But is its quiet hum a hidden danger to pedestrians? For years, safety advocates and engineers have debated whether battery-powered cars are especially dangerous to people on foot when compared with their petrol or diesel counterparts. A new multi-year analysis drawn from Great Britain’s STATS19 road safety database offers a clear answer: once mileage exposure is accounted for, electric vehicles-or EVs-are no more dangerous to pedestrians than internal combustion engine vehicles, or ICEVs.
From 2019 to 2023, EVs have an average casualty rate per billion miles of 57.82, which is statistically indistinguishable from the 58.88 for ICEVs. This is despite EVs generally weighing about 0.3 metric tons more than similar gas cars because of battery packs-the weight of roughly five household washing machines. The injury severity modeling within the study also showed that pedestrians struck by EVs are no more likely to suffer serious or fatal injuries than those hit by ICEVs. It would appear that the heavier mass, which can increase crash energy transfer, seems counterbalanced by the prevalence of advanced safety technologies in new fleets of EVs, such as automatic emergency braking and collision avoidance systems.
In crash mechanics, the role of vehicle mass in pedestrian impacts is well understood: heavier vehicles can impart more kinetic energy and thereby raise injury risk. This, however, is somewhat mitigated in EVs due to the rapid deployment of active safety systems. Modern forward collision warning sensors, coupled with short-range radar and camera arrays, are able to detect pedestrians and initiate braking milliseconds before impact, reducing collision speed and thereby injury severity. These systems are more common on EVs, given that the fleet is younger and concentrated in higher trim levels where such features tend to be standard.
The story is different for hybrid electric vehicles, however. Reaching a casualty rate of 120.14 per billion miles more than double that of either EVs and ICEVs the analysis concludes this has nothing to do with the propulsion design but rather the usage patterns. HEVs have gained great popularity among urban taxi and private hire fleets in the UK, racking up mileage three to four times that of private cars while spending most of their time in pedestrian-heavy city centers. Many HEVs in service pre-date the 2019 regulation requiring Acoustic Vehicle Alerting Systems (AVAS) and so remain near silent at low speeds, reducing auditory cues for pedestrians.
Thus, AVAS technology was required in the UK for all new EV and HEV models from July 2019 onward and is engineered to solve this low-speed audibility problem. The system generates synthetic sound-often in the 56-75 dB(A) range-below 20 km/h, using frequency profiles optimized for human hearing amidst urban ambient noise. Following the implementation of AVAS, EV pedestrian casualty rates fell sharply from 137.2 to 57.8 per billion miles, which was a reduction much greater than that experienced by ICEVs in the same period. With the absence of speed-specific collision data, it is not possible to establish causation; however, this correlation indicates that AVAS is an effective mitigation.
Other influencing factors include vehicle body type-large SUVs, electric or otherwise, increase the severity of pedestrian injuries due to higher bonnet profiles and larger frontal area, which affect impact kinematics-upper‑body trauma rather than leg injuries-and reduce the likelihood a pedestrian will be deflected onto the hood rather than down onto the road surface. This data also illustrate that older vehicles are associated with increased injury severity; this is not surprising as crash structures in these vehicles are outdated, and modern pedestrian protection features such as energy‑absorbing bumpers are lacking.
Speed environment remains a dominant factor: Collisions on higher‑limit roads produce disproportionately severe injuries. In the absence of direct vehicle speed data, posted limits serve as a proxy; roads signed at 70 mph yield far higher severe injury proportions than 20 mph urban streets. This reflects biomechanical models indicating steep rises in pedestrian fatality risk for impact speeds above 30 km/h.
The results have implications for sustainability policy. Electrification is integral to transport decarbonization, with EVs emitting less lifecycle greenhouse gas than ICEVs even on partially decarbonized grids. Concerns that electrification may compromise pedestrian safety find no support in the current UK data. Instead, engineering effort should shift to ensure that all vehicle types-whatever the propulsion-carry high-performance active safety systems and, in the case of hybrid vehicles, retrofitted AVAS where these systems are absent.
It further illustrates, from an engineering perspective, how design interventions such as audible alerts, pedestrian detection algorithms, and rapid-response braking can offset physical disadvantages like increased mass. It also points out the primacy of analysing casualty rates in terms of exposure miles rather than raw counts-a methodological step that controls for fleet size and usage intensity. As far as policymakers and transport engineers are concerned, the evidence indicates that a transition into EVs can be made without compromising pedestrian safety provided that technology adoption remains aggressive and regulations continue to evolve alongside vehicle design.
