Young children are taught to stop, look and listen before crossing the street. In the age of electric cars, parents may want to put special emphasis on the word “listen.”
Pedestrians are twice as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car than by a vehicle that runs on gasoline or diesel, according to a study published Tuesday by London researchers.
Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.
While accident statistics are not yet strong enough to draw scientific conclusions about the reasons, researchers hypothesize that the relatively quiet operation of an electric vehicle is the key factor. Pedestrians in noisy urban areas were almost three times more likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car.
Lead researcher Phil J. Edwards of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine told The Times that the study is not intended to be anti-EV. “Electric cars are definitely something of the future. “They are a wonderful way to reduce air pollution,” he said. “But we must mitigate the danger” to pedestrians. Drivers of electric vehicles “must be very careful around pedestrians.”
Research on the effect of electric vehicles on public safety is scarce, not only for cars and trucks, but also for electric bicycles, scooters, and other forms of electric transportation. But as the electric vehicle market grows, the issue is attracting more attention.
The last notable study was published in 2009 by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, with results similar to Edwards's. The safety problem, according to the NHTSA study, was especially prevalent at low speeds.
The growing epidemic of pedestrian distraction was beyond the researchers' scope, but Edwards said it was likely a contributing factor: “I'm sure there would be an effect, because people are too busy looking at their iPhones when they enter the street.” .
After the NHTSA study, Congress passed a law in 2010 to require electric cars traveling below 19 mph to make a sound loud enough to warn pedestrians, but NHTSA, which tends to take its time to address public safety issues, it took 13 years to implement a law. the law comes into force. Similar laws were implemented in Europe in 2019.
The British study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, analyzed accident statistics in England, Scotland and Wales from 2013 to 2017. Edwards said he intends to conduct another study using data from 2019 onwards to test the effect. of pedestrian circulation. alert technology.
He acknowledged that because a hybrid car has an electric motor and a gasoline motor, some of the hybrid accidents probably occurred with the combustion engine running. But he noted that at low speeds, hybrid cars tend to switch from the fossil fuel engine to the electric motor.
The study analyzed all accidents involving pedestrians, regardless of their severity. Safety advocates worry that the extra weight of an electric car's battery could cause more serious injuries to pedestrians. They also note that vehicle-caused pedestrian deaths are proliferating as heavy SUVs replace sedans and that the hoods of many pickup trucks now reach shoulder height for a six-foot human, and well above from a child's head.
