Electric Vehicles Crashworthiness and Analysis of Collision Trends
Board Location: #110
Discipline: Technology and Engineering
Subcategory: Civil/Mechanical/Manufacturing Engineering
Session: 4
Jada Iwuoha - University of Maryland Baltimore County
Co-Author(s): Mojdeh Pajouh, The University of Nebraska Lincoln; Khaleb Pafford, The University of Nebraska Lincoln; Cody Stolle, The University of Nebraska Lincoln.
As the use and popularity of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) rise, the understanding of their collision patterns and crash statistics becomes increasingly important. Differences in the design, target demographic, and usage trends make BEV collision patterns comparably different from those of Internal Combustion Vehicles (ICEVs). BEVs are designed with an electric battery pack that is located under the vehicle, whereas ICEVs have an internal combustion engine in the vehicle’s front hood. This difference lowers the center of mass of BEVs and decreases the chance of BEV rollovers. Also, the battery is significantly heavier than the engine of an ICEV, making BEVs a much heavier type of vehicle. The fact that BEVs are heavier along with the fact that their center of mass is closer to the ground may result in different crash patterns impacting the safety of roadside barriers. Thus, there is a need to investigate the compatibility of BEVs with today’s roadside infrastructure. This project analyzed the vehicle crash reports provided by the Departments of Transportation of five chosen states (i.e., California, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida, and Washington) for the years 2017 to 2021. From this data, the Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) were decoded which allowed BEV and ICEV crash trends to be compared over serval categories including: Fire, Weather, Day of the week, Time of Day, etc. The data from the state of Florida contained a total of 3,512,577 crash records, after filtering out null VINs and vehicle years from before 2010, we had a total of 2,504,631 crash reports. Of these 2,504,631 crash reports, 8,748 (.35%) involved BEVs, and 2,428,873 (96%) involved ICEVs. After comparison, it was concluded that in categories such as Day of Week, Time of Day, Urban vs. Rural, and Collision Severity there were no distinguishable differences between BEVs and ICEVs. From Washington’s data, it was notably found that BEVs and ICEVs catch on fire at a similar rate with fire as a result of .29% of BEV crashes and .33% of ICEV crashes. Conversely, for Fatal/Severe Injury due to Fire, 90% of BEV fires and 41.7% of ICEV fires result in fatal or severe injury. This implies that while BEVs are less likely to catch fire following a collision, should such a fire occur, there is a greater chance of it resulting in fatal or severe injuries. Future research would include the review of crash report scene diagrams and crash narratives to identify critical sequences of events leading to severe BEV crashes. References: Liu, C., Zhao, L., & Lu, C. (2022). Exploration of the Characteristics and Trends of Electric Vehicle Crashes: A Case Study in Norway. European Transport Research Review, 14(1).Ghoshal, A. (2020, August 17). How lithium-ion batteries in EVS catch fire. Medium. Anderson, M. & Auffhammer, M. (2011). POUNDS THAT KILL: THE EXTERNAL COSTS OF VEHICLE WEIGHT. NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): Funding Acknowledgements: Funding for this project was provided in part by the National Science Foundation (Award EEC-1950597, REU Site: Sustainability of Horizontal Civil Networks in Rural Areas).
Faculty Advisor: Mojdeh Pajouh, mojdeh.pajouh@unl.edu
Role: As one of the two undergraduate research students working on this project, I decoded the vehicle crash reports for Florida and New Mexico. This included separating Vehicle Identification Numbers (VINs) from each report and running them through code to find the vehicle’s Make, Model, Body style, and EV indicator. As well as organize the decoded data from those two states into categories with tables and graphs that would allow us to visualize the data and compare BEV crash causes to ICEV crash causes.