Electric cars no more likely to flatten you than the noisy ones, study finds Electric cars are no more of a danger to pedestrians than conventional vehicles, according to new research. A study of UK data published in Nature this week found there was a fall in casualty rates for both electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles in 2019 following the introduction of the Acoustic Vehicle Alerting System …
I suspect even at very low speeds unexpectedly being rapidly thrown on to a hard surface with or without edges (eg gutters) could cause significant injury.
I imagine a bit like being tackled out of the blue by a forward from the Welsh front row.
One aspect I think the study didn't consider was whether drivers (more particularly owners) of (H)EV were significantly different from ICEV drivers in any number of safety relevant factors eg age, experience etc.
I would conjecture EV owners (perhaps excluding Tesla owners ;) would be more safety conscious and attentive drivers. If that were true it would imply that the EVs considering the vehicle alone were actually slightly more dangerous than ICEVs. Perhaps HEVs combine the worst of ICEV drivers with the failings of EVs ?
The stats for HEVs do show a higher casualty rate (normalized to travelled distance) than EVs or ICEVs.
"I would conjecture EV owners (perhaps excluding Tesla owners ;) would be more safety conscious and attentive drivers."
I'd say not - IME (as someone living on the outskirts of a major metropolitan area) between all the minicab drivers that've switched to EVs over the years, along with the growing number of drivers who seem to have opted for EVs in order to get something with even more acceleration performance than any ICE vehicle they'd be able to afford, and are then only too happy to make full use of said performance when out on the roads regardless of whether the conditions are really suitable for doing so, I'd say EVs are at best merely on a par with ICE in terms of driver ability/sensibility.
Agreed - watching an electric 4WD SUV cross an intersection with full torque from stopped, to dangerously dash between traffic on the main road, makes you immediately realise why there are so many potholes in that spot. The traction control might avoid ejecting the tarmac directly into the windscreen of the car behind, but it still breaks off with the force of acceleration of the massive EV.
I'd agree that EV drivers won't be 'safer' or more attentive, but for a slightly different reason. (Note: This also applies to ICE car drivers where the same features are fitted).
The new 'safety' tech is making drivers lazy. So drivers rely on the tech to avoid collisions, rather than using MK1 eyeball and that organic processor they're supposed to posses (called a brain).
The brake assist (which is quite relevant to this topic) is a classic example: Having found problems with it suffering from false positives, I found most older drivers had experience the same, but some, mostly younger, claimed it 'brilliant' because they didn't have to worry or pay as much attention: The system just did the hard work for them. They seemed unaware of, or simply didn't care about, false positives. As long as it didn't return a false negative (failed to engage when it should have). I've not experienced the negative because I don't rely on the brake assist. However, I know someone who did have that particular failure and hit another vehicle (no, neither was a Tesla - they were both ICE's). Had said driver been paying attention and responsive in their control of their vehicle, that collision could have been avoided. Thankfully no one was hurt (other than emotionally) and no cyclist or pedestrian involved, but this is the one case where I've known the driver of the vehicle involved. Yes, there's 'stories' of others - but they're stories and may or may not be accurate or true.
However, these systems only makes things 'safer' if the system works as intended. If it fails: That's when bad things happen 'cause the driver isn't paying attention and instead is reliant on the system working correctly.
Again: It's relying on tech to work as intended.
How often does tech fail?
That's the problem. Sure, it's a safety net if the driver fails to notice/react to a hazard, but my point is that an increasing number of drivers are just relying on the tech to do the work for them rather than paying attention, so to them there is no safety net. For me, having been brought up with 'dumb' cars, where I had sole responsibility for control of the vehicle, I just got into the habit of retaining that control and so these systems are just a backup. And so far (touch wood) I've not needed them to do anything. Hence being aware of how often they get it wrong - due to false positives.
So while you say humans don't excel at driving: My argument is more than tech isn't as good as humans in interpreting events around it, so is okay for routine driving where things are predictable, but it's not so good for handling exceptions. That doesn't mean it won't work, just that it's a bad idea to rely on it entirely. Hence we should be paying attention while driving and not being reliant on tech. I don't mind the tech: I'm just not about to rely on it.
> How often does tech fail?
