I have several friends who are blind: Silent cars create a serious hazard for someone who is maneuvering through an urban environment largely based upon what they can hear. It became a major concern for schools for the blind as soon as silent electric cars appeared.
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I have a Nissan Leaf and I really wish it had a bicycle bell or some such as well as the normal horn. The normal horn is far too unmodulated for ordinary “you may not be aware, but there’s a car here” signaling.
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I’m going to vote for this one
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The Hypnotoad theme song?
The sound of the Next Generation Enterprise’s warp engines?
The sound of an ice cream truck would be a little cruel but would still alert everyone around as to your car’s presence.
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Or this oldy but goody
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I’ve long thought that cars should have a loud and a quiet horn for just that purpose.
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My go to “engine noise”:
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The car horn has been used to signal the sentiment of “go fuck yourself” for so long it is now inconceivable that any other meaning could be interpreted or otherwise ascribed.
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Every Toyota hybrid in Japan has these, as far as I know. It’s a really strange, soft whirring noise that you barely hear, but carries for long distances.
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Are you bicycling the right way down the street? That is, the same way cars are travelling?
It sounds like a real leap of faith for a pedestrian not to even look for traffic when crossing the street anywhere- which I guess is the reason for artificial car sounds in the first place.
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“Get out of my way get out of my way get out of my way get out of my way get out of my way get out of my way…”
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…Cartoon Car Sound Effects video…
The noise at 2:52 is the best.
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All electric cars should either sound like the TARDIS, or Ivor the Engine:
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What about this?
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I would so do a looped recording of a human imitating a car. Not somebody as good as Michael Winslow from the police academy movies, though. It’d have to be obvious that it was a human making those sounds.
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For the smaller ones:
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Came here to write this.
Actually, I do keep thinking about adding that to the playlist.
Yep. I always bike with traffic and obey traffic laws. I’ve even seen people, at intersections, cross the street against the light not looking in my direction. I can see what they’re doing - they glance in my direction, looking for automobiles, then look in the opposite direction for vehicles, and not seeing any, step directly in front of me while still looking in that other direction. They either didn’t register my bike as something to worry about (and thus don’t “see” it), or they grossly misjudged my speed. Given their surprise as I screech to a halt/swerve wildly, they don’t seem to have noticed I was even there. Also, I suspect people consider the bike lane to not be a “real” part of the street, because sometimes people will walk into those without looking even when cars are coming.
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