A landmark study of UK car crashes has found that hybrid and electric vehicles (EVs) are disproportionately involved in pedestrian incidents – or at least especially like that.
Guard reported the results of a study documenting 32 billion miles (51.5 billion km) of electric vehicle travel, as well as 3 trillion miles (4.8 trillion km) of trips by gasoline and diesel, compiled by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
While three-quarters of the 120,197 pedestrian incidents involved petrol or diesel cars, the remaining quarter saw road users vulnerable to being hit by vehicles. Hybrid or electric vehicle crashes.
Over 100 million miles traveled (160.9 million km), this means an average of 5.16 pedestrians were hit by electric or hybrid vehicles, compared to 2.4 for gasoline and hybrid vehicles. diesel over the same distance.
This data is skewed by incidents in towns and cities, where electric and hybrid vehicles were found to be three times more likely to collide with pedestrians. All means are equally likely to occur in rural areas.
However, there is one big caveat with the data, which is based on travel and road accident figures from 2013 to 2017.
The study’s researchers claim there is no data from 2018 onwards due to a data error, ignoring a few serious incidents in the few years since electric vehicle sales really started to skyrocket across the world. Global.
The 2013-2017 data set also has important results before electric and hybrid vehicles sold across Europe and the UK were forced to be equipped with Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems (AVAS), which emit a sound at speeds up to 20km/h to warn pedestrians.
Without this audio signal, vulnerable road users such as those with visual impairments or those who have difficulty determining distances would be at increased risk of being hit by a vehicle.
Phil Edwards, first author of the study, said because there are vehicles on UK roads that predate safety systems. Guard that the government should consider fitting potentially life-saving equipment to older electric and hybrid vehicles.
“If the government ensures that these systems are installed on all electric vehicles and retrofits them to older electric vehicles, that would be a good start.”
From 2025All new electric, hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell cars, trucks and buses in Australia will have to be equipped with AVAS, with changes made to the relevant Australian Design Rules (ADR). mandarin.
The Australian Government estimates mandatory AVAS will reduce deaths by 68, serious injuries by 2675 and minor injuries by 2962 by 2060, while saving taxpayers $208 million health-related costs.
