An investigation by Money Mail shows that inadequate response times are forcing AA and RAC customers to hire independent recovery firms to come to their rescue instead.

Desperate motorists are abandoning their vehicles and calling on friends, family, or taxis to collect them while others are finding themselves stranded at the side of the road for up to 12 hours, as they wait for recovery.

The unsettling news comes after figures show complaints about breakdown companies doubled last year and look set to double again by the end of this financial year. So, just what is going so wrong with the nation’s two largest roadside assistance companies?

Stranded without food or water

The Daily Mail spoke to Martyn James, Head of Media and Marketing at Resolver, a free online service that helps consumers raise and resolve consumer issues. Mr James says breakdown companies aren‘t good enough and that an increasing number of people find that when something goes wrong with their vehicle; the wait is excessive.

Resolver dealt with only 360 complaints in 2016-17. This figure grew to 711 complaints the following year. By August of this year, they had already received 446 complaints and say they expect to receive around 1,000 by the end of the 2018 financial year.

The AA said the average time between when they receive a call and when they arrive at the breakdown is under 50 minutes while the RAC said it gives each member an individual expected time of arrival. Yet, what‘s shocking is that Resolver says they’ve heard of people left stranded overnight without food or water.

According to experts, a big part of the problem is the lack of competition within the roadside recovery industry. Between them, the AA and the RAC control around 70% of the market and, although they each use their own patrols, they also contract out jobs to local recovery firms. The AA said they contracted out less than 15% of its jobs last year but, as they attend up to 10,000 breakdowns a day, this equates to around 500,000 call-outs. The RAC report contracting out 10% of their 2.3million call-outs last year.

Blaming the weather

Stephen Smith, of the Association of Vehicle Recovery Operators (ARVO)—which represents local breakdown firms—says the demand on companies such as the AA and RAC to keep prices low for customers means the rates they pay to local breakdown services doesn‘t encourage them to take on jobs.

The AA and RAC responded to Money Mail’s investigation findings. Here’s what their spokespersons said:

From the AA: “A harsh winter, Britain’s appalling potholed roads and a long hot summer have put pressure on the UK’s breakdown services and garages, with the AA seeing a sharp increase in calls for roadside assistance. Sometimes this has meant it took longer to reach our members than we would wish. We know we can improve so are investing in more AA roadside and recovery patrols as well as front-line staff, including in our contact centres.”

The RAC’s response: “As a responsible business we take all complaints seriously and aim to resolve them as quickly as we can. Following the harsh winter weather and the hottest summer on record, we saw large increases in breakdown volumes which inevitably led to more complaints. We have taken steps to reduce long waits and are improving the way we communicate with members who need their vehicles recovered.”

Be prepared

With all this said, if you drive a car, breakdown cover is important. Even in the most reliable of vehicles, mechanical or electrical problems can still happen. If your car breaks down at the side of the road and you don’t have breakdown cover, it can be both stressful and expensive, not to mention put you at risk from other vehicles and crime—especially at night.

Yes, motoring costs a lot already, but you can find decent breakdown cover at a low cost. If you sign up for breakdown cover while stranded, known as ‘instant cover’, you’ll pay far more than if you‘d bought cover in advance.

Before you take out a policy, though, check if breakdown cover is part of another service you already have. For instance, your bank account may include this, your car manufacturer may cover you as part of the warranty, or it could be part of your existing car insurance. If not, adding breakdown cover to your insurance is often better value than taking out a separate breakdown cover policy.

It’s wise to keep a photocopy of your breakdown cover policy on you, in the event your vehicle breaks down. Most people now carry mobile phones but carry a charger that works in your car, too.

The average wait time for roadside recovery is 40-60 minutes and, because you might need to stand away from your vehicle until help arrives, keep a warm coat, a reflective, high-visibility vest, and a torch in the boot. We hope you’ll never have a use for them, but you’ll be glad of them should a breakdown ever occur.

Do you have breakdown cover? Have you waited an excessive time for roadside assistance? Or has your experience been positive? Tell us your opinion in the comments

Fuel duty is never a popular topic, but with the inevitable switchover to electric vehicles (EVs), this long-loathed tax is on its way out, together with the billions of pounds of revenue it generates for the government coffers.

