"AM radio plays a critical role in our public safety infrastructure. As seven former heads of FEMA have explained, AM’s resiliency combined with the long distances AM signals propagate means ‘the success of the National Public Warning System hinges on the use of AM radio.’ I agree. Americans know in times of emergency that they can turn to AM radio. I applaud Congress for its bipartisan action to ensure the continued reception of AM signals in all vehicles.”
If you choose to die at home fine, but public roads are life-critical infrastructure. Guaranteeing everyone in the ensuing 'thundering herd' at least access to a basic AM/FM radio isn't too great a cost burden.
"Why do I need this radio, I don't use it" is a lot like saying, "why do I need this seatbelt, I never crash!"
To be honest I thought this part was kind of obvious and I don’t know why you made such a sarcastic comment about power buttons. Realistically speaking, every car on the market has a sound system anyway. You just need an antenna and AM radio, plus the user interface. It is not a major expense relative to the price of the car.
We're in cities, not the middle of nowhere in this scenario. The idea that we need an AM station to cover a few hundred square miles doesn't really apply here.
> You just need an antenna and AM radio, plus the user interface
And ensure all the shielding is good enough so your AM radio is actually useful, and designing all that shielding, and potentially having to change the placement of antennas on the car, etc.
Sure, you could phase out AM and do all your emergency broadcasts on FM. We haven’t done that. Do that first.
Here is more info about EAS: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System
There are 77 PEPs, which are commercial radio stations that double as emergency broadcast, as primary interfaces to FEMA. They are a mixture of AM and FM. You want to get rid of the AM requirement? Fine. Just switch all the broadcasts to FM first.
In the end though it still kind of sucks. We're expecting people to know about AM radio and then also bother to look around to find the right station. While stations will automatically trigger on an alert, its not like your radio is designed to listen and find these alerts and automatically alert you.
Even better with requirements for car radios, how about we require WX radio and have it set up to by default alert drivers when an alert goes through? So many cars these days are now a part of the cell networks as well, how about we require emergency alerts broadcast over cell networks?