Exactly on topic: a philosophy paper "Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked?" by Douglas Husak. Author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility with other vehicles (and pedestrians), SUV driving is immoral - imposing an oversized amount of harm to others with no proportional safety for self.
I'm willing to go along with this so long as blame is apportioned where it belongs: with the Federal government of the United States.
My case is that manufacturing vehicles is a public good. We can talk about restoring city centers to human beings and I'll agree with you all day, but if you want to make the case that motor vehicles, cars included, are themselves immoral, we don't share enough values to have a productive conversation.
So these companies, to provide this benefit, must comply with the law. Consumers have choice in what to buy, but strictly limited by price tag and availability.
Note that we don't have a cultural trend of buying cars with enormous rotating blades on the bumpers. It's not so much because this is illegal, as none are available for purchase.
The government decided, correctly, that the fleet should be more fuel efficient. All the reasons for this are good. So they did the obvious thing: imposed increasing taxes on gasoline.
Ok, let's back up: no, they passed insane regulations leading directly to the prevalence of SUVs and the increasingly hostile road profile of pickup trucks.
The law allows them less fuel efficiency if they make the wheelbase bigger. That's insane. Shall we apportion some of the blame to the car lobby? Ok. Sure.
Ultimately the government is responsible for the law, and the manufacturers are responsible for following it. End the insanity, and the problem goes away over a decade or so.
> So they did the obvious thing: imposed increasing taxes on gasoline.
I would argue that their hands were somewhat tied because raising the federal gas tax during a recession would have been an extremely unpopular thing to do regardless of the reasoning. Maybe we should expect our representatives to make the right choices anyway but we would probably still punish them for it.
The IRA has a similar problem, its all climate change 'carrots' because all the various forms of carbon taxes necessary to go the 'stick' route would be deeply unpopular despite probably being more economically efficient. I'm sure in a decade we will be talking about all the bone-headed perverse incentives that came out of it, but I'd rather that than us talk about how we missed the chance to pass the biggest climate bill in US history.
All that said, they definitely still could have crafted better legislation that had fewer side effects than the footprint system they went with.
> I would argue that their hands were somewhat tied because raising the federal gas tax during a recession would have been an extremely unpopular thing to do regardless of the reasoning.
Hopefully in the next boom time we'll do the sane thing and finally tie the gas tax to inflation, or at least increase it at the same rate as we do federal wages. Making it a fixed amount of pennies is about the dumbest thing we could have done.
I don't agree that consumers are strictly limited by price. It's been the norm to finance vehicles with loans for a while now. So much that dealerships make more on financing than they do on selling cars in some cases.
As profit in the industry has grown, so too has the amount of available credit. We now see 7 year loans on vehicles becoming more common.
The price of anything expensive includes the cost to obtain enough money to buy it.
When I said "price" that recognizes the fact that cars are financed. It's like the price of a home that way, you're not disagreeing with anything, you just didn't know what that word meant in this context, for some odd reason.
Yeah, the fact here is obviously I can't English. Not that you ignore the reality that consumers consider a car purchase a "$X per month" and not as an actual cost. Every consumer is perfectly educated and diligently computes the total cost of ownership of every purchase.
Vans are nightmare stuff for motorcyclists. Hitting a compact car from most angles means rolling over it. Hitting a van from any angle is instant SPLAT - all potential energy gets instantly converted into damage.
We don't have SUVs here (Eastern Europe), but I think they're a closer to vans than to compacts.
Radu, I'm Romanian too (and assuming based on your name you're Romanian), we have lots of SUVs. Maybe you're thinking of something else? Maybe pickup trucks?
I meant F-150 style cars. They're next level - much taller and wider than what we have here. Small 4x4s like Toyota RAV4 are closer to compacts, and you still have a fair chance to roll over if you hit them in the front.
I guess we do have larger 4x4s like Land Cruiser, forgot about them. They're somewhere in between? Wouldn't want to hit one, but it's not a guaranteed "splat".
Guessing by the name, perhaps Romania. Maybe they mean large ones like Ford F150?
otherwise (Eastern) Europeans love their SUVs for sure, 45% of new vehicles bought in Europe are SUVs.
If that's the case then presumably getting hit by a Nissan Leaf at the same speed is just as bad and the whole premise is bullshit?
I haven't seen one in person for a while but but a Chevy Suburban is practically flat until 4ft off the ground. A Dacia Sandero isn't nearly that tall. I find it hard to believe that it is the same as a Sandero at least at potentially survivable speeds around 30mph.
There are three trends: bigger mass, larger sizes and taller vehicles.
Which one of the above is the most consequential?
I'm guessing height. at 2500 or 5000 lbs, neither is going to be pleasant when you bang in to it. size maybe there is more surface area to get hit by, but that's unlikely to be significant.
mass does influence stopping distance though, so that could be, but at the same time we now have large disc brakes with anti-skid.
Also, shape. Go look at the front end of a car like a ford F150. The hood is flat and sits 4 feet high. Now go look at a more compact car like a prius. The hood is low, and is angled like a wedge smooth into the windshield. When a prius hits you, its liable that you will just roll up and off of it and not get much of the force from the impact as a result. When an F150 hits you with its 4 foot tall wall of a grill straight in your chest, I don't think you will be rolling up and over. Maybe your head would just pop off from the kinetic force, sparing you from a slower death?
I once managed to barely jump and slide over the hood of a car that came up behind me and turned - at considerable speed - right into the pedestrian crossing I had been traversing on a green light. The driver looked right through me, didn’t even realize it until my - corner of the eye induced - leap. I would be dead for 15 years now if that would have been a SUV. Lots of people really don’t seem to have a good grasp of the sheer physics involved while driving these tanks especially.
Not even. You see them in cities themselves. Like why? Finding large parking lots is hard and it’s by definition urban and you can’t possibly have mud or ditches to traverse in your 4x4!
Pedestrian visibility is also compromised. My SO is not a tall person. We've tested - she's quite invisible standing in front of these trucks and SUVs, because their front hood is so high and square. A small child would be impossible to see even some meters away. Worse if the driver of the vehicle is not tall.
> A small child would be impossible to see even some meters away.
A US local News did a segment on that recently, they lined up sitting children in front of a truck, I think only the 7th or 8th child in the row was visible and even then barely. You basically can’t see anything shorter than the hood for 10 feet in front of you, and that’s assuming you look at the road from over the driving wheel not between the dash and wheel arch.
Edit: turns out “recently” is optimistic (or more likely this is a recurring segment), found this from 3 years back: https://youtu.be/NDH3FDfVQl0
This also creates a huge problem for visibility around parked cars. Most US cities I've visited allow parking right up to pedestrian crosswalks on corners (yes, I know this is stupid and dangerous, but the street parking lobby is very strong here). When someone parks a massive truck or a huge SUV on the street, pedestrian, cyclists, and even cars trying to cross the street are stuck gambling on a blind spot.
This shouldn't even be a problem; these massive vehicles literally don't fit in street parking spaces, where they're designated with paint or verge on a bike lane.
I once had a Toyota land cruiser start climbing onto the hood of my Hyundai accent because the driver couldn’t see me over the hood of his engine as he driving up out of a parking garage.
At some point, there needs to be a separate driving test for these gigantic vehicles. A guy on my block is always parking halfway on the curb and has hit more than a few cars when parking. It really takes a different set of skills than driving a regular sedan or maybe even a crossover SUV. Never seen him haul or tow anything, either.
Making driving tests more strict and mandating a refresher every few years would probably go a long ways towards creating more walkable and bikeable cities. Some folks would choose to drive unlicensed, of course, but it'd be silly to let that imperfection destroy the good.
I've hauled all sorts of trailers over the years and driven F750s. They always belonged to friends or work though. When I finally bought my own little 2 horse a ways back, I was just kind of floored that I didn't have to prove to anybody that I knew what the hell I was doing with it. Not long after, I was driving through the mountains in the southwest and realized that I was surrounded by retired people who didn't have to prove they could safely drive their giant RVs.
