The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs
nytimes.com
Unlocked: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv...
Related: ttps://www.thedrive.com/news/75-more-pedestrians-have-been-killed-since-2009-giant-trucks-and-suvs-are-why
nytimes.com
Related: ttps://www.thedrive.com/news/75-more-pedestrians-have-been-killed-since-2009-giant-trucks-and-suvs-are-why
The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders.
Meanwhile, everyone knows that these giant trucks and SUVs are killing people, but we do basically nothing. Even on the off chance that we passed a law about them, existing vehicles would certainly be grandfathered in, we would never outright ban current vehicles/motorists. If we banned existing SUVs and trucks, millions of people would be screaming bloody murder about their right to drive pedestrian-killing cars.
So to answer the question, they would act in insubordination, and anything harsh enough to stop the insubordination won't be practically implemented.
I'd ask to see the data since TFA shows only a 7.5% increase due to size. The rest of the 75% increase is due to other factors.
Edit: why disagee, is my data wrong?
That's the same class of argument as telling people they shouldn't use Signal because criminals use Signal.
Driving a giant truck for no good reason entails a certain risk because of both the inevitability of human error (on the part of the driver but also others) and basic physics.
Furthermore, one might argue that the right to private communication is more important than the marginal improvement in life that you get from driving a big car for no particular reason.
Like consider a person who wants to drive a car filled with TNT. By its very nature this is a danger to others regardless of the intent of the driver or other drivers. Society might be argued to have an interest in regulating such behavior. I think there is a good case to be made that unnecessarily large vehicles differ in degree only from the TNT case, but differ categorically from using signal.
I'm not making the case that the differences justify banning big cars, but there are differences between the two situations.
Oh my sweet summer child...
At the absolute most they might get shut down for a shift or two.
I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell.
Same thing happens on NextDoor, a few kids hanging out and joking around makes people think there's a gang problem, I've seen it happen in my own neighborhood and it's ridiculous.
It is true that violent death and maiming from SUVs and large trucks is a crisis, that society generally ignores. When I once called these hoods "gender affirming" a reply chastised me for being inflammatory and claiming that stating the plain obvious would get in the way of convincing others, but I think it's exactly the opposite: unless we start talking about the truth of these things nothing will happen.
Yes, people freak out when they see a kid on an e-bike on a crowded freeway.
There are also plenty of unreasonable people who freak out when they see that on a not-freeway
In western states with a lot of rural places only serviced by interstate they sometimes never passed blanket prohibition against non-motorized traffic on the interstate property.
I'd bet I-5 in Seattle is bicycles prohibited, but there's no blanket prohibition of bicycles on freeways. Like you said, there's a lot of parts of Washington where the freeway is the only reasonable road, so you can't prohibit bicycles or pedestrians.
Bikes that have motors and don't fit the e-bike tiers are motorcycles ... and could potentially be legal to operate on a bicycle prohibited freeway, but they'd need to be registered and it looks like these don't have plates, and the operator would need a DOT motorcycle helmet which was not present, and I'd bet these are also missing out on the lights and stuff you need too.
The big problem is just Seattle being incredibly underpoliced and really no laws under homicide are really enforced or punished.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how...
Maybe Seattle is the problem ;)
There's constant vitriol about bike lanes, as if it's some huge sacrifice for drivers. And of course heaven forbid you roll a stop sign on a bike. Never mind that drivers do this constantly and are a far greater threat.
A lot of people fear anything that's not what they're used to, and they'll come up with any reason they can find to justify that fear.
Perhaps we can let the few bad apples killing lots of people with their massive hood height lead to better regulation of such hood heights?
We have literal deaths on one hand, and on the other, fears that are already heavily covered by regulation. I don't know Washington, but the laws around the speed regulators, etc., for e-bikes are extensive. People still demand "laws" because they overreact and get fearful.
I just wish people would be more fearful of killing others with their cars. It's the biggest cause of death of children, yet there's no action. Yet here we are, discussing ebikes rather than the real causes of child deaths.
But California's clear tiers of ebike regulations are meaningless without enforcement. Over the past half decade blue states have become unwilling to enforce almost any laws. when they do enforce the laws it is sporadically. This matters for ebikes, it matters more for cars. Running a stop sign is absolutely not enforced any more.
The solution the state came up with was regulating the living hell out of ebikes.
It doesn't matter what tiers there are when parents are negligently providing their kids with these kinds of "toys". I don't know if they are totally ignorant and think "it's just a bicycle" or if they know exactly what it can do and just can't see that their kid isn't ready for the responsibility.
The people buying the hackable e-bikes aren't walking down to their neighborhood e-bike store and paying full retail.
It's an internet phenomenon. They're ordering them online. There are subreddits where you can go and figure out which ones to buy that can be easily hacked or modified.
There are companies addressing this demand by making bikes that are technically capped to a specific tier of performance when sold, but any kid with the internet can find the instructions to "unlock" it to remove all of the limits and use the full power of the bike, not have to pedal, and so on.
The city's treatment of traffic danger is comically bad, but these "e-bikes" aren't kids gallivanting around, they are traffic danger - usually by way of gig workers without insurance ignoring all traffic laws because they're riding "e-bikes" (with the speed limiter pulled out).
I was hopeful when I saw the new law that it'll be used as a tool to take action on actual problem usage without punishing those using them safely. Unfortunately I'm aware of the history of laws like this, so I'm worried it'll just be used against lower income / privilege folks. We'll see.
It's kind of a hilarious yardstick for societal decline if you think about it.
70yr ago the boomers were drunk crashing sports cars so frequently that laws got passed.
Now late teenagers can barely afford an e-bike and mostly aren't causing problem, but laws still get passed, by the literal same cohort who were drunk crashing muscle cars back in the day.
On the other hand, kids have always been stupid. We've just given them new, more powerful ways to abuse that lack of awareness.
Automobiles for 16-year olds have been around for a very long time.
Anyways, it's quintessentially American to be talking about oversized landship SUVs and trucks killing people, only to have someone derail it into kvetching about kids and bicycles.
I see the appeal in trying to ride fast, but it gets kind of scary. When I rode a bike I went fast outside the city specifically to avoid pedestrians.
To be fair, most cars go too fast in residential areas. I drive like a grandma in them and there's a good chance that someone is up my ass and annoyed that I'm not exceeding the speed limit.
Same with not going right on red when it's impossible to see if anybody is coming without pulling way past the crosswalk.
Sometimes the car behind me honks to show their support.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/1-person-killed-tesla-a...
I thought it was all fun at first, but they've since invaded the bike paths and parks near my house. It seems like more common they become, the more emboldened the riders are to drive 40mph down the bike path and weave around people.
It's so bad now that I have to be on high alert on the mixed-use path to grab my kids and pull them in when I hear the unmistakable sound of a Sur-Ron coming at us from behind at high speed. Usually a group of several kids.
They've also taken to riding through the parks and fields we go to, treating the little hills as jumps. The grass is getting destroyed. Parks have to put up temporary fences and gates to keep the electric motorcycles from destroying the fields.
It's not just kids, either. I've had several close calls this year while I'm riding my (pedal) bike and middle-aged people riding modified e-bikes (not pedaling, just zooming along at high speed) have zoomed around corners and almost hit me. They jump from the road to the sidewalk to the bike path as convenient and everyone else has to avoid them.
It's bad. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it's not a problem. I spend a lot of time outside with my kids and the problem is getting worse by the year.
I was driving on a WA highway going ~47 mph (I made note of it for reasons soon to be clear!) when a group of 3 tweens on ebikes, none wearing helmets, passed me up in the bike lane going at least 10mph faster, and I watched them run through a red light up ahead. They got lucky.
I don't have a problem with kids being kids but this is over the top dangerous. To be clear, it's a few small groups of kids. There have been crashes, and they sent a Bellevue woman to the hospital in a hit and run, but as far as I know there's been no fatalities yet.
We don't need to drop the hammer on kids. We just need some common sense.
Previously, there had been a lot of complaints about intentional antisocial riding on pavements etc. Close passes as a form of harassment. If that's tolerated, it's a matter of time before someone gets hit.
As an extra punchline, while the injured woman was surrounded by police and medics, two other idiots on Voi rental bikes ran through the cordon and got arrested.
Easy for you to say this if you're from Happysville, CA, USA, but if you're near Oakland or SF you know these kids DO form "gang"-like groups and block traffic, the bridge, swerve through traffic.
It's chill if the kids near you are respectful but the reason Gen Z as a whole ride these bikes is because they actively want to ride fast like motorcycles without license or registration.
It seems orthogonal to SUVs.
There are multiple things going on in these situations, and rarely is it just one thing a quick simple ban on ___ will actually fix
When I was in elementary school, we were already taught that we ride a bicycle in the street and follow traffic rules. That included things like traveling in the correct lane for the direction we are going and observing stop signs and traffic lights. Also, as we got older, using things like turn lanes just like a motorcycle should do.
We were also taught tp walk it on the sidewalk/crosswalks as a pedestrian when the conditions were too complex for us to safely ride with traffic.
Even ignoring the peril to actual pedestrians, I have seen so many near-accidents in more recent decades from people violating these rules. Riding on sidewalks and/or against traffic flow (wrong side of the road) so that they "come out of nowhere" into traffic, ignoring traffic control lights, etc. Adding the electric speed boosts has just made these reckless things wildly more dangerous.
More money flows atop highway and road infrastructure than on biking, rail, and scooter infrastructure. By orders of magnitude.
Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways.
Biking infrastructure is actually deleterious as it doesn't serve the pregnant, elderly, sick, frail, doesn't work well for rain/snow/high heat/weather, doesn't transport high volumes of goods, etc. etc.
Lots of cities are tearing up road infra to cater to this, and in doing so, they're reducing the economic corridor capacity and throughput of roads. Roads are simply much more valuable and flexible for logistics, people, and business.
The value of roads is going to become even more apparent when we have widespread autonomous vehicles.
Bikes are popular for 20-40-something men, mostly yuppie, mostly upper middle class. But they're not doing the economic heavy lifting.
Ok, and what fraction of investment has it gotten?
We've underfunded rail/bike infrastructure for decades, of course money is going to flow on the cheapest route. Roads are cheap because we've subsidized the shit out of them.
There's a meme that bikes will solve everything and that cars suck, but it's dismissive of the orders of magnitude more value that road infra can and will always provide.
You're ripping up infrastructure for yuppie pickleball.
How do you transmit tons of material on bikes? How do people move in the rain or when they're on their period? How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?
Every lane taken away is centuries of economic activity destroyed.
How do you transmit tons of materials with these crappy oversize pickup trucks? Their towing and payload capacity is pathetic.
Why does someone who is not literally a builder or joiner need to drive something as big as a full-size Ford Transit to take their child to school?
But yeah, you got me. It's impossible to ride a bike in the rain, or on your period. Checkmate, I surrender.
In terms of economics, consider how terrible car parking can be. A bike rack can park 20+ people in the space of 1 car parking spot (1-4 people). Do you really think a business would be better off with 1/10th the number of customers who can actually enter their building at once?
Bikes and rail should exist as options, not requirements. And when done well, like in Amsterdam, people will like using them. And driving will be even better, because of so much less traffic.
