Related: ttps://www.thedrive.com/news/75-more-pedestrians-have-been-killed-since-2009-giant-trucks-and-suvs-are-why
> Most of the explanations commonly put forward for why US roads remain so deadly focus on broad structural factors such as vehicle size or time spent on the road, but a review of the evidence suggests this may be mistaken. Last year’s improvement is a case in point. Two reasons often cited as key causes of poor US performance both worsened: the total number of miles driven by Americans increased, and US cars continued to grow larger. Yet fatal collisions still declined.
> Adding to the evidence that this is not a dominant factor, car sizes in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have traced similar paths to the US without resulting in a spike in fatalities.
> Another theory is that the rise of homelessness in the US may be pushing pedestrian deaths higher. A recent study found that there had indeed been a marked rise in traffic-related deaths among the homeless, but this, too, can only explain a small portion of the overall rise.
> Instead, an underrated factor seems to be not American cars but American drivers [...] The determining factor seems to be different attitudes to safety, with Americans twice as likely as Canadians or Europeans to say they find it acceptable to use a phone while driving.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ubbfrv/oc...
Save some blame for the shortsighted environmentalists. They are a huge part of why everything is so stupidly spaced out. Most of the site plans that were normal until the 1970s are just outright illegal now. These people would rather see you impoverished by rent driven sky high from scarcity than let a filthy landlord develop the whole lot without "expensive to the point of nonstarter" mitigations or accept that maybe the municipality will have to upgrade a culvert here or there. I work in a skyscraper and even it has token green space that's clearly just bullshit they chucked in to make the runoff calcs work. You can't even use it for anything because it's a planter/ditch, so the whole place is still effectively concrete jungle and they have a fence around it so nobody falls.
I do think you need to defend your assertion, because the difference between a driver and a pedestrian is that the driver "knew the risks" while the risks were imposed on the pedestrian.
A better question is why is the US the only developed country that’s seen pedestrian deaths increase over the past 10-15 years. Every other developed country has seen both occupant and pedestrian deaths decrease over the same time period, and has seen a larger combined drop in deaths than the US. And to be clear, I’m talking about deaths per mile driven, not absolute counts, so the size of the US is already factored into the numbers.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221201222...
It's the hood geometry, stupid. An effective regulator could fix this. As a side-effect, it would make cars look like the new USPS delivery trucks, which would make petrosexuals big mad.
Many big SUVs are flat out illegal in Europe, you’d need a small truck license. It’s hard to comprehend how large American cars are unless you’ve lived in both places.
For example:
we took an Uber to the airport for our annual pilgrimage back home. We had 4 suitcases this time because new babies need gifts. In USA we got picked up by a sedan and everything fit in the trunk. In Europe we rented an SUV and had to break down the rear seats to fit everything.
Trucks and SUVs have been getting heavier consistently since 1980 while pedestrian deaths consistently decreased from 1980 to 2009. Truck sizes went up much more from 1980 to 2009 than from 2009 to present. But pedestrian deaths dropped almost in half from 1980 to 2009.
The NYT study on which this article is based acknowledges that pedestrian deaths dropped in half from 1980 to 2009, but then does nothing with this information.
The large factors are phone use (more prevalent among american drivers and there's data to show this), and homelessness - the homeless are dramatically overrepresented in US pedestrian deaths and the population has increased dramatically in the US over the past decade. Even more so though it appears to be attitudes, Americans are twice as likely as Europeans or Canadians to say using a phone while driving is acceptable. Though no single factor is a smoking gun, vehicle size is one of the least convincing. Getting hit by a 4000lb car or an 8000lb truck matters much less than how fast the vehicle's going (let's all remember our high school physics class).
This blog post is the best deep dive I've seen on the data: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/more-on-us-pedestrian...
Yes SUVs are more common in Europe now but still size is much smaller than in US.