Don't get me started on cheap CDL training programs.
As a driver of an oversized vehicle I am always paranoid about driving in the city and almost never do it in my truck. If you walk in front of my truck I literally cannot see you. The tires are almost 4 ft tall and it is easily possible to simple drive over smaller cars. I keep this diesel monstrosity where it belongs, out in nature off roading and buying groceries in my local suburb.
Ah yes, the natural environment of the 4ft tall tired diesel monstrosity truck.
I understand that you want this vehicle for offroading. But in my opinion it should be treated like a dirt bike or a 4 wheeler: you should have to tow it to the trails. If you live in the wilderness, feel free to drive it right onto dirt roads and trails. But it just shouldn't be allowed at all in a suburban or urban environment. A truck like that cannot possibly fit in the parking space at the grocery store. Not being able to see over the hood is a danger to anyone walking or biking in your suburb, and probably contributes to the fact that nobody walks or bikes in your suburb.
I was tongue in cheek. It is not even very useful for off roading except out in very open areas, which it does do okay at, it has a great suspension setup. Too wide to fit on most of the mountain trails here in Colorado, though. And it does fit in a parking spot, if you are very careful, but I generally just park away from other vehicles so no one has to deal with it. I drive smaller vehicles in congested areas. And FWIW a ton of people cycle in my area and I am almost always one of the few people giving cyclists appropriate space out here.
I do at least ponder the moral implications of it. It was fun for a while, I will probably sell it soon, it is rather impractical :)
As a former Coloradan myself, up your off roading game and get yourself a mountain bike! Especially if you live on the Front Range, there are a ton of trails much closer to home. You might even be able to bike to them!
Yeah, we do all our "real" Colorado activities in our 4Runner and or with our off road camper. My son loves mountain biking when we go camping. I just don't enjoy mountain biking, but I do live in Golden where you have some great trails minutes away. In all seriousness I actually just use the truck to tow trailers and move cars and other things around, and occasionally take the camper to the more open areas :)
Yes, cyclists too. When approaching an intersection which is not at right angles, it can be especially dangerous for cyclists when the speed of the car and cyclist is just right for the cyclist to be obscured for a long period of time. [1]
I also noticed when driving a certain Kei car in Japan with no a-pillar airbags and a so-called “split” or “double” a-pillar with a window between 2 skinny pillars, that the visibility is so much better. It feels great when you realize you don’t need to move your head around at all to see past them, the parallax affect of having 2 eyes makes them basically disappear. [2]
He shows off a rural (and thankfully now fixed) crossroads in the UK with seemingly great visibility and an unusually high rate of cyclist fatalities - the roads are at such an angle that any reckless driving speed can align with a reasonable cycling speed such that the driver's door pillar can block visibility of a cyclist with right of way right up to the point of impact - and it's compounded by the fact that the car is necessarily approaching from behind the cyclist, so a passing cyclist will be unaware of the danger possibly until they get hit.
Of course if drivers in the area actually followed the stop signs no one would get hit - but if you watch the video in a five minute period genuinely only about half of the cars passing through actually come to a complete stop at the stop sign. You need more than signage and quietly hoping that people to do the right thing.
I've had an entire Mazda 2 hidden from view in a roundabout, by the A-pillar and associated airbag of a VE commodore. Pedestrians and bicycles required much more effort to see in that car than any other I've ever driven.
A good rule of thumb is, if you are in dense complex traffic, to move your head around a bit when looking out and in the mirrors. Better coverage of dead angle in side mirrors, adding a bit more 3D into perspective.
Its sort of defensive driving - expect troubles, idiotic clueless drivers, people having heart attack or just turning head to yelling kid on backseat / nice lady walking nearby. Can't save it all but definitely helps.
Driving in country where people, when averaged, drive like crap is a good learning experience (albeit stressful). For me, whenever I enter France from Switzerland (on average 1x per week), its night and day and training (with cursing) resumes.
The density or complexity of traffic really has nothing to do with whether a car has been designed in such a way that it significantly impedes vision where it is most critical. In this case, a quiet roundabout with one other car almost directly in front.
Some passenger cars also have a nifty feature where if an impact is detected, the hood on the side of the windshield is instantly propped up by some springs to provide a cushioning effect to whoever ends up on the hood.
I've seen it action when a guy who I was riding motorcycles with got hit on the side by a car (his fault, low speed, he was fine). My car also has the feature.
Obviously impossible if the hood's too high like with an SUV or pickup.
The 2012 Volvo V40 (now discontinued) did one-up that by including an airbag under the hood which covers the A-pillars when detecting pedestrian impact.
I drove a Prius only once, for around ten minutes. I used to dislike the Prius, but following that short experience I now hate it from the deepest of my heart.
The Prius is an abomination, because it is too low to be comfortable and because of its wrong, arcuate shape. The natural and right shape for a car includes only vertical walls and horizontal surfaces, apart from the windscreen which is allowed to be slanted, but not too much.
"Just roll up and off of it" makes it sound like a pleasurable experience. The majority of serious injuries happen not upon collision with the vehicle, but when hitting the ground afterwards. This applies for any vehicle shape, but in different ways.
Yeah, but landing on the round hood of a VW Polo vs being hit by the equivalent of a rolling brick wall makes a difference.
If you look at the formula for acceleration (a = ∆v/∆t) and acceleration force (F = a⋅m) the only two things we can truly influence here are speed (slower collisions are less dangerous) and time (collisions where the force transfer takes longer produce less force).
The latter is what makes the difference between getting hit with an cushion and an equally heavy rock. The same difference exists if you run against a brick wall and against an angled grassy hill (or: a bendy car hood). Not only will the elastic hood (and the roll) absorb part of the collision energy, the angle of the hood stretches the acceleration over longer time and reduces the force transfered on your body.
So if you get the choice as a cyclist, the choice is pretty clear.
Though at the mass ratios of car vs pedestrian/cyclists, the difference on the car side makes no significant effect. It doesn‘t really matter if the ratio is 1:10 in favor of the car or 1:20. The acceleration that the car will feel is negligible either way.
I neglected mass here, because I don't think it really makes much of a difference in the deadliness of the collision (car is always much heavier than cyclist).
One thing it would definitely affect tho is the time within which the car could brake, provided they react in time.
> The majority of serious injuries happen not upon collision with the vehicle, but when hitting the ground afterwards.
That claim right there is begging for a source. It's hard to imagine landing from a person's height is worse than hitting a brick wall moving 40 km/h, unless that brick wall also threw you more than 6 meters up into the air, which point at which you'd be moving faster than 40km/h when you hit the ground.
A few months ago, I saw a pedestrian get hit by an SUV going ~40mph (64km/h). He flew far enough that when he came to a stop he was a good ways down the road. If you made it through the sudden acceleration to 40mph, I could also see "the road braking you from 40mph to zero" doing some damage.
As another example, here's a locally-high-profile crash [0] (the driver, a city councilwoman and the daughter of the county commissioner, left the scene and didn't report the crash for hours). Red lights and sightlines aside, even though not much momentum is imparted to the cyclist, the crash was enough to flip him over and knock him into the air, which changes all of the calculus for landing damage from what normally happens when you fall off a bicycle. If you land straight down on your head, it might be worse for you than getting hit in the torso at a higher speed.
I got into a head on collision with an SUV that came off two wheels while rounding a curve and crossed the yellow divider right into my little car. In that case it was definitely the height that did us in.
My car crumpled perfectly and my only injuries were scrapes from the airbag. The other driver broke a few ribs.
I will never forget the split second I recognized there was a huge mass of metal coming straight at me at a high speed and I resigned to the fact that it would probably mean life altering injuries. Good thing I wore my seat belt!
