But "reading the recall carefully" I see that NHTSA actually praised the Boombox feature:
"Boombox can enhance the conspicuity of the vehicle to pedestrians"
and even noted the nominal non-interference:
"Boombox and the pedestrian alert sound are mutually exclusive sounds"
They actually seem to have no objection to Boombox at all, they were only pointing out that someone could conceivably create a custom noise-canceling inverse of the PWS sound to effectively silence it:
"sounds emitted using Boombox could be construed to obscure or prevent the PWS from complying with FMVSS 141"
Exactly. Not a NHTSA watcher here but I’d bet a tall coffee that the almost every member of the assessment team thought it was a good innovation, but this was not a refutable possibility so it carried the day. Tesla could probably have found a way to prevent it but decided it wasn’t worth the time. I wish they hadn’t given up so easily.
But NHTSA was very foolish. Now instead of people finding a noise cancelling sound and enabling it every time they drive, those who dislike the PWS will simply unplug the speaker.
I’m not a fan of the “UFO sound” but people can do that anyway. The easiest way to handle that is simply to make sure all insurance policies insist on non-modification of the PWS system. Any policy I’ve had has insisted on seatbelts and I think technically they can refuse to pay out in any accident where their customers (and passengers) are not belted in. If you disable safety features that have a direct relationship to the accident that occurred, no coverage.
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