> While that’s all true, why is being in a car a special case?
If you are in an emergency that requires evacuation, and you have means to evacuate, there's a good chance that means will be a car. In such an evacuation, having a universal way to communicate would be pretty useful. Although, it's not clear that people would know to listen to it.
Also, plenty of existing travel advisory systems rely on AM radio, so it's a mess if a new generation of cars can't tune to AM 530 when lights flash. The vast majority of existing cars in the US have an AM radio receiver, and there's a generation of classic cars that never upgraded to FM radio.
If you are in an emergency that requires evacuation, and you have means to evacuate, there's a good chance that means will be a car. In such an evacuation, having a universal way to communicate would be pretty useful. Although, it's not clear that people would know to listen to it.
Also, plenty of existing travel advisory systems rely on AM radio, so it's a mess if a new generation of cars can't tune to AM 530 when lights flash. The vast majority of existing cars in the US have an AM radio receiver, and there's a generation of classic cars that never upgraded to FM radio.