Mr Red, the majority of collisions happen at low speed. Parking lots, for example, are veritable hot-beds of collision risk, with vehicles and pedestrians starting abruptly without warning and wandering around at unpredictable angles, all at low speed. What low-speed collisions are not is, typically, likely to cause a fatal injury -- unless, of course, the slowly moving vehicle knocks a pedestrian down and then proceeds to roll over her. Which happens.

Until the car industry can produce an electric vehicle that can cover typical inter-urban distances in Canada, in winter, in the same time and at about the same cost as a petrol- or diesel-fired vehicle, sales in this country will be paltry.