Petrol and Disel vehicles tend to make huge Engine sound. That means you can use your ear to determine whether there is a vehicle coming from the distance where you may not see, especially during heavy fog or during crossing road inside a inner road.
Lets be honest here, 99.99% people only follow good practices when crossing road in a major highway. Most people dont even look behind when crossing in small roads away from the highway.
I was walking today and an electric scooter just speeded up and passed me by. If it were a petrol engine I would hear it coming even when I am not directly looking.
I guess it could matter if I were to drive with the windows down and not listen to the radio but…
The regulators have been working on this problem for awhile.
My 2015 Volt has a pedestrian horn that you activate on the stalk.
My Tesla sounds like a UFO when backing up. The Mach-E sounds like a bulldozer when backing up.
Lets be honest, who drives quiet cars and who is after the rumble?
If you’re talking about potential accidents from a minimum of low speed noise, there are already mitigations such as the built-in artificial noise makers (whirring or spinning or machine buzz, etc.). And bikes are different.
But in my experience, yes, I’ve had more “almost got rear ended” close calls while driving EV compared to driving ICE vehicle. And this is due to the combination of the unusual or unexpected regen deceleration compared to the common friction braking pace, plus the way some rear brake lights flash or don’t flash and drivers in rear traffic are too ignorantly watching your vehicle red lights instead of street traffic red lights, then they try to pass you as a result, etc.
It all becomes more accident prone.
This is a concern that was addressed ten years ago. Nowadays all electric road vehicles sold in most countries have exterior speakers that generate sound as the vehicles drives to alert pedestrians. This is not a choice for automakers, as legal regulations force them to add these sounds. Electric scooters don’t count as vehicles, so they don’t follow the artificial sound rules. But comparing electric scooters (if by “scooter” you mean the one that you stand on and push with your foot) to electric cars is a pretty awful comparison, since they are way slower than cars. Do you think we should attach gasoline engines to bicycles too? Maybe instead of asking everyone around you to make noise, you should just swivel your head and look both ways.