Many petrol cars are now hybrid and are just as quiet as EVs.
Many EVs make sound when driving at slow speeds. Does that mitigate the problem? It’s actually really irresponsible that this topic isn’t brought up at all in the article. If artificial sound has a big impact we should have legislation around it ASAP, no?
Is the weight actually a big factor? There are heavy EVs and EVs that are about the same weight as their ICE counterparts. The data could give us a better conclusion on this.
We just had a report in Norway about traffic fatalities in cars.. and there’s really no significant difference between 0-4 yo cars that are now mostly EVs, and 5-9 yo cars that was mostly petrol cars. New ICE and new EVs are fairly similar.
It’s old ICE that stand out in the data: they are far more deadly to occupants in an accident. If you don’t account for that ICE looks like a massive death trap in the data. I suspect old ICE will also stand out in accidents with pedestrians: they are so extremely loud that they will skew the data heavily towards the conclusion that petrol cars are safer to pedestrians than EVs.
What can we do to improve the situation? I don’t feel like making noise is the right solution. The reduced noise of EVs and modern petrol cars is hugely valuable. Noise is negative for health. And besides, noise doesn’t help people with hearing problems or ear phones.