I believe there is an instance of a woman being hit by a meteorite which penetrated the roof of her house and dinged her in the thigh. I don't know if it whistled or not...

Perhaps, in an emergency, passengers could be required to scream while the plane is crashing to warn bystanders ?

Forget the whistle we should just ban planes and jogging.

Problem solved.

I think the situation is so very rare, and simple solutions like horns likely to fail, that it isn't worth worrying about.

But that doesn't mean it is a stupid question. There is a related situation that is becoming more common every day. The situation is how do you keep people from stepping off the curb in front of a silent electric car? It is not an academic concern.

The fact is that people are so accustom to internal combustion engine vehicles that make a fair amount of noise, and being able to avoid them by listening, that a nearly silent electric car catches them by surprise. this is a real issue. One proposed solutions is to equip electric cars with a noisemaker to warn people. One proposal was to have a recording of a regular car, keyed in loudness and tone to speed and throttle, play through a speaker on the front bumper.

One wag suggested the drivers could just make 'vroom-vroom' noises.

This is a real issue and one we will be hearing more about in the future.

Won't matter. The doppler effect is a shift in the sound frequency due to the relative movement of the plane/car/whatever, but the speed of sound remains the same: About 340 meters per second.

I'm surprised no one has mentioned it but jogging/walking/biking/driving with headphones in/on is more dangerous than silent airplanes. Now that its getting nice out we are starting to see that already, trying to ride a bike down the multipurpose trail and someone is walking along with headphones on and doesn't hear you coming or your "on the left" call and steps in front of you or swings their arms. Having the headphones on you loose the situational awareness and don't hear anything else coming be it an airplane with no engine or a stray dog or car or bicycle or mugger or etc.

I'm not sure if I should take this seriously?? Maybe we let the government legislate us to safety. All potential things that could kill us should be regulated immediately! Handrails should be installed on all bars of soap and banana peels. Anything that flies or rolls should be equipped with a clown and bicycle horn. All new firearms will be produced with a 'bang/fire delay'. You hear the "BANG" and then 3 seconds later the bullet leaves the muzzle. That way, everyone would have plenty of time to duck.

Mother Nature and Murphy are trying to kill us all the time. If people would look up from their self absorbed lives, it wouldn't make any difference. Someone is going to be run over, speared, crashed into and dropped everyday. All we can do is lessen the chances.

No news report ever mentions the thousands of joggers that go out for a run and return home safely. It's only the exceptions.

My 2 cents

I hope you don't think I'm suggesting legislation (hard to tell with some users in the flat mode and some in the threaded, it appears your replying to me). Its nothing that needs legislated, the act of jobbing isn't dangerous its jogging with headphones or jogging down a busy street that is dangerous.

Someone asked what are the odds of this happening. Obviously, 100%. The odds that another plane loses its' propellor, has the engine sieze throwing oil all over the windshield, having the pilot decide to ditch into the Atlantic wheels up, and hitting a visiting tourist who is running with his IPod headphones on ---

pretty remote.

I think getting hit with lightning while a polar bear is mauling you and winning the lottery all at the same time is more likely to happen. On a Tuesday even.

But stuff happens. It was that guy's time to go.

No, no, no. Just because a long shot happened, that doesn't change it to 100%. That's something that many people get confused about.

It only means that that one time the numbers came up. It's still a 1 in a [whatever] chance, even in the instance where it happened.

And the fact that it happened once has no effect on the chance of it happening again. It's the same as the chance of it happening the first time.

Let's say it's 1 in a million*. Then, the 1 in a million happened once. The odds of it happening again today are still 1 in a million. Which doesn't mean it couldn't happen today, only that it's no more or less likely than it was on the day it happened.

(Although, if it did happen again so soon, I'd be looking for some factor we aren't aware of, making the event more likely than we think.)


*And for you Terry Pratchett fans, this isn't the Discworld. 1 in a million is 1 in a million.