Note that minivans have been around longer than SUVs, but do not appear to be as disproportionate in fatalities. I suspect part of this is that they are typically lower to the ground and, more importantly, tend to only weigh about 500 lbs more than the average car at ~4500 lbs. Contrast this with full size SUVs, which are often taller and weigh on average closer to ~5900 lbs.
The Chevrolet suburban from 1947 was clearly a large SUV. (the suburban was introduced in 1935, but you could argue those models were station wagons, by 1947 they were clearly SUVs). The VW microbus - was from 1950.
The minivan didn't become popular until 1980s, while SUVs remained the domain of niches like families too large for a minivan, or those who regularly drove off road for another decade or two. However the SUV is clearly the older of the two.
60 km/h car will kill you either way, 1 km/h car won't kill you either way, but somewhere in between there's a velocity range where a SUV will kill you and a compact car won't - simply because of the mass difference. I'd argue it's the velocity range in which a lot of collisions happen (especially in city traffic).
This is the wrong way to think of it. At some point the mass is irrelevant. If an inelastic lead object the size of a car hits you, the energy transfers is the same as if a lead 747 hits you at the same speed.
Both objects have an overwhelming amount of energy and momentum compared to a nearly stationary 100 kg person. They'll transfer enough energy to bring the person up to their speed, likely mangling them in the process.
Trauma depends on how quickly this energy is transferred to the individual.
More to your point, both a car and a truck have more than enough energy to not be meaningfully slowed down by a pedestrian. The difference is strike location, contact area, and crumple zones to slow the transfer.
A typical locomotive at 1 mph has more momentum than a Ford F-150 at 45 mph, but the latter is far more likely to kill you in collision so it doesn’t look like it is momentum that kills.
Doubling the mass of the car assuming everything else (crumple zones etc.) stays the same - doubles the acceleration experienced by the pedestrian.
X_p0 = X of the pedestrian before collision
X_c0 = X of the car before collision
X_p1 = X of the pedestrian after the collision
X_c1 = X of the car after the collision
m_ = mass
v_ = velocity
a_ = acceleration
t = time
//conservation of momentum:
m_p * v_p0 + m_c * v_c0 = m_p * v_p1 + m_c * v_c1
m_p * (v_p0 - v_p1) = m_c * (v_c1 - v_c0)
v_p1 - v_p0 = m_c * (v_c0 - v_c1) / m_p
// a = delta v / t
a = (v_p1 - v_p0)/t = m_c * (v_c0 - v_c1) / (m_p * t)
It is not just the mass, the design is critical as well. Check pedestrian impact tests, on regular cars pedestrians can roll over while with tall cars or SUVs they are simply splashed against it.
I think that band where the light car is not lethal is a narrow bad. I could be wrong but I have a feeling it's sitting up high in an SUV/truck that is causing some of this.
Don't forget that crashes aren't just an oblivious driver smashing into a pedestrian at full speed. Many, perhaps a majority involve some degree of braking.
The big problem -- pun intended -- is that vehicles are de facto required by law to be huge.
Imagine if we had cars that were built like cars from the 80s -- smaller, lightweight, tons of visibility, minimal equipment -- but with modern engine technology and a few of the electronics that don't add much weight, but add a ton of functionality (like 360-degree cameras).
I'll take the road noise, less interior comfort, and all the rest, just for a basic... car.
I'd love to have a modern reboot 80s compact pickup that wasn't a bloated mess like the new Ford Ranger.
They're not required by law to be huge - they're required by law to be safe, which being larger ends up being a side effect.
Sure a 2022 Toyota Corolla is gigantic compared to a 1985 Corolla, but it's nothing compared to a 2022 F150. The best selling 'car' in North America. I know which one I'd prefer to be hit by.
They are respectively larger than cars that had similar interior space 40 years ago.
Saw a review of an old peugeot 505 wagon. It was way smaller than the current Toyota Camry but you could fit 8 persons and still have larger storage capacity.
At the same time Toyota Aygo is no longer produced. There is now a Toyota Aygo X - a crossover/mini-suv. From what I have read companies stopped producing most of those smallest cars, because to make good margins within what is required by law in terms of safety and CO2 emissions it does not make much sense to produce small cheap cars anymore.
What I see instead is very small electric vehicles entering the market from new manufacturers --- the market entry hurdle was not the vehicle safety, it was mastering the EURO-6,7,8 and California environmental norms with such a small engine.
Toyota Aygo is no longer produced. Replaced by Aygo X - a somewhat bigger car.
Renault Twingo is produced, but is not offered in some countries (I know about UK and Poland).
Peugeot 108 is no longer produced and AFAIU a successor was cancelled. Same thing for sibling Citroen C1. Aygo was also a sibling model.
Suzuki Ignis is a crossover now.
Skoda Citigo is no longer produced. Its sibling model VW Up is still produced, but other sibling Seat Mii is not.
Smart is a bit in a class of its own. It is not cheap though. Toyota had iQ in this class - it is no longer produced.
That leaves us with Hyundai i10 and its sibling Kia Picanto, Fiat Panda which is just a bit bigger then usual in the class, Fiat 500, aforementioned VW Up and Mitsubishi Mirage (also called Space Star in some countries). For me this is a sign of the class being less represented. I think it can go in other direction when electric cars will finally be cheaper, but it will not happen for a couple of years.
> Renault Twingo is produced, but is not offered in some countries
This argument is applied for every vehicle except extremely major one, like Corolla?
> Suzuki Ignis is a crossover now.
It's actually just a bit high A-seg hatchback. Its weight is like 900kg. I've driven it and like it because I don't need SUV w/big tires (unnecessary expensive!) but just need a bit high.
I think every manufacturers just want upselling in current market situation, and A-segs needed to be cheap. VW and Skoda that you pick looks good example. Not due to safety.
Covid 19 and the western economic crisis certainly had an impact on the a-segment, and vendors have also phased out ICE models indeed. however the "couple of years" is a small number and all vendors are working their ways to provide BEVs into that segment.
also the context of my statement is this thread, and a comment claiming vehicle safety being the problem of the A segment, to which your comment seemed to suggest "yah it's also in decline, see: ..."
to which I dare to claim: nope, it will happily come back as the economy recovers and the top mass producers (TMC, VW, Stellantis, RNM alliance) master BEVs.
> That means yes, they are required by law to be larger.
Larger, but not huge as I said. The gigantism of the best selling cars of 2022 isn't because of the law it's because of consumer preference to the detriment of everyone else.
I live in the UK, and the last car I bought was a SEAT Ibiza with a 3 cylinder 1 litre engine. I get 4.5l/100km or 52 mpg on long trips. 98% of the time my engine does under 2500 rpm.
I have absolutely no need of anything bigger and my car has all the comforts I require. I was also able to buy it for cash.
I've never quite understood the desire to own a large car with all its concomitant costs.
To be clear we do own another car which is an old Skoda Octavia Greenline also bought for cash. Its efficiency is pretty incredible even if it is a 'dirty diesel'.
It occurred to me a few weeks ago that it was kind of nonsensical that there are tons of safety requirements that have added a lot of cost and complexity to a basic car (arguably this is a very good idea) yet you can still ride a motorcycle around legally. I don't know about you but I'd rather drive to work in a 1980 honda civic than a motorcycle, if only to stay out of the rain. But it isn't legal to sell a 1980s style civic anymore.
Uhm not seeing your point? Cars are made to keep who’s inside alive, and you can’t do that with paper thin walls that made the original mini.
No law makes an SUV a requirement though. That’s just people getting greedy while the roads are getting larger allowing them to see no difference driving large vehicles.
I live in an area that is sparsely populated and has hard winters, oftentimes plowing isn't going to happen soon if it happens on the day of a snow storm. I also have several children that I need to transport to various places.
I have yet to find a mini-van that is able to handle appropriately in the snow and conditions I am likely to face, and a smaller vehicle can't carry my family.
Just because you can't think of a reason doesn't mean someone who does something you disagree with is morally deficient.