I mean Historically when I did that sort of thing I'd have a change of clothes if necessary, but otherwise I never really minded riding in the rain. Or light snow.
> or when they're on their period?
I'm sorry, what? (I actually do have anecdata based answers for this but I don't want to risk offending your sensibilities.)
> How do you transmit tons of material on bikes? > How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?
Cool! There's more room on the road for that to happen.
But in general you're implying a dichotomy where none exists.
On the medical front, that's quite a strawman. I doubt you'll find much of anyone opposed to using cars for medical and emergency services.
Bikes do a lot of package and food delivery here, but fewer people commuting by car would make it easier for ambulances to get where they need to.
I see these go past my office fairly often. A Facebook photo (I won't link) shows there's at least 8 of them.
https://www.dreamstime.com/official-blood-test-transporting-...
And one from a private analysis company. It's obviously a fake photo, as we all know it's impossible to ride a bike when there's snow.
https://dbio.dk/nyheder/nytaenkning-cykelbud-med-friske-blod...
Widespread car usage has caused an enormous amount of harm. It has destroyed American cities, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands more with sedentary lifestyle diseases, and burned a truly enormous amount of fossil fuels into CO2, and locked in the infrastructure to continue to do so for decades. It's an absolutely enormous tragedy.
Cars are also useful and have helped a lot of things, but they should not be the default choice of transportation.
I'd love to see a real grassroots effort to tax (toll?) based on GVWR or vehicle length. It would be met with tremendous opposition by special interests, but I could see it succeeding in the right environment. Maybe it could be framed as a rebate for small vehicles, rather than a tax on large ones.
It also should be pointed out that in many cases, both large vehicles and guns save lives.
There is absolutely no denying that larger vehicles are safer in an accident. Anything to the contrary that you have read is propaganda.
In the case of guns, defensive gun uses have actually stopped a tremendous number of crimes. Those statistics were altered by the FBI to make gun ownership less appealing. Note that many of those uses did not involve firing the firearm.
Please educate yourself before you spread more propaganda.
This has been a public service announcement.
However, to help you understand this complex issue more broadly (since you're already here), let me present an analogy. A framing saw is a dangerous tool. It has legitimate uses (e.g. cutting lumber) that may outweigh the risks of having it in your garage, but, critically, that ceases to be true if you don't make an effort to mitigate the risks. If your 5 year old kid gets into the garage and manages to cut his foot off with your framing saw because you left the door unlocked with the saw plugged in, you have fucked up bigtime. That's a risk you could have mitigated, and would have mitigated if you weren't a negligent fuckup, but you are, now your kid has a lifelong disability.
And in this situation, maybe you would say nuh uh, the saw didn't cause the injury, and I'd reply that if you want to frame it that way then no, the saw didn't cause the injury. You caused the injury by failing to recognize and effectively respond to the risk the saw presented.
Similarly, trucks and guns are tools. They obviously have certain legitimate applications whose utility outweighs the risks they pose to bystanders with appropriate mitigations in place. But if society makes no effort to mitigate even the basic obvious risks, innocent bystanders end up being needlessly harmed as a result, via the frivolity, negligence, and sometimes downright malice of others.
This is the situation with trucks and guns in America. We demonstrate no will or capacity to place reasonable restrictions on their availability to and usage by people who really have no legitimate need for them, nor the skill and temperament to use them safely, and as a result people are needlessly hurt and killed by them every day. Some people think this is fine, I guess, but I don't.
I did read the entire article. One point you may have missed is the same increase in frontal height happened in other countries, but didn’t result in the same increases in pedestrian fatalities. It’s likely that other factors are in play in the USA.
Various tools represent varying levels of risk to bystanders. Every auto or truck is a potentially lethal weapon.
Guns and large vehicles are similar in that both increase the safety of the owner. There’s no downside as long as the owner is responsible. One flaw in the NYT analysis was around the “A column” blind spot. No competent driver will look for pedestrians without moving his head enough to eliminate that blind spot.
There is no denying that large vehicles are safer for their occupants, the statistics are clear. Regardless of whether large trucks and SUVs are in play, the major offenders will remain…those being delivery trucks, busses, and semis.
On a final note, everyone in the USA has the legal right to own firearms for self defense, as it should be. Many in Europe are wishing for the same thing about now…
I am not sure where you are getting this in the article, but yes, obviously other factors are in play. Transit engineering, driving culture, and other demographic factors affect the likelihood of a pedestrian collision happening in the first place, as well as vehicle design factors. But once the collision occurs, vehicle speed and vehicle design are the primary factors determining the outcome for the pedestrian. Competent regulators will attack the problem from all sides, and improving vehicle design standards (or at the very least not incentivizing larger vehicles) is low hanging fruit.
> Guns and large vehicles are similar in that both increase the safety of the owner. There’s no downside as long as the owner is responsible.
You could say this about literally anything. I would have no problem with personal nuclear weapons for self defense as long as the owner(s) were responsible.
In practice, we know that the owners of guns and large vehicles have (to a first approximation) the same capacity for irresponsibility as anyone else.
> One flaw in the NYT analysis was around the “A column” blind spot. No competent driver will look for pedestrians without moving his head enough to eliminate that blind spot.
Makes me think you've never tried to negotiate e.g. a busy unsignaled four way stop with protected cycle tracks on three of the four incoming roads, and no raised sidewalks, at night and/or in the rain.
When a driver's attention is split 5+ ways, there is only so much they can do. As above, intersection design takes a lot of the blame in these situations, but making blind spots smaller will always improve safety. As somebody who has been walking, riding, and driving in a mid sized American city for 20+ years, the most frequent type of near-death experience I've had has been crossing the street with the signal and almost getting hit by left-turning cars who didn't see me, in precisely the same kind of situation highlighted in the article.
> There is no denying that large vehicles are safer for their occupants, the statistics are clear.
Nobody is debating this, because it's totally irrelevant here except insofar as it's insane for us to encourage people to insulate themselves from the consequences of collisions while reciprocally increasing the risk for others involved.
I seriously don't understand the mindset that focuses on the safety of occupants of the largest vehicles involved in a collision, especially when the context is pedestrian safety. It's even more frustrating that our regulators seem to have adopted the same mindset.
edit: And the current mix of vehicles we have on the road distorts the safety statistics even more. Is it really surprising that when a Yukon XL collides with a Corolla, the people in the Yukon walk away while the Corolla's occupants get closed casket funerals? Since the protection larger vehicles afford their occupants is dependent on their size and weight, it's not independent of the outcomes for others involved in a collision.
I do think it would make more sense to simplify (and future-proof) the law to just say, "If it can go >30mph on level ground and has a motor, it's a motorcycle." But similar to code, it's easier to add legislation than it is to modify existing rules.
1. https://apps.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=6110&Year=202... text: https://lawfilesext.leg.wa.gov/biennium/2025-26/Pdf/Bills/Se...
You could make it more analogous by saying that we could enforce stricter regulations on big SUVs and trucks in terms of, say, driver licensing, and you'd still have a huge outcry if we tried that.
The EU cuts you off at like 8,000 lbs.
The US averages 14.9/100k traffic fatalities, Europe 6.7 [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
+ Canada’s rates are better on a per km basis (even beating the Dutch).
Annual/biannual safety inspections are only required in 3 of 10 provinces and those 3 are on the smaller side (PEI, NS and NB).
Motor vehicle infraction enforcement is… an afterthought for Canadian police (they don’t think/care that their salary/town depends on it). But admittedly, even lighter than I’ve experienced in Europe.
It’s gotta be some other factor behind excess US road fatalities.
sadly, that's very often the passing lane
Heck even some of the non highway roads.
Cause I'm in MI, where we have Michigan lefts, and somewhere between surges of out-of-state transplants and COVID everyone has lost the plot on...
But overall around here, we have lots of 3/4 lane highways.
From left to right on a 4 lane...
Left lane is prettymuch always fastest traffic, with a occasional trucker stupidity around failing to not use the leftmost lane unless part of the actual route.
Next lane on a 4 lane is more faster traffic, possibly more trucker stupidity because typically they are supposed to be in the right two lanes unless there is a split incoming where they have to go left.
Next lane on a 4 lane is all of the wimpy trucks and the freight drivers following state law (i.e. we often have a higher speed limit for 'not-truck' than 'truck')
Last lane, is entering/exiting traffic; may go faster than prior lane at times but is more likely to have slowdowns from people who had at least a quarter mile to see what traffic was and attempt to match speed...
On a 3 lane, it's similar, except trucks in general will stay in the middle or right, but usually the middle.
---
Where it gets ugly though, is that my state is Michigan, so we have 'Michigan Lefts'.
i.e. on many roads, to do a left turn you take an intentional turn-around through a median, then take a right back at the intersection.
This normally works but sometimes it means for such roads that the left lane is not in fact the fastest lane overall.
I think also the lower number of lanes on routes like the 401 help, usually[0].
Even though it's been a while, every drive in Canada just felt more leisurely. Speed limits in general are lower, there's more stop signs where they should be.
[0] - Except when a whiskey truck tips over and it's now a 2 hour delay to the next exit...
Of course, a lot of people flip that switch because 20mph can feel pretty slow.
OTOH people in 80's complained about kids on BMX bikes terrorizing the neighborhood, and those things were slow.
(Also, I love the Half-Life reference in your username btw. ;) )
That seems crazy high to me, but then again, I’m hard-pressed to choose exactly the right lower value that would “perfect”.
I’m not arguing, but more pointing out that what you want will never happen.
There are electric riding devices that are bicycle-shaped that go up to 45 mph (72 km/h) that are being sold as "e-bikes".
It's why it's hard to talk about e-bikes and regulation surrounding them because you can say "e-bike" and people think you're talking about entirely different things.
For example, in Oregon, for something to be an e-bike, it must be only pedal-assist and only up to 250 watts, which really will only take you to about 15-20 mph. If it has a throttle button so it doesn't require pedaling, then it's classified as an e-motorcycle, regardless of power rating, and so is licensed and registered like a motorcycle.
But enforcement is weak, and parents often don't know, so they'll buy their kids what is legally an e-motorcycle and they'll rip through neighborhoods at 45 mph, not even aware that their kids even riding one at all is illegal.
There is what some people say is a gray zone (I don't actually think it's that gray) where a device is too fast or powerful to be a legal e-bike, but also doesn't meet the requirements to be a road legal motorcycle. Will Progressive give me motorcycle insurance on my DIY e-bike without a VIN? Will the DVM register it? I don't think so. In most states there is no path to legality, at least as far as operating the thing on public streets goes.
I don't think that's necessarily a problem that needs solved. I'm fine telling the person that bought a Sur-Ron, "too bad, off road only".
Not true. It's common to convert dirt bikes into street legal vehicles with conversion kits that add the required pieces. Depending on the state, that means turn signals, a mirror, headlight, and tail light.
I think it's completely reasonable if we tell people that their Sur-Ron is for private property use only until they add the same equipment we require every other street legal vehicle to have. I also think it's reasonable if we tell them their electric motorcycle doesn't belong on the bike path.
If only that were actually the law. My roads are 100% private with absolutely zero tax payer funding yet the dumbass registration laws and requirement to display a plate even apply on my private road (only exempt if the owner white-lists traffic, which cannot be done under my easement rules which at best would only might allow me to black-list abusers). In fact pretty much all the roads in my town are completely privately funded and privately owned yet you still need registration/plate along with the legal mumbo jumbo to obtain it.
