Electric vehicles vs. internal combustion engine vehicles: A comparative study of crashes involving vulnerable road users

Powered by electric engines, electric vehicles (EVs) exhibit unique dynamic characteristics that may lead to different crash characteristics and outcomes compared with traditional internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs). This might be particularly true for vulnerable road users (VRUs), such as pedestrians and cyclists. Motivated by these concerns, this paper delves into the comparative analysis of crashes involving EVs and VRUs, exploring how crash characteristics and injury severities differ from those involving VRUs and ICEVs. Employing statistical testing and binary probit regression analyses, this study analyzes crash data from Chicago spanning from 2015 to 2022. Spatial and temporal constraints were applied to filter ICEV crashes, ensuring similar environmental conditions and VRU exposure for the considered crashes. Innovatively, this study supplements traditional police crash reports with Google Street View (GSV) images and employs neural network models to uncover previously unreported environmental variables at crash scenes. The results reveal both similarities and disparities in the characteristics of crash involved VRUs between EVs and ICEVs. However, significant differences in factors, such as VRU type (pedestrians or cyclists), hit-and-run incidents, damage level, crash hour, crash weekday, weather conditions, and road surface conditions, along with the influence of season and road surface condition on injury severity, were observed between EVs and ICEVs. These distinctions may be attributed to driver demographics, vehicle design, and spatial and temporal usage patterns. These insights can guide the development of safety regulations for EVs and aid in devising specific safety measures and policies for VRUs, including pedestrians and cyclists.