TIL that only two minivans (the Sienna and the Pacifica) offer AWD. That surprised me!
And incidentally (getting back to the original point of the article), both models feature a pretty flat front-end for a minivan. I wouldn't be surprised if they are considered among the least pedestrian-safe vehicles of the class.
European cars have to pass Euro-NCAP crash standards which include pedestrian safety tests. It's not the mass or overall size that's dangerous to pedestrians, it's the nose/hood profile and height.
Smart is smaller than most cars made in 80s, and modern compact/city cars are still reasonably light. It's just that somehow SUVs became fashionable. I can't understand why.
In terms of mass it weighs more (depending on model, it can be as little as 200lbs more), but it's not actually much larger in terms of size. I think it is actually smaller in some dimensions.
Modern sedans are way smaller than the sedans of the 80's: Have you seen a Ford Crown Vic from that time frame - or driven one? (my dad had an 85, and was the first car that I was allowed to use).
Modern cars aren't required to be huge, in other words.
Car companies profit on SUV's more than smaller cars, though, so that's what they push. It helps that they are popular - which is realistically what has happened to the Ford Ranger. Larger bodies are more popular.
How low is low enough? Don't drive? Don't bike? Don't eat?
For that matter, is it immoral for a pedestrian walk down the street because they have some low probability of harming an SUV driver when they splatter off the front end?
How high is too high? Can you have headlights so bright they blind other drivers? Can you drive an armoured vehicle with tracks that could crush other vehicles? Can you have circular saws on the sides of your car to deter careless fender benders?
SUV problem is mostly a grill size problem. They are designed to be aggressive and kill, you could drop them lower increase visibility and improve pedestrian impact like they do in Europe
I wouldn't be surprised if there was some perhaps unconscious trend of buyers picking more aggressive looking cars that are more likely to kill on impact.
Yeah it’s a design trade off. Buyers prefer the aggressive look of large grills but that shape decreases visibility and is more likely to kill pedestrians on impact. That trade off is pretty well known. Without government regulations there is little value to car manufacturers to design vehicles that don’t kill pedestrians on impact so they choose designs optimized to sell that also kill more.
There was a recent case where a vehicle designed for the European market actually had the pedestrians protection hood design stripped off and replaced with more aggressive and deadly styling for the US market.
I think a solid case can be made that almost all car driving is immoral. The solution isn’t individual like “buy a smaller car” is, but driving is objectively bad.
Unfortunately it can't be a bright line. Exposing people to "excessive" risk is wrong, that's the basis of things like drink-driving laws. And that ends up turning it into an arbitrary but important line: you break the law if you exceed a blood alcohol content, but the risk you impose on other people increases seamlessly as the BAC goes up.
Trucks over a certain weight require extra licensing. I wonder if this threshold should be brought down to reflect the extra harm of larger vehicles?
> Findings suggest larger vehicles are involved in pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes with more severe injuries that result in higher hospital charges.
I've commuted 10s of thousands of miles by bike the last 30 years, mostly in an urban environment. This doesn't surprise me. I can't read the whole article, and the excerpt doesn't offer any data or speculation about the causes of this. So, with some experience, I'll speculate. I'm happy to have real data instead!
So, why? Well, my first thought is that the impact surfaces of those vehicles are much higher off the ground. Rather than being tossed up onto a hood, people might be more likely to be hit directly.
Also, the visibility in tall vehicles is worse. For the driver of a sedan, my whole bicycle and torso are eye-level for them -- I'm easier to see. To a Suburban driver, my head and maybe shoulders are at eye level. I've ridden next to [ostensibly] passenger vehicles where the drivers are above my head level; they'd have to look _down_ to even see me.
And even aside from the height, modern vehicles have narrower windows and larger pillars. This alone makes a big difference. As a contrast, compare an old car with a modern one. The old Benz has at least 150% the visibility. It's like driving inside a fishbowl.
Even WHEN THE DRIVER sees you, some subconsciously ignore you. I'v had people look straight at me, keep driving then looking shocked when they finally realise and hit the brakes.
I can only surmise they perceive traffic in terms of threats. When you're in a bigger car, threats are reduced.
At one point when biking to work I stopped at an intersection and filtered to the front. The head vehicle was a huge yellow thing built for construction work. I turned my head to see if I could see the driver (then at least he would have a chance of seeing me) and you know what he did?
He understood what I was doing and pointed straight at me to indicate he had noticed me.
This is something I've started doing when I'm driving now, too. I wish everyone did it.
I'm in my 40s, I've never had a car, and the only thing that makes me feel somewhat safe when I cross in front of a vehicle is making eye contact with the driver, which is sometimes difficult with the prevalence of tinted windows.
In my experience, drivers look for other cars, not for pedestrians. We are not a danger to them, so they subconsciously filter us out, as we are not a threat to them.
To make things worse, in North America traffic rules are particularly hostile to pedestrians, allowing things such as right turns on red. Which is to say, as a pedestrian I am naturally not allowed to cross the street when the light is red for me, but for some unclear reason, if I were to be driving a 2-ton vehicle then somehow it is no longer considered dangerous for me to ignore the same red light. Bonkers.
The difficulty with eye contact is that it's easy to interpret as being there when the other person really just looks through you. Very common to hear about accidents when one person was confident they had eye contact and then the other just had no idea they were there.
In fact, eye contact works so badly for me that I prefer looking at the front tyres – their direction and angular acceleration tells me a lot more about where the vehicle is about to be.
Pointing, however, is very explicit and rarely happens by accident.
People don't look for peds because they aren't trained to, and for the most part, peds aren't that common. Only if you're in a dense urban center, would I say that they're common (in the US)
I do this, too, especially for pedestrians in crosswalks but also for cyclists and other motorists. The funny thing is I've never seen anyone else do it, yet everyone I point at always seems to immediately understand.
There's that famous video of people dancing, where a person in a gorilla suit enters and leaves the action, and at the end, people don't remember seeing the gorilla.
I think drivers are creatures of habit, especially in heavy traffic on a familiar route such as their daily work commute. They are not really in complete control of their cars -- certainly if traffic is heavy enough that nobody is following at a safe distance. Now throw distractions into the mix.
I'm also an experienced urban cyclist, and I believe that route choice is a major safety factor. I have some rules of thumb for roads to avoid, and am extremely lucky that I live in a town that is fairly cycle- and pedestrian-friendly. I have a hunch that car drivers in my town have gradually adapted to the presence of cyclists, for the better.
I do ride on 55 mph roads in the countryside, but only ones with very little traffic, and the region has quite friendly drivers. Stories from cyclists living in other states suggest to me that straightforward aggression is a factor in a lot of the close passes and other antics that they experience.
Somewhat fittingly "the basic Simons and Chabris study was reused on British television as a public safety advert designed to point out the potential dangers to cyclists caused by inattentional blindness in motorists."
I beleive that the paper was originally titled "Gorillas In Our Midst" which is a wonderful play on the title of the Dian Fossey book Gorillas in the Mist.
It applies because drivers tend to look for other cars, which are a threat to them, while filtering out pedestrians and bicycles. It is very noticeable as a pedestrian, e.g. when a driver enters a road through a right turn and only looks left to avoid incoming traffic, ignoring the possibility of a pedestrian coming from their right.
If it is about threats, then you should try to make the cyclists and pedestrians more threatening. Make yourself bigger, travel in large packs, bear your teeth, etc.
That or just have completely separated pathways for motorized vehicles and cyclists and pedestrians.
I tend to think of the drivers, not as reacting to threats, but navigating an evolving mental model of their surroundings -- with a primary focus on opportunities rather than threats. The mechanism that updates that model doesn't have "training data" with cyclists in the picture.
Probably because of poor training and infrequent interactions with cyclists/pedestrians. If something isn't a part of your regular life, and you haven't been told you need to watch out for it, then why would you?