Pretty soon you realize the laws have nothing to do with the fiction of the laws being there to protect the public roads or public land or taxpayer funding or some such, it's a sham pretense that falls apart upon inspection of how they work.
It sounds like your roads are accessible by the public though, which means unregulated public traffic, which means all of the tools necessary to ensure a basic level of safety and accountability need to be followed. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, does it not to you?
Like, you still have to follow building codes, pay property taxes, and not murder people on your private property and that doesn't seem outrageous.
Anywhere an ORV can be legally used. That's not just private property.
This happens all the time. Even trailers need a VIN. If you build a trailer and get it registered, they will assign a VIN for it.
So, the only real alternative is a dual sport, which is louder, heavier, faster, and has more emissions. The latest (only?) loophole is to find a plated, clapped out Honda or Yamaha dirt bike and do an electric conversion.
The Shifter cycling channel recently polled viewers and came out with a pretty good classification system:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Z35F2R7FeE&t=17m20s
"E-bike" is pedal assist only/mostly with max speed of 30kph/20mph (only while pedalling) and throttle cuts out at low speeds (7kph: basically just there to get some inertial); treated as just another bicycle (perhaps limit age to ≥14 yo). Everything else is an "e-moto" with the same rules as mopeds and motorcycles.
Of course enforcement is key: importing, selling, on the road.
Also worth noting that in some places in the EU a automobile Category B also gives you Category AM allowances:
> In some countries, holders of a B driver licence are also entitled (sometimes with special conditions) to ride motorcycles <= 125 cubic centimetres (7.6 cu in) and power <= 11 kilowatts (15 hp) and ratio power/weight <= 0.1 kilowatts per kilogram (0.061 hp/lb)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence#Since...
I'm going to respond to this pragmatically.
Realistically, the current Class 1/2/3 system more or less works.
Class 1 is pedal only, max 20MPH (but lots of bikes are sold as class 1 with lower limits, I think the one I got for my chosen sister is 10, maybe 15 tops.).
Class 2 is Pedal+Throttle, max 20MPH. Again, sometimes the manufacturers will have a lower cap (Wife's e-bike has a throttle cap between 12-15.)
But 7KPH is too little, at least for the US if you want to get more than low rate adoption of E-bikes as a mode of transportation [0]. At bare minimum you need something where the person can maintain balance and it's faster than a brisk walk.
Class 3 is, well I thought it was Pedal-only 28MPH but I think there's some conflicting data and hand-waving. i.e. some claim that Class 3 is 'throttle up to 20MPH, pedal assist up to 28MPH' but last I was aware a Class 3 shouldn't have a throttle.
But again, the confounding factor [0] means that some compromises may have to be made.
The worst part about all of this, is everything was more or less OK, until these e-motos and overpowered e-bikes went on the market, and parents bought them for kids without any thought of risk/etc or even paying attention to the 'offroad use only' disclaimers. I also put it that way because (sadly) if it was just adults getting splattered it would probably just get treated like any other motorcycle/cycling accident as far as actual action.
[0] - As a confounding factor, I'll give the example that in my state, an electric scooter qualifies as an 'electric skateboard' and thus so long as it has a throttle cap of under 25MPH, sure, go nuts unless there's a restriction via muni (e.x. some munis may ban use on roads with a speed limit over X mph) or DOT (e.x. public highway restrictions.)
The 7kph is a throttle-based boost for pedal-assist to help you get going: think of something like a Urban Arrow where overcoming the stopped inertia may be difficult for a petite person:
* https://www.urbanarrow.com/family-bikes/familynext
Once you're moving it's not hard, and the 'regular' pedal assist keeps you moving, but starting from zero is a challenge. That 7kph limit would be sufficient to start, after which the throttle (boost) gets deactivated and you're using the 'traditional' pedal assist that is 30kph/20mph max.
I.e. "I have a mild disability and it would be nice to at least be able to limp home while just having to worry about balance and steering".
Personally? I don't need it, I can pedal fast or pedal long...
But I know people that have achieved much better mobility thanks to the ability to be able to travel a bit easier in my part of the states.
But restating, I'm talking about the bigger picture for adoption. Instead of forcing the pedaling, just wait for people to use it to enhance mobility and when someone inevitably forgets to check the charge level and start putting in some effort they realize... "Hey, that wasn't so bad".
When we think about alternative transportation in the US, we have to remember the starting point:
You are asking these people to give up air conditioning. You can't force them to make actual physical effort right away, they are worried that will make them get even more uncomfortable.
In the states, 10-15MPH throttle limited ebikes/tries/quads[1] would help a lot of people so long as the thing can stop reasonably well around here.
Heck, I'd wager, if someone could come up with a cheap-enough 'e-trike-ish' semi-suitable for grocery getting[2] in the more urban side of american suburbia, they could make a decent amount of sales quick enough given the current concerns around gas prices versus the oversized guzzlers so many people drive 1-2 miles to a grocery store and back with, and the traffic reduction that would result.
But it would Have to have that E-throttle at a decent speed option for the consumers that would make a difference from an environment/traffic standpoint to even dip their toes into.
I want to be clear; I've done proper to heavy commutes on everything between Chicago Schwinns and Tandems, sometimes carrying 30-50$ of 2007 era USD between rack bag and handlebars for grocery trips... I don't need to be won over.
I'm talking about winning over a critical mass. I'm talking about enough people adopting non-car transport that I can feel safe in my suburban shithole[3].
[0] - Again, at least personally, It is impossible for me to keep balanced on any bike I've owned under 5-6MPH... I do have inner ear balance issues however.
[1] - I dream of something along the lines of a Sun Recumbent side-by-side, mid-rear bumper seat with canopy and all... Maybe a little more upright-ish...
[2] - At minimum needs some sort of cooler mount, they can use ice packs etc. If tech gets cheaper you could say 'The delta-V of having a powered cooler is fine because it means we have more weight to balance and make fast stops safer'.
[3] - I am currently trapped between one of the most historically accident prone and one of the most historically deadly accident intersections in the state... Part of the whole 'had to unlock 28MPh assist' thing....
It turns out 12yo me could go 29mph on a mountain bike.
30 is too low IMO. Make it 35 or something. 25 is a joke.
I've gone >50mph on a bicycle, 40mph on level ground. Yes it's possible, but it requires significant effort and you can't accelerate as quickly as an e-bike. That's why I said, "and has a motor". Heck, a fast runner can endanger people on the sidewalk. When I'm running, I often slow down in crowded areas so that if someone does randomly veer into my path, I'll have time to avoid them.
If lots of people (who I assume are very fit) were riding bicycles dangerously, maybe the legislature would make some laws about that. But until it becomes a problem, there's really no need.
The current threshold is dumb. The whole premise is dumb. Ebikes don't need legislating beyond enforcing existing laws about cycling on sidewalks and the like.
>I've gone >50mph on a bicycle, 40mph on level ground. Yes it's possible, but it requires significant effort and you can't accelerate as quickly as an e-bike.
It's also pretty clear that the geometry of the vehicle was not really optimized for such speeds. I don't think anyone going 30+ (commuting, the spandex crowd who rides for fun is a different story) thinks it's ok to be doing that around pedestrians or anything else sketchy. Most of the problems seem to simply be correlation to accessibility of speed to problem demographics, teenagers and the like. You'll have that problem regardless of form factor. 70yr ago the boomers were drunk crashing muscle cars because those were accessible.
>If lots of people (who I assume are very fit) were riding bicycles dangerously, maybe the legislature would make some laws about that. But until it becomes a problem, there's really no need.
Depends wholly on other unrelated demographic factors IMO. What can these people do for the government vs what problems do you cause it is the primary driver of whether you get stomped or pandered to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/bicycling/comments/1tu6v9d/scooter_...
When you're pedaling at 30 mph, you're much more likely to be engaged, paying attention, and under ideal conditions. Folks who cruise at 30 at the press of a button, tend to actually do so consistently. Anyone who rides on a bike path anywhere today can obviously observe the differences in behavior.
The example of the standard you suggest could equally apply to large motor vehicles: you need special training above and beyond the status quo for vehicles that meet a certain standard. To your own point, motor vehicle laws were largely written based on outdated assumptions about the size of trucks and SUVs.
The problem with ebikes is any unlicensed driver can get one, and go 40mph on a sidewalk without any practical way to hold them accountable.
I live near one of the busiest biking + walking trails in the country, and the egregious disrespect and recklessness of ebike's and scooters is insane to me. Even on the parts of the trail that are split into two or three sections (walking, running, and biking sections) I see people going 20-30mph weaving in and out of walkers. What's crazy is it would be safer if they were operating gas motorcycles, because atleast you could hear them coming.
Large vehicles are killing people, even with sober drivers and nobody is being held responsible. This is well investigated at this point. Only recently are we finally getting some traction on the awareness front of how bad it is getting.
Being local to WA and spending a lot of time on bikes, the easiest thing we could do to improve the situation would be for law enforcement to aggressively enforce existing distracted driving laws. The number of drivers with their face buried in a phone during any kind of slow traffic is terrifying if one looks around.
There's safety and emissions loopholes that brought this on: https://www.wired.com/story/the-us-wants-to-close-the-suv-lo...
We also subsidize fossil fuels to some $900B/yr, not counting foreign wars for oil, climate damage, health impacts etc. Fuel should be MUCH more expensive, around $15/gal. If priced right, the market would weed out these giant vehicles for personal/entertainment use. https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/in-gasolinegate-the-true-...
"On the highway, I'd rather kill someone than be killed in a wreck."
They would not recognize that while that might work for a while, it wasn't going to lead anywhere good for our society. A generation of people thinking like that has filled our roads with vehicles that protect their occupants while making it more dangerous for everyone else.
Too much money is tied up to giant trucks and SUVs being the norm. These vehicles only came into widespread existence due to the infamous "SUV loophole" [1], accelerated by them being much more profitable for manufacturers as there was (and is) far less competition in the truck/SUV space from non-American manufacturers and, with that, less competitive pressure that tends to eat up margins.
[1] https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-loophole-that-made-cars-in...
This is not true. The law didn't ban anything. It just clarified what's classified as a bike with requirements like "must have pedals" and "you have to pedal it".
There wasn't a ban. Previously there was a gray area where people were taking full on e-motorcycles, which should have been on roads, and trying to ride them in spaces meant for pedal bicycles.
So if they can't be operated as an e-bike and they can't be registered as an e-motorcycle, they've been banned.
No, they're not allowed on public roadways or bike/pedestrian paths. Which I think is fair and good, because they're not designed for either space.
There are a lot of different types of vehicles that aren't allowed on the roads of bike paths, but people still use them recreationally on private property. You can find retrofit kits to add the necessary mirrors and turn signals to many dirt bikes if you want to ride on the road.
If someone wants to ride on a bike path, they should have something that meets the definition of a bike. We've stretched the definition to include reasonable e-assist bikes, but we're not stretching it further to include everything with 2 wheels and a motor.
If someone wants to ride on the roads, they need turn signals and a mirror.
We don't have to allow everyone to ride everything on every public shared space.
