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Comment by cyb_ | Hacker News Reader

I was curious how they defined 'unsafe' in this context. Following the links in the article, I found this quote:

> These massive trucks are actually safer for their occupants, but far more deadly to the people outside

I’ll point out and it will probably get downvoted again because it is an inconvenient truth, but making vehicles safer for the occupants at the cost of slightly to somewhat more dangerous for non-occupants can still result in a net improvement of overall safety because pedestrians and vehicle accidents happen far less frequently than vehicle to vehicle accidents.

No it doesn't. The larger vehicle in a collision is safer, but the smaller vehicle is less safe. If you buy an Expedition, you're more likely to kill a pedestrian, plus you're more likely to kill the occupants of any other vehicles you collide with. You're more likely to die in a rollover, and dont significantly affect your odds when colliding with a fixed object.

Your personal risk goes down because as you say vehicle to vehicle is the most common and you win that zero sum game, but overall the score is very negative.

So you do or don’t agree with my statement of “making vehicles safer for the occupants at the cost of slightly to somewhat more dangerous for non-occupants can still result in a net improvement of overall safety”?

No, you are making it far worse for people driving smaller vehicles too.

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