The incentives are all aligned to maximize vehicle use and minimize any inconvenience to incompetent vehicle owners, regardless of the death toll.
But I'd imagine most people don't consider the survivability of pedestrians in a collision when they buy a car, since people generally overestimate their driving ability and underestimate their likelihood of ending up in an accident.
So harsher penalties might not improve car designs much.
The pedestrians are safe(ish). For now.
I wonder how much of an effect those hypothetical lawsuits have on downstream insurance premiums — anecdotally, it hasn't stopped the F-150 being the most popular car in North America.
California:
A felony vehicular manslaughter conviction is punishable by 2, 4 or 6 years in state prison.
Colorado:
Under Colorado law, vehicular manslaughter in the second degree is considered a Class 4 felony, as outlined in Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-3-106. The potential penalties for this offense include imprisonment for a term ranging from 2 to 6 years and a fine between $2,000 and $500,000
Do you drive at all? You could be a perfect driver, fully sober and alert, and one moment's distraction can easily kill. Maybe a sudden glare in the window, or your misbehaving kid in the backseat throws something. It happens every day.
I don't see any social good to be gained from jailing people when negligence isn't involved. Human beings have failure rates. You're talking about taking an already horrible situation and destroying more lives and families.
When I'm riding my bicycle in a perfectly legal way on a roadway, and a driver gets irritated and tries to clip me, it's very difficult for me to prove that they acted in malice. If they clip me and I die hitting a guardrail, it's incredibly easy for them to claim it was an accident.
But that's an edge case and this type of culpability problem is common across many facets of humanity. The bigger issue may be that driving isn't treated with the seriousness it should warrant. In conditions where "sudden glare" is possible, one should drive their 4000lb vehicle at a speed that allows them to mitigate all but the most rare (freak) accident, like a 200lb alligator popping out of a manhole cover right in front of them. The human failure rate is real, but there's more we can do with process + tech + practice to mitigate it even smaller.
This level of care as a driver is directly counter to what the automobile industry wants as the image of their product: an easy, convenient and essential tool to be used every day.
The real problem is as the parent comment states, CAFE standards which have massively fucked with the incentives for car manufacturers to aggressively market previously SUVs and increasingly pickup trucks as family vehicles that are absolutely ridiculously oversized for their stated purpose (while also being remarkably and hilariously unable to actually carry cargo efficiently) and ludicrously inefficient, with all the blind-spots and difficulty to handle that that implies. Their higher stance and larger bodies make them infinitely more dangerous to pedestrians and smaller vehicles, which also incentivizes other drivers to buy the enormous fucking things, so if they get t-boned by someone driving them they don't have basically no chance of surviving. Which is not to say that a reasonably sized sedan can't also kill a pedestrian, but an Escalade has an infinitely better shot of managing it, both by size, and because the higher ride height greatly increases the odds of people going under the damn wheels.
Speaking of going under the damn wheels, there's been a huge increase in the number of kiddos going under the wheels of these big stupid things in recent decades, which is a uniquely American phenomenon occurring basically nowhere else because these enormous stupid vehicles do not make economic sense anywhere they aren't subsidized like they are here.
If you're unable to see what's in front of your 2-ton mile-a-minute machine because of a glare, maybe you shouldn't be driving a mile a minute? Clean the windows before you leave. Wear sunglasses. If the glare is "not that bad" so you don't regularly clean the windows and don't make sure you have sunglasses and occasionally someone dies because of this that is unacceptable. Glare does kill, as evidenced by increased collision rates when the sunrise aligns and misaligns with peak traffic - change the incentives so that people take steps to mitigate this.
If you're responsible for managing the behavior of a kid and also piloting a car, maybe you should have a second adult in the car. Maybe the kid should be in a seat they can't easily unbuckle, or not have access to toys they can throw in front of you. You should think about the risk to other road users and your potential jail time when you take your eyes off the road to handle some other responsibility.
Yes, I drive. Professionally! I deliver industrial equipment and travel all over the Midwest to perform upgrades, maintenance, and bug fixes on it. I take the safety of myself, pedestrians, and fellow drivers seriously when I have 20,000 lbs of steel on a gooseneck - more seriously than a lot of drivers I see around me. When I'm not traveling, though, I bike to work for 9+ months a year. And I've had my share of beer cans thrown out windows, and rearview mirrors hitting me in the butt, and coal rolled in my face, and panic from people scrolling TikTok and not seeing me until the last second. I haven't been killed yet, but I keep my life insurance paid up.