I agree that some of the more egregious big motor e-bikes should be banned, but whenever you shift the requirements like this you're going to be taking away somebody's only means of getting to work. There are people out there driving big motor e-bikes because they can't afford a car. Or because they can't get a license.
Unfortunate for them, but we can't be shaping the laws for everyone around a couple people who already bought a big-motor e-bike to ride on the bike path.
I'm not really persuaded by this argument either, as they can sell their big-motor e-bike and buy a lesser model, or trade someone straight across.
> Or because they can't get a license.
This just raises more questions. If they can't get a license, they shouldn't be driving on the road. That limits them to bike paths, where they shouldn't be driving high powered vehicles anyway. Again, not really persuaded.
As an outsider (from a fairly corrupt country), this reeks of corruption and that law favours rich.
The number of things I believe "everyone knows" has tended to zero over time.
it's one of those cases of stated preference vs observed preference:
for individuals big SUVs/Trucks feel good to drive, are fast enough & come with street cred. Notice I put the word "feel".
for cities/state governments - big SUVs/Trucks mean increased taxes since they consume more gas - thus increased revenues from gas taxes
for the automakers as the article stated - 90% of their profits come from big SUVs/Trucks that American automakers have stopped making sedans. Profits from big co's is a bragging point for the federal government too.
Now legislation would've to try for all those people to act against their own interests ? Unless some geopolitical event happens - that's unlikely.
Meanwhile, nobody bats an eye over the fact that motor vehicles are a leading cause of death in this country and the brunt is often borne by others.
I am constantly having to dodge these e-bikes in the streets, mostly driven by children/teenagers, who do not follow traffic laws (I'm in upstate NY). They don't even follow standard bicycle traffic laws. Driving in the city, I regularly have e-bikes coming at me against traffic in my lane. I would be absolutely devastated if I hit someone with my truck, and I honestly usually drive lower than the speed limit in these areas. It's even worse in the suburbs, because these people don't have the same survival instincts when riding these e-bikes as those in higher traffic areas. It's constantly on my mind that if I hit one of these children, not only will my conscious be filled with guilt, but I will probably be charged with manslaughter charges.
Upstate NY is starting to create laws and restrictions around e-bikes, but that is not stopping parents from being uninvolved. In the cities, there are rentable e-bikes being used everywhere, and it only requires the ability to pay to use it. I'm all for making transportation easier for those of lower income, or that prefer to use something that doesn't spew emissions like a gas-powered vehicle, but beyond being able to pay for the e-bike there is little being done to regulate or enforce how they are used.
From my perspective it's the other way around. Bikers don't pay taxes, don't follow traffic laws, they generally do whatever they want with total impunity while the law actively protects them. Meanwhile drivers pay taxes, get ticketed for violations and have to bend over backwards in order to avoid killing the bikers.
Pedestrian enough to use pedestrian crossings without even getting off the bike, weave through people on sidewalks and generally be immune to traffic laws, yet vehicular enough to use the road and slow everybody else down, but not enough to get taxed, require traffic law education, licenses. Everything about bikes is a contradiction.
That is obviously false -- just ask any biker who is not a little kid or a billionaire.
"Moped-style ebikes" like Surrons were already illegal on public roads.
Lets make it better.
After all, after the nanny state representatives succeed with this, they will move onto some other cause to ban another thing they deem unnecessary and an affront to their sensibilities. They will not be content until everyone does exactly as they say ( but not do ). And that is fine for them. Where I stand, I will keep on trucking and my child, god willing, will own a veritable tank that will crush anti truck infidels under its mighty heels. The gods of molten metal have spoken. Your sacrifice is deemed acceptable -- bike enjoyer.
It is a massive problem that receives a disproportionate amount of attention.
[0] https://www.cdc.gov/pedestrian-bike-safety/about/pedestrian-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
Mass shootings by contrast are not economic or personal drivers of freedom, they're not an intended output of the system that creates them, they're a relatively modern perversity of it. Of course people are more concerned with seemingly random violence that many other countries seem to live without, or with much less of, compared to inevitable accidents.
People also love to present "Vehicle vs Ped" as a de facto accident on the part of the vehicle or the driver, and that can certainly be the case! It's also true that about 30% of pedestrians involved in these accidents have a BAC over the legal limit. There are also issues with poorly designed and maintained lights, safety systems on roads, and so on that play a role. None of this is as simple as, "Just bike to work, dummy."
I'd also add that recent stats show a REDUCTION in pedestrian fatalities, it's just that it's been on a rise since 2009, but it's going back down again. Possibly that comes down to addressing some concerns I've mentioned above, some comes down to fewer megamonsterSUV's, and some comes down to smartphone and in-car tech no longer promoting using said phones on the road.
https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalit...
It does make a compelling case that specifically large trucks and SUVs are causing preventable deaths. And I certainly find no reason that we need very large trucks or SUVs.
Or do you mean simply that trucks and SUVs, regardless of their height, provide benefits? I don't doubt that and do not mean to imply otherwise.
Ground clearance. In some parts of the US and for some use cases this is non-negotiable. It would be like buying a car in Texas without an air conditioner. There is a Japanese automaker (Subaru) that traditionally caters to this market almost exclusively in the US.
I won't buy a vehicle with less than 8 inches of ground clearance for safety reasons.
When I lived in the area, I regularly rescued people stranded on roads in the Sierra Nevada mountains around Lake Tahoe that found out the hard way that their vehicles were unfit for the changing road conditions. Nearly getting stranded myself a couple times over the decades informed my vehicular requirements.
I currently live in the city and but rarely drive there. Almost all of my driving is done across the western US. I require the vehicle I own to be able to safely navigate all of the road conditions I am likely to see there.
A less common reason is that the nice paved roads are not always the fastest way between two points. I used to regularly commute to a town in Nevada where using the nice paved highway around the mountains took 30 minutes longer than taking an old mining road straight over the mountains. Everyone that lived in the area took the old mining road. That would have been sketchy without decent ground clearance. A lot of locals just drove old Subarus.
AKA a large SUV or truck is not necessary.
A large 4WD will handle conditions a Subaru will not but a Subaru is fine for getting around the area if you typically stay off most ranch/mining roads. It is illegal to maintain the ranch/mining roads for historical reasons, so they get a bit spicy.
I'm not sure what the need is for a very tall pickup truck that can also hold a family five? But maybe there is one. Perhaps there is also a need for an excavator that holds a family of five, idk. If a real need is demonstrated, then sure, please do not ban the manufacturing of an excavator that has the necessary hook-ups for modern child carseats simply because I, a commenter on HackerNews, made a statement that was a little too sweeping for the needs of past, present, and future human beings on Earth and across potential settlement across the universe and dimensions beyond.
But most people do not need a very large truck or SUV. Vehicles with hoods closer to the ground and better lines-of-sight are safer for those around them, while having practically no impact on the utility of said vehicles as they drive on roads and highways in the USA.
Maybe that's where effort should be focused.
First, people need transportation, not cars. For the vast majority of people, if you truly need a car, it's because your infrastructure was built in a way that doesn't provide any other modes of transportation.
Second, mass shootings aren't the intended effect of guns in the same way pedestrian fatalities aren't the intended effect of cars. Both cars and guns are providing some perceived value (personal transportation freedom and self-defense/safeguard against tyranny/national defense) with a significant number of deaths as a tradeoff.
Third, implying someone with a BAC over the legal limit for DRIVING is somehow responsible for getting killed while WALKING instead of driving is comical and darkly ironic considering drunk driving accounts for almost a third of traffic deaths in the US [1].
1. https://www.cdc.gov/impaired-driving/facts/index.html#:~:tex...
It is a difficult problem to untangle, but not impossible. Accepting this level of tragedy and violence because cars are sometimes “economically necessary” is very sad. And again they are not nearly as necessary as is perceived. I drive my car maybe once or twice a week now and I live in a suburb of about 40k people, not in a major city.
Making right-on-red illegal wouldn't be bad either. The number of times I've almost been run over when a car is stopped in the middle/straight lane and blocks line of sight to a right-turning car that doesn't look.
DUIs are at least treated seriously. It's one of the few offenses that will get a visa instantly revoked. Same in Canada I think.
The perhaps greater problem though is that those tests are completely trivial.
For kids, it's 50 hours of road experience, and 10 at night, but a parent can sign that off. Maryland looks the same? You've got to do a knowledge test to get a learner's permit, 6 hours behind the wheel + 30 class, and then you get a provisional which can be upgraded to full. NY is also a 50/15 hour parent declaration and maybe(?) a supervised course for a few hours.
https://www.stateofflorida.com/drivers-license-steps/ https://dmv.ny.gov/driver-license/complete-pre-licensing-req...
They are such completely different categories of ways to die I'm having trouble understand how to compare them in any sensible way.
Instead of trying to make our streets safer, the USA has responded by not allowing kids to walk or bike to school and have insane lines of cars and elaborate drop-off/pick-up procedures. Paradoxically, all of the additional vehicles on the road makes our streets more dangerous.
You should tell that to the families of the 8000 that are killed each year. I’m sure it’ll help them accept the accept the loss of their loved ones.
The US is the only developed country that has seen a steady increase in the number of pedestrian deaths per 1000km driven over the past 10-15 years. And 10-15 years ago it was one of the worst performing developed countries for pedestrian deaths. Every other developed country has seen decreases in pedestrian deaths over the same time period, which means the US is an extreme outlier when it comes to pedestrian safety, or lack there of.
I mean, yes? Society has decided that cars are worth the convenience because of all their advantages. Now is America too obsessed with cars, and totally ignorant of pedestrian safety? Yes of course. But other countries aren't so bad on that front and they still accept some deaths. It's easy to see the utility of cars.
Less so for guns.
> it was one of the worst performing developed countries for pedestrian deaths
How's it performing on the mass shooting front?
This problem is solvable and people in this thread saying that it’s not are absurd.
I don't think any of these are apples to apples comparisons tbh your point still stands without the extreme analogy.
> Most of the explanations commonly put forward for why US roads remain so deadly focus on broad structural factors such as vehicle size or time spent on the road, but a review of the evidence suggests this may be mistaken. Last year’s improvement is a case in point. Two reasons often cited as key causes of poor US performance both worsened: the total number of miles driven by Americans increased, and US cars continued to grow larger. Yet fatal collisions still declined.
> Adding to the evidence that this is not a dominant factor, car sizes in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have traced similar paths to the US without resulting in a spike in fatalities.
> Another theory is that the rise of homelessness in the US may be pushing pedestrian deaths higher. A recent study found that there had indeed been a marked rise in traffic-related deaths among the homeless, but this, too, can only explain a small portion of the overall rise.
> Instead, an underrated factor seems to be not American cars but American drivers [...] The determining factor seems to be different attitudes to safety, with Americans twice as likely as Canadians or Europeans to say they find it acceptable to use a phone while driving.
I do think you need to defend your assertion, because the difference between a driver and a pedestrian is that the driver "knew the risks" while the risks were imposed on the pedestrian.
A better question is why is the US the only developed country that’s seen pedestrian deaths increase over the past 10-15 years. Every other developed country has seen both occupant and pedestrian deaths decrease over the same time period, and has seen a larger combined drop in deaths than the US. And to be clear, I’m talking about deaths per mile driven, not absolute counts, so the size of the US is already factored into the numbers.
