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Read the rest of this articleHybrid cars guilty of stealth attacks on naive pedestrians
What's scarier than an 80,000 lb semi truck driving down a busy street full of pedestrians? The answer, ironically enough, was purposefully developed to be a peaceful machine, in more ways than one, but it instead has turned into a pedestrian's nightmare.
Noiseless hybrid vehicles, according to a report done by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, are two times more likely, at lower speeds, to be involved in pedestrian and bicyclist crashes than standard combustion engines.
The report's results can most likely be attributed to the large differences in noise levels between the hybrid vehicles and the internal combustion engine vehicles.
Hybrid vehicles are now becoming smart enough that the vehicle can determine the level of engine and gasoline use (which determines the noise levels) by taking into account factors such as temperature and the amount of acceleration needed.
Cars like the Toyota Prius are also able to take advantage of times that the vehicle is either idle or accelerating. According to Toyota, "Most of the time when the Prius comes to a stop, the gasoline engine is shut down. This means no unnecessary idling or wasted fuel while stuck in traffic or at stop signs. When accelerating from rest at a normal pace, and up to mid-range speeds, the Prius is powered by the electric motor, which is fed by the battery."
In other words, while the car is stopped or just accelerating, it makes very little noise because it has no need for the gasoline engine.
When first developing hybrids, I am sure the idea of a quiet, almost effortless vehicle sounded like a good idea. Hybrid makers were bringing the peace of the quiet wilderness to the day-to-day driving experience--that is if you exclude the other environmental noise and the many internal combustion engines surrounding a hybrid at any given time.
The problem, however, if it can even be called a problem, is that society has become accustomed to the noise-making, carbon-emitting, gas-guzzlers that cruise the streets.
City slickers confidently stroll across the street trusting their senses, naively believing that they will no doubt hear a vehicle if it is cruising towards the pedestrian walk. Yes, even I have been guilty of this before.
It may be time for a wake up call that there are in fact vehicles, mostly hybrid and electric, that don't sound like military tanks or hummers. Some are even smart enough to make no sound at all.
Hybrids have been crafted and fine tuned so well that people may need to revisit the lesson their mothers taught them to look both ways before crossing.
Yes, a hybrid can be a stealth, pedestrian nightmare, but only if people are naive enough to believe that all cars use gasoline and all cars make noise. Let's stop making that mistake.
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Comments
First, the report, DOT HS 811 204 (downloadable from NHTSA.gov,) lists only two types of maneuvers, turning and backing, which their own table lists as only 13% of all maneuvers. But to call hybrids "twice as dangerous" is inflating the proverbial mole hill.
Worse, DOT HS 811 204 does not use a count of vehicles to give an accident rate per vehicle or vehicle mile. What this means is no one at NHTSA can give a risk per vehicle or vehicle mile. Yet every year the NHTSA reports the fatalities per 100 million miles. They know how to report a risk per vehicle and this report is only comparing the distribution of accidents, the profile.
We took the Prius sales and Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) data and found in abosolute terms, half the rate of fatal accidents compared to the NHTSA rates. This covered 2001-2007, the same years of the NHTSA study. It is a strange hazard that kills half as many as the USA fleet stud.
The report has merit for future studies but as an absolute vehicle risk, the Prius is twice as safe. Misrepresentation of this report, sad to say, is too common by those not willing to pick it up and read it directly. Facts and data first, then base your opinion upon what is real.
Bob Wilson
The Toyota Prius, for what its worth, is a safe vehicle (the article is not claiming otherwise). What the article is saying is that at slow speeds, when maneuvering corners, accelerating, and backing, the Toyota Prius and other hybrids are deathly quiet and potentially dangerous for pedestrians not paying attention.
Taken directly from the report in an honest attempt to not extort data: "The HEV was two times more likely to be involved in a pedestrian crash in these situations than was an ICE vehicle." I'm not sure where the extortion happened. It's a very real fact (read very closely) from the study.
The accident rate per vehicle or vehicle mile is a great point, but it fails to admit the failure of almost any reactionary or observatory study: you cannot have 24/7 monitoring of every happening in the world. Studies like this make the best use of the data collected. To do a more controlled study would skew the results by adding known variables to those being tested.
It is certainly a study to observe in the future as it may have very real implications as more cars turn into hybrid cars.
Essentially, for the average city dweller, a quiet car = no car at all. Living in the city myself, I have walked out into street without looking in either direction because I trust my senses. With a hybrid, you just can't do that anymore because you would never know it is there.