A lot less often than humans. In fact, that is the point that you go on to make in your post ("okay for routine driving where things are predictable, but it's not so good for handling exceptions").
> Hence we should be paying attention while driving
Absolutely!
> and not being reliant on tech
I know what you mean (it can fail – exceedingly rare – or not cover the entire operational envelope – quite common) but I would word it differently: you *do* want to rely on technology, e.g., to reduce workload, improve detection and reaction times, better spatial awareness, allow you to take on a more supervisory role, etc.; but you do want to be cognisant of the limits of that technology so as not to misuse it.
> My argument is more than tech isn't as good as humans in interpreting events around it
It's getting there at an impressive pace. If you're in the US or in the continent, I'd suggest that you try to book a ride on a Tesla with FSD 14 (demo ride as pax in France, Germany, Italy), if only out of curiosity.
PS: I'm also pre-ABS, assisted steering, etc. and have driven or been in control of anything from a bicycle to 4WD to emergency vehicles to lorries to nearly 60 tons of Blagnac's best, but I can't compete against a sufficiently advanced computer.
> Again: It's relying on tech to work as intended
Which I never do as I don't trust it to be infallible but it is there if everything goes to hell in a handcart.
disclaimer : I am an older driver so started out without this stuff, hell even seatbelts were optional in the back seats!
The cars I'd worry most about being hit by are the ones that make the most noise--the ones that sound like they had their mufflers removed, and the engine timing is set so they backfire when they take their foot off the gas. That's because those drivers try to break the speed of light, whether they're on the freeway or back roads.
> That's because those drivers try to break the speed of light, whether they're on the freeway or back roads.
US American, I suppose, the language is clear. Come to Germany, on a day when the roads are not congested. And we did no break the speed of light yet. No German would drive in the US the way they do in Germany, mostly out of fear their car would break due to street conditions. And that average US drivers don't even remotely get the driving-school quality you get in Germany, which shows. Once adjusted no problem for us, but it takes a few days. The other way around is more difficult since all 'muricans I met so far say that we have the best road discipline in the world (I beg to differ from my POV though)...
I would rather (and have for many years) driven 180KM/h on the unrestricted portions of the Autobahn with German drivers both close-in front and behind me, than drive in the States doing 50 KM/h. The mandatory traffic school pays great dividends. The quality of a BMW compared to a US car is staggering.
I know exactly what the Germans will do in most situations, where the yanks will turn left, from the right lane with the right hand indicator on, a coffee in one hand and phone in the other.
„Blinken, Bremsen, Besonnen fahren.“
> the driving-school quality you get in Germany
I cannot say I'm impressed, to be frank. Yes it's better than no instruction at all, but very poor value for the time / money and rather outdated. In my experience, both the UK and (especially) the Czech Republic are better examples of proper driver training. Germany is more Poland or Austria levels of "let's go through the motions and that's it".
"If we're talking about low speed collisions, 80kg human, does the weight of the vehicle really have that much of an impact?"
Hell yes: The larger the mass at a given velocity, the more momentum of the vehicle impacting that 80kg human, meaning more force transference resulting in greater risk of injury.
It's basic physics.
Currently EV's are 40%-50% greater mass than their ICE counterpart, so that's 40%-50% more momentum, so that's a marked increase in risk. That is why there's more reliance on the newer safety systems such as break assist: If it works as intended, it should reduce the incidents of impact. However, where there is an impact, the greater mass involved means a more severe impact/injury. General design of the vehicle also plays a part in this, but mass is most certainly a major factor including when breaking.
Brake assist (and similar) helps not only with reducing the number of impacts, but also speed at impact. That fraction of a second of extra braking can have a very large effect on severity.
Ideally, I wish the study compared EVs with ICEs-with-recent-safety-features, rather than EVs with ICEs general.
"Hell yes: The larger the mass at a given velocity, the more momentum of the vehicle impacting that 80kg human, meaning more force transference resulting in greater risk of injury."
Not convinced that's true when one object is already an order of magnitude more massive than the other.
The force required to accelerate a pedestrian from zero to, say, twenty miles an hour doesn't depend on the mass of the vehicle. And so long as that vehicle's speed isn't materially affected by the impact of the pedestrian, which is probably isn't, then it's mass isn't relevant.