Many big SUVs are flat out illegal in Europe, you’d need a small truck license. It’s hard to comprehend how large American cars are unless you’ve lived in both places.
For example:
we took an Uber to the airport for our annual pilgrimage back home. We had 4 suitcases this time because new babies need gifts. In USA we got picked up by a sedan and everything fit in the trunk. In Europe we rented an SUV and had to break down the rear seats to fit everything.
https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ubbfrv/oc...
Save some blame for the shortsighted environmentalists. They are a huge part of why everything is so stupidly spaced out. Most of the site plans that were normal until the 1970s are just outright illegal now. These people would rather see you impoverished by rent driven sky high from scarcity than let a filthy landlord develop the whole lot without "expensive to the point of nonstarter" mitigations or accept that maybe the municipality will have to upgrade a culvert here or there. I work in a skyscraper and even it has token green space that's clearly just bullshit they chucked in to make the runoff calcs work. You can't even use it for anything because it's a planter/ditch, so the whole place is still effectively concrete jungle and they have a fence around it so nobody falls.
Trucks and SUVs have been getting heavier consistently since 1980 while pedestrian deaths consistently decreased from 1980 to 2009. Truck sizes went up much more from 1980 to 2009 than from 2009 to present. But pedestrian deaths dropped almost in half from 1980 to 2009.
The NYT study on which this article is based acknowledges that pedestrian deaths dropped in half from 1980 to 2009, but then does nothing with this information.
Vehicle size is a relevant factor in vehicle-pedestrian collisions regardless of the cause of the collision.
What is there to address? Unless you enforce that people only drink in private homes there will always be pedestrians who've had a few. Walking is probably the safest mode of transportation when you're impaired.
Absolutely true, but what are you proposing? I’d propose banning most vehicles from city centers where people congregate.
Vehicle size and weight will always be a relevant factor as long as people and vehicles exist in the same spaces.
Just as vehicle size and weight will always be a factor, so too will alcohol, drugs, phones, etc.
There’s also the issue that heavier vehicles are inevitable due to EVs. Our bz4x won’t get tagged as a “big evil truck,” but it’s about the same weight as a base model Ford F150. And heavier than a Toyota Tacoma double cab.
The proportion of them which have a grill height which impairs visibility of the average height pedestrian would be a "better" metric, except it isn't as easy to cleanly define that.
With me driving in my 2000s Ranger, I can at least see adults walking in front of it just fine, even though it is bigger than a 1980 Toyota pickup.
What we need is a "distance from the front of the car a 4' person is visible." metric. Car manufactures should be penalized for poor visibility.
You should really take into account driver height, pedestrian height and hood slope and length and height.
The large factors are phone use (more prevalent among american drivers and there's data to show this), and homelessness - the homeless are dramatically overrepresented in US pedestrian deaths and the population has increased dramatically in the US over the past decade. Even more so though it appears to be attitudes, Americans are twice as likely as Europeans or Canadians to say using a phone while driving is acceptable. Though no single factor is a smoking gun, vehicle size is one of the least convincing. Getting hit by a 4000lb car or an 8000lb truck matters much less than how fast the vehicle's going (let's all remember our high school physics class).
This blog post is the best deep dive I've seen on the data: https://www.construction-physics.com/p/more-on-us-pedestrian...
Being caught using a phone whilst driving imposes a $1,251 fine. In fact, even a phone off, but touching any part of your body (including on lap/leg) will incur this fine.
Yes SUVs are more common in Europe now but still size is much smaller than in US.
It's not the weight of the vehicle but that the front of a US truck is a big flat brick wall, whereas vehicles more common in Europe have a lower-shaped hood you fall on which is engineered to dent (some even having an actuator to pop up and increase the distance to the engine) and save the life of the pedestrian (as tested by Euro NCAP)
Getting hit by any vehicle over 20mph is going to be a very bad time, it is going to be somewhat worse if it's a large vehicle with a high bumper.
Americans are twice as likely to think it's fine to use a cell phone while driving than Canadians or Europeans, and while illegal in most places it's effectively unenforced - our cops spend half their shifts driving around messing around on a mounted laptop. If you want to improve outcomes, start holding American drivers to the standards that peer nations do.
As far as truck sizes go, yes they have steadily increased, but the bigger trucks did not have as much effect on pedestrian fatality rates in the '80s or '90s because they were a much smaller percentage of vehicles on the road. In 1980 trucks were only about 1/5 of new vehicle sales. It was up to about 1/3 in 1990. By 2000 it was a little under 50%. By 2010 it was a little over 50%. Sometime around 2017 it was 2/3 trucks, and about 4/5 by 2023. (SUVs are counted as trucks in these numbers).
Remember those are figures for new sales, so changes in the percent of trucks on the road will lag changes in the percent of trucks in new sales.
You can get an idea of whether phones or size was the more responsible factor by comparing injuries to deaths. Phones would increase deaths mostly by increasing the number of accidents. Big trucks/SUVs would increase deaths by making accidents more fatal. In the phone case injuries and fatalities should rise at about the same mount. In the big vehicle case fatalities should rise more than injuries.
Fatalities have in fact risen more than injuries (80% vs 15%), suggesting that size is the much more significant factor.
It isn't weight, it is hood height and blunt fronts. But the Great Bluntening didn't happen until recently.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
Am I crazy? The article itself points out that only 10% of the increase would have been 'saved' if cars had remained the same size. This goes directly against the title no?
There's certainly more than one reason, my gut would point to more smart phone use both by drivers and even by pedestrians themselves.
I wonder if one day using a smart phone while driving will have the same stigma as a DUI (and similar punishment). I struggle to argue it shouldn't, its sometimes a little crazy to think about that if the person in the other lane gets distracted on their phone, I might be involved in a head on collision at 60+mph.
This is from the NYT article
"75% More Pedestrians Have Been Killed Since 2009. Giant Trucks and SUVs Are *One Reason*" would be a more accurate title based on my reading.
The energy of a crash at the same speed is linearly scaled with mass though. Especially when you have two such monsters collide, it's significant.
But the smaller cars are probably more carefully designed for "crunch" zones, preserving their occupants by maximizing the effect of available material. The nominal energy involved vs Cars would simply scale as Mass of SUV in Cars.
10 000 people will see the headline here on HN or somewhere else and form their opinion based on it only.
1000 people will open the article
Out of those, 200 people will understand that the title is completely false relevant to the data.
Out of those 200 people, 150 people will still deny that the title is a lie, down vote, or try to sidetrack, because even a lie has to be supported if it supports their own political agenda.
Thankfully, it is beginning to, in some places outside the US.
> You can be fined $1,251 and have 4 demerit points recorded against your traffic history for using a mobile phone illegally while driving. [1]
> 0.05 and over, but under 0.10
Disqualification: 1 to 9 months
Fine: $2,336 [2]
[1]: https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/mobile-p...
[2]: https://www.qld.gov.au/transport/safety/road-safety/drink-dr...
"200 to 400" is from their model of decreasing hood height for existing collisions. But from the article:
> There are two reasons bigger vehicles are deadlier: They have taller hoods. And they tend to have larger blind zones.
It doesn't appear that NYT included in their model the larger blind zones and how that causes more collisions. So they shouldn't have said their 200-400 estimate covers the increase in vehicle "size" when it only models one dimension of size growth.
"Driving a Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) requires a higher level of knowledge, experience, skills, and physical abilities than that required to drive a non-commercial vehicle. In order to obtain a Commercial Driver's License (CDL), an applicant must pass both skills and knowledge testing geared to these higher standards. Additionally CDL holders are held to a higher standard when operating any type of motor vehicle on public roads. Serious traffic violations committed by a CDL holder can affect their ability to maintain their CDL certification."
- I wonder how things compare for a pedestrian embracing a large SUV vs. a Semi.
Anything over 2000kg should require a truck license including retesting every five years imho.
The EU is working on the M1e car class that has a weight cap of 1500kg. It would be great if cities would only allow cars under M1e to enter.
If you're actually following the stats you will see that vehicle size only accounted for 10% of the increase. You would want to focus on the other 90% to make the biggest difference. And using that logic, you should increase the education and testing requirements for all drivers because that will provide gains over the whole driving population instead of a single segment.
Penalties should remain the same for whatever the outcome is - doesn't matter if a bicyclist kills me or a semi truck.
Lower BAC limits are opposed even by groups like MADD. The data shows the current level is good and lowering it further will result in more people ignoring it.
Nobody is asking you to pay for others' decisions (unless we want to go down the rabbit hole of insurance, for which sports cars and high priced electrics are costing all drivers more). Nor is a large vehicle an infringement on anyone's right to life (someone's recklessness could be).
Large vehicles increase the risk of death for other people. The article was about pedestrians but the stats are clear about collisions with these vehicles, same size = same death rate. Small vs large = major increased risk. The argument that ownership of these vehicles doesn't infringe on my right to life or have costs to the public as a whole is ridiculous when the stats show clearly the impact. I'll even branch out to true monetary and other costs, if we extend further these vehicles have secondary impacts due to the resources they consume. Parking lots and roads are bigger making cities worse. Pollution in cities is worse impacting my health and my enjoyment of the city I live in. And, yes, they kill more people. The decision to own a big vehicle like this and drive it around everywhere has direct and major negative impacts on me at multiple levels. So, yes, I am tired of paying for other peoples decisions and just accepting it.
I will agree that in general professionalism on the road should be higher. In general we need to take driving more seriously. It kills tens of thousands each year and has a tragic impact on younger driver stats. These large vehicles though clearly represent a significant fraction and just because there are other areas that could help it doesn't mean we should ignore this one.
When you look around at people in the US there is a strong chance that most of them know personally someone that has died in a car accident or has a friend that knew someone that died. Almost universally everyone knows multiple others that have been in significant accidents or themselves been in major accidents. Just last week my cousin was struck when crossing a street (luckily just a bit banged up but mostly fine). If we can reduce deaths on the road or pedestrian deaths significantly by licensing, even if it just did it by minimizing the number of these vehicles since the bar was higher, I'd take the win.
Really, can you show me ownership of these kills people? You aren't looking at this from a systems thinking perspective but just comparing numbers on the surface. Owning a vehicle isnt killing anyone. It's a tool. If used responsibly, the negative affects are minimized. What you are actually comparing is the irresponsible use of a car vs the irresponsible use of a truck. I would rather address the irresponsible use than the marginal difference in fatalities caused by the two. Can you show the stats you talk about, or are we still on the 7.5% from the article?
"Parking lots and roads are bigger making cities worse."
Source? Lane size and parking space width is pretty standard.
"Pollution in cities is worse impacting my health and my enjoyment of the city I live in."
Source? Gas mileage is lower, but emissions standards are pretty strict for most pollutants. The bigger issue would be large diesel trucks.
"The decision to own a big vehicle like this and drive it around everywhere has direct and major negative impacts on me at multiple levels."
I have yet to hear you provide a direct negative impact to yourself - they're all theoretical or n-order indirect.
Education and testing would be the best approach as it would cover multiple issues and the entire population.
