Why can't the blind pony up if they're the ones having such a problem with quiet cars and it's apparently so cheap to implement these noisemaking systems?

Who actually believes in community spirit at every level, may I ask?

Would you regard a nation spread across the width of an entire continent, composed of hundreds of millions of people, as being a single, coherent community of people?

@kevmartin
A good community consists of people who don't leech off others and look out for their own needs instead of demanding other people look out for them.

When i was a little boy, i used to stick a playingcard to my cycle, so it would sound like a moped or better yet, a motorcycle.

There's your noisemaker for ya

I just realized. All cars - even hybrids - already have such a noise maker. In the United States, we call it a horn. Its activated usually by pushing a button on your steering column. When you see a blind person, or anyone else for that matter, try to get in front of your machine, push that button!

Problem solved.

Everyone should be happy now.

They should, along with everyone else. Why is it so incomprehensible that the entire community foot the bill for something needed by a minority of its members? I'm sure it happens in a million other ways. If you are suggesting EVERYTHING should be totally 'user pays', well, fair enough, but I find that so, so, sad.

This depends on what you mean by "believes in". Believes it already exists, or believes it is something worth aspiring too.

Yes, and one day hopefully the species will evolve far enough to work effectively as a whole, so there will also be an effective world community.

A community, to me, is any group of people who work together to achieve a common goal for all its members (the "common good"). That might be the local neighbourhood watch, the teachers and students at a school, residents of a State, country, or the planet - or many other collectives.

How is it so, so, sad to expect someone to pay for something if they want it, as opposed to expecting everyone else who does not necessarily want it, also to pay?

Either way.

Sounds like bullshit to me. I don't work together with even a tenth of the people in my city to "achieve a common goal", and you want me to swallow that the entire US is a single community?

Feel free to drag your ass over to some forlorn Communist country if you're really so incensed by this. There's still plenty of them around.

I do believe every possible concession should be made to facilitate physical impairment from wheelchair ramps to beeping traffic lights. However, I do have a bit of a problem with this one. I mean cyclists don't make much noise and they've been around for years. If blind people cross the road at designated crossing spots with proper sound indicators where is the problem?

It's not about expectation so much as desire. Another difference in the "me vs you" mindset as opposed to the "us" mindset. I guess if you can't see it, you just can't see it. The world will continue to be a place full of little but conflict as long as the majority are just out for their own interests.

Let's try another example - should people who live on an island have to be the only ones to pay for a bridge that allows them access to the mainland. If it's paid for by the State along with other roads, am I not being ripped off since I don't ever go to that island? What if I don't drive a car at all, instead I walk everywhere I need to go - should I be exempt from contributing to taxes that are spent on roads altogether. How about airports, if I never fly? Or railways? Or the military? Do you seriously propose that every aspect of life should be 100% user pays? If not, then where do you draw the line?

No - it isn't. Hence my question of whether you meant "is now" or "aspires to be". There's a big difference - it will never happen as long as people don't aspire towards it. I've said time and time again that people are ultimately selfish creatures, and ultimately that fact is at odds with the concept of community. But I believe that this is slowly evolving. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.