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Berlin crash prompts calls to ban SUVs from German cities
- techer 7y agoThese are known as ‘Chelsea Tractors’ in London...
- ryanlol 7y agoThis was a Macan, not a Cayenne.
- imgabe 7y agoWhy focus on SUVs in particular? Cars in general don't belong in inner cities.
- Ballas 7y agoYeah, I fail to see how the car being an SUV is a factor in the article. Would a smaller car have made a difference? It would have needed to be a lot lighter to be stopped by the traffic light. (the influence of mass being linear and that of speed being cubic)
- ocschwar 7y agoCars are more designed to have the front crumple, and that makes the influence much less, because less kinetic energy is conserved in the collision.
- Ballas 7y agoI don't think there is much of a difference in the crumple zone for a German SUV and a German sedan. Do you have any sources?
- ocschwar 7y agoLook up "Bradsher Bars." They're designed to make sure in a collision with a car, the SUV frame will catch the car and not overtop it, which would be even worse for the car's occupants. BUt they also mean less crumpling because the bars have to connect directly with the frame.
- jakobegger 7y agoSUVs also tend to have much more powerful engines. If the accident was really caused by an epileptic seizure (as the media speculate), a smaller car with a less powerful engine wouldn't have accelerated as quickly as that Porsche Macan.
- chooseaname 7y agoBut not all SUVs are Porsches. Plenty of smaller cars accelerate much more quickly than SUVs.
- jessaustin 7y agoObviously, a different mass would make a difference in a wide variety of situations. SUVs don't drive slower than other automobiles. Also, kinetic energy has velocity squared, not cubed.
- nesadi 7y agohttps://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=SUV+safety+pedestrians&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=SUV+... I've seen numbers showing in pedestrian accidents, SUVs are twice as likely to kill the pedestrian than smaller cars. Nonetheless, I'd rather we just phase cars out of inner cities entirely.
- apendleton 7y agoAs others have said elsewhere, it's the height that's particularly important. As I understand it, there are two reasons: taller vehicles are more likely to send pedestrians under the vehicle than over it, and the point of impact is likely to move from the legs (unpleasant but usually survivable) to the trunk (often not).
- IfOnlyYouKnew 7y agoSUVs have higher and steeper fronts that tend to hit directly and relatively high on the body, directly impacting vital organs. With smaller cars the pedestrian often ends up rolling over the front.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoProbably seen as "American" - you would be just as dead if a you where hit by a Audi Estate or A BMW Saloon. Note that its the Chair of the Greens - bit tacky to be using a tragedy to argue for their anti car agenda.
- paulie_a 7y agoThe people that drive Audi's and BMWs generally drive like complete assholes in my experience. Porsche Cayenne drivers are the worst offenders.
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- reallydontask 7y agofar easier sell to voters a ban on SUVs (a small minority of city dwellers) than on cars outright (a sizeable minority of city dwellers). In Berlin, given public transport it would seem feasible to live without a car for the majority of people
- sigio 7y agoStill ... Berlin is a very car-friendly city, with lots of parking space, large wide roads going on for long straight stretches. While the public transportation in Berlin is also great, as a foreign visitor, I like the fact that I can easily bring my car into all but the most central bits of Berlin. (And the Berlin metro-area is gigantic)
- benj111 7y agoSUVs are just a little bit worse on all measures. I don't think it's reasonable to expect to get rid of all ic vehicles in the short term, but we can certainly focus on the worst offenders.
- polskibus 7y agoAs far as I know, road damage is not linear to weight, it is exponential. See for example https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/ SUV that is 25% heavier than a sedan, destroys the road much quicker than a sedan would.
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- braythwayt 7y agoI would not care to be struck by any vehicle, thank you, but IIRC, vehicles with higher front ends may be more dangerous to pedestrians: studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also blamed SUVs for the higher death rate, concluding that "pedestrians are two to three times more likely to suffer a fatality when struck by an SUV or pickup than … by a passenger car." https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-pedestrian-dangers.html https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-pedest... I’d like to see the study, the first question I have is whether they accounted for the proportion of SUVs on the roads increasing relative to cars. It’s common for second- or third-hand accounts to gloss over details like that.
- braythwayt 7y agoAnother angle to consider would be making pedestrian safety mandatory and setting standards, rather than waiting for vague promises from manufacturers. Volvo created a “pedestrian air bag” years ago that inflated on the hood of the car when it detected what could be a pedestrian being struck. They replaced that with systems that auto-brake at low speeds when they detect pedestrians or bicycles. Other manufacturers have this kind of tech too, but there are zero standards and no enforcement AFAICT.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago> Volvo created a “pedestrian air bag” years ago that inflated on the hood of the car when it detected what could be a pedestrian being struck. I wonder how effective that would be - given that a pedestrian hitting the hood could be coming from a ton of different vectors compared to the collision of a driver with a steering wheel, I wonder if you'd just end up throwing more energy and chaos into the collision.
