Electric Vehicles (Vulnerable Road Users)

John Leech Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Glindon]

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) is right, and the tenet of our debate today is to ask the Government to do more. I have to confess that I have not yet done a walk around with a blindfold on, but I know people who have, and I do not think that any of us here who are blessed to have our sight can imagine what it is like or what the dangers are until we have experienced what people with poor sight or no sight have to experience.

Research by the TAS Partnership that was published only last month shows that electric and hybrid vehicles were involved in 25% more collisions, causing injury to pedestrians, between 2010 and 2012, than conventional vehicles. Moreover, between 2005 and 2008, crashes involving quiet vehicles trebled. In 2011, research for the Department for Transport found that electric and hybrid vehicles were far more difficult to detect than internal combustion engine vehicles at the lowest steady speed and, when pulling away from rest, at the lowest speed. EU research has shown that 93% of blind and partially sighted people have experienced difficulties with electric vehicles.

All those figures are very concerning. The fact that people have been injured in accidents with these vehicles is frightening enough, but as Guide Dogs has pointed out, loss of confidence is also a massive problem for blind and partially sighted people, and a bad experience, as already described, could ultimately lead to someone not wanting to leave their home, and therefore losing their independence. Many blind and partially sighted people are easily discouraged from independent mobility if any element of their journey is adversely impacted by outside factors. Guide Dogs estimates that about 180,000 blind and partially sighted people never leave home alone.

Research by the eVADER—electric vehicle alert for detection and emergency response—project found that 91% of blind and partially sighed people want to see quiet vehicles recognised as a problem, and with 81% of the general public, according to a survey by Orange, wanting electric vehicles to emit a noise at a level equivalent to conventional vehicles, it is surely time for the Government to act.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and I welcome this debate. Is she aware of any evidence that the situation has resulted in people with electric cars getting higher insurance premiums? If there have been more accidents, insurance premiums will be higher. That would be an incentive for makers of these cars to increase the noise levels, so that in future, people will not get higher insurance premiums if they buy these cars and are more likely to have an accident.

[Mrs Glindon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Unfortunately, I have not looked at insurance, and it has not come up in anything that I have looked at, but that seems to be a logical step to take and a convincing argument, if not for insurers—well, even an insurer would have to pay out, so I hope that the Minister will say something about that.

In 2010, Japan and the United States legislated for alert systems to be put into cars. Any such system is cheap and simple to fit, and in the UK it would add only about £20 to the cost of a car. I am sure that everyone here would agree that that is a very small price to pay for road safety.

In February this year, Members of the European Parliament voted for an amendment to the EU regulation on the sound level of motor vehicles to make acoustic vehicle alerting systems mandatory for all quiet vehicles. That amendment is now being negotiated by the European Commission, European Council and European Parliament. The UN Economic Commission for Europe is developing a global technical regulation to specify standards for AVAS around the world. It will be finalised next year and will form the basis of the EU regulation, but unfortunately it seems that our Government are pushing for only the voluntary introduction of AVAS and have reservations about making those systems mandatory.

I ask the Minister to say why the Government think that making the systems mandatory will place a financial burden on car manufacturers when, as I said, the inclusion of such a system will add only £20 to the cost of a car. Motor manufacturing companies are not averse to developing alert systems. Nissan, which I make no apology for mentioning again because it is a local car company and therefore I have been in contact with it, has been researching and working with cognitive and acoustic psychologists to produce a practical system that is safe and environmentally friendly. Many technical issues need to be considered with regard to the right sound in order to be heard without encroaching on the environment, but it is good to see that companies such as Nissan, which has been so successful, are being proactive in this field.

It was greatly concerning to learn that the Government do not accept the national and international evidence of which I have spoken. It does show a link between silent vehicles and a road safety threat to vulnerable road users. Does the Minister think that the opinions of organisations such as Guide Dogs, the Automobile Association and the Royal Automobile Club are not trustworthy on this matter?

The next EU negotiation on the matter will be on 5 November, and an agreement must be reached by the time of the next Transport Council in December in order to be finalised within this EU Parliament. There are already nearly 3,000 electric cars and more than 133,000 hybrid vehicles on our roads. What commitment will the Minister give to make AVAS in electric vehicles mandatory, so that the many more motorists who will be buying these cars and other road users, especially the most vulnerable, can all be confident that they will be able to travel safely in the future? I hope that he does not agree with his predecessor—now the Minister for Crime Prevention—who, in a reply in July to a letter that I had sent him, said:

“To date the number of electric and hybrid electric vehicles on the road is small compared to conventional vehicles and more data will need to be gathered over the next few years before we can be certain of the best approach.”

As I said, the Government have already committed more than £800 million. Car manufacturers are committing large sums. People are buying these cars. We shall see many more of them on the roads. However, the numbers of people who are vulnerable—elderly people, children, cyclists and the blind and visually impaired—are not decreasing. Those people remain vulnerable, and I hope that the Minister will listen today to what all these people feel.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Spencer]

I am grateful for that intervention. That is exactly the sort of technology that we need to embrace. The sound needs to be projected forward to those people who are in danger.

[Mr Leech]

I was going to make a point similar to that made by the hon. Lady. Existing non-electric vehicles make quite a lot of noise. I do not think there is any suggestion that the noise created by some sort of warning system on an electric vehicle would be any more obtrusive than noise from existing petrol and diesel engines.

[Mr Spencer]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is important to establish those facts while the discussions are ongoing.

My final point to the Minister is that we need to give some thought to retrospective action for silent vehicles already on the road. Should the law change? How do we encourage people in possession of a silent electric vehicle to fit kit that will assist others to hear it coming?

I congratulate the hon. Lady again on securing this important debate about an issue on which I hope we can make progress in the coming months.