Is my "it probably isn't" reasonable?
Assume an elastic collision between vehicle of mass 1000kg travelling at 9m/s (20 mph) and a stationary pedestrian of mass 100kg (i.e. only one order of magnitude difference) which then ends up on the bonnet, travelling with the vehicle.
(Remember: cows are spherical)
The speed of the combined product will be:
KE to start: .5*1000*9^2=40.5kJ
Speed: sqrt(40500/(.5*1100))=8.6 m/s or 19.2mph
If the vehicle mass was doubled then we end up with 8.8 m/s or 19.7mph
The difference in force required to accelerate a 100kg pedestrian to 19.2 or 19.7 mph is tiny.
The shape of the front of the vehicle, and therefore the distance over which that acceleration can take place is the primary factor in determining the acceleration and therefore the forces involved.
So firstly, thanks for acknowledging there is a difference.
The issue, I believe, is you don't think that 0.5mph difference is particularly significant. Problem is: It can be.
So: a 1tonne car hits you in the hip. It causes bruising. I can pop a cold pack on that, offer you paracetamol, check you can walk, signpost you to the hospital (self-present) and discharge you at scene if I'm confident it is just bruising. Sure, I'd much rather have an ambulance crew check you out, just to be sure, but you're considered non-urgent so it could be a while, and that's why I'd advise self-presenting to the hospital.
A 1.5 tonne car at the same speed (say the e-208 rather than the 208) that's now fractured the neck of your femur. Now you need a traction splint (outside my scope of practice) so that's an ambulance, but I can (if I've my kit) give you Penthrox or Entonox (depending on if I have the latter) as an analgesic. You're going to hospital, possibly cat1, possibly cat2 - I don't make that call.
Now, a 2 tonne car hits you at that same speed and that's a pelvic fracture. You're now in so much pain you can't follow the instructions for the analgesics I can provide, so you're waiting on the ambulance for morphine. You'll also need a pelvic binder which, while within my scope of practice, I don't carry - so that's waiting on the ambulance, too. Good news, however, is you're a cat1. Stat. So the nearest ambulance, unless already on a cat1, is getting diverted to you. You're in a really bad way with a pelvic fracture: Internal bleeding, organ displacement, intense pain: You could die very easily, so this is a real major case.
This isn't a joke, btw: Injuries aren't a linear progression: Even a 0.1mph difference could be the difference between soft tissue injury only and bones breaking. So to me (I'm a First responder btw) the milder the impact, the better (with no impact being the best!).
And that is why I say: the larger the mass at a given velocity, the more momentum (hence force) results in a greater risk of injury. The body can absorb x amount of force without issue, but it doesn't take much beyond that for the injuries to stack up and move from mild to critical.
> And that is why I say: the larger the mass at a given velocity, the more momentum
Whilst injuries are non linear... the forces here are *so* similar that it makes no sense to use the mass of the vehicle as an indicator of the likely damage.
The variance from bonnet shape and designed deformation is orders of magnitude more significant - since it can take acceleration distance from zero, to several cm, or even more with modern active pedestrian safety features.
You'll note that I really stacked the deck in favour of the "heavier car does more damage", I took a vehicle mass less than a Renault Clio, and a heavy pedestrian, then doubled the mass of the vehicle as a comparison.
I still ended up with a very small difference in force applied (which is only one indicator of injury potential), and I mean a really small difference (~5%).
The difference between being accelerated over 1cm and 10cm is 1000% - meaning the 5% above is completely drowned in the noise of the collision.
The point of the study mentioned in the headline is, apparently, that your experience and belief (while quite valid as an anecdote) isn't what actually happens on a larger scale. This happens quite a lot with scientific studies, finding that personal experience isn't quite accurate as a description of what's happening.
This is where theoretical physics meets practical physics. You would think that the 50% increase in weight would be a marked increase in risk, but the amount of practical force transferred from the 2000kg car to the 80kg human at low speeds isn't significantly different than the amount of force from the 1000kg car. Neither is going to slow it down before taking the human off their feet and becoming part of the moving mass. The only thing that makes a difference in the scenario is the effective braking force on the vehicles.
