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1970-01-01

I too am unconvinced bigger truck/vehicle means things are getting of control. It's terrible how the NYT article has no facts on overall road deaths, so here I state one for everyone: Occupant deaths have a clear falling trend. So while pedestrian deaths are climbing, the overall deaths are still trending downward, and I shouldn't have to defend that the overall count is more important than the pedestrian subset.

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That can be very easily explained as "bigger cars are safer for their occupant and deadlier to the person getting hit by them".

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.

Many accidents are single vehicle and the vast, vast majority don't involve pedestrians.

> So while pedestrian deaths are climbing, the overall deaths are still trending downward, and I shouldn't have to defend that the overall count is more important than the pedestrian subset.

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.

You do need to justify it. There is a great moral hazard prioritizing the driver's safety over pedestrians, since the driver is most in control of the danger. There is very little a pedestrian can do to protect themselves from a driver on their phone who mounts the sidewalk.

Fixing on the pedestrian safety yields higher death counts overall. It is justified in quantity.

How do you reconcile your viewpoint with the non-pedestrian vehicular death rate in Europe? Do you think the reason deaths are so much lower there is because Europeans are unconcerned with pedestrians?

Apples and oranges. EU roads and cities are not US roads and cities and never will be.

I see. So you believe that if Europeans designed their streets to be less safe for pedestrians, like they are in the U.S., then their overall vehicular death rate would go down. Is that right?

You made a stupid jump and conclusion there mate. EU streets are nothing like US streets. Go lookup the rates in every EU country and come back with some data and we can compare it to the top and bottom US states. Apples and oranges.

Sorry, I'm just trying to understand your point of view. I live in the US and spend a lot of time in the EU. I'm a citizen of both. It couldn't be more obvious to me that our street designs differ (as implied by my previous comment). I'd genuinely like to know where you're coming from, but your responses so far are shallow tautologies. I initially responded to your comment, "Fixing on the pedestrian safety yields higher death counts overall" (I assumed you meant "fixating on pedestrian safety," but perhaps this was a mistake). I'm curious how you came to that conclusion. Can you please elaborate, and what was my stupid "jump and conclusion," precisely?

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