Estimates say the Treasury will earn £28.3bn from fuel duty this financial year and the leading UK think tank and educational charity, Policy Exchange, told Autocar magazine they estimated the move to electric vehicles may cost the government up to £170billion by 2030 in lost taxation.

With this in mind, ministers are considering how to replace this huge financial shortfall and the answer might take the form of road pricing. If MPs go ahead with this scheme, UK drivers will face paying for every mile they drive.

Plugging the gap

In early October, Prime Minister Theresa May promised fuel duty would stay frozen for the ninth year in a row, at 57.95 pence per litre of petrol or diesel purchased. While good news for motorists, it’s still galling to know 44% of what we pay at the pumps is the fuel duty, which may account for why fuel duty is so unpopular. This isn’t an issue for pure electric vehicle owners who avoid paying any fuel duty—something very appealing when fuel prices are so high.

To reduce air pollution, or receive large fines, the government is keen to reduce emissions, by getting all UK motorists—over 30 million of us—to switch to greener cars. Only last week we wrote about the impending ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars.

Not to mention factors such as Oxford City Council considering a ban on all non-zero emissions cars from the city centre, other cities considering charges for petrol and diesel vehicles, and the European Parliament ruling that manufacturers’ must reduce fleet average CO2 emissions for new cars 35% by 2030.

So, how will the government claw back the money lost from fuel duty revenue from petrol and diesel when drivers change to less-polluting hybrid and electric vehicles?

According to Policy Exchange, officials are looking into introducing road pricing to plug the gap, meaning drivers may have to pay to use major routes—even if their vehicles produce zero emissions—which may not go down too well with car owners who feel penalised at every turn.

‘Poll tax on wheels’

There hasn’t been a proposed solution by the government yet, but it’s no doubt on their agenda as the sale of fuel drops with increased EV sales. Josh Burke, Senior Research Fellow for Policy Exchange, told Autocar that a Treasury official had mentioned to him that the government was looking at alternatives to Fuel Duty—one of them being road pricing.

“If anything, the case for reform has accelerated because of the increased uptake of plug-ins,” said Burke.

AA President, Edmund King OBE who, in an interview with Autocar, said: “Road pricing gets described as a poll tax on wheels. It’s political suicide.” Instead, he and his wife, economist Deirdre King propose an alternative scheme they created together, called ‘Road Miles’.

The scheme would give motorists an ‘allowance’ of 3,000 free miles each year, with a charge for every later mile. Motorists living in rural areas and electric vehicle owners would receive more free miles, with a gradual phase-in of the scheme as fuel duty disappears. Just as road pricing would need, for King’s scheme to work, a record of miles travelled is almost certain to come from a device connected to the car’s diagnostic port (much like an insurance telematics ‘black box’) or, for older cars, checked as part of the MOT. Yet, the latter would have to involve a much tighter crackdown on odometer tampering, known as ‘clocking’. This alternative to road pricing may not appeal to all, but last year, King and his wife made the shortlist for the esteemed Wolfson Economics Prize for their Road Miles proposal.

Big Brother is watching you

It‘s a given that fuel duty will disappear and while it would be difficult to apply something similar for electric cars; we have no way of knowing if—while looking at alternatives to keep tax revenue at the current levels—the government won’t bring in a tax on electricity used to charge zero-emission cars.

The possibility of road pricing has always proven to be unpopular. So unpopular that, in 2007, despite no firm proposals being put forward for road pricing, almost two million people signed a Downing Street petition against a national road pricing plan. If the government decide on road pricing as the answer, they could face a fierce backlash from the public. There were also worries from drivers about privacy issues from tracking devices being fitted to cars, which no doubt will resurface if road pricing takes over fuel duty.

In the past, the government said they wouldn’t use the mileage device to keep watch on drivers or to prosecute those found speeding, but who can say future laws won’t change to include such monitoring of driver behaviours?

