Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds

Due to a mixture of standards, this has changed. The roof cap and pillars have thickened and curved for roll-over protection, and front pillars are also thicker to hold air bags that didn't exist in those older cars. The windows sills are higher up relative to the driver, to improve side-impact protection.

There are other changes too, such as dark coatings around the edges of windshields and fat mounts behind the rear view mirror to hold sensors, cameras, etc. As a tall driver, I find these changes very frustrating. The rear view mirror is capable of hiding a crossing car at a 4-way stop, and I sometimes cannot even see overhead traffic lights when stopped in the first position at an intersection.

It seems like there's a second-order effect here on visibility that may not have been really appreciated.

Surprisingly, sloped windows are more of a safety thing than a fuel efficiency or aerodynamics thing. If the windshield is too sloped, it acts like a wedge that throws air up above the car and causes a ton of turbulence. It's more important that the airflow stays stuck to the top surface of the car, and a steeper windshield helps with that.

I drive a truck and live in a mountainous area. Trust me, it's not just sedans. Nearly everyone drives around with their brights on and it seems they no longer bother to turn them down when approaching traffic (automatic dimming features don't work well up here). Consequently, night time driving is dangerous. I don't know what their advertised beam pattern is, but it's like driving passed spotlights aimed at your eyes while on the road when you're on the outside lane.

FWIW mine are halogens (2014). Plenty bright (and aim-able—for towing), but they're useless when you're temporarily blinded by super bright LEDs.

In proper urban design that's actually a feature. People don't care about the posted speed limit - they probably won't even notice the sign. Instead they drive at the speed which they feel is appropriate for the road.

A lot of the suburban infrastructure in the US was developed around collision safety. This means wide roads and large setbacks, all in order to get rid of anything to collide with. However, this means that a regular residential street now feels extremely safe to drive: it's essentially a highway, so people will drive at highway speeds.

On the other hand, plenty of suburban road infrastructure in Europe has been explicitly designed to feel unsafe. The roads are intentionally made narrow, visibility is poor, and you'll run into plenty of obstacles like chicanes. Although plenty of that is a leftover from the pre-car era, it's nowadays an intentional design decision for new roads even when there is plenty of space. It's physically impossible to drive on those streets at highway speeds, so people are forced to slow down. Anyone with even the vaguest sense of self-preservation will drive a lot slower with a 6-inch clearance to oncoming traffic than with a 6-feet clearance. The lower speeds in turn actually make the roads safer, and make it possible to share them with cyclists and other low-speed traffic.

Fun fact: the narrowest residential street allowed in the US is wider than a highway lane in The Netherlands.

I come from New Zealand; I know when you need a ute or an SUV and you do NOT need one in London.

> Laws that cover passing when crossing the centerline of the roadway is not required (where there are multiple lanes in the same direction), often say something like this:

> The driver of a vehicle overtaking another vehicle proceeding in the same direction shall pass to the left thereof at a safe distance and shall not again drive to the right side of the roadway until safely clear of the overtaken vehicle.

source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/beat-tick...

They mostly are (at least the front windshield is), it's just not really enforced.

So you’re still over 5000lbs on that monster without the batteries.

Mass is mass, whether in the form of battery or frame metal.

While encouraging lighter cars would be a huge win, carving a massive exception to heavy EVs completely defeats the point.

It doesn't need to be anything punitive, just make it that more training is required.

You start off with a basic license that allows for something like a 1.0 liter engine car (I know, also need to change regulations to encourage the manufacturing of small cars).

Then with more experience and more training you can level up to higher power and weight categories, if you want. The training needs to become more and more difficult (not paper DMV tests), that cuts out the people who want the 9000lb truck just for status since most people won't bother. If you need that 9000lb truck enough to go through the training, have at it.

1) We need to recognize that there's a wide variety of vehicles in the SUV category. Many of them have replaced (not supplemented, replaced, because they sell better and car companies are hyperoptimizing their profits like everyone else) old standards like station wagons and minivans in manufacturer lineups. Most of them do not have the stupidly-high hoods that this article is actually about: those are primarily on pickup trucks.

2) We need to recognize that, at least for some SUVs, there are genuine, non-overcompensating use cases. Like driving on snowy, icy winter roads in the northern US and all of Canada.

3) Having recognized these things, we need to make sure there is provision in place for the people who have actual needs these vehicles are fulfilling—whether because they fall into the smaller category of people who would always need these things, or because they fall into the much larger category of people who would have bought a minivan or station wagon in the '80s and '90s, but most of those have gone away—before we start treating them all like the worst members of the category.

