An analysis of British road traffic accidents indicates that hybrid and electric cars are more likely to be involved in pedestrian collisions compared to petrol or diesel vehicles, particularly in urban settings.
Data from 32 billion miles of battery-powered car travel and 3 trillion miles of gasoline and diesel car trips revealed that electric and hybrid cars were twice as likely to hit pedestrians as fossil fuel-powered cars.
Drivers of electric cars are generally younger and less experienced
The exact reason why eco-friendly cars are more hazardous is unclear, but researchers attribute it to several factors. Drivers of electric cars are generally younger and less experienced, and the cars are significantly quieter than those with combustion engines, making them harder to detect, especially in urban areas.
Phil Edwards, the study’s lead author and a professor of epidemiology and statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, explains, “electric cars pose a danger to pedestrians because they are less likely to be heard than petrol or diesel cars. The government needs to address these risks if it plans to phase out the sale of petrol and diesel cars.” “If you’re moving to an electric car, remember it’s a new kind of vehicle,” Edwards added. “They are much quieter than the old-fashioned cars and drivers of these vehicles need to be extra cautious.”
Notably, road traffic accidents are the leading cause of death among children and young adults in the UK, with pedestrians accounting for a quarter of all road fatalities. In 2017, a US Department of Transportation report found that electric and hybrid cars posed a 20% higher risk to pedestrians compared to petrol and diesel cars, and a 50% higher risk during low-speed maneuvers, such as turning, reversing, starting into traffic, and stopping. Edwards and his team analyzed UK travel and road accident data from 2013 to 2017. Due to an archiving issue, data from 2018 onwards is unavailable.
Their analysis included 916,713 casualties, with 120,197 being pedestrians, and over 96,000 of those pedestrians were struck by a car or taxi. Since July 2019, all new hybrid and electric vehicles sold in Europe must have an audio vehicle alerting system that generates sound when the car is moving slowly, but there are still thousands of electric cars on the road without these devices. “If the government made sure these systems were installed in all-electric vehicles and retrofitted them to older electric cars, that would be a good start,” Edwards said.