On a low-speed impact, most of the injuries are not caused by the impact with the vehicle, but the body's impact with the ground once the vehicle has stopped. At that point, the weight of the vehicle, whether it is a bicycle or a locomotive, no longer has any influence - only the weight of the human.
Yes, it is basic physics. But the result (as I see John Robson has pointed out) isn't what you expected. By your reasoning, we could (say) tap a marble with a car and have it shoot off like a bullet. Make the object smaller, and we can speed it up arbitrarily.
Coincidentally, I was recently reading Randall Munroe's book What if?, in which he mentions seeing a comment from a medical examiner about such injuries. Apparently, most people are not killed by the impact. Instead, it breaks their legs, they go over the hood and hit the windscreen with their heads, usually "starring" the windscreen. Then they go flying off the car and hit the pavement, and then are killed by head injuries when they land.
John Robson wrote "...assume an elastic collision", but then did the analysis (correctly) for an inelastic collision. From the ME's comment above, it sounds as if the momentum transfer is incomplete; the pedestrian doesn't wind up going as fast as the car. If the car is coming in at, say, 22 km/hour, and the pedestrian has a mass 10% that of the car, the result is not that the pedestrian stays on the hood with car and pedestrian going 20 km/hour. More likely, the car proceeds at about (say) 21 km/hour and the pedestrian follows at a lesser speed.
For an elastic collision, the result (for Mcar >> Mpedestrian, true whether the car is ten or a hundred times more massive than the unfortunate pedestrian) would be that the pedestrian would be thrown forward at twice the speed of the car. Perhaps if you wore a rubber suit, you could manage that.
Don't hold your breath. We already know that many vehicle occupants as well as pedestrians are killed by head injuries that a helmet would mitigate. However, I don't see any pedestrians wearing helmets, including myself, even though I was wearing motorcycle helmets and seat belts several years before they became mandatory. I wasn't alone.
I have thought about wearing a helmet when walking, but it's unappealing. I guess I'd accept it if it was mandated.
> I don't see any pedestrians wearing helmets
In the context of vehicular contact, this is addressed by active bonnets.
Doesn't help with protection from falling plant pots or defenestration, mind.
We've got a car with an active bonnet/hood... It's one of the reasons why there's a hood-prop (that's quite difficult to get loose once put in) to hold it up for service, instead of the gas struts previously used. If the pyro lifts go off while the car is being worked on, that hood prop will hopefully save the mechanic from a falling hood. Trade-offs everywhere... It's slightly riskier to work on the engine, but safer for the pedestrians.
ME's tend to see the more severe cases that are sent to hospital. There, the cause of death is important, and yes, head injuries are more dangerous.
No, I've never said that all the force is transferred: The design of cars has helped 'soften' blows by extending the time over which the forces are transferred, allowing better absorption by both the pedestrian and the vehicle. This is a good thing (although I still rather there be zero impact).
What I've said, and still say, is that a heavier vehicle imparts more force due to momentum for the same velocity - it's the same concept as the same car hitting at a slightly higher speed. That difference can affect the non-elastic elements (the bit that breaks bones). Bones break when the force transferred to the bone exceeds the material strength of the bone - this is true of all materials. With some materials, such as bone, there isn't that much of a progression between no failure, partial failure and full failure . And that's the point I'm making: That the more force, the bigger the risk of fractures, and depending on the bones fractured, that could be the difference between a minor injury and a critical injury. And yes, that includes the skull - that's one set of bones you don't want fracturing, and the soft tissue within does NOT like shock.
So, as a first responder, I don't want people hit. If they're going to be hit, I'd rather it be at a very slow speed, and with a very light vehicle. As either increases, the chance of a more severe injury occurring increases. And this IS a case of a small difference in force = sudden jump in severity of injury. Like I said in my reply to John Robson, fracturing the femur is bad enough, but fracture the pelvis is much, much worse. And the difference there could just be the angle of impact, but it could also be a small increase in force.
"What I've said, and still say, is that a heavier vehicle imparts more force due to momentum for the same velocity - it's the same concept as the same car hitting at a slightly higher speed."
And whilst there is a very small change in the collision from increased mass, it's completely irrelevant compared with the change in acceleration time which is part of car design.