> In cases of criminal negligence, the defendant is commonly charged with unintentional vehicular manslaughter.
These people should not be jailed.
> and one moment's distraction can easily kill. Maybe a sudden glare in the window, or your misbehaving kid in the backseat throws something. It happens every day
By phrasing it that way, you also admit that driving is incredibly dangerous, essentially murderous in the aggregate. The right response then is that we need to establish a transportation system where a moment of inattention doesn't cause death and destruction. Traffic calming, slower speed limits, more mobility options (walk, bike, bus, train), ... and to the point of the article, smaller and lighter vehicles.
I think appropriate justice is a spectrum and they often get it wrong.
For example, 10+ years ago a friend of mine was rear ended by a drunk driver while sitting at a red light. She died. The driver lost his license (because he was drunk) and got a year of supervision. He probably should've spent sometime in jail imo.
On the other hand, I'm well aware there are people sitting in jail right now that absolutely shouldn't be.
Driving too close is not an accident. Driving too fast for the conditions is not an accident. Weaving around in traffic to gain a spot. Not looking at who is in the crosswalk before driving through it. Not yielding at a merge. Racing the lights to get there before it is red/or just after. Not having your brakes, tires, lights, suspension, etc in correct working condition. Driving too tired, or under the influence. Sure, most of the time nothing happens, so people get used to thinking these are how driving is done (and it is in the US). But just because one normally gets away with it does not mean these are not dangerous behaviors, and they're absolutely under the drivers control.
Not accident, incident.
Read up on "normalization of deviance" (wiki page is pretty light but it is a start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance). Aviation has long recognized this and training emphasizes not getting caught in that behavioral trap.
The reason the US is considered a driving culture is only partially legislation and only partly infrastructure, it's due to a culture that treats driving as a loosely enforced activity where faults should be given the benefit of the doubt. This is the opposite of aviation where safety is emphasized in every part of the process and scary moments are encouraged to be reported anonymously through ASOS. Infrastructure is stressed as the ideal solution because it involves very little cultural change but due to a reluctance to raise taxes and aforementioned driving culture, people resist infrastructural changes which help non-drivers.
Contrary to the popular narrative, not everyone who drives a car does so drunk, high, and/or too fast - a lot of people are actually very good drivers. Many (most?) of them do all of the recommended maintenance on the car in a timely manner. That doesn't mean that every driver has the reflexes of a racecar driver, and nor can you expect them to.
Blaming every accident on the driver by default and expecting jail time for anything with bad consequences is pretty toxic. Even the FAA doesn't do that for pilots.
Where do you live? That's not how it is in my neighborhood, despite a 25mph sped limit that turns to a 20mph zone in front of my house (due to the proximity of a playground), drivers routinely drive 35+ mph. Neighborhood complaints have so far gotten a "Slow - Children" sign posted.
The one thing that helped for about a week was when they parked a radar speed trailer on the side of the street, it would flash a bright blue light when drivers exceed the speed limit by 5mph.
After they took away the trailer, cars started speeding again.
So why do most drivers appear to be much more cautious in a parking lot?
If drivers were truly taking more responsibility for the dangers they create for others, whenever they travel on a street alongside parked cars they would limit themselves to a speed that is at least unlikely to cause a pedestrian fatality (<30km limits are sometimes justified on this basis).
I mean, I get it - it would be incredibly inconvenient for drivers and as a society we have implicitly accepted the consequences of this convenience, but it doesn't abrogate the moral responsibility of drivers in my opinion. Just because everyone else does something doesn't make it morally okay.
Strongly disagree with this as a general statement. I live on a street near one of the several exits to my neighborhood. It’s not a sleepy street, but it’s also not a major road or anything overly busy. Being objective, I’d estimate that far less than 20% of drivers passing my house are truly prepared to stop for an unexpected obstacle and maybe ~2% are outright reckless (~50mph in a 35, DUI, fixated on phone, etc). The rest, and that’s most of us here, think they’re driving safe but are caught up in thoughts about their project at work, late for kid’s soccer practice, worried about a relationship, etc… and are mostly on autopilot for the conditions they routinely experience, but are not actively prepared for an outlier event.