As far as truck sizes go, yes they have steadily increased, but the bigger trucks did not have as much effect on pedestrian fatality rates in the '80s or '90s because they were a much smaller percentage of vehicles on the road. In 1980 trucks were only about 1/5 of new vehicle sales. It was up to about 1/3 in 1990. By 2000 it was a little under 50%. By 2010 it was a little over 50%. Sometime around 2017 it was 2/3 trucks, and about 4/5 by 2023. (SUVs are counted as trucks in these numbers).
Remember those are figures for new sales, so changes in the percent of trucks on the road will lag changes in the percent of trucks in new sales.
You can get an idea of whether phones or size was the more responsible factor by comparing injuries to deaths. Phones would increase deaths mostly by increasing the number of accidents. Big trucks/SUVs would increase deaths by making accidents more fatal. In the phone case injuries and fatalities should rise at about the same mount. In the big vehicle case fatalities should rise more than injuries.
Fatalities have in fact risen more than injuries (80% vs 15%), suggesting that size is the much more significant factor.
It isn't weight, it is hood height and blunt fronts. But the Great Bluntening didn't happen until recently.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
The proportion of them which have a grill height which impairs visibility of the average height pedestrian would be a "better" metric, except it isn't as easy to cleanly define that.
With me driving in my 2000s Ranger, I can at least see adults walking in front of it just fine, even though it is bigger than a 1980 Toyota pickup.
What we need is a "distance from the front of the car a 4' person is visible." metric. Car manufactures should be penalized for poor visibility.
You should really take into account driver height, pedestrian height and hood slope and length and height.
Vehicle size is a relevant factor in vehicle-pedestrian collisions regardless of the cause of the collision.
There’s also the issue that heavier vehicles are inevitable due to EVs. Our bz4x won’t get tagged as a “big evil truck,” but it’s about the same weight as a base model Ford F150. And heavier than a Toyota Tacoma double cab.
Regardless of any safety claims, for that reason alone, I don't see it as a politically viable issue.
I think people simply do find SUVs (which I don't like) convenient. Many women, including a huge number of moms, do happen to just love SUVs. Both in the US and in the EU.
In the EU SUVs are now approaching 60% of all cars sold (59.25% or so, latest numbers). You don't get such a market share by being mostly cars sold to men needing to "gender-affirm".
They more or less have the capabilities of a small pickup truck, but exchange the bed for more passenger space and inside cargo room. A minivan does have more space, but cannot tow and would immediately get stuck in the first mud patch it sees.
I have no idea why people in the city buy them though (other than snowy regions).
A Ford F150 is fucking ridiculous in comparison, and larger than any truck I remember seeing growing up, and there's people with F350s for personal use.
One of them ran over and killed a kid outside a nearby children's museum. Those things are not safe.
Watch a US truck commercial. The market and the motivating themes are immediately obvious. Besides, drivers literally adorn trucks with prosthetic testicles. That's something that cannot be unseen.
I don't think it's politically impossible. These things are killing children (among many other people). "Giant trucks and SUVs are killing children" seems like a pretty powerful line.
Assault rifles have been used to slaughter classrooms full of children in some of the most bone-chilling acts of violence imaginable, and people have such a weird identity complex around guns that they go to outrageous lengths to avoid any meaningful action. We've even seen parents of murdered children accused by gun-rights activists of being paid actors and deliberately threatening 2nd amendment rights.
Car culture in America is similarly toxic, with people having strong automobile-centric identities. The culture surrounding giant trucks is the most extreme, and there's a mountain of dashcam video online suggesting that the kinds of people who buy these massive truck are also quite reckless behind the wheel and do intentionally aggressive things with them, including deliberately harassing behaviors like "rolling coal". These aesthetics and behaviors are enshrined by popular political establishments on the right, meaning that challenging any of it becomes a partisan fight.
The backlash of banning these kinds of vehicles would be straight out of the movie Idiocracy, but there are enough jerks in this country that it would completely block any progress from ever being made.
I don't think I've ever heard any man ever say that in real life, but even online it's probably been almost a decade since this was memed into the ground.
Um, because men get weird when you point out the gender-affirming actions they do? Try it irl and see what the reactions are. There's a reason the only place free of physical intimidation is where this can be safely said.
