LOW CARBON VEHICLES AND ROAD SAFETY

Wp ref. tcom/Electric for Transcom 2013

Comment in response to Transport Committee request: reference the debate of 25th April

 LOW CARBON VEHICLES

The government’s belief that electric vehicles, EV’s, emit 40% less carbon than equivalent internal combustion ones is based largely on the Arup – Cenex report[1].  That report depends on the (wild) claims of manufacturers.  Worse still, (a) despite pretending to represent the whole of life emissions, the report omits the very considerable energy required to manufacture and recycle the batteries (b) no account is taken of performance, or the greater weight of EV, which may be 50% heavier than competing Internal Combustion powered vehicles, ICV’s .

 In contrast, our analysis[2] compares the Well to wheel efficiencies and emissions for EVs with those for ICVs, for a range of operating conditions after allowing for battery manufacture and weight differences, thereby making like for like comparisons.  Our conclusion is that, far from emitting less carbon, the EV may emit more than its ICV competitor.  That view is supported by the recent Norwegian study reported by the BBC.[3]

Against that background it seems very likely that the dash for electric cars is misguided.

There is support for that view, albeit on different and wider grounds, from Professors Collings and Cebon, of Cambridge University, reference their letter to Ingenia, the quarterly produced by The Royal Academy of Engineering.[4]  That letter is compelling.  We commend it to the Transport Committee, copy attached.

Furthermore, Professor Collings notes that “over the last 50 years, average fuel economy (and hence CO2 emissions) have improved substantially, but so has performance.  There is little doubt that if the public were prepared to drive (and the manufacturers to manufacture) cars with the same performance as prevailed ~50 years ago, but with current engine technology, CO2 emissions could be approximately halved - while retaining the greater safety characteristics of modern vehicles”.

ROAD SAFETY

For more than 10 years prior to 1995 deaths per vehicle-km by road had been declining at over 7% per year.  Thereafter, and despite the support given to the camera campaign by the speed humps and countless other local measures, that decline, instead of accelerating,  collapsed to 2.5%, leading to over 10,000 extra deaths compared with those which would have arisen had the historic trend continued.[5]

From 2006 there has been an acceleration in the rate of decline, but that cannot be due to policies, since they did not then change.  Instead the acceleration may be due to the financial crisis which has led to more cautious behaviour and taken many young drivers, or would-be drivers, off the road. 

The graphs below illustrate.  The second of those provides a remarkable correlation between the extra deaths compared with the pre-1995 trend and the rate of speeding  fines, suggesting that the more they fine us the more we die.

In the light of that our view is that this speed camera campaign, and the setting of ever lower speed limits, has been counter-productive, and a public relations disaster, in that nearly all those fined, and millions have been, will have been driving perfectly safely for the conditions.

Worse than that, we sense that the officials driving this campaign have been less than candid about the impact of the cameras.  Often, if not always, those officials ignore the fact that installation usually follows a period where there has been a spate of accidents.  The corollary is that a site specific reduction should be credited to a return to the longer term average, rather than to the cameras.  The police are also to be criticised, see the Luxford case, which appears to be not untypical.[6]

The sense of disingenuousness is heightened when the official pronouncements to do with the danger of speeding are compared with the data.  For example, the impression has been created that speeding (meaning breaking the speed limit) is a major (30%) cause of road traffic accidents.  However, national data, see end note, shows that speeding, as a recorded cause, amounts to 5.4% of all causes for deaths and to 2.3% for all causes of injury accidents.

Likewise, there is great odium associate with mobile phone use. However, the data shows that, despite the frequency of that act, use of a phone amounts to 0.5% of the recorded causes of fatal accidents and to 0.15% of all causes for all severities of personal injury accident.  The reason will be that those who use their phones when driving have the good sense to do so only when the conditions suggest it is safe.

One reason for the collapse in the previous downward trend in road deaths is that the cameras distract drivers from the road ahead, replacing that with a fearful concentration on the speedometer.

Lastly, recent research by David Finney supports the view that speed cameras have had no beneficial effect.  In summary, the reports point out that (a) cameras are often cited in response to an abnormally high number of accidents within the previous three years (b) it takes about a year to install the cameras (c) in that year the number of accidents are greatly reduced compared with the three year record that created the rational for the camera site (d) after installation there was no further reduction in accidents despite the speed reduction brought about by the camera (f) the accident record after installation matched, or exceeded, that for the period prior to the record which led to the site selection.  It follows that it is very difficult indeed to claim that the cameras within Mr Finney’s substantial data set have had any beneficial impact on road traffic accidents.[7]^, [8]

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Separately from that we have carried out detailed calculations which show that the effect of slowing us down costs very much more, in terms of lost time, than it saves in reduced casualties.[9]  The implication is that, if the values for time and casualties used by the DfT are to be believed then, rather than slowing us down, they should be speeding us up.

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End note: Recorded causes of accidents:

The DfT Table RSA 50007, Contributory Factors in reported accidents for 2011, provides data enabling the following summary.  The source data, taking two pages, is appended.