This is why electric and hybrid cars are mandated to have noise makers in 2013, which makes me stabby.

Hang up and walk.

lemurs: foxyshadis: Fish in a Barrel: This is why electric and hybrid cars are mandated to have noise makers in 2013, which makes me stabby.

I'm assuming that they'll be pretty easy to remove. I'll certainly try, even though it looks like my next purchase won't be a hybrid after all.

A car with some level of artificial noise may be useful for blind pedestrians. Someone with a face planted to a glowy screen is going to be just as oblivious whether the car is audible or not.

It's not just the blind pedestrians. I've almost gotten nailed by Prii a few times in parking lots, and I wouldn't be caught dead with a glowy screen in my hand, for fear of, y'know, being caught dead. But you're walking from your car to the store, keeping track of the apparently oblivious teenager backing out on one side of you, and the wanker with a cell phone stuck to their face trying to poach a parking spot from the one in the pickup truck with the disturbing stickers on the back window, and that guy who doesn't seem to realize that there's anyone else in the parking lot besides him. Then some car you can't hear comes from a direction you can't see. If I'd had just one more distraction -- keeping an eye on a child, for instance, or just carrying something big that was trying to blow away -- I might not have noticed them at all.

People use more senses than just sight to spot potential threats, and taking away one of those cues makes it a whole lot harder.

Confabulat: I bike everywhere and it is sort of hilarious. You can be 100 feet from someone and you can pretty much assume they won't look up.

Why are you biking down the sidewalk? Asshole.

liam76: ReapTheChaos: I don't think it's so much the devices they're carrying or even being distracted it's just the mentality of people these days. I call it the Wal-Mart mentality, because 15 or so years ago that's where it all started as far as I can tell. People walk out of the store pushing their overloaded cart and not even bother looking right or left, they simply walk right into the driving lane assuming the cars will stop.

If you are between the store and the parking lot and the car is supposed to stop, I still check because peopel are morons, but the pedestrian has the right of way in a parking lot.

Also that pattern of white lines between the doors and the parking lanes is a cross-walk, meaning the pedestrians have legal right of way. I always look anyways, because the cars are heavier and harder than I am. However, Ive been known to flip off or even yell at asshats who speed right through, sometimes passing within a foot or two of me, my wife, and our kids. To top it off, if its Walmart there are (rarely observed) stop signs at either end of said cross-walk.

Also of note, most of the cars ignoring the stop sign and speeding through the cross-walks are sporting out of state plates. Worst are old people from New York and Michigan...a group of people with the worst sense of entitlement I have ever encountered.

BigNumber12: It's hard to have sympathy for people, all trails should be enclosed plastic tubes.

If only to keep forest cleaner. I cringe we i see someone flicking a cigarette but out the window when they're driving. Who the hell taught them that "thats ok just throw it on the ground'.I've let people on the phone walk right into me before, they're always surprised.

ReapTheChaos: People walk out of the store pushing their overloaded cart and not even bother looking right or left, they simply walk right into the driving lane assuming the cars will stop.

I keep thinking about hiting one of them with my car, but then I know I'll have to listen to all that "pedestrians have the right of way" crap when I get to court.

I hate people.

People who just walk (or waddle) around with a phone jammed to an ear at all times remind me of the thumb-sucking Linus with a security blanket in the "Peanuts" series.

/sic 'em, Snoopy

We call them "walkers".

Anytime someone walks into the middle of the street without looking both ways is culpable.

They dont even need a smartphone to walk blindly into traffic. They just figure cars will stop, or something.

Even my Chevy Prizm will win in a match of You vs My car.

I was about to injure someone yammering away with their cart taking up the entire isle in the grocery store yesterday... it's not just cars they need to worry about.