Besides, how old is the privacy comment or the "parents should parent" comment we see dragged out on every kid's social media ban? It's almost like the age of the sentiment doesn't have any bearing on its relevancy.
Larger vehicles also cause more road damage over time, which raises my taxes or reduces the quality of roads I drive on.
For those reasons, I think vehicles should be taxed by weight, to encourage more smaller, lighter vehicles.
I pay higher insurance and registration fees already, I think its covered where I am.
Wish I knew.
>Sounds like you are trying to justify your needlessly large/heavy vehicle.
I drove a Honda Jazz until I literally couldn't fit everything in anymore. I found I could carry 4 1.2 meter galvanised steel poles at an angle before I ran out of capacity. Which worked fine for me, I wouldn't be anxious unless they were literally scraping the windshield. I could carry half a rack of servers in the back with the seats folded down, before the back of the thing would start to scrape pavement. I needed something that could do better than that when I upgraded. Most hatches and sedans were a backwards step, and Honda stopped selling the Jazz in Aus. But for whatever reason, people feel the need to comment on the large vehicle.
>Plenty of accidents still occur with vehicles that have all those features.
With reduced impact.
>like increased pollution and road degradation.
I get better distance per litre out of the big one, and if its more polluting then I don't understand why I struggle so hard with the DPF which is literally designed to bring the thing down to our honestly egregious emissions standards, I literally dream about getting it illegally removed. "Road Degredation" seems marginal at best, wider tires spreading the load out further. Seems like another engineering problem if it is a problem. The poms figured out how to prevent their CVR light tanks from causing road damage, I am sure big utes aren't that much of an issue.
The thing literally starts braking before my brain can process whats happening.
I have a newer crossover. I put a hitch mount cargo box on and went to back out of the driveway. It slammed the brakes on harder than I ever have.
Automatic braking does alleviate this, but also, inattentive driving is already illegal?
and don't get me started on the environmental/political aspects.
why would someone questioning your selfish (I'm not targeting you personally, just voicing a general perspective) decision have anything to do with jealousy?
>it's safer for you, but almost no one else.
No its safe for everyone else too. It wont even let me run into a tree.
>have anything to do with jealousy
Wish I knew, its just the only thing left when driving an efficient, safe vehicle that just happens to be large.
I was like oh look at people can actually function without big trucks, wow! What a surprise!
It seems uniquely American to have these huge trucks and most of the people here don't even farm. They just use them to flex.
You can't put anything in them. They've got a load bed that I could *just* about fit a couple of sandwiches in.
Everyone here in the UK uses Ford Transits. How do you use something like an F150 to move plasterboard sheets?
I don't see evidence for EVs stimulating small vehicle production (but it would be awesome if it were the case). The one smaller vehicle bright spot is perhaps Tesla's Cybercab, which is compared to the Honda Civic, which itself has grown very large over the years. In order to get to that size the passenger mass capacity of the Cybercab is roughly 2/3 of the Civic. [0]
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/11/driving-the-biggest-lea...
https://www.torquenews.com/17998/i-leased-hummer-ev-because-...
> Whap! Time’s up. What did you get hit by? If you picked small, you might be dead. If you said “large,” your odds are lower. Why? Two reasons. First, F=ma and second, P = F/A. OK, I suppose that’s really just one reason, and it’s called “physics.”
I drive a big SUV because I have a better chance of surviving if something hits me. That has to be a significant statistic somewhere too, right? How many lives were saved because of big cars?
Selfish behavior is ruining our streets.
Yes, that's the point. No offense to other people, but I'm trying to not die when I drive to the store. Driving a tank with a sun roof is a good way to do that.
end the idiotic chicken tax and make small trucks and utes legal again
while we are on the topic, full size vans make a lot more sense than "suvs" for most families
The attribution to larger vehicles while ignoring smartphones seems misplaced.
If you don't know Rollie Williams, Climate Town videos are informative but suffused with a lot of humor to prevent it from being too preachy.