Do you have a source for this being a common source of pedestrian accidents?
Contrary to the popular narrative, not everyone who drives a car does so drunk, high
No one is claiming that.
and/or too fast
Ok, I'll make this claim, people routinely exceed speed limits, whether on 25mph residential streets or 65mph highways.
Blaming every accident on the driver by default and expecting jail time for anything with bad consequences is pretty toxic
The driver is in the 3000 lb vehicle, he should shoulder more responsibility. If drivers thought they'd face serious consequences if they hit a pedestrian, they'd manage to actually look for pedestrians instead of just giving a token glance. Try to cross on a walk signal in any busy town or city and you'll see how few drivers pay attention to pedestrians, I've actually been in the crosswalk and had to stop for a right-on-red turning car who didn't manage to see a person in the street in broad daylight.
> Roughly 68 percent of crashes resulting in a pedestrian fatality occurred at non-intersections in 2010
Also half of these pedestrian-driver crashes involve someone (pedestrian or driver) being inebriated, but they certainly do occur when the driver is paying full attention.
> I've actually been in the crosswalk and had to stop for a right-on-red turning car who didn't manage to see a person in the street in broad daylight.
I've been in the same position as you here, but I've had a lot more drivers wait for me. I've also seen drivers (particularly in Florida) acknowledge my existence by making eye contact before rudely turning directly in front of me. This particular piece of American car culture drives me crazy, too, but is not an indication of broad negligence or disregard for the lives of others.
An unintended adverse event.
For example: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/driver-killed-south-la-si...
A driver, allegedly watching youtube, runs over and kills 2 children of 12 and 14 at a crosswalk. But they were only charged with the lesser vehicular manslaughter, not felony vehicular manslaughter.
This all assumes, however, that the accident was actually the fault of the driver. In many cases, it's actually not their fault, in which case the lawsuit from the family goes out the window and the sentence also tends to get reduced. The cases you are thinking of probably involved a pedestrian running into the street without seeing the car or a cyclist doing something equally stupid.
In the examples you gave:
1. "a traffic offense for causing serious injury or death to a vulnerable individual while operating a motor vehicle"
2. "Despite that evidence, prosecutors declined to seek criminal charges against Vanderweit, saying her carelessness didn’t amount to vehicular homicide" - "Careless driving" is a charge they give drivers when the prosecutor wants to make a quick deal and doesn't think they can prosecute anything higher. I wonder if there's more to the story here given that there were at least 13 witnesses who could explain exactly what happened...
3. "pleaded no contest to overtaking and passing a cyclist without keeping a distance of at least 3 feet"
"Current laws in many ways do not give substantial protections to victims struck by vehicles. As legislative liaison for the Maryland State’s Attorneys’ Association, I would welcome any discussion and examine any changes proposed to the legislature. We share concerns about keeping our community members safe on the roads,” said State’s Attorney John McCarthy."
If everybody was guaranteed to get 60 days of community service every time they did something that could have killed a pedestrian then the behaviour would drop right off.
Is the purpose of punishment only to deter criminal behavior? How about expressing social condemnation for the committed criminal act, strengthening citizens' trust in the legal order based on the rule of law, increasing awareness of the danger of committing criminal acts and of the fairness of punishment, and enabling the perpetrator to rejoin the society.
If distracted driving was caught 95% of the time, and the sentence was something like 40 hours of community service (and escalated for repeat offenders in some manner), I don't think society has nearly as difficult of a moral problem on it's hands when a 19 year old kills a cyclist due to checking a text on their phone.
Studies repeatedly show "random" punishments (even if harsh) are simply not very effective vs. consistent enforcement. When you drop the hammer on someone who more or less got "unlucky" that day by engaging in what amounts to otherwise normalized behavior due to lack of enforcement - it gets kind of hard to see how that can be remotely effective at accomplishing much for society beyond vengeance. While that is important, it certainly isn't everything.
This would be fantastic
> Studies show that the length of sentence has little impact on criminal behaviour.
Does that study apply to this situation? Vehicular manslaughter is not premeditated. There are cases of drunk speeding drivers getting 10 days for killing someone: https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20170126/old-town/ryne-san-h... Drivers would be more careful if they knew of cases where a driver got 15 years in prison for their negligence.