If, or when, road pricing starts, we’ll know more about more complicated details, such as how will those motorists who, for instance, take their cars on driving holidays across Europe, receive reliable and fair charges only for the mileage clocked up on UK roads? While we wait to see what the future holds for fuel duty, EV drivers, at least, can continue to enjoy no longer having it as part of their motoring costs.

Do you think road pricing is a good replacement for fuel duty? What about the Road Miles idea? Do you have any concerns about having telematics fitted to your car? What alternatives to fuel duty would you support? Tell us in the comments.

The City of London Corporation is looking at implementing a 15mph speed limit in the capital’s Square Mile to help with road safety and reduce pollution.

Experts say that if anything, it will increase pollution levels due to the stop & start nature of the traffic, but road safety charity Brake is backing the plans.

Planning & Transportation Chairman for the City of London Corporation, Chris Hayward says: “90% of collisions that result in death or serious injury involve a motor vehicle. We need bold ideas to make our streets safer”.

Horse and cart

There were 54 people killed or seriously injured on the streets of the City of London last year, and despite the lower 20mph speed limits, the number of these incidents hasn’t decreased, purely because of the record numbers of pedestrians in the City.

A spokesperson for the AA said that lowering the speed limit will have little to no effect on injuries, comparing the traffic speed to that of a horse and cart, and IAM RoadSmart Director of Policy and Research agrees: “There is no real road safety benefit in enforcing a speed limit which traffic seldom reaches”.

The experts also agree that in all likelihood, it will raise pollution levels, which are currently under scrutiny, and therefore used to tax the motorist further.

Practicalities will also play a part; how would they implement the lower speed limit, particularly concerning cyclists? It’s estimated that around two people are killed or injured every week as a result of an accident with a bicycle. The conviction of Charlie Alliston for causing bodily harm through ‘wanton and furious driving’ proves that there is an issue that needs looking in to.

Better investment

Experts say that rather than enforce an unworkable solution, that will cause further problems with pollution levels, that the City of London Corporation should look into making investments in better road safety infrastructure, such as pedestrian crossings, pinch points and speed humps.

A spokesperson for Brake said: “Speed is a critical factor in many deaths on our roads, we welcome any measure that can help make our communities safer; slower speeds save lives and make our streets a more liveable environment”.

In contrary to that, Hampshire County Council stated in June that they would be no longer implementing 20mph limits, as they’d noticed no discernible reduction in road accidents, which would fit with the theory from the AA.

“Changing the limit from a 30mph zone to 20mph reduces the speed slightly, but the majority of motorists travel at 25mph, so there has been a reduction in speed, but not significant”.

Pollution levels

Putting aside the speed vs injury debate, the other argument from the City of London Corporation is that there would be a reduction in pollution levels. Clearly, with traffic taking longer to clear the area, the start/stop nature of traffic, combined with an already overloaded road system, this simply wouldn’t happen?

A study by the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI) in 2013 found similar results; the nature of stop/start traffic at low speeds means that there is an increase in acceleration and braking, coupled with the fact that at such low speed, any motorist would likely to be in a low gear, which would further exacerbate the problem. The optimum speed for minimising vehicle pollution and emissions is actually around 40mph.

However, that’s simplifying it too much, there are further points to be aware of.

If the traffic flow is smooth, then lower speed limits will help with reducing pollution, it’s only when you introduce the stop & start of city driving that it will negate the effect of lower limits. Due to further legislation surrounding emissions, car manufacturers comply with much stricter emissions regulations, and therefore, their products are tuned to give optimum returns under the majority of use – around 45 – 50mph in top gear.

Using traffic-calming measures can work under certain circumstances, but it gets back to keeping the traffic flowing smoothly – not accelerating away from speed humps or traffic lights for example.

Generation

While it’s undoubtedly commendable to try and reduce the number of injuries in a locale, there needs to be serious thought given as to how practical this can be, or whether it’s just another publicity/money generating scheme for the local authority.

Evidence and experts say that a 15mph speed limit won’t really affect either positively – it won’t reduce accidents, nor will it help with pollution, so just what is the purpose of lowering the limit? We know the cynical answer, but surely, it can’t be that blatant?

