Senate bill SB 1174 establishes a "... commission ... all motorized road vehicles, [to RJW] emit sound sufficient to be heard ... by pedestrians who are blind or visually impaired ... " is redundant to Federal legislation, HR 5734, "Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2008." This means the California tax payer gets to pay twice: (1) Federal taxes for HR 5734, and (2) California State taxes for SB 1174. In a time of shrinking budgets, this is pure waste.

Already, half a dozen California representatives are co-sponsors to HR 5734: Bob Filner, Zoe Lofgren, Jerry McNerney, Linda Sanchez, Fortney Stark, and Ellen Tauscher. One bill is enough and we don't need to spend any more time and money on something Washington DC is already working on.

BTW, this bill also has a number of serious errors in the facts and data. We looked at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) accident data and found the Prius hybrid electric has the same pedestrian accident rate as ordinary vehicles. In fact, not one blind person has ever been killed by a Prius in the 5 years of available traffic data. An average of 5 blind pedestrians die each year, killed by today's sound emitting pickup trucks and SUVs.

The NHTSA held a hearing June 23 in DC on this and the some of the results can be found at: www.regulation.gov - search - NHTSA-2008-0108-0020 (why sound generators don't work.)