Not so quiet please.

I read a curious article today. Seems that the powers that decide this stuff, decided that hybrid cars are too quiet. Yes you read that correctly.
They are too quiet. Supposedly they pose a risk to pedestrians who may not hear a car coming.

So they are giving the manufacturers about a half dozen years or so to make them noisier.
We are bombarded by noise everwhere we go. From the boom..boom..boom of speedy cars driven by teens (how do they afford these by the way?), to the screeching of tires, the incessant honking of horns, siren, bus brakes. Very hard not to be bombarded by noise in some form or another everyday.

So what is bad about quiet, clean efficient vehicles? Are we as pedestrians so unaware of our surroundings that we have stopped looking when we cross the street, depending on the car with the dragging muffler to alert us that it is approaching?

Hopefully those with sounder judgement will review this new idea and find it to be faulty.
After all the blind don't see any cars coming but I am sure that most will hear the hum of the hybrid. The deaf don't hear anything, but will surely see the approaching cars.
Maybe we should all just listen and look, and the auto manufacturers can continue what they should be doing, building solid, sound, fuel efficient vehicles to take us from point A to point B.
Heck everyone I see have headphones on anyway, they are not hearing anything outside of those tiny outside sound blocking ear plugs. Let's just hope that they are looking.