What do you think of a 15mph speed limit? Should more cities introduce it? Should the City of London stop wasting money on schemes to hit the motorist? Let us know in the comments.

In the budget released on Monday, Chancellor Philip Hammond revealed plans to invest £28.8 billion in the National Road Fund but not all seems as it should be. While the huge investment seems to be great news, digging a little deeper shows the true reason behind the decision.

Around £25.3 billion has been sectioned to Highways England to help build and upgrade motorways, with a heavy focus on smart motorways. Smart motorways have long raised suspicion as a cash cow for the government, with £100 fines handed out consistently for all manner of misdemeanours.

Cash cows

Figures show that from when smart motorways were first introduced to the beginning of 2017 a phenomenal £21 million pounds were raised from fines, including speeding and minor transgressions, such as driving in a lane which is closed.

Since then, over 200 miles of smart motorways have been built, double the amount there were previously, leading to the conclusion that an extra £20 million or so could have been raised. It seems clear that the government has realised this potential and so chosen to act on it in order to help generate some revenue for roads.

Variable speed limits have no doubt generated the most in fines, with many people caught out by the sudden changes that can drop to as low as 40mph. Smart motorways are designed to help keep drivers safe and reduce congestion, all which contribute to lowered emissions.

Highways England, speaking to SurreyLive in 2016 said “The government has been clear speed cameras should not be used to generate revenue and the vast majority of motorists are sticking to the speed limits,”

“Variable speed limits on smart motorways are designed to smooth traffic flow, improve journey times and reduce congestion for millions of motorists while also enhancing safety.”

All for the best?

Aside from the cash cow issue, others have condemned the rise in funding for major roads as “not sustainable” and “gearing up to create more pollution that wrecks our climate.”

Shadow Transport Secretary Andy McDonald spoke out on the decision to increase funding saying “With car dependency rising, public transport in decline and local roads in a state of disrepair, ramping up spending on major roads is the wrong decision.”

“It simply isn’t sustainable to repeatedly ramp-up major road spending, especially at a time when air pollution causes 40,000 premature deaths each year and climate change is threatening a global crisis.”

The climate change argument is one that has been echoed across the industry, especially as grants to buy a new electric car have been cut. There has also been no relief for business who buy electric cars as the tax for low emission company cars to 16% for 2019 and then fall to 2% in 2020, a move discouraged by MPs and industry leaders alike.

“Peeing in the sea?”

Along with the £25.3 billion for roads, Mr Hammond also pledged an extra £420 million for pothole repairs, which would be made available immediately as the backlog from bad weather earlier this year continues to mount.

However, this figure has been dismissed as “peeing in the sea” by Mr Pothole, an anti-pothole campaigner. He pointed out that Kent Council alone had a £630 million backlog, and they had the second highest number of potholes in any county, ahead of Surrey which, back in January had over 6,700 unfixed potholes. The total sum to fix all of the potholes and bring the roads to an adequate state of repair would cost in the region of £9 billion, hence the “peeing in the sea” comparison.

The Asphalt Industry Alliance (AIA) also commented on this, saying that over 10 years an extra £1.5 billion would be needed to bring the roads to an adequate condition and “halt the ongoing decline.”

VED increase

In a hidden segment of the budget, a small text portion revealed that Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) was going to increase in with RPI from April 2019. With VED now being ring-fenced to help maintain the Strategic Road Network, perhaps the thought process behind the increase was motorists may be happy to pay more if they know that it is going straight on roads.

For some motorists who are buying new cars, they could be paying an increase of up to £65 extra a year, coming into effect on April 1st, 2019, depending on the emissions level of the car. For most drivers this will mean an annual increase of £5 a year on their yearly payments, taking it to £145 for petrol and diesel cars and £135 for hybrids. This is now the third year in a row that VED has increased and another increase is expected in 2020.

Do you think the budget will help or hinder motorists? What do you think about the increase of smart motorways? Let us know in the comments below

Figures revealed by the comparison site, GoCompare, have shown that since 2016, the most prolific speed cameras have been predominantly located in Avon and Somerset; the top eight were policed by the Avon and Somerset police force.