Just realised that I should probably also do the really extreme case in the other direction:
A 40kg pedestrian (about a 12 year old child, so not unreasonable that they might be crossing the road).
And let's compare a small car (sticking to 1000kg) with a fully laden HGV (44 times as much).
Again, I'm assuming an inelastic (sic) collision between a vehicle travelling at 20mph and a stationary pedestrian.
In the case of the car we end up with a combined speed of 8.766m/s
In the case of the HGV we end up with a combined speed of 8.936 m/s
In the case of an infinitely massive vehicle: 8.94 m/s
To get a relevant difference we need to *really* drop the mass of the vehicle.
At 500kg, we're still at 8.6 m/s
At 300 kg (~ 500cc bike and rider): 8.4m/s
At 100kg (~ pedal cycle and rider): 7.6m/s
Vehicle mass simply isn't a significant factor when calculating the acceleration force experienced.
It depends: most cars are so much heavier than meatware that simple collisions are probably the same. Remember the "cattle bars" that we fitted as standard for a while on some early SUVs? These along were likely to cause severe injury because the impact was concentrated on a small area. But it's what happens immediately after impact that matters more: the chances of head or spinal injury either due to the bodywork or things like kerbs are bodies are flung around faster than reflexes.
But in vehicle-vehicle collisions SUVs, in all their awful forms, have effectively started an arms race as their mass is so much more than a normal car as to make severe injury almost inevitable.
> So what mass are you looking at?
The car's, which is what determines its kinetic energy.
F = ma is simply how that kinetic energy will be transferred from one object to the other (the car will also receive kinetic energy relative to the mass of the pedestrian, which should be absorbed by airbags / crumple zones / active bonnet / etc.)
In which case you're looking for KE=.5*m*v^2
The relevant acceleration is that of the pedestrian, and therefore the relevant mass is that of the pedestrian.
The force will be the same on the vehicle, which matters if you get hit by a pedal cycle, or even a smaller motorbike - but cars are so heavy that their deceleration from the impact will be negligible.
A recording of a Lancaster bomber at 500 feet, with all 4 Merlin engines going would be interesting. Perhaps a bit hard on nearby residences though.
Or how about a singsong voice chanting, "I'm coming to run you over! I'm coming to run you over!"
Maybe Tesla's could read a selection of the latest tweets from Elon and/or the most read tweets of the day?
Although I do quite like the idea of passing a law that the driver has to wind down the window and make their own vroom vroom noises.
With ICE engines getting so much quieter, at low speeds you tend to be relying more on tyre noise and wind noise than engine noise anyway. But the whining noises the Tesla driver in our office makes are quite good for getting your attention without being too loud or annoying. We've got a bunch of Prius taxis in my town, and they're all quite old - so don't have noisemakers. So can be a bit hard to avoid when they're just pulling out, before the motor kicks in and you can hear them.
In the 70s some premium cars had a dash switch to change the horn sound between "town" & "country" modes. It wasn't so much the volume that changed as the pitch.
A good (& recently deceased) friend, who was also somewhat obsessed with 1930s - 50s British car design, & who lived long enough to hear the various synthesised noises that some EVs make, & be puzzled by them, smiled when I explained them. "Aha, that should make possible an idea I had in the 70s." Essentially he wanted to fit size & class appropriate horns to vehicles, giving them instead a recorded spoken alert rather than a horn sound. He envisaged the finest Bentley saying something like "you there, yes you, would you mind awfully getting out of my way?" whilst a tiny town car might simply go "excuse me, excuse me!" in an excitable & high-pitched tone.
I've experienced traffic in Bangalore & similar places where everyone is honking constantly from dawn 'till dusk, can you imagine how much worse that would be if he'd had his way?
> I love the concept that you could have an EV recreate the noise of an ICE car
The crazy thing is that ICE cars do exactly that. Synthetic engine sounds are actually a thing in cars that already have an actual engine.
In some countries it seems to be a bit of a fashion to "rev" those up inside tunnels, God knows why.
Personally, I would quite like a "Citroën 2CV" mode.
I'm so happy that there are NO belts to change on our new hybrid, aside from the timing belt (no worries there, it will last "the life of the engine", right?)
