Heavy Toll: America's Huge, Heavy Cars Are Killing More People - https://www.motortrend.com/features/why-americas-roads-keep-... - September 24th, 2024

> More than 40,000 people die on America’s roads every year, making them nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven than those in other rich nations. What’s more, the death rate has increased over the past decade, despite the adoption of more sophisticated passive safety systems and advanced driver assistance systems such as lane keep assist and automatic braking. The number of pedestrians killed by motor vehicles has almost doubled since 2010. Why? “Weight is to blame,” The Economist insists.

> Using data for 7.5 million two-vehicle crashes in 14 American states in 2013–2023, The Economist found that for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles killed 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest. The publication estimates that if the heaviest 10 percent of vehicles on America’s roads were roughly 1,000 pounds lighter, fatalities in multicar crashes would fall by 12 percent, saving 2,300 lives a year, without compromising the safety of the occupants of the heavier vehicles.

> “For every life the heaviest one percent of SUVs or trucks saves in America,” The Economist wrote, “more than a dozen lives are lost in smaller vehicles. This makes traffic jams an ethics class on wheels.”

> Of course, what’s behind those grim statistics is simple physics. Force equals mass times acceleration: The heavier a vehicle, the harder it impacts an object at any given speed. The core issue in America is the massive differential between the lightest and heaviest vehicles on its roads (and to be clear, The Economist’s reporting is focused on cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks, not heavy-duty commercial trucks or semis).