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Comment by charliesharding | Hacker News Reader

This is a sensational story based off of a shallow if not deliberate misreading of statistics. They point to an increase in raw number of deaths and say that the rate is increasing - completely leaving out population adjustments like density and raw numbers increasing. The only rate discussion is in a graph that shows % inside vehicle fatalities vs % outside vehicle fatalities. With cars becoming safer of course the % of outside vehicle fatalities will rise since the human body isn't becoming more resilient to car crashes at the same rate.

Also they didn't do any looking into the circumstances of death, as mentioned by throwGuardian - I suspect cell phone related incidents are on the rise.

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Guess you missed the ones where cities are higher impacted and rural areas went down and that most of these are caused by SUVs because drivers of SUVs are terrible people and have a lead foot leading to more head injuries because of the height of their vehicle. It's pretty clear that the people at highest risk are pedestrians in cities that allow SUVs. The solution should be to ban SUVs in cities, since they are responsible for most of the deaths would cause a dramatic drop in pedestrians dying.

edit: oh and a ton of people hit had alcohol in their system.

Less crude than banning SUVs would be requiring vehicles to pass pedestrian safety standards in addition to vehicle occupant safety standards in a crash.

IIRC in the US we only really test safety for people inside the car, not outside.

Well yeah but that would require giving up SUVs and trucks altogether and bring calls of socialism because Europe already does that.

I could of sworn there was an article here not that long ago explaining that the reason more people die after being hit be vehicles now as opposed to living after being hit is that more vehicles are SUVs and they just kill you on impact instead of potentially rolling over the top.

> The solution should be to ban SUVs in cities

Far more effective would be to ban cities, or pedestrians.

Even car drivers are pedestrians at some point, but in a city, it's quite easy to be a pedestrian and never be a car driver.

So more practical than banning pedestrians would be banning privately driven cars. Commercial trucks, emergency vehicles and taxi's/Uber/Lyft with appropriate driver standards/training requirements could still be allowed on roads.

Drivers that really want a private car could keep them parked outside of the city center, or maybe they could pay for the same driver training/certification of commercial drivers - and all drivers should be held to very high standards, no more "I didn't see him in the cross walk!" excuse when a driver hits a pedestrian.

I don't make enough money to "own" a car. It's dangerous, stressful, expensive. The car becomes a single point of failure that can turn my whole life upside down if it ever fails, which cars often do at the price range I can afford. Banning pedestrians would basically ban poor people from going outside.

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