Pedestrians can be twice as likely to be hit by an electric or hybrid car than by one that runs on gasoline or diesel. This is the conclusion reached by a study on victim rates between 2013 and 2017 in Great Britain and which has been published in the Journal of Epidemiology.
The risk is greatest in urban areas, and governments must take steps to mitigate this safety hazard as they move to phase out fossil fuel-powered vehicles to improve air quality and curb climate change, the experts urge. researchers.
According to the data collected in the report, injuries from traffic accidents are the main cause of death among children and young people, and approximately 25% of those killed in accidents are pedestrians. Amid the ongoing transition to electric and hybrid cars, concerns have been raised that these vehicles may pose a greater risk to pedestrian safety than internal combustion cars. The reason is that they are quieter and in urban areas, where ambient noise levels are higher, their presence is less heard.
To explore this further, the researchers compared the differences in pedestrian casualty rates per 100 million miles of road travel in Britain between electric/hybrid and fossil fuel cars, using Road Safety Data (STATS19). .
They estimated annual mileage from data from the National Travel Survey (NTS). These only began to include hybrid as a vehicle fuel type in 2013, while a filing issue prevented relevant data from being loaded from 2018; hence the selected study period of 2013-17.
In total, 32 billion miles of electric/hybrid vehicle trips and 3 trillion miles of gasoline/diesel vehicle trips were included in the analysis. Between 2013 and 2017, there were 916,713 victims of road traffic collisions in Great Britain. Of them, 120,197 were pedestrians.
Three quarters of these pedestrians – 71,666 (74%) – had been hit by a gasoline or diesel car or taxi. Some 1,652 (2%) had been hit by an electric or hybrid vehicle. But in nearly 1 in 4 – 22,829 (24%) – pedestrian victims the vehicle type code was missing.
The majority of accidents occurred in urban areas, and a greater proportion of them involved more electric or hybrid vehicles than gasoline or diesel vehicles: 94% compared to 88%. This compares with 6% and 12%, respectively, in rural areas.
From this data, the researchers calculate that between 2013 and 2017, the average annual rate of pedestrian casualties per 160 million kilometers traveled on the road was 5.16 for electric and hybrid vehicles and 2.40 for gasoline and diesel vehicles.
This indicates that pedestrian collisions were, on average, twice as likely with electric and hybrid vehicles as with gasoline and diesel vehicles, and three times more likely in urban areas than in rural areas, say the researchers, who acknowledge several caveats. in its findings, including missing data beyond 2017 and missing vehicle coding in nearly a quarter of cases.
And younger, less experienced drivers are more likely to be involved in a traffic collision and are also more likely to own an electric car, possibly explaining some of the observed increased risk associated with these vehicles, they suggest. “In Britain, petrol and diesel cars injure more pedestrians than electric cars, but compared to petrol and diesel cars, electric cars pose a greater risk to pedestrians and the risk is greater in urban environments,” they write.
“A plausible explanation for our results is that background ambient noise levels differ between urban and rural areas, making EVs less audible to pedestrians in urban areas,” they suggest.
“From a public health perspective, our results should not discourage health-beneficial active forms of transportation, such as walking and cycling; rather they can be used to ensure that any potential increased risk of road traffic injuries is understood and protected,” they emphasize.
To this end, they conclude that the increased safety risk posed to pedestrians by electric and hybrid cars “must be mitigated as governments move to phase out gasoline and diesel cars.”
