Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds
Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds
arstechnica.com
Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds
131 comments
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, I felt physically threatened just standing next to some of the products
Yes, that’s why they make them like that.
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No shit? I forget where I saw the comparison but the length of the view that is blocked when being in a big ass truck is absolutely insane. There could be a gaggle of kids in front of you and you would never know until you hit them.
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I mentioned this is another comment, but the crazy thing is that's the driver's view from M1 Abrams. Typically, in hatches open operation you'd either have a Crew Commander (and/or gunner) standing with their torso out of the turret for better visibility (and a second set of eyes), or a ground guide watching where you go.
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That'd be the one.
On another note, I think your comment is causing the Boost app to crash. :/
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They also seriously injure the people they do hit.
A car tends to hit low and send people onto the hood. A truck hits high (head and torso injuries) and knocks people to the ground where they get run over.
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There could be a gaggle of kids in front of you and you would never know until you hit them.
Republicans: As long as they're not white...
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Modern trucks have shitty visibility all the way around. I borrow my dad's Colorado and my boss's F-150 frequently and I always feel like I'm driving a school bus and feel like I can't see shit. They have backup cameras but it's not that great(and the idea that a backup camera should be required to operate a vehicle safely in the first place is abhorrent to me anyway). I never had any issues with my S10 back in the day and I could fit more shit in the bed.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo&t=559s
There is a good visualization in this video (These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us by Not Just Bikes) at the timestamp I linked (roughly 9 minutes 19 seconds), cited from KidsAndCars.org
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It is honestly a major failure of US society (comedians I am looking at you) that people aren’t made fun of for driving these trucks so mercilessly that most people feel too ashamed to drive them.
I mean lots of other failures too, it shouldn’t be legal especially because there is zero reason for the high hood height from a vehicle function perspective. Unless of course you consider your vehicle being more efficient at killing pedestrians a reason to have them that way. I suppose we have entered that stage of things here in the US haven’t we.
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Definitely. Builders and contractors in Europe drive vans; same as everyone else on the planet except the insecure yanks. If you pulled up to a site in one of these in any other country, I fuckin guarantee remarks will be made about your penis size and your penchant for the cock
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I fuckin guarantee remarks will be made about your penis size and your penchant for the cock
Every country on the planet other than the US will call someone gay for driving a large truck?
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There are plenty of things vans aren't suitable for--towing fifth wheels or holding oversized power equipment, for instance. Nor are vans any better for visibility than the trucks on OP's list. Many start as the same truck frames and then have a different body placed on top.
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If you’re relying on comedians to save you, you might want to rethink your strategy.
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Comedians would absolutely, definitely be the best way to swing this
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It's probably better than hoping corporations and politicians rein things in though.
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I mean I agree lol
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It's been shown time and again that Americans get their news from comedy shows and their comedy from news broadcasts.
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But they need their Emotional Support Vehicles!
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A truck has to have a nose that looks like a big slab of concrete to oncoming traffic. If it doesn't men will be forced to wear dresses, sing show tunes while sitting to pee. Thems the rules.
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We got rid of pop-up headlights because they were causing pedestrian deaths, but I don't think we'll do anything about these monstrosities because not only are they deadly, they're not fun. And our regulators want to prevent fun more than they want to prevent death.
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I hadn't heard this before. How were pop-up headlights killing pedestrians?
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A pedestrian’s body doesn’t slide up the hood obstruction-free. It gets mangled by a sconce.
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The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe's 1998 Global Technical Regulation Number 9 deals with pedestrian safety sets out how countries should test the pedestrian safety of vehicle exteriors. The U.K.'s Individual Vehicle Approval framework, which is based on the aforementioned Global Technical Regulation, limits the size and presence of sharp edges on any surface where a pedestrian or cyclist is likely to impact in the event of a collision. According to the U.K. regulation, protrusions greater than 5 mm (0.195 inches) must have a radius of at least 2.5 mm (0.098 inches), and further rules prohibit protrusions on which pedestrians could get caught in the event on an impact. These and other regional E.U. laws made it prohibitively difficult to engineer pop-up headlights into a vehicle.
They weren't killing people, I don't think, but they were unnecessarily sharp protrusions. They can still be used, but you have to make them roundish and smooth, which is tougher to accomplish with a flush-with-hood-look. It's more that to meet EU regulations, they would look uglier.
