SOLUTIONSplus policy brief on Electromobility and Road Safety

SOLUTIONSplus has published a new and exciting policy brief on electromobility. This Policy Brief, entitled ''Electromobility and Road Safety: making Zero-Carbon support Vision-Zero'', explores six key facets in which road safety and electromobility intersect and offers thoughts and suggestions on how policy-makers can mitigate the risks within each of them.

Electromobility is an essential tool on the path to decarbonisation of road transport, which has become a political priority for governments across the world. But decarbonisation is not the only worthwhile ambition – road transport safety is another key imperative for which electromobility brings new opportunities and challenges.

SOLUTIONSplus' new policy brief identified six key areas, namely: (1) speed and acceleration, (2) noise, (3) size and weight, (4) charging infrastructure in the street, (5) diversity of vehicles, and (6) fire safety. In each of these fields, electromobility offers a variety of improvements upon the safety implications of cars with internal combustion engines, as they reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as air and noise pollution, but also has the potential to exacerbate existing problems or create new ones entirely.

The lack of noise produced by electric vehicles could lead to danger for pedestrians who rely on sonic cues to detect oncoming traffic, a lack of environmental regulations allowing electric vehicles to become bigger and heavier than ICE vehicles can increase the severity of collisions, and the potential fire hazard caused by batteries are just some of the potential safety risks within electromobility. How policy-makers react to these will determine if they can seize this opportunity to transform road transport sustainably and safely. This Policy Brief provides some of the tools and insights necessary to tackle these challenges without blowing them out of proportion.

The Policy Brief was developed in the context of the EU-funded Project SOLUTIONSplus, which aims to kickstart the transition to low-carbon urban mobility and proliferate knowledge in the realm of electromobility. It contains extensive input from transport specialists and other experts, provided via the POLIS working groups for Clean Vehicles & Air Quality and for Safety & Security, a workshop conducted in the framework of the International Transport Forum’s Safer City Streets Network, and through in-depth interviews.