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Are electric cars really more dangerous than gasoline or diesel vehicles for pedestrians ? To answer this question, British researchers have just conducted a study based on data of magnitude collected in the United Kingdom on travel and road accidents between 2013 and 2017. It was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
In total, this information concerns 32 billion kilometers traveled by electric cars and 3 billion kilometers traveled by thermal cars. And the observation is clear and clear.
Hybrid and electric cars are much more likely to hit pedestrians than gasoline and diesel vehicles. In detail, the average annual rate of pedestrian victims per 100 million kilometers traveled was 5.16 for the former, compared to 2.4 for the latter.
How to explain these results ?
Among the causes cited by scientists, we find the fact that drivers of electric cars are younger and less experienced than the average, and they therefore have a few more accidents. These green cars are also quieter, which is not without problems.
Quoted by The Guardian, Phil Edwards, first author of the study and professor of epidemiology and statistics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, underlines thus:
Electric cars pose a danger to pedestrians because they are less likely to be heard than gasoline or diesel cars. The government must mitigate these risks if it wants to phase out the sale of gasoline and diesel cars.
How to fix this problem ?
He also invites the drivers of these vehicles to be extra vigilant, because pedestrians are not necessarily used to coexisting with these last. Remember also that all hybrid and electric vehicles sold in Europe since July 2019 have a system that emits a sound when the car is driving slowly. Except that thousands of vehicles marketed before this date are not equipped with it.
For their part, manufacturers have taken this issue seriously. They are working on collision and autonomous emergency braking systems that can act automatically if there is a risk of collision with a pedestrian or cyclist. The researchers therefore believe that future research could focus on the effectiveness of these features.
You can read this study in more detail by going directly to this site.
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