Brent

I'd go for this idea.

As a point of reference, the FAA's new ADS-B requirement will soon require all airplanes to carry transmitters to announce their position.

FAA - Surveillance and Broadcast Services


This technology is supposed to help pilots do their own traffic avoidance, and ease congestion by allowing planes to fly closer together. Right now, radar updates so slowly that controllers are forced to space airplanes several minutes apart to "guarantee" minimum separation.

ADS-B is expensive -- even cheap ones are said to cost $6,000+ -- but some similar announcing technology could be used for cars. It would actually be nice to have the ability to know that another car is in your blind spot, and the blind could have similar receivers alerting them to passing cars.

vfx

I heard that in Japan they have cell phones and toys that do the proximity notification we are talking about. It's been a meeting/ dating fad for teens.

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The world loves to be deceived.

malcolm

Do we really need more gadgets to carry around? Particularly ones which will only be needed in a somewhat narrow set of circumstances and must be purchased/subsidized by/for those on invalidity levels of income.

The advantage of ordinary hearing is that you can immediately identify the direction of the sound source. Some sort of personal-quiet-car-detector would have to communicate direction in a NON-visual way. Tricky = expensive.

doug

Another story about cars not being noisy enough.

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com

Minnesota boy rides bike into Prius he didn't hear - AutoblogGreen

malcolm

The technology already exists for cars to spot pedestrians;

Toyota introduces Night View on Japanese Crown Hybrid - AutoblogGreen

Could be linked to a Hypersonic Sound System - or just an old fashioned horn.

malcolm

malcolm

Nice looking bracelet

Vibering concept warns of impending vehicles - AutoblogGreen

But will the price of this be subsidised for members of the disabled community?

SByer

What about cellphones? Can't we just piggyback off of that? Bet we could even hack together a BlueTooth solution now. Could even probably just use donated old cellphones. May require re-flashing those phones without Java, but it'd be pretty darned cheap.

And I'd buy $2000 worth of those bracelets for the disabled if it meant I didn't have to have any lame sound generator on my car.

malcolm

That's a good idea SBuyer - could use the extended Bluetooth range of 100 metres. Existing tech. Like it!

malcolm

Oh no, not Lotus as well!

Lotus gives hybrids a V8 soundtrack - Autoblog

Video here