In some ways cyclists are slow enough compared to how fast a car can accelerate. Even a moped or motorcycle can use speed assert its presence and maintain safe stopping distance between other cars.
Especially in a urban area where everyone is stuck trying to get to home/work/etc, most cars appear to be looking for opportunities. Opportunities to get ahead, to squeeze through a left turn lane before oncoming traffic, to find an empty bike lane to drop off an uber eats order. With that opportunity, get ahead” mindset, cyclists do not register. Until, of course, something happens.
I don't think threat assessment is driving people's driving habits. More likely, they didn't actually see you, or if they did, they made an assumption that you were going to wait for them or otherwise not be in their path. That could be because they don't know the laws concerning cycling, or maybe being tired/distracted/inebriated.
I have had similar experiences cycling a number of times. It's really more of a mental block. They aren't expecting to see a cyclist so they don't see one.
Anyone remember the 1990s-2000s US-market civilian Hummer models, and how people at the time felt them to be absolutely massive? Well, the 2023 Chevy Suburban is a comparable size to the largest of those Hummers.
There are so many incentives for size creep, and improvements in occupant safety features and self-driving functionality just add fuel to the cycle, by making drivers feel like they can adequately control ever-bigger vehicles.
I too have primarily commuted in city traffic by bike for decades until recently (moved to an island). I've been hit by both cars and trucks.
Back home I have two VW cars - a golf, and an Atlas. The Atlas has far superior visibility, is equipped with proximity sensors all around, lights on mirrors that warn of potential blind spot vehicles... I feel much more confident I won't injure a fellow cyclist driving that car than the golf. It also ferries all of my wife and my friends' bikes to distant races very well.
I think you can find any two single cars that prove one way or the other that visibility is worse. In general though one of the selling points of larger vehicles in increased visibility. Now let's just get rid of the "cross over" which seems to have all of the down sides of both.
I think the hight of the driver works both ways as you can see over lower vehicles and see conflicting traffic sooner.
ref visibility - one thing I don't like about newer cars in general is they have very thick A and B pillars for crash protection which can completely hide things from you. You have to constantly move your head around to sweep your blind spots.
As an American, we need to rethink how the cities are designed. Way too much emphasis on car centric design. An emphasis on car centric transportation means fed government and people want cars to be safer. Larger A-pillars which decrease line of sight. Larger vehicles give people a higher sense of security and safety.
These 2 points make it very safe for the driver and occupants but disregard any safety for pedestrians. Which is consistent with the papers findings.
Anecdotally, I have seen empty nesters and older men/women buy large SUVs and trucks not because of utility but because of the perceived safety a larger vehicle gives them. Even growing up in TX, rich parents would buy their 16 year old child a truck, SUV, or even a god forsaken hummer because it gives them peace of mind.
In my opinion, if cities were re-designed around public transportation and alternative forms of transportation. We would be better off in the long run: decreased auto v pedestrian fatalities, increased air quality, decreased in air pollution related illness/disease, much more efficient use of space (parking lots/garages vs space for human beings), and much more efficient cities in terms of taxing efficiency (decreased dependency on municipal bonds), and decreased and/or stabilized cost of living for everyone
We have rethought it extensively. There are proposals in every major city and probably nearly every neighborhood for improved street designs. But enough of those who drive through those neighborhoods oppose those improvements that they rarely happen.
It’s easy for a driver to assign themself responsibility to “drive safely” - and hard to admit that we take constant risks that sometimes result in harm. Accepting that we need new street designs is taken as a personal affront by many drivers.
I think the only way to solve this is to take street design decisions (and funding for safety improvements) out of the hands of governments - there’s no level of local gov that is immune from the backlash. But how do we do that without some horrible other outcomes?
Exactly. The way we have it concentrates the harm mostly on the impoverished and disabled which is exactly where we want it. You can purchase your way out of the worst of the danger if you have the resources which again is traditional and aligned with our national values. There's nothing here that actually demands action within an american framework of harm and safety. Maybe we'll grow beyond this eventually but for now we have chosen not to.
>We have rethought it extensively. There are proposals in every major city and probably nearly every neighborhood for improved street designs. But enough of those who drive through those neighborhoods oppose those improvements that they rarely happen.
It doesn't help that half the time these proposals wind up being half-baked boondoggles that result in a great deal of money being spent for a situation that is at best net neutral. In my own city they redeveloped some main streets according to modern principals coinciding with a stadium development. They then patted themselves on the backs for how effective they were at traffic calming without reducing throughput at the points before and after the project zone at which they measured. Of course, nobody was talking about the fact that they basically just displaced the traffic from that main thoroughfare into the adjacent neighborhoods and turned "kids play here" streets into exactly the kind of car-filled hellscape they allege to be against. Of course, only the locals know this. If you're far away in some ivory tower the project looks like a success.
>and hard to admit that we take constant risks that sometimes result in harm.
Modern society is incapable of having the requisite tough discussions about the pros and cons of various risks/rewards when human life and limb is involved. I think the HN classes ought to take a good look in the mirror because we do a great amount of peddling the kind of rhetoric that perpetuates this immaturity.
>I think the only way to solve this is to take street design decisions (and funding for safety improvements) out of the hands of governments - there’s no level of local gov that is immune from the backlash. But how do we do that without some horrible other outcomes?
We don't. Further removed government doesn't exactly have a great track record. Time and time again you'll see local governments do absolutely asinine infrastructure things because checking some box to meet some criteria for state or fed funding results in a lower total cost after the higher level of .gov kicks in some fraction of the money even though the end result is not what they need.
I think the solution here is more direct local control. If some municipalities do figure it out and make improvements then their ideas and patterns of development will be copied elsewhere.
The American system is broken. Many (Blue) states would happily rein in oil guzzling pickups, SUVs, etc but Federal law prevents that. Another example is states can't require truck trailers to have side barriers to keep small cars and cyclists from going under.
Interestingly, California has essentially put itself in the position of dictating emissions standards for the entire USA because it imposes the strictest requirements, and California is a large enough market that carmakers won't ignore it (but small enough that it's not worth separate SKUs).
I wonder what would happen if California, or New York, or a consortium of smaller blue states like New England imposed safety standards that banned or heavily penalized trucks and SUVs over 4,000 lbs, oversized A pillars, etc.
Would the automakers blink, and start making cars safer? Or would they just start selling the dangerous vehicles only in red states? Would blue states start to ticket dangerous vehicles purely for existing on roads?
(Yes I know it's not a "right" but there's no political will to ban it federally so the distinction doesn't matter much here.)
And given the choice between putting up with oversized vehicles and completely eviscerating federal authority to set rules for individuals and small local businesses and organizations (which is what reinterpreting the commerce clause would lead to) oversized vehicles doesn't seem that bad.
Honestly as an upper middle class or rich American it looks like one of the more dangerous things you could do is probably go out cycling in a road shared by these monster machines. If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives.
When I lived in College Station Texas I had to use a bike (because I was broke) but I stuck to the sidewalks, rules be damned. And even in the sidewalk had to keep an eye for unruly drivers on the road alongside because the last person you want to trust not to mount the curb is a drunk Texan kid with a raised pickup after a football game.
And when time came to cross a road, even if the light was green, even if I made eye contact with the dude in the truck, I wouldn’t venture out until the road was fully empty. I decided a long time back id never put myself in a place where another American in a car has to brake to not hit me when I’m outside a car.
The odds are in your favor to be honest. I live in a city of 4 million people. 10-20 cyclist die a year. I'll roll those dice when the variance is that high. I figure I bike safer than the average biker I see on the road anyhow, so my odds of survival go up even higher. Probably not a small number of those accidents involved intoxicated bikers or mentally ill; I see a lot of people, clearly out of their mind through mental illness or addiction or both, biking the wrong way into traffic, or otherwise not being aware of anything at all and blithely riding (sometimes pedestrians just walking on the freeway too). Things I do to be safe while biking that I rarely see others do:
- taking the lane
- wearing a helmet
- using lights
- filtering to the front of the intersection
- opting for those 25mph residential roads that hardly have any traffic whenever possible
- "dutch left": instead of cutting over across traffic to turn left as a car would, I instead go straight almost all the way through the intersection on the right hand side, turn right in front of the stopped perpendicular cars, and then angle myself to go straight on that perpendicular road when the lights cycle to green.
