Relative risk for light trucks is only 45% higher than cars and is lower than cars for heavy trucks. Buses are the real dangers on the road.
I suspect most of the increase in pedestrian fatalities is from pedestrians and drivers staring at their phone instead of where they are going. I have definitely had close calls where I watched someone looking at the phone start wandering through an intersection without seeing if it's clear.
Seatbelt and airbag regulations were fought on the grounds that bad drivers killed people, not good drivers. It was the drivers responsibility to be safe. Since airbags and sest belts have become important safety features, hundreds of thousands lives have been saved in the United States alone.
Have we decided we're okay with the number of pedestrian deaths caused by compact cars and SUVs? Some SUVs are heavier, have less visibility, and would presumably lead to more pedestrian deaths than cars, so why isn't there a similar condemnation against those vehicles? Or maybe there is?
But the trend of stock pick-up trucks getting lifted, having high hoods, small windshields vs their equivalent models 10 or 20 years ago is so much worse than the default cross-over SUV in the US. Sales of trucks have gone up, so have pedestrian deaths.
https://theweek.com/articles/929196/case-against-american-tr...
Given the choice of hitting an inclined windshield and rolling over the top of a vehicle vs. taking the full force of a giant body-length grille, I'd rather take my chances with the windshield.
This is what is referred to as a moral hazard, because the people driving these trucks are not taking any risk, even reducing their own risk, but at the cost of increasing the risk of everyone else, and most importantly people who didn't drive to begin with and opted out of the risky activity. Particularly when deaths are involved this is obviously behavior worthy of (1) popular condemnation (2) fucking regulatory action.