The culprit is the front of trucks and SUVs being like 5ft tall.
Most cars hit you at the knee. Trucks and SUVs hit you in the chest. Hit in the knee, and you’re likely to end up smashing tempered glass which will catch you almost like a really painfully frozen net. Hit in the chest, you’re going down, and the truck is running you over.
Yes and no. The research you posted in your follow-up comment does indeed show collisions here are deadlier because of the taller vehicles, but that’s not the only factor (and maybe not even the largest).
I think the even bigger problem is that collisions are more frequent to begin with, because car-dependent zoning forces people to drive more.
In other words, banning big pickup trucks is a marginal gain, but still more of a scapegoat than a real solution.
Edit: folks, read what I actually wrote, not what the other guy pretended I wrote. I never disputed his point!
Y’all just like his answer because it gives an easy villain to scapegoat and thus absolves you from having to change anything about your behavior, despite the fact that (statistically speaking, with most Americans reading this likely having suburban car-dependent lifestyles), you yourself are likely to also be part of the problem.
I. The “Height & Geometry” Studies (Directly refuting your claim)
IIHS Study: Vehicles with hood heights >40 inches are 45% more likely to cause fatalities. Crucially, medium-height vehicles (crossovers) with blunt fronts are 26% more lethal than those with sloped fronts.
University of Hawaii (Justin Tyndall): “The Effect of Front-end Vehicle Height on Pedestrian Death Risk.” A 10cm increase in front-end height yields a 22% increase in fatality risk.
Traffic Injury Prevention: SUVs are disproportionately likely to kill pedestrians even at intermediate speeds due to high impact points (chest/pelvis vs legs).
Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA): 2023 Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities Report linking the rise in deaths to the increased market share of light trucks.
Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine: Study on pedestrian injury patterns confirming SUV impacts result in more severe thoracic/head injuries.
I know you’re not the person I responded to, but surely you saw that I am not here to have an armchair discussion.
If you’re not giving me something peer reviewed to chew on, I am not going to generally respect your response. We’re all nobody’s out here. Give peer reviewed research or admit you’re just armchairing, and return to the premise that I am explicitly not here for any armchair discussion.
I know you’re not the person I responded to, but surely you saw that I am not here to have an armchair discussion.
If you’re not giving me something peer reviewed to chew on, I am not going to generally respect your response. We’re all nobody’s out here. Give peer reviewed research or admit you’re just armchairing, and return to the premise that I am explicitly not here for any armchair discussion.
…is nothing but a bullshit attempt to excuse your Gish gallop so you can avoid addressing substantive counterarguments that don’t rely on a flood of citations to provide the appearance of validity.
Rekt how? I never disputed his point to begin with.
By his own citation (#4, BTW), he’s quibbling over 3000 deaths over a ten-year span. That’s the maximum number of people that could be saved by abolishing large trucks, all other things being equal.
Meanwhile, total car-related deaths are two orders of magnitude higher: 40,000 per year (not decade, year). The only sorts of policies that could make a real dent in that are the kinds that get people out of their automobiles completely, not just swap big ones for smaller ones.
What part of “the research you posted in your follow-up comment does indeed show collisions here are deadlier because of the taller vehicles” did you not understand? You just spent a bunch of effort on a rebuttal to a claim I didn’t make!
You’re literally preaching to the choir mod of !fuckcars. I get it.
All I’m saying is that if we have the choice between lessening the severity of a crash by replacing a tall truck with a smaller car or avoiding it entirely by replacing the truck trip with a bike or transit trip — and we do! — the latter is clearly superior.
Take your citation #4, for instance:
Replacing SUVs with cars would have averted over 3,000 pedestrian deaths in US cities (2000–2019).
3000 over 10 years. That’s the maximum benefit of the policy change you’re proposing (getting rid of tall trucks and SUVs). Compare that to the 40,000 total traffic deaths per year that we could put a big dent in by making zoning changes to reduce total car trips and vehicle miles traveled. Even just a 10% reduction in VMT (and even without reducing our ridiculously high rate of deaths per VMT) would save 4,000 people a year, which is an order of magnitude higher than your 3000 per 10 years best-case.
Obviously, we could do both. But if you have a limited amount of time/money/effort/political capital to spend and you had to choose only one, zoning reform for walkability has a way higher potential upside.
Face it: you’re chipping around the edges of a vastly larger problem.
I doubt this is a significant factor. Nobody in America is driving actual SUVs. They’re all crossovers which are more often than not identical to their Sedan counterparts but with a suspension about 4 inches higher.
Sorry, I don’t do armchair “I doubt this” nonsense. We’re not doing that here.
This isn’t my opinion. It is peer-reviewed research based on actual crash data. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) explicitly found that vehicles with hood heights exceeding 40 inches are about 145% times as likely to cause pedestrian fatalities.