The statistics have been obtained as part of a Freedom of Information request sent out to all 45 of Britain’s forces, although only 16 thought it necessary to respond, so how representative these numbers are is debatable. We also don’t know whether the different forces are using different trigger speeds.

However, statistics published one year ago also state that Avon and Somerset issued 95 tickets per 1,000 residents – second only to the City of London, so it would seem that they’re most likely at the top of the list.

148 Tickets

The most prolific camera, located on the M32, caught 22,350 speeders in the first five months of 2018, which equates to just under 150 motorists per day. Whilst Andy Williams from Avon and Somerset Police is insistent that they don’t want to catch speeders, you’d have to consider that even just a £100 fine per offence could typically net over £5,000,000 in speeding fines for the year.

“Speeding can have fatal consequences, it endangers the lives of others. We don’t want to catch speeders, we just want them to obey speed limits” states Andy Williams.

Between 2016 – 2018, a total of 386,969 speeding tickets were issued by the Avon and Somerset police, more than Bedfordshire, West Mercia, South Wales and Cheshire Police. You’d have to wonder just how that number is consistently higher than other forces – are they using lower limits than the rest of the country?

Top ten cameras

From the 16 respondents, these are the top ten cameras, their locations and the amount of tickets issued and when:

Strangely, the M32 camera caught just under 13,000 motorists in 2017, and yet after an increase in penalties, it has already caught more than 22,000 in the first five months of 2018.

Speeding and you

Although speeding offences are generally on the decline, the revamped and increased penalties (from April 2017) could see you being fined as much as £1,000 for an offence on a single or dual carriageway, and as much as £2,500 for a similar offence on a motorway. Regardless of road type, you could also be faced with 6 penalty points and anything up to a ban for serious breach of the speed limit.

Challenging a ticket issued as the result of a safety camera is almost impossible, and contrary to popular belief, minor details being wrong (such as the colour of the car) isn’t a defence that will stand up in court. The only ‘get out’ clause you could possibly use is if the Notice of Intended Prosecution (NIP) hasn’t been issued in time – it should be issued within 14 days of the offence.

With that said, you may not necessarily receive the NIP within that time, but providing it has been sent to the registered keeper, the prosecution will go ahead.

There is never really a defence for speeding, and although police numbers are on the decline, the rise of technology means that prosecutions for driving offences are on the increase – it’s estimated that 1 in 3 motorists are fined every year, and that the police forces are raking in around £25,000,000 each year from fixed penalty notices.

If you feel that a speeding conviction has been unfairly issued, there is still hope – around 1 in 10 speeding fines are cancelled each year, although between 2016 – 17, Greater Manchester Police raised that cancellation figure to almost 28%, a total of 33,893 speeding convictions were withdrawn.

A lecturer in criminology at Liverpool Hope University found that 241,165 fines were scrapped in the same period, and calls for the ‘zero tolerance’ approach have been dismissed as unworkable, thanks to the mistakes being made.

What do you think about the proliferation of safety cameras? Are the authorities too reliant on them? Do you think that some view it as an alternative to policing? Let us know in the comments.

Ministers from a cross-party group—the Commons Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) committee—have called on the government to bring the contentious ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars forward to 2032; eight years earlier than planned.

The news comes after the government announced they were making cuts to the Plug-In Car Grant scheme and, as of next month, will no longer offer incentives to buyers of hybrid vehicles.

Targeted pressure

The government has received pressure from various quarters, urging them to bring forward the 2040 target, while other European countries, such as Denmark, Germany, and Ireland have a much more ambitious plan to outlaw the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030, a decade before the UK.

Although the Government’s Road to Zero strategy includes the aim that by 2030, 50 to 70% of new car sales and up to 40% of new vans will be ultra-low emission, UK transport emissions have only reduced 2% since 1990, and an increasing number of advisers from climate, energy and industry sectors say the 2040 target date is too late.

The BEIS report says it wants to see hybrids included in the phase-out of petrol and diesel vehicles, but after anger from both the automobile industry and motoring organisations, MPs backtracked from more extreme plans to prevent the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2040 by allowing the lowest emission hybrids.