Full disclosure: I drive a Subaru Outback. I drive it for three main reasons: it's extremely reliable, it has amazing cargo capacity (which I do use regularly), and its AWD is a godsend on the roads in upstate NY in the winter. (Is it possible to drive on these roads without it? Absolutely; I drove a Toyota Corolla for over a decade. But I am much less stressed with the AWD.) I just bought my second one, after shopping around extensively to find something that would fulfill my requirements, but get better gas mileage (which, to be fair, the Outback's is actually shockingly good for an SUV).

The Outback is also basically the shape of a station wagon. It does not have an unhealthily high hood. I honestly don't know how its weight compares to other non-SUVs, but my understanding is that right now, the heaviest cars are electric cars, so using weight alone is also not a great metric.

Ultimately, I think what people like you need to do is consider this question: Are you actually trying to solve a real problem with what cars are on the road? Or are you just looking for a socially-acceptable group of people to bully and be mean to? Because your proposals sound a lot like they're aimed at the latter, and very little like they'd be effective at the former.

Oh, that couldn't possibly have any side effects.

What you can't seem to get is something like a first generation Tacoma or 90s S-10 without 4WD that's low to the ground. All of the newer trucks have very high bed sides that make loading them from the side a huge pain even if you're tall.

Lots of Americans want smaller trucks. I just saw a Netflix show where a main character prized his old Toyota pickup. This is also evidenced in the importation of Japanese "K-car" trucks.

Given the popularity of F-250s / 2500s, which hardly meet any CAFE standard, the truckers don't yearn for the Ranger. They like 12mpg turbo diesel. We could repeal CAFE, get Ford to make them, but they still wouldn't sell. Tacoma loyalists keep the mid-size truck alive, but they're just a small fraction of 1500/2500 buyers.

People like big trucks, and that's fine: but why blame it on the gov't ?

Blaming the government for getting captured by industry also obfuscates the problem and makes discussing solutions more difficult. The current (grotesque) CAFE standards went in during the last months of the Bush administration, as a gift to the automakers.

This is presented incredibly dishonestly in this context. It's well understood that automakers had their grubby little hands all over emissions regulations in the late Bush admin. They spent oodles of cash, tons of lobbyist time, and BEGGED for the exclusions for trucks that made complete sense at the time for TRUCKS, as in, pickup trucks used by laborers that needed the power and relaxed emissions standards that they asked for. And then, once that was done, set about changing 2/3 of their sales into trucks, so they could continue selling ever larger vehicles at ever higher prices with ever worse fuel economy.

> most people simply buy what is available in the form factor they like. Trucks are the most popular form factor in the United States (with pickups a close second)[1]

Which is directly traceable to substantial and aggressive marketing pushes by the American auto industry to shove trucks and SUV's down American's throats, because they could sell them for higher prices than the vans and station wagons that were already popular at the time.

And even now, the solution proposed for all the issues these oversized stupid machines cause, is more sensors, more cameras, more safety features that, OH WOW, they get to charge more money for! No way!

> and the manufacturers keep making the cars bigger because of the poorly written CAFE laws[2].

Again, the way this is framed posits that the CAFE standards were flawed output by the legislators themselves, and not the result of back and forth negotiations with the auto industry for decades prior.

> I, and I suspect most Americans with pickups, would prefer to purchase one the size of a '90s F-150 as compared to the monsters of today but manufacturers can't or won't sell me one.

Except now after decades of this shit, even if you can find a smaller vehicle, many consumers have (correctly) identified that their neighbors are driving suburban panzers, and not having one yourself puts you and yours at an elevated risk in a collision. Tons of people have reasonably sized vehicles in this country, and if you get t-boned by some jack-off in a lifted F-350 driving one, there is a not-insubstantial chance you're going to die, because those vehicles are not designed with safety in mind: they are designed to appeal to a marketing demographic that has been created: the modern man seeking to reclaim his masculinity because his accounting job doesn't let him imagine himself a hunter seeking the mammoth well enough, or whatever the fuck.

> Making up some macho strawman to attack actually obfuscates the problem and makes discussing solutions more difficult.

It isn't making up strawmen, it's pointing to a strawman manufactured by the auto industry that needs to be burned. The ONLY reason all these stupid machines are out driving today is because we as a society permit it. That can be changed. We are allowed to simply say that if you cannot demonstrate competence to handle a vehicle of this size, you do not get to drive one, end of discussion. It's not like we haven't had multiple classes of drivers licenses since basically the inception of drivers' licenses for this exact reason: because handling a 55 foot LTL truck is harder than handling a Honda Civic.

This is a cultural issue as much as it is a political one. You can't just not take into account the long-term and well documented history of the auto industry and it's involvement here, any more than you can not take into account the documented history of the NRA/gun manufacturers with regard to our gun problem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/07/trucks-ou...

If you've got back, hip, knee, or ankle problems, then trying to bend down into a low car is an undignified exercise at best, a struggle at worst. A CUV doesn't have that problem, you just sit into it like a chair.

