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Comment by spdgg | Hacker News Reader

I find it funny that the safety standards are for the drivers, not everyone around them.

Small trucks = not safe

Massive modern trucks killing cyclists and pedestrians = very safe! (For the driver)

A small truck has just as much possibility to kill as a big truck, and in fact due to the smaller application of similar forces its more likely to seriously cripple you, even if said hit was non-fatal.

While I’m all for reducing the size of cars in USA, pretending that ”massive modern trucks” are the only ones that kill is just wrong.

> A small truck has just as much possibility to kill as a big truck, and in fact due to the smaller application of similar forces its more likely to seriously cripple you, even if said hit was non-fatal. > While I’m all for reducing the size of cars in USA, pretending that ”massive modern trucks” are the only ones that kill is just wrong.

The argument is that a larger truck is more likely to kill - instead of resulting in injuries that can be treated. There is evidence for this.

Yes, and it's not just mass, it's also hood height. https://ssti.us/2024/01/29/vehicle-hoods-are-now-four-inches...

There is also very obvious evidence that regardless of size you are overwhelmingly likely to die when hit by a vehicle and that in fact due to the application of force via the hood even in non-fatal crashes smaller vehicles have a higher chance to cripple you for life. I really shouldn’t be surprised that saying ‘getting hit by a car, regardless of size, is deadly’ on HN.

“Large SUVs and pickup trucks are, unsurprisingly, more likely than smaller cars to injure or kill pedestrians due to their greater weight and taller front ends.”

https://towardsdatascience.com/suvs-are-killing-people-de6ce....

You’ve simply got it backwards. More massive trucks with higher top speeds are more dangerous. An F-150 at 30mph is more dangerous than a Honda Fit at 30 mph.

I don’t believe I ever denied how dangerous large vehicles are? Although I see a lot of denial in the replies of the danger of smaller vehicles.

But what’s your point then? Yes, of course all vehicles are dangerous to some degree. But some are much more dangerous than others.

Smaller, lighter vehicles are less dangerous through simply the laws of physics.

Not sure how you can come to this conclusion. Seems obviously false by intuition, napkin math, and a cursory search.

The only way you can somehow NOT come to this conclusion is by denying that all vehicles, big or small, are dangerous and fooling yourself into thinking that there is some magical size where a multi-ton object going at 60MPH is somehow not a lethal force.

I mean it's just momentum = mass*velocity. Something with more mass inherently has more momentum, and will therefore be harder to stop in an emergency/hit harder when it crashes. That's obviously more dangerous no matter how you look at it. A penny going at 60 MPH at your head probably won't kill you but a truck will. A penny going 1000 MPH will probably kill you, but I wouldn't call a penny as dangerous as a truck even though they're both potentially lethal.

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