I think the bigger issue isn't death but simply that you can get caught on them, instead of rolling over the vehicle, which causes less harm.
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I thought we ditched popup headlights because having a piece of critical illumination on a moveable body panel was a bad idea?
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Not quite right. They became common due to a combination of aerodynamics and lamp height restrictions. Especially in the US, which used to require one of a small list of sealed beam designs which weren't at all aerodynamic. They are still technically legal, but difficult to integrate with protrusion restrictions. The US also dropped the sealed beam restriction decades ago, so there wad no point in trying.
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It's ok though, in about 30 years after 2 million children are dead, we'll make a law that limits the height of hoods, effective 5 years from then.
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We’ll also add exclusions for cars above a certain wheel well distance, which will only further incentivize carmakers to make bigger cars.
/s but not really, because this is literally how emissions regulations work. Emissions regulations are less strict as wheel well distance increases, so larger cars can be less efficient. Which is why car makers have heavily pushed for larger cars via marketing, astroturfing, etc, because it means regulatory compliance is easier.
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yeah. you really can't, the cab over semi isn't coming back. They were cold in winter, too hot in summer, uncomfortable and killed the drivers in a moose hit. Sure anything you hit with a semi dies anyways, but doesn't so often take the driver too with a conventional.
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But i Like sITTinG uP hIGhEr
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This is a legitimate desire, I think. Being able to see more of what’s ahead is really luxurious and makes the whole driving experience feel safer (for drivers, anyway.) That said, now that every car on the street is a damned SUV, you’d need a damned semi truck to gain any real visibility advantage. Driving a “normal” car is like being the only dwarf in the NBA.
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The seats keep creeping up higher but so do the windows. And the windows are farther and farther away from the driver. If we continue the current trend, soon there will be no more than slits on eye level.
If you remember older cars like Mr Beans Mini, the windows went down to the elbows and were right up to the driver. Of course that's less comfortable, but I prefer the all around view of older cars to the "elevated position" with firing holes for windows.
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That said, now that every car on the street is a damned SUV, you’d need a damned semi truck to gain any real visibility advantage.
Get one of those Google Street View cars with the 360 degree cameras on a pole and wear VR goggles or something.
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That's what unicycles are for.
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Try the all new Dodge Pedestrian Rammer.
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My 5 year old son loves Monster Trucks. We walked past one of these behemoth in stock form and he thought it was a monster truck. He wasn't far off.
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The automotive industry must be jealous of firearms killing so many Americans and beating the annual death toll of vehicles, so they're upping their game to really push us into an increasingly dystopian and dangerous world. How dare you walk or ride a bike!?
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They really just want us to actually be living in Mad Max world, all guns and cars and "guzzoline." They all fancy themselves an Immortan Joe.
Do not, my friends, become addicted to water. It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence!
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Last time I was visiting family in Toronto, I noticed the speed limit on major streets had been lowered to 40 kph (25 mph). So the same as residential streets, in other words.
I asked my brother about this. He said that in spite of measures taken by the city to improve infrastructure, pedestrian and cyclist fatalities were on the way up due to the heavier and higher off the ground vehicles people drive today. The city admitted they did not expect people to drive that slow, but if they could start ticketing people doing over 60, that might save some lives? It's pretty sad.
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From what I've heard, the Toronto police generally just don't enforce traffic laws.
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They know. And those vehicle owners like to bully people and other cars with that.
Tax it hard like a luxury tax or vice tax.
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Who would have thunk?
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I see what you did there, and I appreciate it.
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Pedestrian infrastructure is not typically great either
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I just biked home and cars were in the bike lane for 90% of it. The plows pulled all the reflectors off the road and now drivers can't tell where the lanes are. Even though that entire lane is the dedicated right turn lane, they go in the bike lane. When we had snow a few days ago, pedestrians were in the road because the snow was plowed into the bike lane and sidewalk. Fuck 99.9% of US and Canadian infrastructure
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In the US that is. In many other western countries, pedestrian infrastructure is awesome and advanced. On the other hand, they usually also don't have many of these trucks. Double whammy for US pedestrians.
