Petrol and Disel vehicles tend to make huge Engine sound. That means you can use your ear to determine whether there is a vehicle coming from the distance where you may not see, especially during heavy fog or during crossing road inside a inner road.
Lets be honest here, 99.99% people only follow good practices when crossing road in a major highway. Most people dont even look behind when crossing in small roads away from the highway.
I was walking today and an electric scooter just speeded up and passed me by. If it were a petrol engine I would hear it coming even when I am not directly looking.
No, next question?
To be fair, I’ve asked myself this question a lot since I had my own BEV. The other day I went down a restricted speed lane that takes me to our Type 2 chargers at work. And I wasn’t below 12mph because someone later told me how quiet my ID3 was as they saw me go by. Which kind of concerned me as I felt I was in the pedestrian warning noise range, but I was obviously going faster than 12mph. BEVs are so quiet and smooth that judging speed is more difficult than with an old clunker ICE car. But, as pedestrians begin to change their alertness habits so will BEV drivers. All my old driving habits have subtley changed, bar going extra slow during that time because I so rarely need to do it. Omce every week or couple of weeks and even then there’s nobody about.
I just think that we all need to take responsibility. Drivers, don’t expect pedestrians to be model road users, and pedestrians don’t expect drivers to be in charge of your life if you step off the pavement into traffic. Saying all this, upto now I’ve not seen a real problem with the quietness of BEVs [hence, no next question joke]. On the contrary, every person who cycles to our company [about 6 people] generally give me a wave as I pass them in the morning. At least I’m not directly chucking poisons at them. And believe me, I’ve been on the other end - cycling to work in winter, getting to the top of a hill, lungs bursting, only to have a badly in need of service cold diesel vehicle chuck me a lung full. It’s not nice.