The research found the risk of accidents was higher in UK cities from 2013 to 2017. Researchers call for measures to reduce this risk as fossil fuel vehicles are phased out. Examining victimization rates in the UK from 2013 to 2017 and Journal of Epidemiology and Community Healthfound that electric or hybrid vehicles are twice as likely to hit pedestrians as gasoline or diesel vehicles.

Researchers say the risk is greater in urban areas and governments should take action to reduce this safety threat by phasing out fossil fuel vehicles to improve air quality and curb climate change.

Road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death in children and young people, and 1 in 4 road deaths are pedestrians. Amid the steady transition to electric and hybrid cars, there have been concerns that these vehicles could pose a greater danger to pedestrians than fossil fuel cars because they are quieter, especially in cities where background noise levels are higher.

To investigate this further, researchers compared the difference in pedestrian fatality rates per 100 million miles traveled in the UK between electric/hybrid and fossil fuel vehicles using road safety data (STATS19). They estimated annual mileage from the National Travel Survey (NTS). They only started including hybrid as a vehicle fuel type in 2013; An archiving error prevented the loading of relevant data from 2018, hence the 2013-17 study period.

Analysis and level of casualties

A total of 32 billion miles driven by electric/hybrid vehicles and 3 trillion miles driven by gasoline/diesel vehicles were included in the analysis.

There were 916,713 road deaths in the UK between 2013 and 2017. Of these, 120,197 were pedestrians, and 96,285 of them were hit by a car or taxi. Three-quarters of these pedestrians (71,666 (74%)) were hit by a gasoline or diesel-powered car or taxi. Approximately 1,652 (2%) people were hit by an electric or hybrid vehicle. However, almost 1 in 4 (22,829; 24%) of pedestrian victims were missing the vehicle type code.

The majority of collisions occurred in cities; The proportion of electric or hybrid vehicles was higher compared to petrol/diesel vehicles: 94% versus 88%. This rate is 6% and 12% respectively in rural areas. Based on this data, researchers estimated that the average annual number of pedestrian deaths per 100 million road miles between 2013 and 2017 was 5.16 for electric and hybrid vehicles and 2.40 for gasoline and diesel vehicles.