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I'm fairly confident the folks over at !fuck_cars@lemmy.ml, !fuck_cars@lemmy.world, and !fuck_cars@lemmy.ca, could have told anyone that.
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Yeah but who cares what those nutjobs think?
There's nothing wrong with cars, especially when they're backed by a good public transit system and plenty of pedestrian-only paths. It's the trucks (edit: and SUVs) that are the problem.
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The thing wrong with cars was the psyop the oil companies played on North Americans in the 50s that it was the ultimate symbol of freedom, before designing entire metropolises around them and causing everyone to have to sit in their car for 2 hours a day needlessly.
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I'd argue there's nothing wrong with trucks, either. Some folk have a legitimate use for them: fitting construction material and lumber in the back; towing a trailer.
The problem is two fold, I figure: we've got a bunch of folk driving trucks (and SUVs) around that never have a legitimate use for them other than a status symbol. Then there's the folk that have a partial need for them, but can't afford to keep multiple vehicles around, so they're stuck driving the truck they need a fraction of the time.
I'm in the latter category. If i could reliably rent a truck to haul/tow with, I'd replace my family's Tacoma with a sedan, and save a bunch of money in the process.
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So cool. I'm gonna get an aftermarket hood height riser on my Ferd Fteenthousand
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Pedestrians need to duck, not jump.
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Worst game of Temple Run ever.
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It also directly correlates with smaller dick size
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Maybe we need to destigmatize small dicks. That might solve a lot of societal problems.
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I saw a pedestrian get bumped by a city car on a crossing yesterday, she rolled on the hood and had a leg injury.
With a higher hood, like a SUV, she would probably have been thrown onto the ground and hit her head...
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Road taxes should increase after certain dimensions and weights. Bonnet/hood height should be one.
Also, safety ratings should give equal weighting to the a vehicle's impact absorbtion and impact contribution. It's insane that something is considered safe solely because the occupant is protected.
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Agreed. They should but there are these Cafe Standards that need to be dealt with. The cars have to be larger to be exempt because we're using wheel base to help determine fuel economy (it should be weight not wheelbase) These exemptions need to go away.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
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Next up at 11: "Water is Wet"
Stay tuned
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This according to a study published in the journal "No Shit Quarterly".
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Wasn't there some Toyota marketing campaign about how they were making cars safer when a person is hit? Let me search around...
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Wait, is it because we cannot see them? Or maybe they are just really short people?
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That's the point 🤷
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The point being it's the owners that are buying these cars because they want to kill pedestrians or the designers intentionally create them with higher bonnets specifically to kill pedestrians?
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The point being that owners are buying these vehicles to be the "winner" in any collision that may happen, and that includes with pedestrians.
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BONNET
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Hood! Bonnet sounds like you are galloping through the woods for a cookie.
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What about school busses? They have very high hoods and many danger areas where the driver cannot see, right?
Nice graphic here: https://www.drivergent.com/safety/bus-safety/danger-zones/
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Yeah; but you also need a special license to operate a bus that requires more training than driving an 18-wheeler for logistics. You also still have much more visibility over the hood in a bus.
Source: Was a school bus driver.
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Buses actually have better sight lines than modern trucks because the driver is much higher and the hood is sloped. This is also why they have a bar on the front that extends when unloading kids, to make them walk outside that zone.
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The craziest part about that too, is that militaries typically acknowledge these poor sight lines and have procedures in place. I drove a Bison in the Canadian Army, and we had to have either a crew command (up higher on the vehicle with a better view) or a ground guide (literally a personal walking in front of the vehicle).
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Schools buses usually require a CDL to drive, and there are even more stringent checks required if you actually drive children around.
There is nothing stopping a just licensed 16 year old, or a repeat drunk driver from jumping behind the wheel of a huge truck or SUV and operating it in pedestrian-rich areas, with no oversight.
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pedestrian deaths
I believe they call those "bonus points".
Brought to you by someone who ripped the mask right off your face, before the vaccine existed.
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Who hurt you?
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Edgy teens doing their thing. Or emotionally stunted adults who never grew out of it.
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To admit would be letting 'the libruls' win. They know, but it will remain a closely guarded dark secret.
