Archive for October 9th, 2009

We’ve remarked here before on things like Japan’s ‘melody road,’ in which road grooves would play songs only at the proper driving speed, and here comes another form of musically-based behavioral modification, an intriguing transportation “nudge.” The benefit here is I suppose oriented more towards people’s health than actual energy savings (do escalators consume more energy with more passengers?), but it’s an interesting result in light of previous findings that only escalator queues of a certain length will compel people to the stairs (with the exception of efficiency nuts like myself, the frantic guy you see bounding down the stairs at the airport because I can’t stand waiting on the clogged escalators).

(Thanks Robert)

Usually Staten Island’s in the news for its law-averse drivers, but here’s a different take: Renegade homegrown traffic engineers.

Lawrence Rosenblum on the hazards of ultra-quiet hybrid cars:

This finding is consistent with a fact many of us have suspected all along: the quietness of slow moving hybrid cars is a danger to all of us—blind and sighted alike. Our auditory systems often work at an implicit level in warning of nearby dangers, allowing us to concentrate on more conscious tasks. Our ability to safely cross a parking lot while we talk to a friend, manage our children, or simply look for where we’ve parked, is aided by our implicit auditory warning system.

But our hyper-sensitivity to approaching sounds can also be part of the solution. It means that only a subtle enhancement of sound should be needed. Hybrids and electric cars won’t need to beep, chirp, or produce an alarm to be audible. Beeps and chirps are likely more distracting than they are perceptually useful. The enhancing sound, needed only at slow speeds, could be either the simulated sounds of a very quiet engine (think cooling fan), or of rolling tires. For purposes of both auditory utility and simple familiarity, the safest sounds are car sounds. And these sounds would be barely noticeable for most of us. Not much sound is needed for the auditory system to warn us about hazards, as long as it’s the right sound.