Thank you. As a cyclist and pedestrian (who does own a normally-sized car), I was getting pretty frustrated by the lack of safety discussed in the comments.

https://twitter.com/lloydalter/status/1395326192908218371?s=...

I agree this is less safe for pedestrians, which matters in cities, but it is maybe safer in rural areas? I'd much rather hit a deer or moose going 80 in a tall truck then a short truck. Also, in my experience, people drive much slower in smaller towns, and are therefore less likely to hit a pedestrian or cyclist.

Plus the added visibility is nice and certainly would increase safety, I would think.

> but it is maybe safer in rural areas?

People walk in rural areas, too; and those roads are often not designed for it and these accidents tend to happen at night. There's a significant percentage of pedestrian deaths that happen out of the city under these circumstances.

I guess suburbs are where these trucks and people most often encounter each other.

Sounds like a common sense reasoning about this. Are there stats to back it up? Do trucks pose a significantly greater risk to cyclists and pedestrians? I'm actually a truck owning cyclist myself.

The commonly cited study (that of course nobody reads) from the Governors Highway Safety Association showed that if you get hit by a truck or SUV you have a higher chance of dying. They also found that if you adjust for how many of each are on the road, you are 15% more likely to be hit by the driver of a car.

Trucks and SUVs are on average newer than cars and at a higher price point, which means more newer safety features like object detection and driver warnings. I also suspect the feeling of mass in driving a larger vehicle makes you take driving more seriously.

>I also suspect the feeling of mass in driving a larger vehicle makes you take driving more seriously.

I think it's the opposite. Also larger vehicles feel slower when you drive them even when you are doing 80.

Is it that, or is it just that people drive smaller vehicles on average in cities than in rural areas, and that's also where most of the pedestrians are?

It's probably a function of average parking spot size.

Front visibility issues come up from time to time. Especially with children sometimes hidden from sight.

https://www.wthr.com/mobile/article/news/investigations/13-i...

Yes, there are lots of studies on this. If you want info a good place to start is London's upcoming ban on large vehicles with low visibility (I would provide more info, but I'm limited on time right now).

You'd need a study that actually looked at more than just "what happens if you hit a pedestrian at 25 mph" - because it's quite possible that a truck does more damage when it hits, but hits less often because it's higher up and has better visibility.

I feel like I'm much more able to see pedestrians in my Cayman than in my 4Runner. People seem to blend in with the surroundings the higher up I am.

Every single near-miss I've had while walking in Minneapolis has been due to the driver not paying attention. There wasn't a single time it was due to lack of visibility from inside the vehicle.

My yelling at one driver who was staring at her phone while driving out of a parking ramp and across the sidewalk where she nearly hit me, probably woke her up enough to avoid driving into traffic and being hit by a bus!

No, it's not the vehicles, it's the people driving them.

The gp was simply stating that being struck by a truck is more lethal than a car due to their flat, tall fronts. They weren't, by my reading, insinuating that trucks are more likely to hit people. That is indeed, in my opinion, a function of operator error all things equal.

The GP said also, " The high hoods make for poor visibility around the front." to which your parent responded.

Yup, this is also why the Cybertruck (probably) won't be road legal in Europe. Too many sharp edges that would seriously hurt a pedestrian on collision.

Also no side mirrors. It's kind of a joke how poorly defined it is with people seriously expecting it this year.

You don't necessarily need mirrors when you have reliable (probably ASIL-B, maybe ASIL-D) cameras systems that recreate that view inside the vehicle, although I'm not that well versed with European laws.

They could also just add mirrors as has long been standard between concept and production motorcycles. (Example [0][1])

[0] https://2yrh403fk8vd1hz9ro2n46dd-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... [1] https://i2.wp.com/www.asphaltandrubber.com/wp-content/upload...

News articles[0] vs. anecdote

[0]https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investig...

This article states that forward blind spots account for 30-60 pedestrian fatalities each year. Rear blind spots are 5-10x deadlier. I would prioritize backup cameras.

Back up cameras are now standard 18MY onwards. New vehicles are required backup cameras.

Totally agree with you. Now, would you prefer being hit by a Ford F-150 or Fiat 500 (same speed)?

>No, it's not the vehicles, it's the people driving them.

people being distracted isn't a new feature; people being given distractions in the cabin is.

I'm not sure exactly what your argument is, to be quite frank.

Are you insinuating that less visibility isn't hindering the ability to drive safely?

There are additional devices commonplace in vehicles to make up for the lack of visibility -- pedestrian detection/auto-braking/switching cameras for example -- but surely a car would be safer to both pedestrians and the passengers if it had those types of features along with increased visibility..

>No, it's not the vehicles, it's the people driving them.

As a former auto mechanic, maybe i'm over-exposed.. but :

1) car interior design changes yearly, and it's usually to sate consumer desires rather than for safety/usability/efficiency.

2) mechanical failures aren't rare. mechanical failures that may end in injury or loss-of-life aren't rare, either.

The DoD has done tons of usability studies with regards to UI/UX. If auto manufacturers wanted a safe/repeatable/efficient environment then the interiors would probably share a lot of features with fighter jets; tactile buttons, audio cues, correct information density, etc.

They don't look anything like this -- this is a clue to the consumer that there are different priorities in mind at the manufactures' HQ, namely lately ICE (in-car entertainment, not internal combustion engine; sorry for possible confusion) and technological glitz like RGB lighting.

