Research and analysis

The safety risk of electric and hybrid vehicles to visually impaired pedestrians

Report by Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) into the risks of quiet electric and hybrid vehicles to visually impaired pedestrians.

• From: Department for Transport and Office for Low Emission Vehicles
• Published: 25 July 2011

Documents

Assessing the perceived safety risk from quiet electric and hybrid vehicles to vision-impaired pedestrians

PDF, 1.11 MB

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Details

The Department for Transport commissioned TRL to investigate the accident risk posed by E/HE vehicles and compare it with that for equivalent vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines (ICEs), to determine whether E/HE vehicles are audibly more difficult to detect.

This report presents the findings from the study, based upon

• a review of vehicle accident statistics
• a programme of practical measurements to compare the noise of E/HE and ICE vehicles
• a small-scale subjective assessment of the noise from these vehicles involving vision-impaired participants

Published 25 July 2011