Electric cars more dangerous for pedestrians in the city than ICE vehicles

Back in 2021, Tesla released a fun take on its external regulation speakers that allowed drivers to use their voice as a megaphone to warn absent-minded pedestrians instead of playing a pre-recorded sound.

While Tesla's Boombox and Megaphone functions are cool to play with, they are meant to prevent serious incidents with pedestrians that started multiplying with the proliferation of electric cars.

While not exactly at the level of the old Run Silent, Run Deep submarine movie, EVs can be just as deadly while approaching a crossing. One only starts to hear a swooshing sound and the whine of an electric motor when they are dangerously close.

A cross-sectional study of collisions with electric and hybrid-electric cars in the UK now confirms just how much more dangerous EVs are for pedestrians compared to ICE cars.

Because of their silent powertrain and lack of the familiar diesel or gas-powered engine noises, electric cars and hybrids are cumulatively twice more likely to get into collisions with pedestrians in an urban environment, it turns out.

For rural settings, the study found no difference in pedestrian injury rates, but in the city the Poisson regression analysis of government collision data found "strong evidence that E-HE vehicles were three times more dangerous than ICE vehicles" in that respect.

On the other hand, the Euro NCAP crash tests found that the "Model Y camera-only Vision system performs remarkably well in preventing collisions with other cars, cyclists and pedestrians."

Tesla's SUV has also been involved in numerous heavy accidents where its passengers survive thanks to "a strong, rigid passenger compartment, fortified battery pack, and overall low center of gravity," as per the NHTSA, and these findings are valid for other electric vehicles as well.

Despite all these safety virtues and smart collision prevention systems, however, there is still work to be done to alert pedestrians of an incoming EV or hybrid better to avoid injuries, as the study demonstrates.

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