Many have probably had to duck for cover when an electric car suddenly appears out of nowhere without warning. Electric cars being quiet can be pleasant – but a new study reveals alarming accident statistics. Pedestrians in urban environments are at highest risk.
Pedestrians are twice as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car in accidents compared to a gasoline or diesel car, according to a British study.
The highest risk is in urban environments, where according to the study, it is three times higher to hit a pedestrian with an electric car than with a car powered by fossil fuels.
In the EU, there is a requirement that all electric cars, hybrids, and plug-in hybrids produced from and including July 1, 2019 must produce a certain level of noise when driving at speeds under 20 km/h, just to address the problem. However, cars produced before that date do not have the same requirement.
In the study, researchers looked at statistics for around 96,000 accidents in the UK between 2013 and 2017, where pedestrians were injured after being hit by a passenger car.
In total, it was only 2% of the cases where an electric or hybrid car was involved. But when researchers took into account the proportion of the fleet that these types of cars made up, it was 5 deaths per 16 million miles driven with electric cars, compared to almost 2.5 deaths with gasoline and diesel cars involved.
Anna Vadeby is surprised that it was so much higher risk for pedestrians to be involved in accidents with electric and hybrid cars.
According to Anna Vadeby, there are different opinions about whether those who drive electric cars drive more or less cautiously than those with gasoline cars.