The data confirms that the danger is the vertical front-end geometry striking the torso rather than the legs—regardless of whether you call it a “crossover” or a truck.
I’m not interested in your response unless it includes peer-reviewed research. Just as a heads-up: I implore you to read before offering your “insight” next time.
You’ve either looked into this more than me or you haven’t. Seems like you haven’t.
Absolutely nothing in your linked page disputes what I said.
On the contrary, that final hood comparison picture reinforces what I said. It clearly states that the hood size and shape indicative of a crossover has “similar risk” to standard cars. Vastly different from the hood of the large SUVs and trucks. Destroys your entire argument lol.
I implore you to read the articles you share before sharing them. Not only will you avoid being wrong, but you might actually learn something.
whether you call it a “crossover” or a truck.
This confirms how clueless you are beyond a reasonable doubt lol. You can’t even distinguish between a truck, SUV, or crossover, three very distinct vehicles with different sizes and shapes, but you want to speak authoritatively on the safety aspects of each of them? Zero people other than you would look at a truck and call it a “crossover” or vice versa.
Since you couldn’t be bothered to provide a single peer-reviewed source as requested, I did the work for you.
You are fixated on a picture you clearly didn’t understand. The “crossover is just a sedan” argument is factually bankrupt. It isn’t just about height; it is about geometry. A sedan is a wedge (pedestrian rolls onto the hood); a crossover is a block (pedestrian is pushed forward/under).
The data is overwhelming. You haven’t looked into this. I have.
Regarding your comment on the picture: You looked at the image but ignored the data right next to it. The IIHS study explicitly isolates “medium-height” vehicles (30–40 inches—i.e., crossovers) and found that those with blunt, vertical fronts are 26% more lethal than those with sloped fronts.
Here are 22 sources—including peer-reviewed studies, federal datasets, and safety institute reports—that explicitly refute your “opinion.”
I. The “Height & Geometry” Studies (Directly refuting your claim)*
IIHS Study: Vehicles with hood heights >40 inches are 45% more likely to cause fatalities. Crucially, medium-height vehicles (crossovers) with blunt fronts are 26% more lethal than those with sloped fronts.
University of Hawaii (Justin Tyndall): “The Effect of Front-end Vehicle Height on Pedestrian Death Risk.” A 10cm increase in front-end height yields a 22% increase in fatality risk.
Traffic Injury Prevention: SUVs are disproportionately likely to kill pedestrians even at intermediate speeds due to high impact points (chest/pelvis vs legs).
Governors Highway Safety Association (GHSA): 2023 Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities Report linking the rise in deaths to the increased market share of light trucks.
Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine: Study on pedestrian injury patterns confirming SUV impacts result in more severe thoracic/head injuries.
It isn’t just about height; it is about geometry. A sedan is a wedge (pedestrian rolls onto the hood); a crossover is a block (pedestrian is pushed forward/under).
Incorrect. A crossover is a wedge, not a block. You are once again thinking of a truck or a full size SUV you donut lol.
You haven’t looked into this. I have.
No you haven’t. You don’t even know what modern motor vehicles look like.
The IIHS study explicitly isolates “medium-height” vehicles (30–40 inches—i.e., crossovers) and found that those with blunt, vertical fronts are 26% more lethal than those with sloped fronts
Good thing crossovers have sloped fronts and not vertical fronts lol. Once again, you’ve never seen a motor vehicle before in your life.
Thank you for taking the time to collect several more links, all of which reinforce what I’ve said and completely destroy your own argument. The danger comes from large SUVs and trucks with tall, blunt hoods. NOT the average crossover that is currently the highest selling sector of vehicle in the United States.
Perhaps you should read them, since they prove my point and discredit yours. Every single link you provided discusses the impacts of SUVs and Light trucks. Literally none of them apply to crossovers, the most popular vehicle type in the United States, which you continue to prove that you can’t identify.
But go ahead and block me you intellectual coward. It’s the only way you will be able to live in your shocking level of ignorance in peace.
One of those things has characteristics that have been found through extensive research to be more deadly to pedestrians, due to geometry very different from regular cars, and the other does not have those things.
Take a look at these two vehicles. Can you tell which one of these is responsible for killing people at a higher rate?
The culprit is the front of trucks and SUVs being like 5ft tall.
Most cars hit you at the knee. Trucks and SUVs hit you in the chest. Hit in the knee, and you’re likely to end up smashing tempered glass which will catch you almost like a really painfully frozen net. Hit in the chest, you’re going down, and the truck is running you over.
Yes and no. The research you posted in your follow-up comment does indeed show collisions here are deadlier because of the taller vehicles, but that’s not the only factor (and maybe not even the largest).
