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Comment by brikym | Hacker News Reader

This clip shows how ridiculously large vehicles have become. Not only is the mass higher than ever but the front ends have become stupidly large which results in pedestrians being mowed down rather than rolling over the top. It's a symptom of american culture being highly individualistic and selfish. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6tMSEW_EBs

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I don't disagree about the individualism and selfishness, but US trucks are getting bigger in part because the CAFE standard incentivizes it.

It’s hardly stupid and it’s not in the spirit of HN to go on such diatribes. Cars today are vastly, vastly safer than even 30 years ago, never mind 80, and crumple zones are a huge part of that.

Safer for the passengers, but increasingly dangerous for pedestrians.

And other cars!

That's when you get an even bigger car, for safety!

That said, two cars hitting each other's large crumple zones is probably safer than a car hitting a bollard or something else unforgiving.

I agree about the tone, but that RAM 1500 doesn't have a lot of empty space under the hood because it is necessary for a crumple zone. It's the design of the frame rails and passenger safety cage that determines the crumple zone, the empty space has no effect on this. That empty space is there because of packaging requirements for various drivetrain options and because of styling.

Safer for who?

> It's a symptom of american culture being highly individualistic and selfish.

Your comment is a bit on the nose.

Not that vast (in the US).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/1994-_Mo...

Are we looking at the same chart? Other than the recent peak due to loons during COVID, it shows a reduction of almost 50% in per-incident deaths between 1990 and 2010.

Showing per capita deaths coming down from a car-boom peak of 27 in 1969 down to 11 by the 20-teens.

Vastly, vastly, safer.

That's not even getting into how things like energy absorbing bumpers have turned low speed collisions that might have results in injuries 50 or 60 years ago are now non-events. (probably no seat belts, certainly no shoulder belt, and the dash is full of chrome and zero padding)

> Are we looking at the same chart?

Clearly not: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/road-users/pedestr...

You understand that only the small blue bars represent pedestrian deaths, the figures are not per capita, and the US population grew by over a third in the covered time span, right?

And again, prior to the covid years the numbers show a DECREASE from 1990 up until 2019.

So, what was the point you were trying to make here exactly?

Typical HN anti-car sentiment without hard grounding in facts.

I just used your source. It's bizarre that they adjust the vehicle stats for population size but not the pedestrian ones.

Regardless, here's a different source, search for "Pedestrian deaths per 100,000 people by age, 1975-2021": https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...

The 2021 death rate is 2.2, that's the same as what it was in 1993. Looks like it's only gotten worse since then too: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians24

The point remains the same, vulnerable road user deaths are the more important statistic and it's not looking good whatsoever.

Cars got safer thanks to design differences unrelated to size.

The Car Obesity Crisis in USA is related at least partially to tricking NHTSA regulations related to mileage (IIRC), which take into account platform size of the car, which in turn drives other design concerns.

Basically the law assumes that a vehicle that's heavy enough MUST be something people use for business purposes - nobody would daily drive a 6000 pound vehicle every day. And those cars get special treatment tax-wise and relaxed emission standards. They are for work after all.

Car manufacturers had a lightbulb moment and started making regular cars FUCKING HUGE, thus slipping into the magical weight bracket.

So I make a comment about how selfish the culture has become because a bigger vehicle is less safe for people _outside_ that car... And your retort is to tell us about how safe the big vehicles are for people _inside_ the car. The irony is your selfishness is exactly what I'm referring to. Thanks for the laugh you're not the brightest.

Yes totally dumb to optimize for where 90% of the people are. I’m the one that’s dumb and selfish…

99.99999*% of people are not in _your_ vehicle.

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