New scientific work has shown that cars with an electric motor are more dangerous for pedestrians than those equipped with internal combustion engines. In theory, this is relatively easy to fix, but it is far from the fact that someone will go for such fixes.
Today, electric cars and, to a lesser extent, hybrids are actively "stepping on" ICE-mobiles. In 2023, 15.8% of all new cars on the planet were clean electric vehicles (10 million units) and hybrids (4.8 million units). Moreover, in 2023, for the first time, the clean electric car (Tesla Model Y) became the best-selling car in the world, displacing the former long—term leaders - Toyota Camry and RAV4 from this position. Although the electric market is developing cyclically, and this year it will experience a temporary decline, it is already quite clear that by 2030, more than half of all new cars will be equipped with electric motors.
This creates concerns among road safety experts. At typical city speeds, electric cars and hybrids are much quieter than cars with internal combustion engines. Naturally, pedestrians crossing the road in the wrong places hear them worse. However, there has been very little empirical evidence so far about how often this leads to problems.
Over the past five years, the share of electric vehicles and hybrids in new car sales has increased more than sixfold. Already in the 2020s, it may exceed 50 percent of the market, and in the 2030s it will go significantly higher
Image source: EV Volumes
The authors of a new study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health decided to fill the gap. To do this, they tried to refer to the statistics of accidents involving pedestrians in the UK. Unfortunately, in the process it turned out that the data after 2017 was stored improperly in the archive, which is why it is unusable. However, the information for 2013-2017 has survived.
Scientists have found out that during this period 96,285 British pedestrians were hit by lekgovushki: 74% — from cars with internal combustion engines, 2% — from electric vehicles and hybrids. It was not possible to determine who hit another 24% of pedestrians, because the employees who were supposed to enter such information in the documents did not do so.
Over the past year, production of the Tesla Model Y has accelerated significantly and it has become the best-selling car in the world. This is the first result of its kind for an electric car in history. The hybrid has never had such a result and most likely never will.
Image source: EV Volumes
Nevertheless, the lack of data alone did not prevent an assessment of the risks. The fact is that the probability of carelessly filling out accident documents is relatively close for cars with internal combustion engines, and for electric vehicles, and for hybrids. Therefore, the authors of the study suggested that among the unaccounted 24%, the distribution of those who were "hit" by different types of cars is about the same as among the remaining 76%.
In 2013-2017, ICE cars traveled about 4.8 trillion kilometers in the UK, while electric cars and hybrids traveled only 50 billion kilometers. The actual total mileage may be higher, but most likely the proportions of non-accounting are similar for cars of different types. That is, the incompleteness of the data, again, does not prevent us from obtaining a statistically reliable estimate.
As a result, scientists found that electric cars crashed into pedestrians 2.15 times more often per unit of mileage than conventional cars. This is a fairly significant amount. With the full electrification of the fleet — and many states have officially set such a goal — the number of downed pedestrians can grow extremely significantly. From this, the authors of the work concluded that countermeasures against the low noise of electric cars are necessary.
It may be recalled here that in the UK in 2021, the norm on equipping electric vehicles with an engine sound simulator has already been adopted. However, the law still requires noise in the region of 56 decibels. This is higher than an electric car at a typical urban speed, but significantly lower than that of an internal combustion engine (approximately 70 decibels).
Last year, the number of electric vehicles and hybrids in the world exceeded forty million. Significantly more than a third of them were made in just one 2023 year
Image Source: EV Volumes
Taking into account the new data, the threshold for mandatory noise in the city should be increased. At the same time, earlier work on the example of London showed that in areas where traffic noise is around 60 decibels, the overall mortality rate is 4% higher than where noise is only 55 decibels (when trying to statistically cut off other harmful factors).
Probably, the best solution would be to isolate pedestrian zones from the streets using fences and other measures. But the experience of modern large cities shows that in many cases local authorities are simply not active enough to undertake something like this.
Because of all this, it is not yet clear how the problem of the danger of electric cars to pedestrians will be solved in the future. For Russia, due to the low growth rates of its economy after 2024, this is less relevant than for Western countries, but sooner or later we will have to look for some kind of solution here, since the displacement of conventional cars by electric analogs will inevitably affect us.
