"Federal safety officials expect to finalize rules later this year requiring all hybrid and electric cars to play fake engine sounds to alert passersby, a chang

"Federal safety officials expect to finalize rules later this year requiring all hybrid and electric cars to play fake engine sounds to alert passersby, a change that experts estimate could prevent thousands of pedestrian and cyclist injuries." My guess is that the main force behind this law is Big Oil using their lobbyists to slow the adoption of electric vehicles. If they were really concerned about pedestrians being hit by cars it would be illegal to wear headphones while walking. Instead of adding noise, which we already have too much of (I can hear cars on roads a mile away from my house) how about they require cars to send out a signal that an inexpensive device can pick up and thus locate the car. That way any pedestrian can actually see where all the cars are around them. I bet that kind of proactive action would have much better results then depending on people's inadvertent attention to background noise.