Further recommendations in the committee’s report were for the government to organise the required infrastructure for charging EVs, to make sure that buyers of electric vehicles enjoy preferential Vehicle Excise Duty rates (‘road tax’) and preferential rates on EV company car tax—The report also calls for the government to keep Plug-in Car Grants for new electric vehicles at their current levels.

‘Unambitious and vague’

BEIS Chair Rachel Reeves, who said the government must make 2032 the target for the sales of cars and vans to be zero-emission, said:

“The UK Government’s targets on zero-emissions vehicles are unambitious and vague, giving little clarity or incentive to industry or the consumer to invest in electric cars. “

Ms Reeves said the Department for Transport’s cutbacks of the Plug-in Grant Car scheme “drives the incentives of buying an electric vehicle into reverse,” and is a “perverse way to encourage drivers to move to non-polluting cars.”

“This is only the latest sign of the government’s inconsistent approach to developing the market for electric vehicles,” she added.

Despite the UK ranking as the fifth best European country in which to own an electric vehicle, with around 14,500 public charging points for EVs, the committee said the UK was far from ready for electric vehicles.

Reeves said the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “was clear on the need to encourage changes in consumer behaviour, including increasing the switch to electric vehicles, to help decarbonise our economy. “

She added that the government needs to “get a grip” and organise the financial support and technical skills needed for councils to develop the necessary charging infrastructure and help make sure that electric cars are an attractive choice for consumers.

Mike Hawes, Chief Executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), who feels the current 2040 target is challenging enough for the motoring industry said a 2032 target would be “nigh-on impossible”.

Mr Hawes said because zero-emission vehicles make up only 0.6% of the market, the demand for such vehicles needs to increase by 17,000% in just over a decade.

The SMMT spokesman said, “This is unrealistic and rejects the evidence put forward by SMMT on behalf of the industry,” and added that car manufacturers are investing billions into zero-emission technologies but they recognise that “consumers need greater confidence and support if they are to buy these vehicles in the numbers we all want.”

Best country to own an EV

The government say they intend to make the UK ‘the best place in the world’ to own an electric vehicle and, although the car industry expects a rapid growth in sales over the next few years, with so many unknown circumstances ahead—such as whether manufacturers can make enough batteries to support the rapid growth of electric vehicles—you have to wonder if they can make this a reality.

Electric vehicles (EVs) make up 0.6% of the cars sold in the UK, and plug-in hybrids only 1.6%. Overall, they’re a tiny part of the 31.5 million registered cars on the UK’s roads. Although purchases of electric vehicles have increased, UK car manufacturers sold only 119,821 alternatively fuelled vehicles in the UK in 2017, but that number includes hybrid vehicles, too. Only 13,597 of the vehicles sold were zero-emission battery power cars, compared to the 1.3m petrol and over 1m diesel cars.

Buying an electric car is still much more expensive than petrol or diesel vehicles, so, motorists need to see the government offering practical and financial incentives before they can consider switching to EVs.

Many drivers, despite supporting the push to reduce carbon emissions, just can’t afford to buy a low or zero-emission car or find the lack of charging facilities—more so those in rural areas—daunting, and with the recent cuts to the Plug-In Grant scheme, the average driver is in a difficult position.

The upcoming Budget is an excellent chance for the government to discuss these issues and we can but hope they’ve been listening.

What’s your view on the proposed, new target? Are you for or against a 2032 target? Do you think the UK is ready for the changes the ban on petrol and diesel cars will bring? Share your opinion in the comments.

Back in May, PetrolPrices told you the European Union had put in place legislation that meant, from next year, all new electric cars must come with noise generators, which emit sounds when the car is travelling at low speeds.

Now, nine months before the new law takes effect, Jaguar has revealed the sound their I-PACE model will make—and the noise may surprise you. One thing is for certain, not everybody will like it.

Protecting the vulnerable

When electric vehicles (EVs) were first introduced, one of their selling points was that they were silent. Living in an ever noisy world, people welcomed fewer combustion engines not only polluting our air and planet but also our ears.

What EV designers didn’t expect was any downside of vehicles that make little to no sound, but the problem is that people can’t hear them coming—an even bigger issue for vulnerable people such as those with sight impairment.

