Electric Buses on London's 100 Route Will Play a Soundtrack To Alert Pedestrians To Their Presence

Matt Burgess, writing for Wired UK: Last year London's 8,000 or so buses traveled 279 million miles and completed 2.23 billion journeys -- more than half of all bus trips completed in England. But they're not green enough. Yet. According to mayor Sadiq Khan, London has Europe's biggest electric bus fleet with more than 200 currently in use. It's a small fraction of the total number of buses but there are already two fully electric bus routes: 43 (running between Muswell Hill and London Bridge) and 134 (North Finchley to Warren Street). Now the capital's electric buses are set to get a new soundtrack. The purpose? To help protect people around them. As electric vehicles are almost silent at lower speeds, they're potentially dangerous to the pedestrians, who may not be paying attention or live with visual impairments. (Research from the US Department of Transportation has even suggested people are 40 per cent more likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car than one with a noisy combustion engine). From July this year, EU regulations stipulate that all new electric need to include an Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System (AVAS). This system must play a sound to alert people to the vehicle when it's moving. Cars moving at speeds of less than 20kph must have a minimum sound level of 56dB and older electric cars have to be retrofitted with a sound system by 2021. The EU regulations also apply to London's buses. In order to create a consistent sound across the city's buses, Transport for London (TfL), the transport regulator, has commissioned a sound to be used by all electric buses in the capital.

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