Weirdly NYC just blocked Waymo again.
Or, put another way, 0.000058% to 0.0001159% of the population.
The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders.
Meanwhile, everyone knows that these giant trucks and SUVs are killing people, but we do basically nothing. Even on the off chance that we passed a law about them, existing vehicles would certainly be grandfathered in, we would never outright ban current vehicles/motorists. If we banned existing SUVs and trucks, millions of people would be screaming bloody murder about their right to drive pedestrian-killing cars.
While I don't disagree with what the article says, it is surprising that they have completely missed these aspects of causality, which have been well-known and discussed by policymakers for decades.
1: https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2024/11/25/t...
It is a massive problem that receives a disproportionate amount of attention.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/pedestrian-bike-safety/about/pedestrian-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
Am I crazy? The article itself points out that only 10% of the increase would have been 'saved' if cars had remained the same size. This goes directly against the title no?
There's certainly more than one reason, my gut would point to more smart phone use both by drivers and even by pedestrians themselves.
I wonder if one day using a smart phone while driving will have the same stigma as a DUI (and similar punishment). I struggle to argue it shouldn't, its sometimes a little crazy to think about that if the person in the other lane gets distracted on their phone, I might be involved in a head on collision at 60+mph.
“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
The original designer wanted the truck to feel like you were driving a fist, punching through the air. So we are killing people so that the driver can have an aggressive aesthetic. And the design has spread like a contagious meme, even BMWs have it now.
Mandatory airbags in the A-pillars is probably the single biggest killer out of everything. The blind spots are massive compared to cars before these regulations. I've seen some models where it seems bad on purpose. Why don't federal regulators want the drivers of these gigantic vehicles to be able to see where the hell they are going?
Seeing today's distracted drivers, driving their mini armored troop carriers around in parking lots, makes me wonder what happens when someone "didn't see the person" and runs them over.
Edit (after some research): "Philadelphia review found only about 16% of drivers who killed vulnerable road users were charged; 30% were closed with no charges, and 46% had no data provided."
So that's a bit concerning but I'm not sure what I'd want if I or a loved one were personally on the end of "making the mistake" vs being a victim of a mistake.
One of my favorite philosophy papers. The author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility of SUVs, they are immoral - imposing needless harm on others. It's also ironic that on average, there is no net safety benefit to those who drive them -- because of higher rollover risks!
Does anybody know of such a nonprofit or organization that is currently making meaningful progress here that I can contribute to?
Pickups are 1000% pointless now
The only response from the safety industry is more doodads. Auto braking, backup cameras, lane departure warnings, blind spot warning.
Cars going too fast in your neighborhood? Build huge speed bumps you need an SUV to navigate to navigate at any speed over 5mph!
I don't think there's actually any hope for human-driven cars, long-term. The system doesn't want them.
Not only it kills more pedestrians, but also when you get an accident with one of the people driving these monstrosity, you get a lot more chance of dying.
So if either you want to be safe, you got to buy an even heavier car.
This is a race to the bottom.
Hopefully with the rise of gas price, people will start to rethink buying SUV.
“I remember wanting it to make it feel very locomotive… my first week in Detroit I was driving through downtown and seeing the fist of Joe Louis, and remember thinking that’s what this truck should look like – a massive fist moving through the air.”
... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look,” explained the GM designer."
The design of these things is deliberately antisocial. The huge hood is not even needed since it's possible to stand inside the mostly empty engine bays of these things as FortNine showed: https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?t=431
But it's not just the hood heights wrong with modern vehicles. Multiple design trends are hostile to other road users and reduce safety equality if you will.
- Headlight hues are white and blinding
- Headlight positioning has increased with the hood height which tends to blind people.
- The pillars in vehicles are really thick and raked which is safer for the occupants but also means visibility is reduced. Great, so now people in bigger, newer, safer vehicles are more likely to hit pedestrians and people in older, smaller vehicles.
- Windows are more tinted and often smaller meaning vehicles are opaque walls now which hinders visibility and communication at intersections.
