5. Conclusion

This article attempts to identify the key issues concerning the risk posed by electric and hybrid vehicles to pedestrians, and in particular the blind and partially-sighted, and to describe and analyze them from several points of view.

An analysis of the context shows that the studies carried out on induced risks are contradictory and imprecise. This leaves the field open to conclusions based all too often on common sense or personal experience. The numerous conditions of danger for users of urban roads can be reduced to a few key situations: vehicles in motion at low speed in quiet areas, on roads or in areas where vehicles and pedestrians live together. In these cases, electric and hybrid vehicles are considered to be silent, as their noise level is often much lower than that of combustion-powered vehicles, and their detection distance may be less than the vehicle's...