That's a false dichotomy. 4x4 cars often do better on poor roads and snow, lower center of gravity is better if you don't need ground clearance, and weight distribution of a pickup is poor unloaded.
The whole 4x4 truck things is even more complicated - good off-road performance and good freeway performance are in many ways at cross purposes.
The only real intrinsic value of a pickup is open air bed space (easier access than a van, but less protected). The way the market developed they have also turned into the vehicle of choice for towing, but that's not intrinsic.
The % of light pickups is more a marketing phenomena than real utility.
My FWD Volvo Station wagon would like a word with you
There are (or were) plenty of small cars that did great off road that are no longer sold in the US, if I was looking for a new car and could buy one in the US I'd consider something like the Sizuki IGNIS where it's got 4WD and can hold people comfortably.
As someone who grew up in Colorado and now lives in Canada, a large 4x4 truck is a menace on poor roads and snow as well.
Trucks are heavy, with poorly distributed weight, and are harder to control in snow if they have a true (locked center diff) 4x4 system. A Subaru with snow tires is the stereotypical mountain car for a reason. If I have to drive an hour through a blizzard I'll take the car if given the choice
If you need a truck, you need a truck, but there should be much stronger limits on what is CAFE exempt, and what you can use a CAFE exempt vehicle for. Perhaps since the exemption is intended to avoid hurting commercial interests, CAFE exempt vehicles should require a commercial license and insurance.
> A large 4x4 truck is a menace in a dense city, but a car is crap in places with poor roads and snow. Both are common.
Then forbid trucks where the roads are good and where there is no snow.
If those are getting tax benefits for being used by specialized industries, they should be treated as such. I want emission standards, but if you tell me that we don’t get a snowplow without exception, I’m amenable. Snow on the road is bad. Where we should all draw the line is having soccer moms do the school run in a snowplow.
If the exclusions are removed then the manufacture cafe ratings across products will go down. Thus be forced to be more efficient and sell smaller cars.
If they didn't have this exception, they wouldn't be able to enact all the other regulations without killing the auto industry.
I mean, an F-150 Lightning has great emissions. It will also crush me into chunky marinara it hits me with its brick-wall grill and 9000lbs of bulk.
Furthermore, vehicles with higher fuel efficiency tend to have smaller engines and thus also have shorter noses and more sloped hoods which make them safer for pedestrians.
The only connection with the CAFE regulations you can make is that they are obviously not strict enough. Especially when it comes to trucks and SUVs. And I fully agree with this. Stricter CAFE regulations would help not only with emissions but with pedestrian safety.
The main reason for the difference between a 1990s f150 and 2020s f150 is that people have been preferring to buy bigger trucks and Ford has catered to that preference by making the trucks bigger CAFE regulations be dammed. To their credit Ford has done some very good r&d work, trying to keep their ever larger trucks relatively fuel efficient, such as by their very well publicized conversion to aluminum. But they could and should be doing more and the government should be doing more to force them to do more.
This video details why: https://youtu.be/azI3nqrHEXM
The short version is there is an exploit to meet standards by increasing footprint that is easier to implement than to make vehicles more fuel efficient. That exploit needs to be nerfed.
However, the government screwed up the scaling factor and it basically became impossible to build a small truck, while larger trucks had much easier-to-meet requirements. That led to automakers basically abandoning the passenger car market, and upsizing trucks significantly.
Ford left the third generation Ranger to rot for nearly 15 years because people kept choosing the ever-increasing-in-size F-150. Chevy discontined the S10 back in 2004 in favor of the larger Colorado.
Customer preferences were already clear.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...
We had entire news cycles about the size of the Ford Excursion and GM's Hummer 1 back in the day.
Corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards are regulations in the United States, first enacted by the United States Congress in 1975,[1] after the 1973–74 Arab Oil Embargo, to improve the average fuel economy of cars and light trucks (trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles) produced for sale in the United States. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
CAFE was adopted in 1975 and effective from 1978. Are you confusing "modern CAFE regulations" with the late 2000s narrowing of the "car" and "light truck" CAFE regulations (which, yes, did push automakers to try to push more vehicles that fell out of the "light truck" category, just as the earlier standards pushed from cars to light trucks), which has effectively shifted back the old gap after the actual (and more complex) modern (2011+) regulations came into play.
And yeah, the chicken tax along with all the other tariffs can go.