feels like the tone of this title is forgetting about the shareholders, which I do not take kindly to
The article doesn’t talk about the fact that the increase is far greater in dark conditions, which is not readily explained by the changes to car design the article discusses.
This article talks more about that, and the linked report suggests population trends have contributed to more people walking at night along arterial roads with poor pedestrian infrastructure.
To be clear, daytime fatalities are up by about 40% in the interval shown, which is much more than the increase in population. Increasing vehicle size and hood height are real problems too, but don’t seem to be the biggest factor.
There are sidewalks on both sides of the street in my neighborhood. People are walking 2 abreast in the street at night and joggers are commonly running about 4 feet into the street from the curb.
Regardless of the article’s findings, some people are just oblivious.
What is the condition of your sidewalks? My sidewalks are uneven and a neighborhood grandma who I walk with still prefers the street even though my street is not well lit. Uneven sidewalks are a tripping hazard that can be avoided by walking in the street. Her vision isn’t great so a paved stretch of road is just easier to walk with a flashlight.
I knew someone who did that because the sidewalks were too uneven. She had bad ankles and kept rolling them trying to walk in the sidewalk
Since pandemic I’ve fallen twice because of bad sidewalks. It’s embarrassing as shit
I propose we trick our fellow Americans by making smol cars offroady enough to embarrass an F150:
Look at them! Who would want a rolling brick over that?
And the Ford Focus is already mostly there.
My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do
Concur.
love this
these look dope af
And functional! You’re looking at Dakar rally champions, and hatchbacks so unreasonably fast on dirt, their league was banned.
This is what actual off-roaders look like.
This is an accepted part of the economy. Our leaders have decided us dying for private profit is fine. Now add up all the accepted deaths per year from every product and service and see how many of us are sacrificed for profit.
But I need a massive truck to carry groceries and 2 kids.
/s
It’s literally style. Those pickup lifts often ruin durability and off-road capability.
Hood heights. You have pickup trucks that have to have a front camera now.
My wife is a medical coder for the ED, for more than a dozen hospitals and says the overwhelming area for vehicle fatalities she codes is intersections crossing in front of traffic. Particularly trying to make the yellow. The plural of anecdote isn’t data mind you, but she’s been at this for 15+ years and has a pretty good sense of it.
My similar anecdote is people taking a right on red without stopping (or apparently looking), and would probably be included in those statistics. Since there may be a pedestrian or cyclist just around the corner you can’t see until you’re at the intersection, stopping and looking is critical for safety
I used to be a proponent of right on red, because who wants to be stuck at a dead intersection? If you only consider cars, it’s a nice efficiency gain. But now non-car users like pedestrians and cyclists don’t have a safe time to cross the intersection. And it’s so much worse now that people turning right on red seem to have forgotten the parts about “after coming to a complete stop” and “yielding to other traffic”
For sure! When driving downtown this is what freaks me out most while driving around. Last thing I want to do is hit someone.
When in NYC and Makati it shocked me to see how flagrant people are with just crossing the street wherever. Two places I’ll never drive, I’m not a good enough driver to not hit people in places like that.
At least in Manhattan, traffic is usually slow enough that pedestrians are at least as fast. Also they tend to go as a crowd. I’ll usually wait for the light but when hundreds of other pedestrians swarm into the street I figure we’re fairly visible and safe.
I would never drive in Manhattan simply because it’s the slowest and most frustrating way to get around. I used to drive around queens when I had a girlfriend there but we’d always take a train around the city, and I’m sure traffic has only gotten worse. It’s just not worth it
Those are pretty staggering numbers considering the population has only grown by maybe 12% in that same timeframe.
A truck drove by me the other day that was so high up and had such a big body there is no way the driver could see anything 10 feet around the truck in all directions.
When you need a step ladder to get into your truck maybe it is too high for public roads.
Interesting to me is some new cars will auto brake before crashing, so I guess the issue is “fixed”.
That would be included in the data. The auto braking is also worse when it comes to to pedestrians than other cars if I’m remembering a report from a little while that came out correctly.
I’d love to see EU numbers side by side for a fair comparison.
40% decrease from 2013 to 2023
Great stuff. Big car go splat.
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Keep selling these massive juggernaut trucks. There is no reason for them beyond emotional driven buying and profits. Then there is the matter of low license barriers, poor vehicle maintenance, and a lack of regular driving fitness testing. The US is also pedestrian unfriendly. I have to drive almost everywhere since there is very little within walking distance to my home. If I do try to walk there are stretches with no sidewalks and very sketchy intersections I have to cross.