Something else that improves your QALYs: cycling. Of course, it's about exercise more generally, but if you don't have time to exercise only, doing it while commuting is clever!
In most locations in the world -- my null hypothesis includes the US here too -- people who commute by bike (for all its risks) live longer and are sick less than those who do not.
I probably would have given this a full-throated endorsement just a couple years ago, but after years of improving safety standards that drove down the number of automobile fatalities, we've seen two years of massive increases (7% in 2020 and then 10% last year [0]). And that pairs nicely with my anecdotal experience, which is that people have lost their fucking minds on the roads. (And also, more controversially, coincides (with utter predictability, in my view) with a massive drop in traffic stops by law enforcement.)
10% increase in my city with the numbers it sees could mean just two additional cycling deaths a year. That's the thing with these statistics, the numbers are so small to begin with, that just a few more events are liable to lead to huge percent increases. These few more events could well be within the variance of this measure you observe year over year, and may not be a real trend.
And across the entire nation of 400 million people, there were 900 cycling deaths last year. Like I say, in my region, there are usually only a dozen or two.
> If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives
This seems like such a typical American view on cycling. The main aim of regular cycling isn't about physical activity, it's about getting from A to B.
> I had to use a bike (because I was broke)
And this too. Being able to afford to drive a car shouldn't be an aspiration and cycling isn't only for people who can't afford a car.
Cycling infra in the US is so terrible and horrid that it's no wonder that people assume you cycle if you're (a) too poor to afford a car, or (b) a fitness fanatic putting fitness ahead of your safety.
Sidewalks can be the most dangerous place for cycling when cars come out of hidden driveways quickly. Maybe not where you are (perhaps there's good vision with big verges and/or big yards with no front fences), but this approach cant be applied safely in many areas.
The real underlying issue of course is a disparity in street design between care for vehicle passenger safety (the primary job of extensive codes and standards and those who enforce them) and cycle safety (at best a side concern in codes, and often the codes are poorly researched and enforce impractical solutions that don't help the end users)
That's why I don't just zoom past openings, unless they are clearly visible that no car is coming out, such as an empty parking lot where nothing is blocking the view of the lot. I always treated those spots as a stop sign of sorts. Pull up to the edge of the drive, stop and check for cars turning in or out, then go on my way.
> If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives.
I suspect that attitude also have to do with obesity rates and with people being too sedentary for their own health no matter what their weight.
It should be good and accepted that people incorporate low key physical activity into their lives. It should be good and accepted that people choose mode of transport that have them move little bit. Whether someone craves physical activity or not does not matter.
Cheaper, healthier mode of transport is as much entitlement as car. Making physical activity something for those who "crave it" is wrong.
It's a different cycling experience to live in an area with 30+ continuous miles of a paved and forested riverside bike trail and 50+ miles of interlaced dirt trails. Cars can barely be a threat consideration most of the time.
That's fine if you're cycling as a hobby, but if you're cycling as a means of transportation you're going to need to take the roads most of the time. Most of the places you are going to are not going to be next to a forest trail.
It is kind of irritating for a commuter to dismiss competitive and fitness sports as hobbies, but that aside, the aforementioned trail parallels a major highway and it’s used by thousands of cyclists and commuters each day for the majority of their routes. Some toss their bikes onto the lightrail and bus racks at the end to avoid roads.
I'm a cyclist and I hate bicycles on sidewalk as much as I would hate cars driving there. They increase risks for pedestrians that have done nothing wrong by walking on a sidewalk. We cyclist must accept our risks and stop offloading them to other people.
Furthermore sidewalks have a worse pavement than roads, are full of obstacles (including pedestrians) and are a slower way to get to destination, but that's another story.
I guess you’ve never been to a Texan town then. Literally no one is on a sidewalk, and if there’s more than one person in the sidewalk per mile, I’d get off the sidewalk. I suppose you’ve also not seen southern drunk (or even sober but texting) kids in raised trucks driving either.
I confess I didn't. My remark is addressed particularly to cyclists of dense cities where we have more people on sidewalks than inside cars (but still a lot of cars.) Unfortunately there are plenty of bicycles on sidewalks.
One counterpoint: biking on sidewalks is illegal in many jurisdictions for a pretty good reason.
If you're a pedestrian walking alongside a busy street, it's almost impossible to hear a cyclist coming up behind you, so unless the cyclist tells you that they're about to pass you, it's easy to unintentionally move into the cyclist's path and risk getting hit.
I've almost gotten hit several times by bikers on the sidewalk, and while such a collision would be much less injurious than a car crash, I can't say I'm opposed to such laws.
Riding a motorcycle is even more dangerous, if that's what you're optimising for. You're just as vulnerable, but you're in traffic and you can go really fast.
> Americans are driving bigger and bigger vehicles..
vehicles have gone up in size globally. this might be driven primarily by the whims and desires of the US market, but it's by no means isolated to the United States.
I (and decent amount of people live in Japan) are unhappy with most car models become big for width (except JDMs and subcompacts, it's fortunate them exists). It become big because car is generally developed and sold for global market, rather than domestic.
Large personal vehicles should just be banned in cities. People abused the system to such an extent that now it is a matter of infringing on other people's right to personal safety not to mention the unnecessary pollution and traffic congestion.
I do not want to discuss the specifics but it would be great if for example cities only allowed KEI cars or a similar concept.
> Large personal vehicles should just be banned in cities.
I see your point, but that will only work when small city cars will be cheap enough to let have a "real" car too for non-daily purposes (long journey, huge shopping, out with the family...).
A brand new C1 is about 12K€. That's not even twice the price of an electrified cargo bike (I saw about 7/8K€ floated around the other day).
And if you go for used, you can get cars in good enough shape for less than 5K€.
Obviously, the additional car will have a much higher running cost than if you went for an electrified cargo bike or stuck to a single car. Forcing people to make that conscious choice would be a pro in my opinion.
I admit I fell in a lucky spot, but 12 k€ is just a bit less than what I paid my new Jeep Renegade, so I don't consider it that cheap.
> electrified cargo bike
Hilly area? Taking children to school or old parent to the doctor's? Not a chance!
> stuck to a single car
Yes, the SUV.
Edit:
> if you go for used, you can get cars in good enough shape for less than 5K€.
Yeah, that's nicer. Unfortunately, you have to add insurance and maintenance, plus a parking spot at home. Still too much for people to accept non-tiny cars to be banned from the city.
Yeah. I've been towing my children to school in a trailer behind my (non-electric) bike. Not particularly difficult, given the route is mostly flat, though I'm grateful it's only a mile and a half each way (I'm old and unfit).
Mind you, there's only one other family that does it. Most people just walk, some drive.
Articles like these make me glad to live in the Netherlands. Here we had "stop de kindermoord" which translates to "stop murdering children" which was aimed at the higher incidence rate of accidents due to motor vehicles. in the abstract they talk about vehicle type, race and other factors while I dont see the real killer anywhere in the abstract or introduction; Speed. Way back during the protest we subsequently figured out how to incorporate cars into cities without accidents.
1) In pedestrian and cycle heavy streets, you reduce the speed to a maximum of 30kmh (~20mph) and sometimes to 10 near schools and residential area's
2) traffic seperation. to improve traffic flow, the dutch governement made sure to always seperate traffic from destinations and only intersect pedestrians and cyclists in the last mile in a 30kmph area.
