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Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

On the other hand, newer cars have gotten more dangerous for pedestrians. Safety is indeed a luxury.

Are we sure about this? In the US the pedestrian death rate from cars in 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020 was 3.6, 2.6, 1.7, 1.4, and 2.0 per 100k.

Some cursory research turns up some interesting characteristics of the increase from 2010 to 2020.

• It was almost entirely in urban areas.

• Over 2/3 was on non-freeway arterials. Only about 1.4% was at intersections. (The percent of pedestrian deaths at intersections is around 16%)

• 90% was in darkness.

• It was adults. The rates for children continued to go down. For the years given above they were 2.7, 1.6, 0.8, 0.4, and 0.3 per 100k.

Cars did get heavier from 2010 to 2020 by about 4%. That would mean 4% more momentum at a given speed and 8% more kinetic energy but when dealing with getting hit by things that weigh a lot more than you do velocity is more important than momentum or kinetic energy [1], so I doubt that this was a significant factor.

Cars with shapes that are less safe did get more common, so that could be a part of it, but from where and when most of the increases were it seems there is a good chance that it is not so much that cars themselves but the behavior of drivers (and to a lesser extent) pedestrians that is mostly responsible.

Distracted driving due to phones, speeding, and reckless driving are all way up.

[1] Would you rather be hit by a Fiat 500x at 60 km/hr or the largest freight train ever constructed at 0.2 km/hr (since we usually don't talk about speeds that low to help visualize it at that speed it takes 18 seconds to go 1 meter)? The train would have 500 times the Fiat's momentum and 1.7 times the kinetic energy, but I'll definitely choose to be hit by the train. I'd even pick the train at 1 km/hr, where it has 2500 times the momentum and 42 times the kinetic energy. (Going the other way, a typical 9 mm bullet has 1/1500000th the momentum of that 0.2 km/hr train, and 1/87th the kinetic energy, but I'll the the train over the bullet).

In the late 1970s children younger than 15 represented 18% of all pedestrian fatality victims. By 2021 they represented just 2.4% of all pedestrian fatalities (NCSA, 2023c; Schneider, 2020). These decreases correspond with declining rates of walking by children as measured by national surveys of household travel (Buehler et al., 2020; Kontou et al., 2020).

https://www.nhtsa.gov/book/countermeasures-that-work/pedestr...

You need to factor in advancements in emergency medicine since 1980.

Roaming in my huge SUV in Sardinia, being lethal danger to pedestrians:

https://www.corriere.it/cronache/25_luglio_11/vivian-spohr-a...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/lufthansa-ceo-wife-...

How? My car breaks automatically whenever there’s an obstacle behind it or in front of it.

> My car breaks automatically whenever there’s an obstacle behind it or in front of it.

I'm imagining the wheels pop off instantly and smoke comes out of the engine if anything gets near it.

It’s called forward collision avoidance assist (a safety feature).

There’s another safety feature for reversing which stops your car in its place when there’s a car passing behind you, for example as you’re exiting a driveway.

Coupled with pre-collision throttle management, it provides exactly the experience I am describing—the car comes to a stop.

Granted, I don’t speed, so maybe that’s why it’s easier for these features to manage the car in these cases.

https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/what-is-forward...

And yet, observational data suggests that driving a huge car makes it harder for you to get injured an easier for everyone else. For example:

"First off, the vitriol against large vehicles is misplaced. The larger the vehicle, the safer for its occupants".

https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?si=mNyPrDr1hUGF_AGy&t=56

"American roads are deadliest than ever for pedestrians, cyclists, and, most of all, motorcyclists".

https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?si=BGaDhmefTKCr8cAL&t=96

You’re right, more pedestrian deaths are occurring year over year, but I think that’s more due to lack of safety features.

The number of car sales seems to be going down, but pedestrian deaths are increasing. Seems to imply more cars are not the issue, but less safe cars are the issue.

https://www.consumershield.com/articles/how-many-cars-us

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TOTALSA

It also ignores Newtons laws?

Pedestrians walking around staring at their phones have made the streets less safe for pedestrians, as have drivers staring at their phones.

IMO that phenomenon completely confounds any attempt at assessing real-world vehicle-pedestrian safety against older statistics.

Such a deference of responsibility. The world and the community should absolutely prioritize pedestrians. The driver operating a 5000 lb dangerous weapon should 100% be the responsible for the consequences.

If I walk into someone's kitchen, stick my hand in a blender, and turn it on, should the owner be responsible?

Fault obviously can obviously go both ways. A large portion of pedestrians are drunk, jaywalking on highways and freeways.

What's even more dangerous for pedestrian is SUV driver staring at their phone.

Exactly. It also doesn't help that cars are harder to see out of these days.

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