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I have yet to actually be killed by it yet - so far - but several drivers seem to enjoy getting WITHIN INCHES of my body as I walk through a crosswalk, sometimes in heavy snow in sub-freezing temperatures where I struggle to even walk while they enjoy their climate-controlled cockpit with all the comforts of home, yet still want to shave off a few seconds of their commute. This has happened in both areas that heavily lean Democrat as well as ones that heavily lean Republican. In the former it is usually a smaller Lexus or BMW, while in the latter it is usually a giant vehicle, either truck or SUV. Also from what I have been told, the concept of "soccer mom" is a real one - a tiny person who can barely see over the wheel of a vehicle not made for tiny people, who drives perhaps once a month when their rotation comes up, not bothering to adjust the vehicle better for them, or to practice more often to become a safer driver.
In all of the above, as with the virus, the underlying attitude (whether rich or poor, liberal or conservative, whatever) is the same: I want MY way, the rest of you can deal with it as best you can - or die, whatever.
Somehow this idea of people abusing their vehicles with extreme negligence in the form of literally running over children like they are in a video game offends people's sensibilities, yet the same identical thought applied elsewhere gets the opposite reaction. e.g. if you knew that you had COVID, and you visit someone anyway (your >80-year-old grandparents?; crucially: before the vaccine existed) over their explicit objection that you only come if you have no symptoms, and then they die, how is that not "murder", or at least a form of almost murderous negligence? Not only did MANY people die (or get long-term symptoms) from exactly and precisely this scenario (a wedding, a funeral, a party or church service, etc.), but it also spread the pandemic much faster than it would have otherwise, flying in the face of the "flatten the curve" advice from scientists, affecting whole entire schools, churches, hospitals, and entire communities by the actions of just a few.
This is also btw the identical reason why groceries cost so much right now: they want to get THEIR way, so they just... do.
This is why society has rules: to provide a guiding light showing us how we all need to behave, or else experience the consequences (though anyone can be MORE friendly than those mandate, at any time). Hence why we might want an evidence-based policy on vehicles with higher hoods. Because people are literally dying here. We'll see if anyone cares, more than simply saying platitudes I mean, in the sense of taking any action to help stop it.
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131 comments
There needs to be regulations on the size of personal vehicles for a shit ton of reasons...
But this one by itself should be enough.
There are… but there are loopholes. Which is why the vehicles get bigger every year. They’re all using loopholes to continue not bothering to meet the standards the regulations set forth.
Loopholes are always going to happen...
But if you close them, then the problem is fixed.
Currently we just ignore them, instead of passing regulations that close the loophole and clarify
We could even go a step further and require plans to be approved by a regulatory agency before mass production can start.
Boom, problem solved forever.
"loophole" implies that regulators are trying to restrict them, but manufacturers are finding ways to work around those restrictions. There is no "loophole" here: CAFE standards are specifically driving manufacturers to produce larger cars.
CAFE standards gradually tighten emissions standards. The problem is that they tighten the standards on smaller cars faster than on larger cars. CAFE are making it harder and harder to make small, compliant vehicles, and easier to produce larger compliant vehicles.
This isn't a loophole. This is incompetent, counter-productive regulation.
There needs to be a social cost of owning these abominations. If we make it more expensive or more regulated, they'll still find the people who want to drive them. If we make them embarrassing, shameful, or otherwise costly in social standing, the market for them will soon collapse.
Other countries require a special license for vehicles that big.
It costs more, and requires frequent tests, written and driving. The large vehicles are also prohibited from driving down small side streets and using normal parking spaces.
Because at this size, they're only needed as commercial vehicles.
If the only reason people have them is for social status, you'd have a point. But, that fails as soon as anyone actually uses one for their intended purpose.
I live in Basel, Switzerland, lovely old city, very unfriendly to cars, which is fine due to the great public transit. There is this one dickhead who has a bright, shiny red Dodge Ram. It's monstrous. And it doesn't fuckin' fit in the streets, I'd love to see how much in fines that idiot has had for blocking trams, traffic, and all the other nonsense I've seen it do, was actually stuck in traffic once because it got stuck on a corner, took 30 mins to get it backed up and out of the way.
But hey, at least he's famous now, sort of
The conservative Supreme Court is about to make that a lot harder in a few days. Get ready for the Canonaro to be real.
What decision is this? I've not been paying attention to Supreme Court doings lately.