For a family with young children, securing child seats into a CUV involves a lot less bending over then in lower car. Bear in mind that many child seats are 40 lbs.

If you live in a snowy area, the greater ground clearance makes it less likely to get stuck in residential roads that are lower priority for snow removal. You also have better approach angles as well, which can become a concern if you live in an area that's very hilly with steep driveways.

You probably don't see advantages, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.

Isn't that the advantage? In a world where SUV's and trucks are more popular than sedans, sitting higher gives a sight advantage (and probably safety advantage in a side collision with one of those high cars). I drive a midsized sedan most of the time, but when I drive the RV (which has a higher seating position than many SUV's), I love the extra forward visibility, instead being at tailgate level, I can see through the back window of the truck/SUV in front of me.

What it sounds like is that crossovers don't offer advantages that appeal to you.

She couldn’t care any less about “ruggedness” or that “tough guy” image. Her only argument ever is “safety.”

I am not in it to change her mind. But whenever she brings this topic up and I show her the actual safety ratings for different vehicles, it’s almost as if her brain shuts down. She would say something along the lines “uh oh idk, maybe, who knows, it doesn’t feel as safe,” and the whole thing gets forgotten. Right until she decides to bring it up again from scratch at some point later, as if our previous conversations about it never happened.

Lowkey, I think it would be an interesting idea to mandate displaying brightly colored safety ratings for every car on display at a dealership. No need to overcomplicate it by showing the entire stat sheet with a bajillion different numbers. Just one giant number for the overall rating, and about 4-5 subcategory numbers (e.g., driver safety score, passenger safety score, etc.). I think 1-2 of those metrics should be “the safety sub-category on which our car scored the worst.”

My only worry about this is that the metrics themselves become the target goal, leading to either car manufacturers influencing safety rating boards or them maliciously complying by gaming the metrics just for those measured categories at the expense of everything else. Though the latter isn’t as much of a concern, given that it is pretty difficult to accomplish, and it would still have a large negative effect on the overall score.

_everybody_ drives huge SUVs. A few rugged men(TM) driving a large truck isn't the problem, they're couleur locale. It'd be adorable, like people wearing cowboy hats in Texas.

The web of interwoven incentive structures - reptile brains, cafe standards, cheap gas, safety arms race, ... - pushing _everybody_ towards larger vehicles is the problem. System and id are completely misaligned, killing thousands in the process.

With tiny dogs. Maybe they're the preferred vehicle of tiny dogs.

Such as being able to see over parked traffic when making a turn.

And I've found driving taller vehicles more comfortable for my back coincidentally.

Large SUVs meet CAFE regulations by being large enough to be regulated as a different class of vehicle. Want smaller trucks? Complain to your Congresscritter to reign in the EPA and force them to write better regulation that does not have these unintended effects.

The problem is that this argument is demonstrably not true. Trucks vastly outnumber blue collar workers, and most blue collar workers would be better served by a Volkswagen Transporter or a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. You're not seeing those in the US because they have an insane import tax.

The traditional target for pickup trucks, farmers, almost universally hate modern trucks because they are simply way too tall to be practical - they'd rather have a 1990 model than a 2024 one.

The vast majority of pickup trucks see zero offroad use, and practically never carry anything in their bed. They are essentially pavement princesses used to commute to an office job.

Aaaaaaaabsolutely not! Trucks outnumber cars in every U.S. state. "Blue Collar" workers represent something like 16% of the U.S. workforce. The vast majority of truck drivers are not blue collar workers.

Other countries have blue collar workers too. And trucks! Have you seen what they look like? Check this bad-boy out. This is peak performance when it comes to manly-man workin' trucks. [1]

[1] https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FA3BTR/a-small-blue-pickup-utilit...

So explain the difference between the twentieth century (and the first few years of the twentyfirst), when trucks were an exception and cars were the norm, and now. Are you saying there were almost no plumbers and construction workers around then, or that almost everyone is a plumber or construction worker now?

Edit: Yeah, it was the manufacturers.

Think less minivan and more Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. You load them more like a moving truck: giant doors in the rear, big empty space to put stuff in.

I also haven't met an American that has been to a high quality of life and walkable city in the EU and didn't come back with a changed perspective on what life could be like. Once you visit places like London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam and the like and stay there for a while you rethink the suburban life.

I'm in the burbs because having small kids in big US cities is super shitty and expensive but as soon as they get older the goal is to find a nice city to move to. Either here or in Europe.

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2023/12/05/with-litt...

[1] https://www.autoweek.com/news/a46013576/tesla-cybertruck-spe...

At least in theory. Unfortunately the cops here almost never wants to prosecute cars hitting kids or pedestrians. There's always an excuse. "The sun was in their eye", "kid didn't wear high vis (it was daytime)".

I don't see well-to-do businessmen jumping into the road all that often, but I do see deadbeat beggars do it every day.