Toyota's sporty model of the car we've got actually has an Engine Sound Enhancement system that puts 'engine sound' into the passenger compartment on purpose when in "Sport Mode"..
Knowing someone who is technically blind (Very poor eyesight so while they can 'see', it's far from perfect): The concern was EV's were too quite to alert vision impaired to their approach so any sound that stands out is a blessing.
Now, ICE's have been getting quieter, meaning it's harder to hear them approach. Not quite as bad as an EV without the AVAS, but it's getting worse. With new ICE's fading out soon: That removed that trend, but it does still mean that vision impaired are reliant on an artificial system to alert them to the approach of a slow moving EV, when that system can, in at least some instances, be turned off.
It is true that people, whether actually or metaphorically blind, tend to be less aware of EV approaching at low speed, but my theory is that this is only a phase. People will eventually learn to recognise the subtler sounds of an engineless conveyance¹ and, at the same time, newer cars from technologically advanced manufacturers are really not fond of running people over and will try to stop you from doing so, which is why the Mafia don't like them.
¹ The survivors will, anyway.
> Haven't tyres been getting noisier as compensation?
Yes, they do every year from 30 Nov until 1 April.
More seriously though, noisier asphalt on the approach to crossings might be a more effective solution, as it not only offers better grip¹ but also work with all wheeled conveyances, be it an EV or a bicycle.
¹ In the Czech Republic they already do this.
Regarding better grip on the asphalt, it's fantastic for cars. Not so for cyclists coming off on it.
This being England people will complain that the home has become too noisy for those by a crossing (well, you do live near one already...)
As a cyclist (well someone who cycled for 20 years in a big city - less now), if you cycle safely, those really grippy sections are fantastic when it's mildly icy out. So noise aside I really like them, but where I live smoothed asphalt is common so when we get freezing fog, everything is an ice rink to talk on - roads, dropped kerbs, etc.
Ref Tyre noise increasing? Not really, no. They make up a greater proportion of the noise that you do hear as engine / transmission / wind noise have all fallen. Most of what you hear near a fast road these days is tyre noise where 20 + years, ago it would mostly have been mechanical, & wind noise from the aero drag. New tyres sold in EU & UK are now rated & labelled for noise emission, rolling resistance / fuel consumption & wet braking. The first two are intimately related. No idea how the noise ratings work in terms of difference between lowest & highest rated, though. (Iirc the difference for fuel consumption is about 7.5%?)
The increased grip surface has been around in the UK since at least the early 80s.Then it was a Shell product marketed as Shell Grip, they even had TV adverts for it.
(Thanks to autocorrect for attempting to make me post "She'll Grip" there.)
electric vehicles are also more likely to have better safety technologies than most internal combustion engine vehicles on the road today, which help them to evade crashes or limit impact, the authors argue.
What would theae "safety technologies" be which putatively "help them to evade crashes"?
Do they have an AI overseer which yanks the steering wheel and/or applies the brakes to avoid a pedestrian?
Not just Tesla. Pretty sure that autonomous emergency braking has been mandated on new cars across the EU for several years now? First encountered it on an S-class merc maybe 20 years ago, along with brake assist, wherein if it detected that you'd hit the brake pedal with greater than a certain amount of force AND accelerated the pedal above a certain amount it deduced that you were doing an emergency stop & applied all the brake force it could provide, modulated at each wheel to make maximum use of the available grip. It's disturbing just how quickly a car that heavy could come to a halt when it really has to, something that MB had observed human drivers rarely achieved. Not sure if there was any mitigation system to prevent the plutocrat in the rear from spilling his brandy when the system triggered.
What would theae "safety technologies" be which putatively "help them to evade crashes"?
Not exclusively EVs. Modern cars in general seem to have obstacle detection which can warn or apply brakes. They are triggered by all sorts of things: wall or hedge across the road when approaching the stop line of a T junction, oncoming traffic in the opposite lane, crossing traffic at a roundabout or nothing obvious whatsoever.
My experience (in an ICE) includes: Heavy rain, wind (particularly if there's blown debris), cars turning left in next lane over (UK), a car pulling out in front of me without ensuring there was sufficient gap... those I can see, I've normally adjusted for in ample time, but the rain was my first experience of Brake Assist applying, and the wind was baffling at first until I realised it was the leaves / debris being blown around. The cars... I'd seen and adjusted got but the break assist insisted it knew better and hit the panic button.
