Monday, June 4, 2012

Making Pizza (and Pedestrians) Safer


As I learned recently in this NPR story, Dominos pizza has taken a creative approach to improving the safety of its electric delivery scooters in the Netherlands. Concerned that the quiet vehicles might catch pedestrians unawares, with unfortunate results, the company added a quirky soundtrack to the motors. Annoying? Possibly, but at least they'll be hard for pedestrians to miss...

4 comments:

  1. US just approved legislation for this in 2010!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_vehicle_warning_sounds

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  2. I hear regularly about ideas to address this issue with cars, though not as much with other types of motorized vehicles.

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  3. I just returned from Amsterdam, which is a paradise of sorts for bicyclists, but is perilous for pedestrians. Keeping the sidewalks clear of bagged garbage and parked vehicles would probably help more than an annoying soundtrack on delivery scooters. Any pedestrian who is at risk of being hit by a pizza scooter is also at risk of being hit by silent bicycles, which are much more ubiquitous.

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  4. Very interesting Christine. It seems that it's not just the US that's struggling with the relationship between bikes and pedestrians. On one hand, we see each other as allies in the fight to get more funding, infrastructure, etc for non-motorized transportation, but on the other hand, we're talking about two pretty different (and sometimes conflicting) modes of travel.

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