Drivekustik: Acoustic Detectability Of Electric Vehicles

The project drivEkustik was funded from 2011 to 2013 by the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology in order to analyse the impacts of the interior as well as the exterior acoustic emissions regarding to road safety. In work package 1, pass-by measurements based on aspects of the standard ISO 362 have been carried out to compare the sound emission of 4 di erent cars at a speed range between 10 and 50 km/h. All measurements were performed with conventional microphones and a binaural head. The binaural recordings were supplemented with recordings of di erent environments, in order to conduct a listening test to determine the acoustic detectability of the vehicles. Special attention was given to the assessment by visual impaired people, which are usually more a ected by safety issues related with electric cars. For this reason, about 10% of a total of 105 participants were visual impaired people. A statistical analysis of the listening test with focus on the di erence between the detection times was carried out. Furthermore, the stimuli of the listening test were analysed and compared with the detection time results of the listening test. In the present paper, the main results of this work are presented.