ad.
Recognizability is the key. That is the entire purpose of the fake car sounds: to have your car make noises that bystanders will immediately recognize as a nearby car. It’s a safety feature. The ability to change it to an arbitrary audio file negatively impacts a safety standard. Same reason why rainbow crosswalks are a bad idea.
Had me in the first half, ngl.
It’s not exactly the same thing, but it is analogous. Taking a standardized zebra striped crosswalk and recoloring it for any reason (pride, sports team colors, etc.) is taking away from that standardization, reducing safety.
It depends what you understand the purpose and effect of a crosswalk to be.
If you think it’s basically a signpost on the road saying “there might be pedestrians here” then the standardization is perhaps important. But even then there’s a decent amount of latitude as long as the feature is recognizable.
If it’s just visual noise that makes people uncomfortable to go fast through, then the specific design is far less important. (“Friction” as described in this video.)
Just like this:
I’m not suggesting the following is standard, but the specific sound my car makes allows for people to not just hear the car, but to also know what direction the sound is coming from. The sound is engineered this way.
Compare this with those utility trucks that have those signature “reverse/backing up” (beep…beep…beep) sounds. You can hear it, but it’s almost impossible to tell from what direction. It’s been a complaint by blind people, and there’s still worker incidents where they step into a moving path of a vehicle despite the sound.
You can even make sounds that work against this technique. Home audio systems use directional audio to give the effect of sounds being in certain locations. I wouldn’t want people to be able to change a car sound to something that is more dangerous.
I think that’s what the static sound is for. It doesn’t have a broken speaker it’s easier to hear where the truck is at