I think the even bigger problem is that collisions are more frequent to begin with, because car-dependent zoning forces people to drive more.
In other words, banning big pickup trucks is a marginal gain, but still more of a scapegoat than a real solution.
Edit: folks, read what I actually wrote, not what the other guy pretended I wrote. I never disputed his point!
Y’all just like his answer because it gives an easy villain to scapegoat and thus absolves you from having to change anything about your behavior, despite the fact that (statistically speaking, with most Americans reading this likely having suburban car-dependent lifestyles), you yourself are likely to also be part of the problem.
🙄
I. The “Height & Geometry” Studies (Directly refuting your claim)
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians
https://uhero.hawaii.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UHEROwp2401.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002243750300088X
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221201222100002X
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15389580490898696
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicle-height-compounds-dangers-of-speed-for-pedestrians
II. The “Blind Zone” & Visibility Data (It’s not just a sedan)
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/the-hidden-danger-of-big-trucks-a9662450296/
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/13-investigates-millions-of-vehicles-have-unexpected-dangerous-front-blind-zone/531-9521c471-3bc1-4b55-b860-3363f0954b3b
https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/facts
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/drivers-cannot-see-kids-front-blind-zones-suvs-trucks-rcna44876
III. Government & Association Reports (The Statistics)
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812681
https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians24
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/GHSA - Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State 2022 Preliminary Data (Jan-Dec).pdf
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813592
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217544/
IV. Analysis & Journalism (Explaining the Physics)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/suvs-trucks-killing-pedestrians-cyclists/621102/
https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2018/06/28/suv-death-rise-pedestrian-safety/646139002/
https://www.propublica.org/article/yield-to-death
https://www.theautopian.com/full-size-suvs-are-twice-as-likely-to-kill-pedestrians-as-cars-study/
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2023/11/14/748057.htm
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-26/suv-crash-safety-for-pedestrians-is-getting-worse
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-pedestrian-deaths-jump-taller-vehicles-cited-risk-2023-11-14/
I know you’re not the person I responded to, but surely you saw that I am not here to have an armchair discussion.
If you’re not giving me something peer reviewed to chew on, I am not going to generally respect your response. We’re all nobody’s out here. Give peer reviewed research or admit you’re just armchairing, and return to the premise that I am explicitly not here for any armchair discussion.
Oh, by the way, this…
…is nothing but a bullshit attempt to excuse your Gish gallop so you can avoid addressing substantive counterarguments that don’t rely on a flood of citations to provide the appearance of validity.
deleted by creator
Rekt how? I never disputed his point to begin with.
By his own citation (#4, BTW), he’s quibbling over 3000 deaths over a ten-year span. That’s the maximum number of people that could be saved by abolishing large trucks, all other things being equal.
Meanwhile, total car-related deaths are two orders of magnitude higher: 40,000 per year (not decade, year). The only sorts of policies that could make a real dent in that are the kinds that get people out of their automobiles completely, not just swap big ones for smaller ones.
What part of “the research you posted in your follow-up comment does indeed show collisions here are deadlier because of the taller vehicles” did you not understand? You just spent a bunch of effort on a rebuttal to a claim I didn’t make!
You’re literally preaching to the
choirmod of !fuckcars. I get it.All I’m saying is that if we have the choice between lessening the severity of a crash by replacing a tall truck with a smaller car or avoiding it entirely by replacing the truck trip with a bike or transit trip — and we do! — the latter is clearly superior.
Take your citation #4, for instance:
3000 over 10 years. That’s the maximum benefit of the policy change you’re proposing (getting rid of tall trucks and SUVs). Compare that to the 40,000 total traffic deaths per year that we could put a big dent in by making zoning changes to reduce total car trips and vehicle miles traveled. Even just a 10% reduction in VMT (and even without reducing our ridiculously high rate of deaths per VMT) would save 4,000 people a year, which is an order of magnitude higher than your 3000 per 10 years best-case.
Obviously, we could do both. But if you have a limited amount of time/money/effort/political capital to spend and you had to choose only one, zoning reform for walkability has a way higher potential upside.
Face it: you’re chipping around the edges of a vastly larger problem.
I doubt this is a significant factor. Nobody in America is driving actual SUVs. They’re all crossovers which are more often than not identical to their Sedan counterparts but with a suspension about 4 inches higher.
Sorry, I don’t do armchair “I doubt this” nonsense. We’re not doing that here.
This isn’t my opinion. It is peer-reviewed research based on actual crash data. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) explicitly found that vehicles with hood heights exceeding 40 inches are about 145% times as likely to cause pedestrian fatalities.
The data confirms that the danger is the vertical front-end geometry striking the torso rather than the legs—regardless of whether you call it a “crossover” or a truck.
