Hybrid cars won’t break your heart: study

PEOPLE with dicky hearts worldwide rejoice: in all likelihood, driving a hybrid car won’t kill you.

US-based medical research group the Mayo Clinic has released a study that says people fitted with electronic pacemakers and defibrillators that keep their hearts working properly “can safely drive or ride in a car without risk of electromagnetic interference”.

“In some cases, implanted devices may sense signals from electrical or magnetic objects and misinterpreted them as potential distress coming from the patient's heart,” the study, titled Hybrid Cars and Implantable Cardioverter Defibrillators: Is It Safe?, says.

Using a Toyota Prius petrol-electric hybrid car as the test platform, researchers tested three different pacemakers and defibrillators placed in six different parts of the car, including from the driver's seat, front passenger seat, the left and right rear seats and in front of and behind the car from the outside.

The performance of the devices and the strength of the electromagnetic field generated by the Prius’s electronics was also tested at about 50kmh and 100kmh, and also under various rates of acceleration and deceleration, the latter of which uses the energy normally lost during braking to feed electricity back into the batteries.

Then it was time for the real people. The Mayo Clinic tested 30 volunteers with implanted devices, ensuring they were “continuously monitored while rotating positions in the car and driving the car, with a particular focus on real-time detection of any interruption in the normal functionality of their devices”.

Although the researchers found that the electric field generated by the Prius appeared to have no effect on patients with electronic tickers, they were cautious enough about the results to call for more studies in more hybrid cars before making a definitive ruling on the impact of hybrid cars.