The alarm is a pain on the motorway: That's where you are likely to encounter people changing lanes without sufficient gap. But again: An attentive driver will be adjusting to handle all of that: We don't actually need the 'safety' system distracting us or messing us about.
> Do they have an AI overseer which yanks the steering wheel and/or applies the brakes to avoid a pedestrian?
Correct.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deWN8SZF7N8
The above was two generations ago, current system is way more advanced.
Plenty of videos on YouTube but usually with no assurance as to the level of automation active or whether it was a vehicle or human intervention, that's why I chose the specific video above. As of a few days ago though, dashcam videos have started embedding car telemetry so when you watch recent videos you'll be able to tell who / what was controlling the car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6wAWEFNkAk&t=582
Perhaps your leccy wagon could be fitted with shotgun sound effects (frequency compensated for vehicle's air speed [Doppler effect].)
I am sure Purdey could do a bespoke accessory for the luxury car market. ;)
An old clagged out banger with worn rings and off timing, regularly backfiring would have the same effect, I imagine.
We navigate by sight and sound.
It's why deaf people have to take extra care when crossing roads.
Electric car engines/motors are fundamentally quiter.
Artificially making them louder is just road safety.
There's a hire bike scheme in London - Lime - that makes their bikes emit a clacking sound when they're ridden.
Given that bike couriers (usually food/restaurant deliveries) often ride like nutjobs on pavements, it's essental.
The Lime bikes only click when 'hijacked' to ride without paying.
Couriers don't ride Lime, they have fat bikes with oversized batteries and speed-limitation system disabled, which makes them illegal on UK puvlic roads but nothing is done about it.
https://regmedia.co.uk/2025/12/09/shutterstock_pedestrianaccident.jpg
Who cares about smartphone zombies! Carmageddon them!
As for the rest of the people: If they don't use their eyes, like I see in way too many dashcam videos with LOUD combustion engine cars and truck which are stepping on the gas, there is nothing you can do.
The point of the article is right: No difference, dumb people are dumb people, no matter which car kills them. Pain is the only teacher here.
"Who cares about smartphone zombies! Carmageddon them!"
The car argument is swamped by all of the peds and cyclists wandering around with their head neck deep in their phone and earbuds cranked up to 11. Maybe they'd notice a Charger with the exhaust bypassed, but nothing less. I'm all for very quiet EV's driving by my house after lights out. Having them making weird alien saucer noises is just too freaky to wake up to.
There used to be a blog written by a London ambulance paramedic, & he related a relevant incident that happened to one of his colleagues.
A car (full of "da yoof, innit") pulled out straight in front of a fast-moving ambulance which had all of it's lights & sirens going. Both vehicles were wrecked, & the car ended up blocking the road. A policeman retrieved the cars key from the driver & went to try & move it. As soon as he turned the key in the ignition the stereo came on so loudly that he leapt from the car clutching his ears. Might have had something to do with the accident...
As irritating as the loud stereos are to me, (living on a busy main road close to a busy level crossing,) it's a new phenomenon that's really bothering me. Round here it's the number of cars that go past trailing a strong stench of grass being smoked...)
My oldest friend rented a room whilst doing his year in industry from a gang leader on railway maintenance.
He always said that they used to find so many isolated limbs scattered around the permanent way that added together they'd probably clear up most of Britain's missing person list.
Spare a thought for the poor sods that find the rest under the trains when they go in for maintenance.
"EVs have reduced noise pollution in cities! We can't have that happening! Make them LOUDER!"
If my car (a PHEV) had this crap there's no question I'd disable it. Fortunately it does not. If yours does - fix that, disable the speaker.
(Icon for the thing which needs its wires cut.)
I do agree that it's a bit daft. At the same time, people (in Europe at least) do have less awareness of cars around them. I haven't had any safety issues as such but it's not uncommon to crawl behind pedestrians walking on the street (not their fault, in some cities people park their cars on the pavement) and it's a while before they realise they have a car behind them.