3) Careful road design. Its really uncomfortable to drive above the speed limit because they narrow roads, add trees, obstacles and turns that are perfectly safe at 30kmph that make driving only safe at the apropriate speeds. adding trees next to roads also increases safety for pedestrians as an offroad car is bound to hit a tree instead of a person.
4) great investment in public transport and highways. Despite everything someone might tell you, the Netherlands is a great country to drive in with the most ridiculous infrastructure to keep traffic flowing.
5) accident investigations. There's safety focused public design. We blame the road for an accident rather than a driver. Because even if someone was wasted drunk, an accident could have killed an innocent person. Therefore the road design can be changed so that even an imcompetent or drunk driver wont harm someone. Also, everyone in a car has the legal responsibility to drive safe when encountering pedestrians because as a heavy vehicle, the onus is on you to not cause damage. even if some cyclist ran a red light. You should have been able to stop.
look up strongtowns for better accessibility for non-dutch speakers.
The sad thing is that at least some part of the growth of vehicles on the road is because few people can afford to own (and park) multiple cars or other vehicles larger than a bike.
I have to move 3 kids and 2 adults regularly over longer distances, so I am pretty much constrained to a van (say a VW T7). But unfortunately, I cannot afford to accompany this expensive car with a smaller, preferrably electric, vehicle. So whenever I have to switch off the bike and move something or someone by car, I switch to the van directly. Car sharing is pretty much uneconomical at that point and a motorcycle or even a cargo bike is problematic due to space constraints.
A VW Golf from the 70s could fit two adults and three children. Or you could rent the van when you really need it.
The trouble is when a society accepts non-sustainable solutions it's very difficult to go back to anything remotely sustainable as any technological progress is always expected to deliver "more". It also leads to people thinking their ridiculous lifestyles are baseline necessity when, in fact, they could be happy with a whole lot less.
Sure, but so could a compact hatchback from the 80s.
The issue is this: Car seat and booster seat laws in the US have changed (I don't know what they are where I live, as I don't have kids. Sister in the US does, though). If you spaced your children 3 years apart, you could easily have 3 car or booster seats in the car, which means your back seat needs to be even larger. The VW golf from the 70s probably couldn't fit 3 booster/car seats, and might struggle with the two youngest using them while the oldest just gets smashed in the middle. Hopefully they aren't large for their age.
A VW Golf from the 2020s could not cover that use case legally or practically.
First of all, kids need safety seats nowadays and these seats are to be mounted via ISOFIX. And guess how many such seats you can mount in a Golf? Right. Two. When the kids grow older, they don't need such seats but need to be belted properly, potentially including another form of a cheaper safety seat or a particular kind of belt, depending on the jurisdiction. You might consider this some kind of circus or greed, but when it's about safety of my children, I don't go back 50 years just because we all need to be more sustainable while some people (cough, US, cough) seem to think it's a great idea to live in uninsulated homes running their AC on fossile fuel.
Besides that, small children need strollers and more children generally means more luggage. You could get away with a Passat or a Golf Variant, but you'd face a challenge for longer trips. A family car exists to solve a problem and not to cause trouble.
And regarding renting a van: This would easily cost more than ownership (weekend trips are horribly expensive) and be less comfortable (fetching and returning the car).
Exactly. Without judging the OP (I am also looking at buying a van (although I would not drive it regularly in the city)) it is a matter of luxury rather than necessity.
Yes, unfortunately. Car seats and booster seats are hard items and they don't have joints to move bits out of the way. People are squishy and have moving parts. The adults won't be comfortable if they are thicker, but they can squish in - often, quite literally.
The solution to this would realistically be to have built-in booster seats or a different style of seat belt that would better fit children and eliminate the need for booster seats for the older children.
Yes. If you have 3 kids and 2 are in the booster seat category, which some agencies recommend until they are 4'9" (145 cm), which some kids may not reach until 12 or older. You cannot fit 3 large booster seats in a Golf, or at least not comfortably.
I personally doubt the necessity of booster seats for older children at all but that's another topic all together.
Distance ain't a choice. Family doesn't live in a single village or city. And no, they're not conveniently close to a train station nor does traveling by train with kids and luggage compete with a car economically and practically.
I really wonder how city-focused one must be to not understand the necessity of regular travels to visit friends and family.
I wonder if insurance rates have been adjusted to reflect this. I would assume that being "at fault" for a crash with a fatality would result in a hefty insurance payout....
Yes, but pedestrian fatalities are relatively uncommon compared to other insurance losses, and in the US the insurance companies liability is typically capped at a fairly low level.
Long story short is that insurance companies price everything in — that’s how insurance works - rates are based upon actual losses and payouts.
In British Columbia, we solved it by switching to a "no fault" regime where motorists and the government insurance provider are simply legally impossible to sue for damages. If you are rendered as a quadriplegic because of a negligent driver, you may get some of your rehab paid for by the government if they agree that your therapy is required. You will receive precisely $0 for your reduced quality of life.
So, problem solved. Simply abdicate any responsibility for the disastrous consequences motorists impose on pedestrians and cyclists, all for those sweet sweet low premiums!
i just learned from a cop that you don't even need a license to drive in LA! she said that cops don't want to put undue burden on people in a city where driving is almost mandatory for livelihood (though i don't currently own a car myself due to the hassles and cost). i kid you not.
Anecdotally from my experience in CA, my friends have been in a total of 6 crashes and not a single other driver was insured. Makes sense why my un/underinsured driver line item on my car insurance is ~40% of the total.
I got nailed head-on in an 80's Chevy truck vs Mountain Bike accident. I was deprived of life function for around 25 minutes. Were it not for the mom-daughter nurse team that saw the entire accident happen as they were coming home from their shift, I'd not be here today.
Impacts with large and heavy vehicles suck. I can not recommend. Stick with bumper cars.
Last summer someone pulled out in front of me and totaled my Honda Fit. I would have loved to replace it with a new one but they don't sell them in North America any more. In the 90s I had a small Nissan truck (apparently it is called a Hardbody? The manual just said "nissan truck") You can't buy any truck anywhere near as small as that any more. I also had a Dodge Dakota at one point and you can't even really find a truck that small any more.
I was secretly hoping that the high gas prices would encourage auto makers to reintroduce some smaller cars but it seems like supply chain issues have resulted in them only making higher end cars since they can make more money off of them.
The thing I’m curious about is, why did sports cars stop being cool?
They were everywhere in the eighties, and of course critics would describe their drivers as compensating for a subconscious lacking in masculinity or something… they understandably died off in the nineties… and now we seem to be back to compensating with huge trucks?
Sports cars might be dangerous but at least that’s mostly just to the occupiers, what do we have to do to make Ferraris and Porsches (real Porsches, not those disgusting SUVs that have become their bread and butter) cool again?
> and of course critics would describe their drivers as compensating for a subconscious lacking in masculinity or something…
So then the next generation grew up and bought trucks because trucks weren't constantly being shat on. And now we're seeing the beginning of a transition back with the high performance EV sports cars.
They were never cool in my eyes. They offer you no space and no comfort, which everybody likes, and they try to compensate with huge speed, that nobody is allowed to attain.
I hope that more Americans will settle on CUVs as family cars.
CUVs are built on car style chassis (as opposed to SUV which are built like trucks) and generally are smaller and more fuel efficient (modern turbo 4 cyl designs are pretty impressive). Yet they retain the vast majority of benefits (roomier, higher, AWD, seating up to 7)
Yes CUVs are bigger than sedans, however for a family they check all the boxes and are in my opinion a vastly better alternative to vans, pickups and large SUVs, all of which often come in v6 and v8 engines.
Something I've wondered about is how do some of the newer vehicle designs fare when it comes to pedestrian safety? Presumably getting hit by a Tesla Cybertruck or Canoo Lifestyle Vehicle would be pretty bad, but are they just as bad as a giant pickup truck? My intuition says yeah, probably. But there might be some nuance, like maybe the Canoo has better-than-average visibility so hitting pedestrians is less likely.