People with impaired sight make up two million children and adults in the UK—no small number—and, while organisations such as the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association are in favour of environmentally friendly vehicles, they also feel further measures are necessary to protect pedestrians.

Research carried out by the charity, Guide Dogs found:

Pedestrians are 40% more liable to get run over by a quiet hybrid or electric car than by petrol or diesel cars.

Between 2012 and 2013 there has been a 54% rise in pedestrian injuries in accidents involving quiet cars.

In some environments, a person may only hear a quiet vehicle just a few seconds before impact.

76% of people polled said quiet vehicles make the roads less safe for pedestrians with sight loss.

78% said these cars make roads less safe for older people and 75% said quiet vehicles make roads less safe for children.

From July 2019, manufacturers must fit sound generators to new electric and hybrid models so that the vehicles make a noise when they are travelling at low speeds. All existing quiet electric and hybrid vehicles must be retrofitted with this technology by 2021.

Yet the Guide Dogs charity says before that happens, there will be thousands more silent, electric and hybrid cars added to the current 45,000 plus electric vehicles already on Britain’s roads. This, they say, puts huge numbers of vulnerable road users at risk.

Has Jaguar got it right?

Nine months before the new law takes effect, Jaguar has released the sound their Audible Vehicle Alert System (AVAS) will make in their I-PACE model—the manufacturer’s first electric vehicle.

It took their engineers four years to produce a sound that is audible yet discreet and one the driver can‘t hear from inside the car. Jaguar first wanted to use a sci-fi spacecraft sound, but when tested, pedestrians would look up at the sky, not towards the approaching vehicle.

The finished sound is audible at speeds up to 12mph and comes from a speaker behind the front grille. The noise is audible from any direction and increases in pitch and volume as the car accelerates. When the car reverses, an additional tone registers the shift in direction.

AVAS isn’t necessary when vehicles travel at higher speeds when enough wind and tyre noise enables pedestrians to detect the car coming, so the car only activates the warning sound at slower speeds and isn’t, it may please you to know, constant.

Click the video below to listen to the AVAS in the new Jaguar I-PACE.

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Jaguar’s Noise, Vibration and Harshness (NVH) technical specialist, Iain Suffield said:

“We developed the Audible Vehicle Alert System for the I-PACE to ensure the safety of all road users. Our potentially life-saving technology cannot be switched off and as the leading charity for people with sight loss, we are pleased to have the support of Guide Dogs to ensure real people are at the heart of our product testing.

“The absence of traditional engine noise from electric vehicles creates a problem for vulnerable pedestrians, such as the blind or visually impaired. This is especially true at low speeds in town centres and car parks.”

Libby Clegg, Paralympian, who twice has almost collided with quiet vehicles, said:

“As a guide dog owner, I rely on being able to hear cars to judge when it’s safe to cross the road. It’s terrifying to cross when you’re unable to hear quiet hybrid and electric vehicles. Ensuring all quiet vehicles have sound generating systems installed and switched on would ensure that millions of people, like me, who are living with sight loss, would be protected from the growing safety hazard.”

Both hybrid and EV vehicles already exist with warning sounds, which either the driver operates or ones that activate at low speeds. The sounds produced range from artificial beeps and chimes to those that mimic engine sounds or tyres moving over gravel.

Noise pollution

Many anti-noise and electric car advocates have fought against vehicles having artificial noise generators as a signal for pedestrians, as they claim these will just further add to noise pollution.

René Weinandy, Head of Noise Abatement in Transport for the German Environment Agency, argued that laws to fit electric vehicles with AVAS were being implemented without adequate scientific proof of their effectiveness or enough consideration of the negative side effects. Weinandy says manufacturers haven’t explored less harmful alternatives and that better options must be available.

Then there are those who say many luxury cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) are already quieter than some hybrids. If so, maybe the safety of pedestrians isn’t a problem with EVs, but with quiet cars?

What’s your opinion on the sound of Jaguar’s I-PACE? What sound do you think is best for EVs and hybrids? Do you support the use of noise-generators in these cars? Tell us in the comments.