Road Safety Day-how safe is an electric vehicle? 

When I checked my mobile phone in the morning the first notification that popped up is the ‘Road Safety Day’ after seeing this my mind went directly thinking how safe is electric vehicles and how safe are they when compared to regular internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.

This two questions in my mind made me research and write about today’s article. Let us now try to find answers for these two questions. I am pretty sure, with road accidents, traffic rules and regulations most of you have also got the same question as me when your mobile calendar has reminded you about the Road Safety Day.

Road Safety Day

Before we talk about electric vehicles, first let us look at why this National road safety day is observed all over India. National road safety week is celebrated from 11th January to 17th January every year in India to create awareness about road safety and minimize road accidents & save a life. This is the 32nd National Road Safety Week.

We are witnessing more and more electric vehicles launching every year all over the world and India is also not behind launching some great electric vehicles.

As technology is improving day by day the battery price will also decrease which helps to adopt more electric vehicles in the country in the coming years. electric vehicles with its great potential to offer many benefits to society such as improved air quality reducing carbon dioxide emissions from road transport. They are different from conventional vehicles and present some new safety hazards.

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While talking about safety, Plug-in electric vehicles or electric vehicles are safe and easy to maintain as conventional vehicles. Electric vehicles must go undergo with rigorous safety standards required for conventional vehicles.

The probability of an EV catching fire is lower than vehicles with internal combustion engines (ICE). According to the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, the fire was found 2.6% of electric vehicles and 4.4% of ICE vehicles. 

Reasons why EV catch fire?

There might be few reasons for the EV to catch fire such as different charging standards that increase the problems of supplying power and voltage for charging infrastructure builders. Overcharging or overheating, maintenance, etc.

A uniform global charging standard can overcome this issue. Electric vehicles are safer than ICE vehicles due to lower flammability of Li-ion batteries. The liquid in the battery cells can overheat due to defective voltage regulators, alternators or the improper use of chargers. However, lithium-ion batteries have a much lower risk of fire explosions than gasoline in conventional vehicles.

The electrical systems used in electric vehicles including the battery, electric motor, and related electronic components, require periodic maintenance. Even though EVs requires less maintenance than ICE vehicles.

Safety Measures 

For these reasons, the safety measures can be taken such as using liquid cooling technology for the battery temperature cool, extra aluminium plate can be used for fire protection like Tesla. Famous automakers such as Toyota, Tesla, Volkswagen, BYD and BMW are investing in developing next-generation solid-state battery technology that will lead to safer batteries.

Apart from all these, the electric vehicle’s one more feature that it is silent ‘no noise pollution’ but this feature may be little risky for the pedestrians as EVs makes no noise. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is looking into and addressing the issue such as EVs to emit audible sounds at low speeds. This option is available in many EVs now.

Yes, electric vehicles are safer than the ICE vehicles by the above explanation we can say it without any doubt. 

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