I'm kind of surprised cars don't have external airbags at this point.
"When the scoop is open the j-walker simply can't get run over; and sometimes that's more than he deserves."
Seems like a product of that weird period of history where streets used to be mainly for people, but they'd been taken over by cars and car companies were out there asserting ownership of the roads and trying to influence public attitudes by, among other things, inventing the crime of jaywalking.
We really need to add a special license requirement for vehicles over a certain size. You shouldn't be able to drive something so dangerous without additional training and restrictions. In addition we should enforce safety standards similar to commercial vehicles. Reduced speed limits, additional licensing fees, and stricter inspections. Also, traffic laws should be more heavily enforced for this class of vehicle with licensing revoked if they cannot keep a clean record.
Driving a truck or an SUV that weighs more than 4 tons is a huge responsibility and we treat it the same as driving a half ton econobox. If a cop sees a 4 ton SUV breaking the speed limit on a residential zone the penalties should be much harsher than a small car, motorcycle or cyclist doing the same.
Bigger vehicles are heavier; at the same speed as a passenger car, they have more kinetic energy. It is even worse when the victim is lighter, as per the momentum conservation principle. The study confirms the physics. What's unexpected is the last line of the abstract.
It's probably mostly a poverty issue. Poor people have more difficulty affording a car. This forces them to walk and bike, even in areas where the infrastructure makes it unsafe to do so (areas like this are ubiquitous in US cities).
Black people in the US, due to a wide variety of systemic issues, are more likely to be poor. Which means that issues of poverty are more likely to affect black people.
I drive a Camaro. I can’t fit an infant seat behind my driver’s side seat, and I sit abnormally closer to the steering wheel than most. Never mind a larger child seat.
Ok, you’re saying - but that’s a Camaro. Well, said Camaro is in repair at the moment and they gave me a loaner. It’s a Chevy Sonic. I also can’t fit the infant seat behind the driver’s side.
To be fair, it’s a subcompact. However, even in my wife’s CX-5 we can barely get our hand between the driver’s seat and the latch for the infant seat to get it out. That’s after moving the seat up further than my wife prefers. I’ll be shopping for a new vehicle soon and I can definitely see how people with families instantly jump to SUVs, vans, and to some extent trucks.
There is another form factor: station wagons. I don't know why they have fallen so out of fashion in the US, they are such practical cars. Fit a family of four? No problem. Need material for your project? Fold the back seats and fit full sheets of plywood.
Not even the full size SUVs has as much space as a regular old station wagon.
They went out of favor because vehicle body design trends (largely driven by safety requirements) make them have a lot less practical space inside for a given external size.
The idiots who cooked up the CAFE footprint rule that resulted in all the OEMs cramming the axles to the far ends of the vehicle (killing a lot of trunk space in the process) are probably responsible for the biggest share but it's very much a death by a thousand cuts situation.
Are you and your wife just really really tall? I mean, I haven't driven any one of these particular cars, but I drive a 90 HP, 50 MPG sedan that four average adults can fit in comfortably.
Some things that American aspiring tank drivers say can't be done, are an everyday occurrence in Europe.
Hey, late to the party, but my wife and I went through this type of issue recently. You want to test drive an OutBack and a Santa Fe. The rear seat width and leg room are highly optimized compared to other vehicles in the segment. We were able to fit 2 car seats and an adult in the back seat of both of those cars without going up to a full-size SUV.
That's actually annoying problem with modern cars, in my case it's doesn't help much moving up to bigger cars though. I'm pretty tall, so if I'm in any of the front sets, the seat behind me become unusable. So a car that fit a family of four, because effectively a three person car.
For trips with four people we put our child in the front passenger seat, my wife driving and I sit in the back. That's the only way to utilize all the seats. There might be cars available that solve the problem, but not within our budget. I get why, but it is annoying that anything above 185cm is consider outside the range of car designs.
Edit: just looking up the CX-5, and I assume it's the Mazda. Those are useless, I can't even drive those, there aren't enough leg room behind the wheel. On the other hand the Hyundai i10 has plenty of space... Just not for someone to sit in the back seat.
I fit a huge (rotating) baby seat behind the driver on an Opel Corsa without issue. I don't see how it's possible that it wouldn't fit just fine in those cars.
I wonder how much damage is solved by halfing all speed limits. I'm constantly amazed about how much risk people will take on in order to arrive home (but usually, a red light) a minute earlier.
Some poor understanding of physics in many comments. High school physics deals in point masses in vacuums, but people and vehicles are not point masses.
Injury is closely correlated to accelerations applied to various body parts. A sloping hood gives more space to average out the acceleration.
Conversely my stepfather blacked out and fell backwards on a tile floor. A low speed impact with a high acceleration applied to the back of his skull and brain that killed him.
This is why weight is a concept used in the Netherlands to determine liability. The more weight you put in motion on public roads, the more liable you're going to be. In a collision, drivers of vehicles that are significantly heavier are going to be assumed at (partial) fault. Kinetics are not complicated.
I would like to see a similar study with data about the type of medicine drivers were on when they struck pedestrians/cyclists. I've always got the impression that there is more people driving under the influence of those drugs than alcohol.
Effective cycling is only possible with effective infrastructure. If you keep sharing the same road, accidents will happen. Big cars are not a problem. The solution is build dedicated infra for cyclers. There is no other way.
This article is a great example of how correlation might be suggestive of causation, but is not itself causation.
Are pickup trucks inherently more dangerous than other vehicles? Or are pickup truck drivers more dangerous than other drivers? Or are pickup trucks more likely to be driving on more-dangerous roads than on less-dangerous roads?
Unfortunately I wasn't able to read the article due to the paywall, but I didn't see any mention of controlling for confounders in the abstract.
Rolling coal generally requires diesel engines (the smoke is from partially burned diesel). Gasoline is much easier to burn and I imagine it would be rather hard to modify a gasoline car to produce black smoke.
I advocate taking the lane in many situations but it's worth noting that you can be passed in your lane with less than 1 ft of space even if you're taking the lane.
Are there reasons to think that trucks are easier to drive safely? E.g. you might be able to see further (even if you can't see the child walking in front of you at the crosswalk). Seem to be plenty of reasons to think they are more dangerous, and that it would be surprising to find that they aren't.
> Passenger cars were the striking vehicle in most fatal pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, though they were underrepresented relative to the proportion of all crashes in which they were involved. Though pickup trucks were the striking vehicle in just 5.6% of pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, they were involved in 12.6% of fatalities. SUVs were similarly overrepresented in fatalities relative to the proportion of their involvement in all crashes. SUVs struck 14.7% of the pedestrians and pedalcyclists investigated here, but were involved in 25.4% of the fatalities.
> In fact, passenger car sales in the United States dropped at an annual rate of 2.4% from 2008 to 2018 alone, while pickup truck sales increased at an annual rate of 6.4% (Davis & Boundy, 2020). In 2008 light trucks were about 40% of light vehicles produced, in 2018 they were nearly half (Ibid).
Based on this, I would put SUV's/Trucks conservatively at say 45% of US vehicles.
Based on this,
their combined pedestrian/pedalcyclist crashes are 5.6 + 14.7 = 20.3%
their combined fatality is 12.6 + 25.4 = 38%
With these numbers, given that the crashes are lower in proportion to their overall numbers, I would say that Light Trucks/SUV's are less likely to be involved in a crash with pedestrians/cyclists but when a crash does happen it is worse. However, they do not seem to be a disproportionate cause of pedestrian/pedalcyclists fatalities compared to passenger cars.
The article is definitely missing some basic numbers such as what the composition of the current fleet is. In my observation, "flat" cars are definitely no longer the norm anymore. Also, the size of SUVs seems to have gone down since 2009. There are more small/medium sized SUVs in general but far fewer Yukons/Sequoias than there used to be. One thing that has obviously gone up since 2009 is driver distraction.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447