A recent study suggests that pedestrians may be twice as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid vehicle than by a petrol or diesel vehicle.
The study examined the number of casualties on UK roads from 2013 to 2017 and published it’s findings in the peer-reviewed Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health on Tuesday.
According to the researchers’ results, there was two times the likelihood of pedestrian collisions with electric and hybrid cars compared to petrol and diesel vehicles, and even thrice the likelihood in urban areas compared to rural areas
The researchers estimated that between 2013 and 2017, the average annual pedestrian casualty rate per 100 million miles of road travel was 5.16 for electric and hybrid cars and 2.40 for gasoline and diesel vehicles. This estimate was based on data from 916,713 occurrences involving casualties.
The investigation covered a total of 3 trillion miles of petrol and diesel vehicle travel and 32 billion miles of travel for electric and hybrid vehicles.
According to the study, 1 in 4 deaths due to traffic accidents are of pedestrians and road traffic injuries are the main cause of deaths for children and young adults.
According to the researchers, because electric and hybrid cars are quieter, especially in cities, which usually have higher background noise levels, they may represent a greater safety risk to pedestrians.
Additionally, they proposed that younger, less seasoned drivers are more likely to acquire electric cars and to be engaged in traffic accidents.
“More pedestrians are injured in Great Britain by petrol and diesel cars than by electric cars, but compared with petrol and diesel cars, electric cars pose a greater risk to pedestrians and the risk is greater in urban environments,” they noted.
“From a public health perspective, our results should not discourage active forms of transport beneficial to health, such as walking and cycling; rather they can be used to ensure that any potential increased traffic injury risks are understood and safeguarded against.”
In conclusion, the group urged that the increased safety risk electric and hybrid cars posed to pedestrians “needs to be mitigated as governments proceed to phase out petrol and diesel cars”.
The authors of the study noted a number of limitations in their conclusions, one of them being the absence of data beyond 2017 as a result of an archiving error that has affected National Travel Survey (NTS) data since 2018.
“The research referred to within this report looks at data between 2013 and 2017, predating the current requirements on electric vehicles,” a Department of Transportation official stated.
“We are committed to ensuring all vehicles are as safe as possible, which is why there are already strict requirements for new EVs to have built-in sound generators while travelling at low speeds and reversing.”
