I wonder if there will be a reversal in pedestrian deaths with the rise in larger cars. I live in a large UK city and it is mad the number of SUVs you see driving around.
More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.
[1] It's not really a cabover, the engine is in the rear. but the front seats are slightly in front of the front axle, and the windshield is at the front of the vehicle. Some contemporaries were really cab-over, like the Toyota Van (aka TownAce) although that has a sloped front which reduces drag and visibility.
The IIHS didn’t even start side impact ratings until 2003, which is a lot more recent than I would have ever guessed.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
Not to mention how much bigger the blind spot is now:
Like every other safety regulation, it's a stupid game of stupid optimization. You "score best" by keeping the dummy's head off the windshield so you make a big giant flop/crunch zone full of engineered plastics and empty void spaces that is (ideally) at least as tall as the dummy's center of mass (belly button). This is why every car, suv, crossover, whatever that's expected to be sold in europe (including most of the small SUVs and crossovers that people complain about in North America) has a tall(er than it would have been 20yr ago) hood line these days.
I don’t think people are buying these because they’re safer for pedestrians, they’re buying them because they like the way they look, and/or because they (the drivers) feel safer when they’re in a huge box sitting high up, looming over the surrounding cars.
All together it results in all cars kind of looking the same. Shame in a way because my favourite looking car of all time is the Golf Mk2, very angular and boxy but it wouldn't have been made now.
I think in an alternative universe where none of that happened we likely would have invested the R&D elsewhere and found creative ways to get the same results (you can see inklings of this like the airbag style hood lift thing) with much lower more aerodynamics and visibility friendly hood lines.
But that's just my opinion from being on the fringes of the industry.
Meanwhile, there's a group (mostly in Britain) that sometimes lets the air out of the tyres of inappropriate vehicles [1] and sometimes drills holes in them [2].
From [3], "My mother is in palliative care and I came to the car to go to her, but because of your vicious act, I am stuck trying to reinflate my tyres!" — I have no sympathy whatsoever. She bought the 'car', she can call a taxi if the journey is urgent.
[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/who-are-the-tyre-extinguishe... / https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/29/tyre-ext...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/07/activist...
One small bit of good news is the Netherlands FINALLY closed the tax exception for these things. Until this year you’d pay no import tax if it was for “business” (NL has a huge number of self employed people who just lie about what the truck is for). It made a dodge ram ridiculously cheap. Notice they all have V plates signifying a business vehicle.
Fuck me
Big cars make drivers feel safer. But the stats are quite clear, they kill more pedestrians, and, ironically, are more likely to kill their drivers due their roll over risk.
The safety features might help, but they’re just compensating for all the additional risk bigger vehicles bring. You simply can’t beat physics.
The question of IF a collision occurs, will the larger car do more damage, obviously it will. Well maybe not obviously, if the sensors are throwing on my breaks earlier than I can react there can be substantially less energy on that front too.
But in terms of frequency I feel like they have taken extreme measures to substantially reduce the risk of the collision occurring in the first place.
Regardless, all of these “extreme measures” could be applied to a smaller car (or even just one with a smaller wall at the front) for the best of both worlds. And collisions will happen regardless, sensors and cameras are not a magic solution.
>A camera is no substitute for actual visibility
I dont even know what point you are trying to make here. Seeing things a different way is not seeing things? Make it make sense.
What society considers acceptable changes over time. Just because it was socially acceptable, doesn’t mean we continue to accept it forever. Don’t forget slavery, the idea of women as chattel, kings as having a god given right to rule etc etc were all “socially accepted” once upon a time. I doubt you would advocate for a return to medieval times on the basis that it was “socially accepted”.
> it has further been reduced as far as practicable.
This is obviously untrue. Car safety for drivers and pedestrians has continued to improve year-over-year (except in the U.S., where pedestrian safety has got worse). There’s no reason to believe the trend toward increased safety is suddenly going to halt now.
> I dont even know what point you are trying to make here. Seeing things a different way is not seeing things? Make it make sense.
Obviously, last I checked I spent my time looking out of the windscreen of my car when driving, not staring at a screen in the centre console. Being able to see everything by looking an out of a single window is always going to be better than having to swap between looking out the window, and looking down at a screen.
Obviously, in an UK town pedestrians and cars should never come in contact, there are pavements, pedestrian crossings, etc.