This argument gets me all the time. By this argument we should get rid of all regulations on vehicles and requirements for licensing. I too would rather people suddenly woke up and were responsible. Using the 'its just a tool' argument ignores the reality of the impact of that tool and denies their right to life.
-"Pollution in cities is worse impacting my health and my enjoyment of the city I live in."
Here is a forbes article saying everything I said with links. Traffic is worse and deaths are higher because of these things. [1] and here are some facts about road deaths involving suvs and light trucks. The key point [2]:
'Conclusion In the case of a crash, SUVs and LTVs cause more severe injuries to pedestrians and cyclists than passenger cars. This effect is larger for fatalities than for KSIs, and the fatality effect is particularly large for children.' [2]
- I have yet to hear you provide a direct negative impact to yourself - they're all theoretical or n-order indirect.
So, yes. They are directly impacting me daily by impacting my city in major negative ways and also increasing my risk of death. I am paying for the decisions of others and it isn't right. The stats show it.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauriewinkless/2025/05/07/suvs-... [2] https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/injuryprev/early/20...
Then raise the standards for licensing. The difference between the lethality of an idiot with a civic and an idiot with an F150 isn't significantly different in practice.
It seems like you’re the one ignoring the system and demonstrated end-to-end results. Ownership of larger vehicles is posing a greater risk to the people outside those vehicles. It can’t be waved away with an imaginary responsibility argument; the drivers of larger vehicles would need to act more responsibly than drivers of smaller vehicles in order to compensate.
https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/bibliography/ref/2294
https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/bibliography/ref/2277
https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/bibliography/ref/2293
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...
It's a paper that will make money automobile advertising.
Implicitly if there were any other single larger cause for the deaths then the article would be about that.
The sensible thing to do would be to carry on investigating the 90%, but in the meantime get on with saving the 200 to 400 people by removing largest factor - the _unnecessarily_ large vehicles - that are _known_ to be killing them.
Then show me explicitly what the breakdown is.
"the _unnecessarily_ large vehicles"
Define unnecessarily. Do I get to buy one because I'm tall, have a big family, haul stuff?
Give or take inches around the waist we are the same size and shape. We have roughly the same mental faculties. Afaik we are no lesser than our parents and grandparents who all managed to do just fine without huge vehicles.
If a situation was fine before and changing something either does nothing or makes that situation worse e.g. kills 200 to 400 people, then that change is?
But it's not. You forgot the size and weight of vehicles from previous generations. You forgot the higher fatalities of the past. You're ignoring that people today are taller. You're also ignoring that pedestrian fatalities have gone down over time when looking at the parents and grandparents timeframe to today, despite the more recent uptick.
https://tpr.fmcsa.dot.gov/content/Resources/ELDT-Applicabili...
> BAC should be lower. Fines higher.
This is already the case.
For sure big trucks don't pay the costs of the damage that they do to road surfaces. Road damage is proportional to the cube of speed and 4th power of axle weight. So an 80,000# semi does 4096 the damage of an 4,000# SUV, both driving the same speed.
Math:
80,000 / 5 = 16,000# per axle 4,000 /2 = 2,000# per axle
(16/2)^4 = 4,096.
Disclaimer: I used to work for my state's version of DMV & Highway Department.
“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
The Ford Maverick exists!
Though the Tacoma does come in extended cab.
And the Maverick has a clever bed that fits 4x8 sheets with the tailgate halfway.
https://environmentalhealthsafetybrief.sidley.com/2025/07/08...
But to move back, the best thing would be to loosen regulation on the smaller class and tighten + enforce for the larger class. Too much time has passed with everyone getting in the larger vehicle arms race for it just to flip back. The manufacturing would also have to gear back up and as we are discovering with the attempt to re-shore, it take time and isn't easy.
Also an additional thought for some of the comments that are talking about the selfishness of those who drive larger vehicles. On one hand it is personally selfish and makes it less safe for pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles. On the other hand, those people have families and friends. My wife wants me to get a larger car because she is worried I will be killed if there is a traffic accident. I have a duty to help provide for my family and I certainly don't want to die, so doing so would not be an irrational choice.
Similarly to the choice of driving a pickup truck, often it is not needed most of the time. I have a family member who doesn't own a car, which is great! They always talk about the options available (Uber, Rental, etc) but anytime they have to travel to the airport for a business trip, they borrow a car from us or another family member to get there and use the airport parking. Which is fine because collectively we have it available but it can also be a slight inconvenience as well but it is less then them having to deal with Uber/Rental/Public Transit.
American Big Three cannot compete with Asian/European cars, so they gave up and erected a regulatory barriers to protect their market:
1. chicken tax 2. Section 179 Deduction - allows writeoff of Vehicles Over 6000 lbs for people non-W2 people (self-employed and small business owners) 3. CAFE footpring and "light truck" loophole and CAFE exemtpions for US trucks
everything designed to protect Big Three's highest margin products at cost of human lives
These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
The original designer wanted the truck to feel like you were driving a fist, punching through the air. So we are killing people so that the driver can have an aggressive aesthetic. And the design has spread like a contagious meme, even BMWs have it now.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/11/driving-the-biggest-lea...
https://www.torquenews.com/17998/i-leased-hummer-ev-because-...
Heavy Toll: America's Huge, Heavy Cars Are Killing More People - https://www.motortrend.com/features/why-americas-roads-keep-... - September 24th, 2024
> More than 40,000 people die on America’s roads every year, making them nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven than those in other rich nations. What’s more, the death rate has increased over the past decade, despite the adoption of more sophisticated passive safety systems and advanced driver assistance systems such as lane keep assist and automatic braking. The number of pedestrians killed by motor vehicles has almost doubled since 2010. Why? “Weight is to blame,” The Economist insists.
> Using data for 7.5 million two-vehicle crashes in 14 American states in 2013–2023, The Economist found that for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles killed 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest. The publication estimates that if the heaviest 10 percent of vehicles on America’s roads were roughly 1,000 pounds lighter, fatalities in multicar crashes would fall by 12 percent, saving 2,300 lives a year, without compromising the safety of the occupants of the heavier vehicles.
> “For every life the heaviest one percent of SUVs or trucks saves in America,” The Economist wrote, “more than a dozen lives are lost in smaller vehicles. This makes traffic jams an ethics class on wheels.”
> Of course, what’s behind those grim statistics is simple physics. Force equals mass times acceleration: The heavier a vehicle, the harder it impacts an object at any given speed. The core issue in America is the massive differential between the lightest and heaviest vehicles on its roads (and to be clear, The Economist’s reporting is focused on cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks, not heavy-duty commercial trucks or semis).
I don't see evidence for EVs stimulating small vehicle production (but it would be awesome if it were the case). The one smaller vehicle bright spot is perhaps Tesla's Cybercab, which is compared to the Honda Civic, which itself has grown very large over the years. In order to get to that size the passenger mass capacity of the Cybercab is roughly 2/3 of the Civic. [0]
One of my favorite philosophy papers. The author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility of SUVs, they are immoral - imposing needless harm on others. It's also ironic that on average, there is no net safety benefit to those who drive them -- because of higher rollover risks!
The attribution to larger vehicles while ignoring smartphones seems misplaced.
Mandatory airbags in the A-pillars is probably the single biggest killer out of everything. The blind spots are massive compared to cars before these regulations. I've seen some models where it seems bad on purpose. Why don't federal regulators want the drivers of these gigantic vehicles to be able to see where the hell they are going?
With many new vehicles on the road with their low beams on coming at me head-on I have no chance of seeing a pedestrian for hundreds of yards because I'm so blinded.
Seeing today's distracted drivers, driving their mini armored troop carriers around in parking lots, makes me wonder what happens when someone "didn't see the person" and runs them over.
Edit (after some research): "Philadelphia review found only about 16% of drivers who killed vulnerable road users were charged; 30% were closed with no charges, and 46% had no data provided."
So that's a bit concerning but I'm not sure what I'd want if I or a loved one were personally on the end of "making the mistake" vs being a victim of a mistake.
I was like oh look at people can actually function without big trucks, wow! What a surprise!
It seems uniquely American to have these huge trucks and most of the people here don't even farm. They just use them to flex.
You can't put anything in them. They've got a load bed that I could *just* about fit a couple of sandwiches in.
Everyone here in the UK uses Ford Transits. How do you use something like an F150 to move plasterboard sheets?
Pickups are 1000% pointless now
While I don't disagree with what the article says, it is surprising that they have completely missed these aspects of causality, which have been well-known and discussed by policymakers for decades.
1: https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2024/11/25/t...
If you don't know Rollie Williams, Climate Town videos are informative but suffused with a lot of humor to prevent it from being too preachy.
Does anybody know of such a nonprofit or organization that is currently making meaningful progress here that I can contribute to?
Safety can dramatically be improved just by focusing on the design of our infrastructure. For example adding bike lanes to a road can dramatically improve safety for both pedestrians and cyclists. The vast majority of the US road network has no bike lanes. Instead of trying to regulate the types of vehicles people are allowed to own even more, why isn't the focus on improving the design of our infrastructure? The amount of taxes we pay is a staggering sum, there's more than enough room in the government budget to spend on roads.
Not only it kills more pedestrians, but also when you get an accident with one of the people driving these monstrosity, you get a lot more chance of dying.
So if either you want to be safe, you got to buy an even heavier car.
This is a race to the bottom.
Hopefully with the rise of gas price, people will start to rethink buying SUV.
“I remember wanting it to make it feel very locomotive… my first week in Detroit I was driving through downtown and seeing the fist of Joe Louis, and remember thinking that’s what this truck should look like – a massive fist moving through the air.”
... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look,” explained the GM designer."
The design of these things is deliberately antisocial. The huge hood is not even needed since it's possible to stand inside the mostly empty engine bays of these things as FortNine showed: https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?t=431
But it's not just the hood heights wrong with modern vehicles. Multiple design trends are hostile to other road users and reduce safety equality if you will.
- Headlight hues are white and blinding
- Headlight positioning has increased with the hood height which tends to blind people.
- The pillars in vehicles are really thick and raked which is safer for the occupants but also means visibility is reduced. Great, so now people in bigger, newer, safer vehicles are more likely to hit pedestrians and people in older, smaller vehicles.
- Windows are more tinted and often smaller meaning vehicles are opaque walls now which hinders visibility and communication at intersections.
“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not
have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over
the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents
about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
The only response from the safety industry is more doodads. Auto braking, backup cameras, lane departure warnings, blind spot warning.
Cars going too fast in your neighborhood? Build huge speed bumps you need an SUV to navigate to navigate at any speed over 5mph!
I don't think there's actually any hope for human-driven cars, long-term. The system doesn't want them.
All these concerns were raised back when vehicles were getting crappy to see out of in the late 00s but "something must be done" and "the statistics say" screeched the exact same demographics if not literal individuals, and so, things were done, and now here we are.
And this is just the tip of the goddamn iceberg. Seems like every axis of discourse and policy is afflicted by this. I have no idea how we fix it.
Imagine a future when a much larger proportion of drivers have 360 degree vision with no blind spots, infinitesimally small reaction times and a human failsafe in the driver seat.
Just cap their top speed at 40 mph, use thin A pillars to better protect pedestrians and make them ugly as hell.
But make damn sure they comfortably transport the family to the soccer game, yes...