I hope it'll be just a phase though and as people and animals adapt, the tyre noise will be quite sufficient.
"I hate that stupid noise. Pull the fuse powering the AVAS and let the electric car just be itself."
I swear the car companies design in ways to keep people from doing that sort of thing. The same fuse will be connected to something else you won't want disconnected. In new cars, I know people that are desperate to get rid of the alerts for somebody in front, somebody behind, somebody in a blind spot, going a tiny bit over the limit and what they've only been able to determine, "just because". The useful beeps that remind you that the key is still in the ignition, the lights have been left on, etc would also go away. Some cars will let you turn off the warnings sounds, about 18 layers deep into the menu system under an unrelated tab if you have the code for service mode.
"That people could not or would observe this for themselves was, and is, stunningly stupid.
As George Carlin said, "half of people are below average". Stupid is rampant and it's a disservice to the species to preserve many of them if they might wind up with a chance to breed.
No causation established or even alleged by that random article.
FWIW: not only I yield whenever it's safe to do so but I have on occasion pulled over and helped people cross (not to mention assisting at accidents, though as a former fireman and EMT I am under a moral and even legal obligation to do so).
Our Kia e-Niro has sounds when it's moving slower than 20 km/h.
The nice thing is that it has a switch to turn the sounds off, really good at night or in slow-moving traffic jams.
The illegal thing is that it has a "beep beep" sound when reversing, as well as the "engine" noise. The "beep beep" is illegal in the UK for a reversing car. But if you turn the sounds off it's illegal because it doesn't have the required "engine" noise.
FWIW the "beep beep" is incredibly annoying, we can hear another Kia with the same noise several houses down the road! So we turn it off as a matter of course when reversing out of our driveway.
"The "beep beep" is illegal in the UK for a reversing car."
That's fairly recent and it's now a hissing sort of sound. The problem is if the car/truck has that function deeply embedded. If it's just a speaker that makes the noise when fed with 12v, it's easy to swap out and construction machinery is mostly like that and sites are prohibited from having beep-beep reversing warnings now. Any studies on the efficacy with any of them? A ton of H&S regs seems to be completely useless on first principles with many others only protecting the most stupid oxygen thieves from winning a Darwin award.
The question of what is the effect of extra weight is easily calculated. I used Google AI to do the calculation. The results are surprising and tie up with the statistics.
How much energy is transferred to a 100kg mass when struck by a 2000kg mass traveling at 30km/h? The amount of energy transferred to the 100 kg mass, assuming a perfectly elastic collision, is approximately 12,598 J (Joules).
How much energy is transferred to a 100kg mass when struck by a 1000kg mass traveling at 30km/h?Assuming the 100kg mass is initially at rest and the collision is perfectly elastic, approximately 11478.42 J (or 11.5 kJ) of energy is transferred to the 100kg mass.
Even being by a ten ton truck is only a bit worse. The energy transferred to the 100kg mass is approximately 13615.22 J.
An elastic collision is one in which the objects after impact become stuck together and move with a common velocity. Thats a bad pedestrian crash. In all three cases the collision is probably fatal. Crumple zones help reduce the damage.
My apologies for using Google AI for every calculation.
A perfectly elastic collision is fairly similar to billiard balls, NOT "crumpled and stuck together." If you used AI to do this calculation assuming elastic collision, your numbers are misleading at best.
The formula is kinetic energy is 1/2 * (mass * velocity^2), and at 30 km/h, the squared velocity term predominates. It's not at all surprising that mass makes a difference, but not a large one. It's the change in velocity that does the most damage. This is why "train vs car" usually result in very little damage to the train or contents as long as the train stays on the rails.
DO NOT ask AI to help you with math that you don't understand, they've always been bad at it.
Our new Toyota has a "pop up the hood" system designed to trigger when someone might hit their head on the hood. The idea being to keep the pedestrian's head from impacting the hood and then the engine block bits by raising it further off the top of the engine and providing shock absorption.
Neat idea, but as far as I can see, that system is the main reason Toyota stopped using gas struts to hold up the hood, and went back to the old-school hood prop system.
Their (quite reasonable) justification was that, now that cars have inside airbags, a large fraction of deaths from car collisions are from "pedestrian versus vehicle".
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