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Comment by RankingMember | Hacker News Reader

Agreed. I think it's important to include safety in the conversation when making comparisons between today's vehicles and those of decades past. It's apparent that pursuing safety over things like "max # of canine accommodations" has yielded positive results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...

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At the expense of increasing pedestrian fatalities.

Pedestrian fatalities are included in the linked stats, but the proportion of pedestrian fatalities has been increasing. There are a number of potential explanations, including the increased prevalence of SUVs and trucks against which pedestrians fare worse, but nothing concrete yet. Vehicles are being designed with pedestrian safety in mind, but if a greater proportion of people are driving SUVs and trucks to get around, I think it's logical that more pedestrian fatalities would follow.

> Vehicles are being designed with pedestrian safety in mind

They're kind of not. The US still doesn't require any pedestrian safety ratings on cars sold there.

The majority of vehicles sold in the US are vehicles also sold elsewhere, e.g. Asia and Europe, which do have pedestrian protection rules in place. I found a short article that elaborates a bit on the relationship between these safety regs and design:

https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15118822/taking-the-h...

Do the statistics on pedestrian fatalities include whether or not the pedestrian was distracted, such as talking on/looking at their phone? Or what about jaywalking/ignoring signals.

Cars arent solely to blame. Pedestrians need to held responsible for their reckless behavior in the presence of cars, too.

Rather irrelevant considering the increasing chance of dying if you're hit. That's nothing to do with phone or pedestrian signals which can only affect the chance of being hit.

Speaking as a car driver, in nearly all of those situations a car driver would be deservedly held responsible, as you're expected to be able to stop short of unexpected hazards. In built up areas that's going to include pedestrians. Drive slower.

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