Second this. Even in the most bike- or pedestrian-friendly neighborhood of Minneapolis, all of the near miss experiences I’ve had have been because of driver inattentiveness. Is there some tautology here—with truck drivers and pedestrians frequenting disjoint geographies? Certainly.

Good that the car has DMS then :)

Related: Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked? by Douglas Husak

Because of high crash incompatibility, more overall damage and death occurs because of SUVs (and other similar vehicles).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447?seq=1

Pedestrians make up only a small minority of people killed in car crashes. (Like 6k of 40k per year.) So sure, it's good to make easy adjustments if they lead to big reductions in deaths, but it's not reasonable to care a ton about seriousness restricting the form factor yet think cars are fine in general. Best would be indexing car/truck sales tax to the size of the negative safety externalities, which would be a quite small fraction of the total car price, and letting people buy what they want to buy. It's clear consumers in the US value the large truck format and are willing to pay for it.

Cars&trucks cause a large majority of the pedestrians killed in walking-around-the-city accidents, though. Lumping those deaths in with highway deaths makes the statistic meaningless.

No. That would only be potentially true if people were proposing a law to limit the form factor of trucks that are driven in cities (and even if so, it would not be obvious; you'd have to look at the numbers). Since that isn't feasible, and all the proposed laws are about limiting the form factor of all consumer trucks, the average statics are the relevant ones.

You can always find a subpopulation where some effect is large; that can't be good reason to make rules that constrain the entire population.

Observation: bigger and heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants in any impact.

Regulation: cars should be safer

Impact: All vehicles continuously increase in size and weight year on year, decreasing the safety of older vehicles and non-vehicular road users

You have not responded to my rebuttal to what you said, you're just bringing up a different argument.

Sure, I don't actually know what your argument is to rebut? I know many people who would like to buy a ford ranger sized truck, but manufacturers discontinued them a decade ago because fuel efficiency regulations disincentivized them.

Not if saving 5k pedestrians kills 10k highway drivers. (Numbers made up, I’m just saying you have to consider them.)

Why would design changes that improve visiblity to avoid killing pedestrians end up killing more highway drivers?

From other threads, one might conclude that animal accidents in rural areas inspire some apprehension about wedge-profiled designs. In USA, 1m out of the 6m auto accidents each year involve one car and one animal, with a human death rate of 200 per year.

>So sure, it's good to make easy adjustments if they lead to big reductions in deaths, but it's not reasonable to care a ton about seriousness restricting the form factor yet think cars are fine in general.

unless the form factor has some very significant upside that I'm not seeing, preventing deaths should be prioritized over people's aesthetic preferences.

>It's clear consumers in the US value the large truck format and are willing to pay for it.

no, it's clear that consumers in the US don't value the lives of pedestrians, and therefore we cannot trust the free market to determine what types of things get made.

> unless the form factor has some very significant upside that I'm not seeing, preventing deaths should be prioritized over people's aesthetic preferences.

Nope. "Deaths should always be prioritized over aesthetics" is a clearly bad rule because it is innumerate. You must always trade off how many deaths for the preferences of how many people. Otherwise all design of everything is dictated solely by safety.

> no, it's clear that consumers in the US don't value the lives of pedestrians, and therefore we cannot trust the free market to determine what types of things get made.

No, you need to read about externalities and Pigovian taxes. The entire point of the proposed tax is that it does not require the car buyer to care about pedestrians whatsoever.

Vehicle drivers decide what vehicles they buy, but pedestrians do not. The Regulations (or lack thereof) incentivize vehicles that kill more pedestrians

Surely you can’t be serious

Pedestrians should get the benefit first though, because they are not the ones choosing to drive cars. I’m much more OK with drivers making choices that hurt themselves than I am with them making choices that hurt other people who never had the option of choosing.

Wow, 6k or 15% of deaths is not worth doing anything about... This is peak car-brain thinking.

Pedestrians are the ones who should be the first to reach zero deaths IMO, since they weren't the ones who decided to drive around in a deadly machine in the first place and are usually completely innocent in their own danger.

What are your thoughts on pedestrian vs. train deaths? Obviously it is always the conductors fault and peak train-brain thinking?

Commuting on a scooter I've seen more than my fair share of pedestrians on phones walking out into traffic and idiots on bikes blowing through red lights. Sometimes everyone involved can be at fault.

It's not even really their fault in those situations though, they're not walking faster than 3-4MPH. You're the guy driving a two thousand pound hunk of steel, not paying attention.

2k of those 6k pedestrian deaths had alcohol in their system. Surely a train is a safer place for them.

Please price in externalities. Add in noise, total area it takes up, weight, and pollution.

Only 6,000 dead?? Wow. Every year.

How is this acceptable??

This is a true point, but it applies to SUV's as well as trucks. This is more an argument for moving to a sedan-dominated fleet than an argument against trucks... but good luck: in the USA, SUVs and trucks are two very hot market segments.

Here's one for you on that topic from London: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56647128

Cities should start taxing the size of vehicles too if they're going to let people park on the street. Smart cars are a fantastic utility vehicle for example, but are not incentivised enough.

especially more dangerous when they've been retrofitted with even higher steel off-roading bumpers.