Occupant safety improved, but pedestrian safety peaked in 2009 and is now back to the level of 1982, with death numbers continuing to climb.

15 years ago most cars had good visibility, and pedestrians getting hit rolled over the vehicle's hood. Now people prefer vehicles with much worse visibility and hoods that hit pedestrians like a freight train instead of like a scoop.

Pedestrian safety is great if you don’t cross highways at night and aren’t drunk.

Pedestrian safety has gotten significantly worse in the past few years in the USA as people keep buying larger vehicles. The USA is much less safe for pedestrians than most developed countries.

There should be much stricter regulations on drivers ability to see to the front and sides of their vehicles. I'm not quite sure what other regulations would force better engineering for pedestrian/cyclist safety. Policymakers should put more effort into discouraging people from buying vehicles that are significantly larger than they really need, and making large vehicles safe for everyone on the road, even at the expense of possibly making them more expensive, less convenient, less cool looking, or slower. After-market modifications which compromise pedestrian safety should be strictly banned from city streets.

Personally I think manufacturers should be partly liable for damage caused by their vehicles.

The natural way would be to price this into insurance premiums, using a high value for human life. It would require that the premium depend on the vehicle model and the expected damage it will do. An SUV model with bad visibility that crushes toddlers, would have a high premium. E($100M * number of crushed toddlers).

Can't we just ban the toddler crushers instead of restricting them only to the wealthy willing to pay for the privilege?

Some people need vehicles with significant size or hauling capacity: delivery trucks/vans, long-haul trucks, ambulances, fire trucks, buses, tow trucks, vehicles used by tradespeople and farmers, etc. At least some of these vehicles are inevitably going to be on streets with shops and residences. But the vehicles needed could be re-engineered to be at least several times safer for pedestrians/cyclists if it were mandated, and many of the large vehicles on the road could be made smaller and lighter without compromising their drivers' needs.

Vans have good visibility as well as more cargo capacity than the shiny $100K pickup trucks mostly driven in cities by non-tradespeople. The engine bays on modern pickups are unnecessarily large. It boggles the mind that there is no regulatory pressure in the US to make pickup trucks safer for pedestrians.

And the military needs tanks and bombers. That doesn't mean just anyone should be able to buy them for joyriding.

We're inevitably going to have delivery trucks, buses, fire engines, some number of pickup trucks (or comparable), etc. on city streets, so under the circumstances we should try to make them as safe as possible (whether by forcing them to be lower to the ground and have more windows in front, requiring them to add cameras, limiting their weight, giving them a slower speed limit, limiting where they can park, ...). The owners of such vehicles should also be required to pay for the external costs their choices impose on everyone else.

Instead we effectively subsidize these vehicles by giving them special tax breaks.