By focusing on the wrong things (especially the endless caterwauling about "speeding"), people are letting legislators off the hook for abetting murder. Texting while driving should be a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties. But year after year, they refuse to do anything about it.
From both the NYT video and their article:
> And that increase is unique to the US. Most other wealthy countries haven't seen a similar surge, suggesting that possible culprits, like the raise of smartphones, don't tell the whole story.
---
> If you hit someone with a tall-ass truck in Portugal, I'm pretty sure he's going to fall over just like he would in the USA.
How popular do you think the tall-ass trucks are in Portugal?
> How popular do you think the tall-ass trucks are in Portugal?
Not very, which is why I was mystified by your question. Why would we NEED special sanctions for non-Americans?
Not addressed (as far as I saw) are the penalties for texting & driving in different countries. In the USA, they're basically nonexistent.
But let's say there's no difference, and no difference in the prevalance of this behavior. Texting is still going to be far more deadly behind the wheel of a giant barge. In fact, the vehicle difference serves as a multiplier for the deadly outcomes of it.
Self driving AI is the answer.
I think it speaks volumes that they didn't.
Phone is 99% likely the culprit.
Self driving AI or putting the #%£€ phone down would have prevented it.
For example SUVs and light trucks rose to 30% of new sales in 1990 but it wasn't until 2003 that they were 30% of vehicles on the road.
So… we have the technology to fix this problem. Let’s just do it!
So maybe deaths per mile would be similar, but we’ve pushed people further and further so they have to drive more miles, increasing the deaths due to poor design.
Building society in a way that we increase deaths due to poor planning, like making driving the only option for the majority of people, gets hidden by statistics like “per mile” or even speed limit changes, which are also more necessary as people need to go further to get to their daily activities, rather than everything being within a short walk or safe bike ride
It's not poor planning, it's what Americans want. Americans, by and large, do not want to live in dense neighborhoods or tiny homes like in many parts of Europe. You get that in places like NYC and quality of life in those places is atrocious.
There are probably even more people who would move if they could, but our cities are expensive (because housing is expensive when you don't build it) and so they stick with the "default". Staying put, getting a car, and finding a way to make it work.
You can't conflate "this is what Americans want" and "this is largely the only choice most Americans get".
At least around where I live (DC suburbs), every dense neighborhood becomes tremendously popular. The limit is that planners are very reluctant to allow them to be built. No problem getting permission to build an 8,000sqft house on a 1/4th acre lot though.
Americans are just rich enough and lucky with geography to be able to have them.
China’s passenger cars gained 392 kg in 12 years as the EV era hits a heavy turning point, report says
Also interesting that often people tend to imagine F-150s, Silverados ,etc., but if you see what people drive they are large Bentzs, Toyotas and of course Suburbans and F-150s. But everyone is building them not just American manufacturers.
But for, and driven by, the American market.
I would hazard a guess that Silverados sold outside of US, Canada, Mexico and Australia can fit in a single parking lot.
Also, our absurd pickups effectively don't exist in those markets. Occasionally you'll see one and it stands out like a sore thumb.
Ford Expedetion: 81,988 in 2021, 71,648 in 2022
Mercedes GLS: 24,482 in 2021, 12,395 in 2022
Chevy Tahoe: 106,030 2021, 109,032 2022
Chevy Suburban: 48,214 2021, 52,459 2022
Dodge Durango: 65,935 2021, 58,627 2022
GMC Yukon: 84,242 2021, 80,731 2022
Nissan Armada: 22,814 2021, 17,551 2022
Toyota Sequoia: 8,070 2021, 7,066 2022 (but about 25,000 after refresh in 2023)
* Ford F-150 [2] *: 726,004 2021, 683,633 in 2022.
The Large SUVs are all linked here: https://carfigures.com/us-market-segment/large-suvs
I'm sure the mix is different and skews a lot more Japanese for mid-size (which are probably also dangerous), but these large SUVs and trucks with huge hoods and no rear visibility are getting quite problematic [1]. The front blind zones are pretty ridiculous, to the point that people advocate for front cameras: https://youtu.be/NDH3FDfVQl0?si=o0uvSEmKZrn2gHSN&t=205 (with timestamp).
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar... [2] https://carfigures.com/us-market-brand/ford/f-series
The same thing is true of cars. Today’s civic is as big as an accord used to be. There is no Del Sol.
We need to turn the incentive knobs that worked so successfully on consumption so we now work on vehicle size.
Also, about the center of gravity discussion: I used to have an old friend that spent decades in business running a body shop. I asked him once what was the worst animal for causing vehicle damage. ( This was in rural South Dakota. I was thinking cow, horse, maybe bison. ) Nope. He said most animals would go up and over the hood, just like the people in the article. He said pigs were the worst. They stay low, going right into the car and not bouncing over. Often resulting in a total loss for that car.
On a number of occasions I have nearly hit people who I simply could not see crossing in my Volvo XC90 due to these pillars. I've been driving for nearly 30 years in the US and UK and have never felt anything like it.
[edit: for future readers, please note that I am not saying it would be legal or correct to hit these people.
I am saying precisely that the A pillars on the XC90 are dangerous as they introduce blind spots that I've never experienced before. We test drove the vehicle, and they weren't apparent during that test drive. I am now responsible for them.
Down in this thread you will read some responses that seem confused about that point. No, it is not legal to run people over in the road. You will be at fault. No, that doesn't make it smart to jump into the road until it's clear that the traffic has yielded you your lawful right of way. IAAL]
there is also Active collision avoidance that will adjust vehicle if it senses a car on the nearby lane about to hit my side
I think these safety systems need to be mandatory
Why do you think that?
How many crashes do you think these prevent?
I'm glad backup cameras are mandatory, though.
Those pedestrians do have the right of way; you need to have another look at the Highway Code.
Obviously that's what the law says, yes. But if they hop into someone's blind spot, it won't matter to their family much that they were in the right.
Speaking as a fellow immigrant, your attitude is what gives immigrants a bad name worldwide.
People shouldn't enter the road until it's clear they've been seen.
I'm not sure what you're missing here guy.
I've said the A bar is a liability because of the blind spot it introduces.
Your response was that the person in the road has the right of way. This is known.
Somehow I give immigrants a bad name because I acknowledge that it is difficult to manage people who assert their right-of-way into blind spots.
It's called a blind spot for a reason. How can one yield to something they by definition don't see?
Your poor consumer choices do not absolve you of your responsibilities and obligations.
YES! OF COURSE. I SAID IT'S A LIABILITY. I AM SHARING INFORMATION, PERHAPS TO AFFECT FUTURE CONSUMER CHOICE.
(ok ... trying to be pointy. As a rarely-driver and not-car-owner I do not feel much sympathy for drivers-of-hazards; because you can't care since you drive a car that makes it impossible to care means others should "do your job" ? That's victim inversion)
That doesn't mean the pedestrians should not be careful...
Your point about modern A pillars is right on the money.
My experiences have been under slow circumstances only. And that makes sense because the individual "lingers" in the blind spot (and perhaps matches your speed) if you're going slow. If you were going fast, the blind spot would be moving much faster and you would see them.
If you watch the video in the post you will understand. The person is just invisible to the driver and they're travelling around the same very low speed.
I suggest doing the same thing unless your cervical vertebrae are fused together. If that’s the case, I understand your concern.
> and there’s a pedestrian crossing in front of me
This is wrong. You have to do it every time because the pedestrian is in your blind spot.
They're also just MASSIVE.
I keep hearing about how "SUVs" are dangerous for pedestrians because you can't see them, but I've got a far better view out the front of my elderly Range Rover than I do in for example the nice little Kia Niro EVs or Renault Zoes we had at work.
Modern cars have so much crap with sensors hanging off the middle of the windscreen you basically can't see anything that's not immediately in front of the driver, and then they have these huge thick door pillars that block the rest.
1. Fuel economy regulations that scale regressively with vehicle size, that incentivize automakers to build and market larger vehicles that are easier to hit regulatory targets.
2. Rollover and crash worthiness regulations that require thicker A-pillars and more robust roof structure.
3. Towing performance. The large pickup manufacturers are in an arms race to beat each other’s power and towing capacity numbers. This requires a large, upright grille to provide adequate cooling for a large engine.
4. Consumer demand. The idea that marketing is telling people what to buy is silly. People are spending $80k+ on massive vehicles because they like them. Simple as that. The industry puts lot of marketing effort behind vehicles that are flops. They can’t make people buy a product they don’t want.
Disclaimer: I own a huge diesel pickup, along with a Tesla Model Y and a Porsche 911. Why? They’re fun! I use the pickup to tow an RV, but it’s also just fun to drive.
I have definitely noticed the visibility problem though. Forget pedestrians, sometimes entire cars are hiding behind the A-pillar! You have to move your head to the side to clear the blind spot safely.
Regardless of any safety claims, for that reason alone, I don't see it as a politically viable issue.
I think people simply do find SUVs (which I don't like) convenient. Many women, including a huge number of moms, do happen to just love SUVs. Both in the US and in the EU.
In the EU SUVs are now approaching 60% of all cars sold (59.25% or so, latest numbers). You don't get such a market share by being mostly cars sold to men needing to "gender-affirm".
A Ford F150 is fucking ridiculous in comparison, and larger than any truck I remember seeing growing up, and there's people with F350s for personal use.
One of them ran over and killed a kid outside a nearby children's museum. Those things are not safe.
They more or less have the capabilities of a small pickup truck, but exchange the bed for more passenger space and inside cargo room. A minivan does have more space, but cannot tow and would immediately get stuck in the first mud patch it sees.
I have no idea why people in the city buy them though (other than snowy regions).
Watch a US truck commercial. The market and the motivating themes are immediately obvious. Besides, drivers literally adorn trucks with prosthetic testicles. That's something that cannot be unseen.
I don't think I've ever heard any man ever say that in real life, but even online it's probably been almost a decade since this was memed into the ground.
Um, because men get weird when you point out the gender-affirming actions they do? Try it irl and see what the reactions are. There's a reason the only place free of physical intimidation is where this can be safely said.
Besides, how old is the privacy comment or the "parents should parent" comment we see dragged out on every kid's social media ban? It's almost like the age of the sentiment doesn't have any bearing on its relevancy.
I don't think it's politically impossible. These things are killing children (among many other people). "Giant trucks and SUVs are killing children" seems like a pretty powerful line.
Assault rifles have been used to slaughter classrooms full of children in some of the most bone-chilling acts of violence imaginable, and people have such a weird identity complex around guns that they go to outrageous lengths to avoid any meaningful action. We've even seen parents of murdered children accused by gun-rights activists of being paid actors and deliberately threatening 2nd amendment rights.
Car culture in America is similarly toxic, with people having strong automobile-centric identities. The culture surrounding giant trucks is the most extreme, and there's a mountain of dashcam video online suggesting that the kinds of people who buy these massive truck are also quite reckless behind the wheel and do intentionally aggressive things with them, including deliberately harassing behaviors like "rolling coal". These aesthetics and behaviors are enshrined by popular political establishments on the right, meaning that challenging any of it becomes a partisan fight.
The backlash of banning these kinds of vehicles would be straight out of the movie Idiocracy, but there are enough jerks in this country that it would completely block any progress from ever being made.