On a number of occasions I have nearly hit people who I simply could not see crossing in my Volvo XC90 due to these pillars. I've been driving for nearly 30 years in the US and UK and have never felt anything like it.
[edit: for future readers, please note that I am not saying it would be legal or correct to hit these people.
I am saying precisely that the A pillars on the XC90 are dangerous as they introduce blind spots that I've never experienced before. We test drove the vehicle, and they weren't apparent during that test drive. I am now responsible for them.
Down in this thread you will read some responses that seem confused about that point. No, it is not legal to run people over in the road. You will be at fault. No, that doesn't make it smart to jump into the road until it's clear that the traffic has yielded you your lawful right of way. IAAL]
“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not
have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over
the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents
about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
Imagine a future when a much larger proportion of drivers have 360 degree vision with no blind spots, infinitesimally small reaction times and a human failsafe in the driver seat.
Just cap their top speed at 40 mph, use thin A pillars to better protect pedestrians and make them ugly as hell.
But make damn sure they comfortably transport the family to the soccer game, yes...
“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
"According to the report, pedestrian deaths have not only increased by 75% since 2009, but the fatalities have been correlated with the hazards presented by the physical heft, height, and blind spots inherent to today’s big trucks and SUVs."
safety stilts.
Keep it up. China will win, as we flagellate.
Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
Just no.
We are not the same.
Either way you're dead.
1. Fuel economy regulations that scale regressively with vehicle size, that incentivize automakers to build and market larger vehicles that are easier to hit regulatory targets.
2. Rollover and crash worthiness regulations that require thicker A-pillars and more robust roof structure.
3. Towing performance. The large pickup manufacturers are in an arms race to beat each other’s power and towing capacity numbers. This requires a large, upright grille to provide adequate cooling for a large engine.
4. Consumer demand. The idea that marketing is telling people what to buy is silly. People are spending $80k+ on massive vehicles because they like them. Simple as that. The industry puts lot of marketing effort behind vehicles that are flops. They can’t make people buy a product they don’t want.
Disclaimer: I own a huge diesel pickup, along with a Tesla Model Y and a Porsche 911. Why? They’re fun! I use the pickup to tow an RV, but it’s also just fun to drive.
I have definitely noticed the visibility problem though. Forget pedestrians, sometimes entire cars are hiding behind the A-pillar! You have to move your head to the side to clear the blind spot safely.
“That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
Edit: The title of the OP has been changed after I made this reply.
Also interesting that often people tend to imagine F-150s, Silverados ,etc., but if you see what people drive they are large Bentzs, Toyotas and of course Suburbans and F-150s. But everyone is building them not just American manufacturers.
"Everyone outside the car be damned" is the expressed preference of US buyers.
It could also be from people staring at their cell phone and walking down the road. I see it all the time. I've seen people walk right into intersections against the light.
Maybe, it's even both, because while I can believe large cars aren't helping... I surely know staring on your phone, walking, and not paying attention is just plain dumb.
The same thing is true of cars. Today’s civic is as big as an accord used to be. There is no Del Sol.
We need to turn the incentive knobs that worked so successfully on consumption so we now work on vehicle size.
Also, about the center of gravity discussion: I used to have an old friend that spent decades in business running a body shop. I asked him once what was the worst animal for causing vehicle damage. ( This was in rural South Dakota. I was thinking cow, horse, maybe bison. ) Nope. He said most animals would go up and over the hood, just like the people in the article. He said pigs were the worst. They stay low, going right into the car and not bouncing over. Often resulting in a total loss for that car.
They're making loud noise about nothing. 200-400 people in a country of 200+ million is nothing.
Yes... big trucks and SUVs might have something to do with it. Could also be that people are not paying attention more because of their phones. Could also be that the people in these vehicles suck at driving them.
The data doesn't account for particular instances, it's just a guess at what is the cause.
Distracted pedestrians must be a significant factor too. Especially if they've got noise-cancelling Airpods or similar in their ears while looking at their phone.