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians?hl=en-US
I’m not interested in your response unless it includes peer-reviewed research. Just as a heads-up: I implore you to read before offering your “insight” next time.
You’ve either looked into this more than me or you haven’t. Seems like you haven’t.
Absolutely nothing in your linked page disputes what I said.
On the contrary, that final hood comparison picture reinforces what I said. It clearly states that the hood size and shape indicative of a crossover has “similar risk” to standard cars. Vastly different from the hood of the large SUVs and trucks. Destroys your entire argument lol.
I implore you to read the articles you share before sharing them. Not only will you avoid being wrong, but you might actually learn something.
This confirms how clueless you are beyond a reasonable doubt lol. You can’t even distinguish between a truck, SUV, or crossover, three very distinct vehicles with different sizes and shapes, but you want to speak authoritatively on the safety aspects of each of them? Zero people other than you would look at a truck and call it a “crossover” or vice versa.
Since you couldn’t be bothered to provide a single peer-reviewed source as requested, I did the work for you.
You are fixated on a picture you clearly didn’t understand. The “crossover is just a sedan” argument is factually bankrupt. It isn’t just about height; it is about geometry. A sedan is a wedge (pedestrian rolls onto the hood); a crossover is a block (pedestrian is pushed forward/under).
The data is overwhelming. You haven’t looked into this. I have.
Regarding your comment on the picture: You looked at the image but ignored the data right next to it. The IIHS study explicitly isolates “medium-height” vehicles (30–40 inches—i.e., crossovers) and found that those with blunt, vertical fronts are 26% more lethal than those with sloped fronts.
Here are 22 sources—including peer-reviewed studies, federal datasets, and safety institute reports—that explicitly refute your “opinion.”
I. The “Height & Geometry” Studies (Directly refuting your claim)*
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-vertical-front-ends-pose-greater-risk-to-pedestrians
https://uhero.hawaii.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/UHEROwp2401.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S002243750300088X
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S221201222100002X
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15389580490898696
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicle-height-compounds-dangers-of-speed-for-pedestrians
II. The “Blind Zone” & Visibility Data (It’s not just a sedan)
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/the-hidden-danger-of-big-trucks-a9662450296/
https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investigates/13-investigates-millions-of-vehicles-have-unexpected-dangerous-front-blind-zone/531-9521c471-3bc1-4b55-b860-3363f0954b3b
https://www.kidsandcars.org/frontovers/facts
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/drivers-cannot-see-kids-front-blind-zones-suvs-trucks-rcna44876
III. Government & Association Reports (The Statistics)
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812681
https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians24
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2023-06/GHSA - Pedestrian Traffic Fatalities by State 2022 Preliminary Data (Jan-Dec).pdf
https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/Publication/813592
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3217544/
IV. Analysis & Journalism (Explaining the Physics)
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/suvs-trucks-killing-pedestrians-cyclists/621102/
https://www.freep.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2018/06/28/suv-death-rise-pedestrian-safety/646139002/
https://www.propublica.org/article/yield-to-death
https://www.theautopian.com/full-size-suvs-are-twice-as-likely-to-kill-pedestrians-as-cars-study/
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2023/11/14/748057.htm
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-26/suv-crash-safety-for-pedestrians-is-getting-worse
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-pedestrian-deaths-jump-taller-vehicles-cited-risk-2023-11-14/
You’ve either looked into this more than me or you haven’t. Seems like you haven’t.
If you’re not going to provide peer reviewed research I will block you because like I said, I don’t do armchair horseshit
Incorrect. A crossover is a wedge, not a block. You are once again thinking of a truck or a full size SUV you donut lol.
No you haven’t. You don’t even know what modern motor vehicles look like.
Good thing crossovers have sloped fronts and not vertical fronts lol. Once again, you’ve never seen a motor vehicle before in your life.
Thank you for taking the time to collect several more links, all of which reinforce what I’ve said and completely destroy your own argument. The danger comes from large SUVs and trucks with tall, blunt hoods. NOT the average crossover that is currently the highest selling sector of vehicle in the United States.
I’m sure you read all those links.
Welcome to my block list! Cheers.
Again as stated, I don’t do armchair.
✌️
Perhaps you should read them, since they prove my point and discredit yours. Every single link you provided discusses the impacts of SUVs and Light trucks. Literally none of them apply to crossovers, the most popular vehicle type in the United States, which you continue to prove that you can’t identify.
But go ahead and block me you intellectual coward. It’s the only way you will be able to live in your shocking level of ignorance in peace.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
No?
One of those things has characteristics that have been found through extensive research to be more deadly to pedestrians, due to geometry very different from regular cars, and the other does not have those things.
Take a look at these two vehicles. Can you tell which one of these is responsible for killing people at a higher rate?
Not quite potayto potahto as you would suggest.