Alevare Blogging

I first noticed electric bike advices in Suzhou some years ago. They rode on sidewalks and were so much quieter even than regular bikes. The drivers didn’t have bells or horns but just shouted at you if you were lucky. I was nearly run down several times but quickly learned to watch out for them. Subsequently, some cities in China banned electric bikes because of safety, just as they had earlier banned two-stroke scooters for pollution.

Now that I have an electric bicycle of my own in the US, I notice that the high-pitched whine of the electric motor makes dogs bark when I pass, so I turn off the motor and pedal when I pass those houses. I don’t think a government mandate is a good idea. Perhaps somebody can figure out a way to brand a sound like a ringtone and pay me to use that as an advertisement for them on my electric bike? After a short while, people will get used to quieter electric cars and bikes and enforcement of artificial noise will be pointless. Instead of safety, the point of electric vehicle noise will be to associate the sound with some product you should buy, just like the sound of the Mazda Miata MX-5 was carefully tuned to what buyers expected from a powerful sports car.