A few years back, one of our clients told us a scary story. Ramona Jensen was getting out of her car and, because she couldn’t hear well, she was unaware of an approaching truck. The driver barely stopped in time to avoid hitting her. You can read Ramona’s story here.
I thought about Ramona recently while reading about the increasing popularity of electric cars. The International Energy Agency recently reported that around 3 million new electric cars were registered last year, a 41% rise compared to 2019. Of course that’s a good thing — it reduces pollution and noise in our cities — but it does pose a few problems, especially for the visually impaired among us, who depend on sound to detect approaching vehicles.
This month a federal law goes into effect requiring electric vehicles to make artificial sounds at low speeds. Discover Magazine reports that Lincoln hired musicians from the Detroit Symphony to create alerts, blended from percussion and stringed instruments, for its latest SUVs. And BMW asked Hans Zimmer to compose noises for its Vision M Next, pictured above, making the concept car sound like the backdrop to an action thriller — like the thrumming, bass-heavy scores for Inception and The Dark Knight. You can read more about that here.
Are you thinking about going electric? Here’s an idea: when you buy that new EV, donate your old gas guzzler to LSH. You’ll be doing two good deeds: helping to create a greener planet while contributing to the LSH mission to restore the gifts of sight and hearing. It’s unbelievably easy: just click here. All it takes is a phone call.
Randy Stein, CEO