“That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
Edit: The title of the OP has been changed after I made this reply.
If you ban a truck - the asshole driving it will just buy bmw instead.
Don’t you see? Why all the good people have to suffer?
We are not the same.
So my point here is that, whatever argument you are making, it is already debunked. You're arguing against statistics with platitudes.
end the idiotic chicken tax and make small trucks and utes legal again
while we are on the topic, full size vans make a lot more sense than "suvs" for most families
safety stilts.
Keep it up. China will win, as we flagellate.
"Everyone outside the car be damned" is the expressed preference of US buyers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TskUzmg6Sk
(Site safety video, engine and transmission removed in example vehicle .. still ..)
This is "race to the bottom" logic. The only end to this logic is everyone driving giant vehicles in bubbles because "it's safer for meeeeeeeee" as they hit children in a school zone cuz the blind spot in their Ford fuck550 is a football field long.
Race to the bottom logic is rampant in this form of capitalism that we're experiencing. Everyone's excuse is valid and only shifts the baseline to more excess and extreme behavior.
https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
A good road driver just generally positions themselves to not get hit by other cars, regardless of whether or not they're in something pretty nimble or a fat pig boat.
It could also be from people staring at their cell phone and walking down the road. I see it all the time. I've seen people walk right into intersections against the light.
Maybe, it's even both, because while I can believe large cars aren't helping... I surely know staring on your phone, walking, and not paying attention is just plain dumb.
> Reports of device distraction are scarce in the New York City and national fatality data, and estimates of annual mobile device-related injuries are dwarfed nationally by pedestrian injury estimates where pedestrian distraction was not cited. In short, despite growing concerns, DOT found little concrete evidence that device-induced distracted walking contributes significantly to pedestrian fatalities and injuries. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/distraction-shoul...
Either way you're dead.
Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll.
Just no.
And now with self driving, newborns can also have their truck
Also, 10% is a huge effect.
But that isn't the case at all, maybe Europeans are immune to smartphones: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/document/download...
You just made that up. Pedestrians are mostly killed by head onto solid object.
Your two most common options are pavement and windshield. Pavement is worse because cars have a fair bit of engineering that goes into preventing head onto windshield. At the end of the day it's mostly a question about getting hit above or below center of mass.
Modern (ie. larger than they were 20yr ago) crossovers and midsize SUVs are doing a lot of heavy lifting in these stats. But the people who want to talk about this problem tend to drive Rav4s and not Chevy 2500s so the latter gets complained about even though the former outsold it 2:1
Relatedly, minivans are kind of bad no matter how you cut them because it's hard to stay true to the form factor and not have pedestrians go straight into windshield in fairly low speed crashes.
> The issue isn’t mass alone, but also height. Yes, spreading impact over a greater area reduces the force experienced by any given part of your body, but when that surface area rises further and further from the ground, the impact point on your body rises with it. If you’re hit below your center of mass, you’re likely to fall toward the vehicle. If you’re hit at or above that point, you’re likely to be knocked down in front of of the vehicle instead. The latter becomes less survivable due to the poor visibility offered by taller trucks and SUVs.
> “We see a lot of devastating collisions even at lower speeds because the pedestrian gets punted forward,” said Shawn Harrington, whose company, Forensic Rock, conducted crash testing for the report. “Before the driver knows what’s happened, the pedestrian’s head is under the wheel.”
> You just made that up. Pedestrians are mostly killed by head onto solid object.
Not to be combative, but I'd also like to see stats on that - that sounds just as made up. I'd expect a lot of pedestrians to strike the hood (about just as likely as windshield) as most pedestrian accidents happen in parking lots, drive-ways, traffic lights and vehicles exiting across a sidewalk (under 25mph).
Several EU car models literally pop up the hood on impact so that the head hits a hood that buckles instead of the engine underneath.
From Wikipedia:
> The hood of most vehicles is usually fabricated from sheet metal, which is a compliant energy absorbing structure which poses a comparatively small threat. Most serious head injuries occur when there is insufficient clearance between the hood and the stiff underlying engine components
> Some models, like the Citroën C6 and Jaguar XK feature a novel pop-up bonnet design, which adds 6.5 cm (2.5", C6) extra clearance over the engine block if the bumper senses a hit. In 2012 and 2015, the Volvo V40 and the Land Rover Discovery Sport have an under-the hood airbag designed to operate if the hood senses a hit
Having spent time driving in both Europe and Southern California, I'd say that European drivers are more attentive to their driving and way less likely to be looking at their phone while driving, since it's policed. You can often see drivers in SoCal holding their phone for a video call.
I wonder why this "special training" to allow people to be able to safely text and drive isn't available to all of us... but I think I can hazard some theories...
(I used to have a corporate laptop I put a 4G WiMax chip in, and would boot it and connect to corporate VPN, open Lotus Notes, and then start my one hour commute. Then at work my Notes would be fully sync’d which otherwise took a half hour.)
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-614...
https://www.cbs42.com/news/crime/ohio-woman-caught-eating-ce...
https://www.carthrottle.com/news/cyclist-berated-woman-eatin...
I wonder if this metric of "traffic light change to driver action" delay is a thing we could use as a performance metric for how well cities are ensuring smartphones aren't used by drivers.
But when we cast around for other explanations, for some reason it's always interesting to zero in on an uncontrollable factor that means we aren't responsible for the situation we find ourselves in.
Btw Europe is full of the same dumb humans that live everywhere else. Granted, they have better bread, cheese, and health care.
A BMW X5 is only slightly narrower than an F150, a range rover vogue only another inch off that.
All fun and games with road infrastructure built for 108s and clios.....
The US however builds a lot of roads that lure you into thinking its safe to take your eyes out. Even countryside rural roads are dead straight for dozens of miles. We take our narrow certain death cliffside roads and replace them with highways with embanked generous turns and other features like that.
Vehicles with 40s on them and a 6” lift are so rare in America they have no statistical significance in regard to accidents.
> Vehicles with 40s on them and a 6” lift are so rare in America they have no statistical significance in regard to accidents.
Do you have a source for this? Asking as someone who recently narrowly escaped death with a loved one as victims in a highway rollover crash caused by a dimwit operating a brodozer with 40" mud tires and a 6" lift in America.
Vehicles with 40” wheels and 6” lift are extremely rare. I haven’t seen one in at least a year, but I’ve personally witnessed multiple accidents in the last year.
If you’d said something like 35s with a 3” you might have made your case a little better.
You can complain about this all you want, but the main problem in terms of vehicle shape is crossovers which are widely available in both America and Australia.
I would get a random breath test every 2-3 months. Pulled over, breathalyser handed to me, blow, and then on my way. Very fast and efficient.
Smartphones are an absolute no no. May e you’d touch one in the outback where you can see clearly for 20 miles in every direction that nobody else is around. Everyone sets up hands free operation through a car Bluetooth. If you can’t do it hands free you simply don’t do it. You program in your GPS maps before you release the parking brake.
In America… people are annoyed when they get a $150 fine for going 30kmh over the limit.
Yes, people would be annoyed at first but they also will experience a sigh of relief that they don't have to reply to a boss's or co-worker's text in the middle of a commute or running deliveries, etc.
> Most other wealthy countries haven’t seen similar increases, suggesting that possible culprits like smartphones don’t tell the whole story.
- but it is so focused on telling a long-winded story that I didn't bother checking whether they'd really tried to correct for that. (My cynical guess is "no" - since if they really cared and had ruled phones out, they'd clearly say so.)
Weirdly NYC just blocked Waymo again.
Or, put another way, 0.000058% to 0.0001159% of the population.
I have a newer crossover. I put a hitch mount cargo box on and went to back out of the driveway. It slammed the brakes on harder than I ever have.
Automatic braking does alleviate this, but also, inattentive driving is already illegal?
Larger vehicles also cause more road damage over time, which raises my taxes or reduces the quality of roads I drive on.
For those reasons, I think vehicles should be taxed by weight, to encourage more smaller, lighter vehicles.
I pay higher insurance and registration fees already, I think its covered where I am.
Wish I knew.
>Sounds like you are trying to justify your needlessly large/heavy vehicle.
I drove a Honda Jazz until I literally couldn't fit everything in anymore. I found I could carry 4 1.2 meter galvanised steel poles at an angle before I ran out of capacity. Which worked fine for me, I wouldn't be anxious unless they were literally scraping the windshield. I could carry half a rack of servers in the back with the seats folded down, before the back of the thing would start to scrape pavement. I needed something that could do better than that when I upgraded. Most hatches and sedans were a backwards step, and Honda stopped selling the Jazz in Aus. But for whatever reason, people feel the need to comment on the large vehicle.
>Plenty of accidents still occur with vehicles that have all those features.
With reduced impact.
>like increased pollution and road degradation.
I get better distance per litre out of the big one, and if its more polluting then I don't understand why I struggle so hard with the DPF which is literally designed to bring the thing down to our honestly egregious emissions standards, I literally dream about getting it illegally removed. "Road Degredation" seems marginal at best, wider tires spreading the load out further. Seems like another engineering problem if it is a problem. The poms figured out how to prevent their CVR light tanks from causing road damage, I am sure big utes aren't that much of an issue.
The thing literally starts braking before my brain can process whats happening.
My vehicle is as safe or safer than older lighter vehicles currently permitted on the road.
Why should the goalposts run off into the distance? Surely I have now met the common definition of "safe". At what point is it enough? This just brings back to Jealousy or some kind of Tall Poppy syndrome again.
But, as you're in Australia, I'm not sure your definition of "large" matches the story's or mine. North America has a whole class of huge ass vehicles that are relatively rare elsewhere in the world. Are you driving an Escalade, F-150, or similar?
and don't get me started on the environmental/political aspects.
why would someone questioning your selfish (I'm not targeting you personally, just voicing a general perspective) decision have anything to do with jealousy?
>it's safer for you, but almost no one else.
No its safe for everyone else too. It wont even let me run into a tree.
>have anything to do with jealousy
Wish I knew, its just the only thing left when driving an efficient, safe vehicle that just happens to be large.
They're making loud noise about nothing. 200-400 people in a country of 200+ million is nothing.
Yes... big trucks and SUVs might have something to do with it. Could also be that people are not paying attention more because of their phones. Could also be that the people in these vehicles suck at driving them.
The data doesn't account for particular instances, it's just a guess at what is the cause.
> Whap! Time’s up. What did you get hit by? If you picked small, you might be dead. If you said “large,” your odds are lower. Why? Two reasons. First, F=ma and second, P = F/A. OK, I suppose that’s really just one reason, and it’s called “physics.”
I drive a big SUV because I have a better chance of surviving if something hits me. That has to be a significant statistic somewhere too, right? How many lives were saved because of big cars?
Selfish behavior is ruining our streets.
Yes, that's the point. No offense to other people, but I'm trying to not die when I drive to the store. Driving a tank with a sun roof is a good way to do that.
Distracted pedestrians must be a significant factor too. Especially if they've got noise-cancelling Airpods or similar in their ears while looking at their phone.
“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
"According to the report, pedestrian deaths have not only increased by 75% since 2009, but the fatalities have been correlated with the hazards presented by the physical heft, height, and blind spots inherent to today’s big trucks and SUVs."