The detectability of conventional, hybrid and electric vehicle sounds by sighted, visually impaired and blind pedestrians

摘要

The timely detection of the vehicles by pedestrians is a prerequisite for road safety. In this study, the traffic condition in which a vehicle approaching to the pedestrian from 50 meter distance with partial load acceleration was investigated. The binaurally recorded sounds of 14 internal combustion engine cars, 4 hybrid cars, and 6 electric cars were presented to the visually impaired, blind and sighted participants. The criteria for the vehicle sound selection was to include broad spectral range with different temporal characteristics. The reaction times of 37 subjects were measured. In the reaction time experiment, the subjects were asked to imagine that they are standing on the curb waiting to cross a one-way street when there may be vehicle approaching from the left. The results show that pedestrians detect the sound of electric vehicles (without sound generator) much later than the sound of vehicles with internal combustion engines and relatively few signal elements are used to detect the sound of internal combustion engine vehicles.