Battery Bus Crash Raises Concerns over Road Safety Infrastructure

A bus crash in Venice this week raises uncomfortable questions about our existing road infrastructure that even the most hardline BEV zealot will have to face.

Looking even beyond the known fire danger that BEVs can pose in accident situations, the extra weight of an electric bus, this one said to be in excess of 13-tons, over its ICE equivalent may have contributed to the failure of metal guard barriers installed to keep vehicles from crashing off of the flyover. Of course, it is early days of an investigation into the deaths of at least 21 people, including several children, who died after the bus they were riding crashed off a flyover near the historic northern Italian city before bursting into a lithium-ion battery blaze, as the BBC reports.

It broke through the road’s metal barriers and fell almost 50ft near railway tracks in Mestre, which is connected to Venice by a bridge. CCTV footage of the flyover from Tuesday night showed the vehicle driving past another bus, before toppling off the carriageway.

Witnesses said they could hear people screaming but the flames were too high to intervene. Fire brigade commander Mauro Longo told Il Gazzettino website that the bus's batteries caught fire and made the task of clearing the bus a complex operation.

However, other reports suggest that the bus had very nearly pulled to a standstill before breaking through the metal barriers raising questions about the vehicle’s extra weight possibly contributing to the disaster. With these considerations being highlighted, it’s hardly surprising that labor unions led by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters have been calling for the Californian governor to sign a bill preventing heavy-duty driverless trucks from operating in the state without safety drivers saying these trucks, mostly battery electric and weighing more than 40-tons, were potentially unsafe.

Without second guessing the appropriate authorities’ investigation and future action plans, it’s safe to say we need to add basic road safety infrastructure upgrades to that of the charging infrastructure as major challenges to mass adoption of battery electric powertrains through our road transportation fleets.

— Paul Myles is a seasoned automotive journalist based in Europe. Follow him on Twitter @Paulmyles_  and Threads