- braythwayt 7y agoGood question. There is a bunch of information about it on the Internet, here's a post that seems somewhat informative: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-pedestrian-airbags-work-45419.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-pedestrian-airbags-wo... But note, they have moved on to trying to avoid striking pedestrians and/or reduce injury through reducing speed.
- vilius 7y agoI was amazed this weekend when Vilnius city center was closed for cars due to the yearly marathon taking place. The 6am-6pm closure felt great: - All streets are free to walk, a sense of freedom - No car noise, you start hearing other people foot steps which is weird - A lot of people, not sure where they parked or have they used public transport but no one seemed bothered I wouldn't be surprised that cars in city centers become things of a past.
- mrzool 7y agoAgreed, but you need to start somewhere.
- criddell 7y agoI'm okay with that. Just don't ban them out in the suburbs!
- mc32 7y agoSmall car or large car, both will do damage to people. Yes it’s harder to stop a large car, but a person or persons will not stop the travel of a small car either. I’m not a fan of those monstrosities but I think banning them is a psychological overreaction to this incident.
- ChuckNorris89 7y agoGermany was the country of the eatates(Kombi) since they were the cars of the working class family man, economical and practical. Don't know what changed in the last decade but they're a rare sight these days, everyone seems to only want SUVs of all sizes instead which are less practical and less economical than estates. Heck, even Volvo's famous practical boxy estates are nearly vanished and replaced with its more expensive SUVs. What happened to European drivers? Maybe it's the perceived "better safety".
- polskibus 7y agoYou sit higher, and you see more - that's why people like driving SUVs. Problem is that lights from SUVs often blind people in sedans - they are often misconfigured or badly fixed.
- martin_a 7y ago> You sit higher, and you see more To be honest, that was fulfilled by my smart ForTwo or my mothers Mercedes Benz A class, just as well as my now Hyundai Kona.
- sliken 7y agoYou see "more" as in further down the road. But much less up close, as evidenced by new owners running over their own children in their own driveways. On a bike I've learned to give minivans and SUVs a wide berth, they just seem way less predictable and less likely to see a bicyclist.
- saiya-jin 7y agoA common argument for SUVs by soccer mums that can't drive properly in traffic. No matter that cars are more expensive to run (fuel, tires, brakes etc.), far worse in every measurable driving experience (heavier, much higher center of gravity doesn't lead to much fun), but also more prone to rolling in case of accident (which can be deadly easily). The fact that they can see more ahead in dense traffic gives them a feeling of more safety on emotional level. I would argue against this and nothing beats good driving skills, no matter what car is driven. Worst thing is, some guys also jump on SUV trend.
- Reason077 7y agoThere may be sound environmental reasons for restricting SUVs in city centres, but all types of motor vehicles are just as capable of harming pedestrians if misused, driven carelessly, or the driver suffers a medical event. This could just have easily been a garbage truck, delivery van, taxi, or private car and the result would have been the same. The solution that will really improve safety is advanced AEB (autonomous emergency braking) which can detect pedestrians and cyclists, lane departure, etc and automatically apply the brakes to prevent a collision or reduce its severity.
- lawlessone 7y ago>This could just have easily been a garbage truck, delivery van, taxi, or private car and the result would have been the same. If i had to be hit by a vehicle i would rather get hit by mini than hit by a bin truck, i don't know about you?
- tyingq 7y agoIf you mean as a pedestrian, lots of variables there, so who knows? The bin truck has more room underneath it.
- Reason077 7y agoTrucks in Europe are designed to prevent things going under the truck, with mandatory under-run protection bars. You definitely would not want to end up underneath one! There was a similar tragic incident in Glasgow in 2014 involving a bin truck, where the driver suffered a seizure. Several pedestrians killed and many injured.
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- chooseaname 7y agoIf I get hit by a mini and suffer a few broken bones, then, yeah. But if I get hit by a mini and live in a coma, then no.
- tjansen 7y agoWhat the article doesn't mention: the "SUV" was a Porsche Macan, a compact SUV that's smaller than most german station wagons and about the size of an average family van. They just say 'Porsche SUV', and most people think it's the more common Porsche Cayenne.
- cookieswumchorr 7y agogood point, that's exactly what I thought
- dagw 7y agoIndeed. I'm not quite sure what I think of the ban. But if there is a ban it should be based some combination of weight and engine size and not whether the car is considered an 'SUV' or not.
- mchanson 7y agoSUVs are higher up and as a pedestrian your far more likely to go under them then over them compared to sedans.
- dagw 7y agoFine, then make it a function of weight, horsepower, ground-clearance and dimensions.
- choeger 7y agoIncluding deliveries, please. There are way too many people living in the city right now.
- dagw 7y agoIncluding deliveries, please. Completely agree. The fact the you can drive a truck down a narrow pedestrian street to deliver a couple of 50x50x30 cm boxes is insane. But there does need to be an exception where people can apply for a permit on a case by case basis for deliveries that are necessary and cannot be brought in any other way. There are way too many people living in the city right now. Complete disagree as a matter of principle, and I don't see what one has to do with the other. Much of the traffic in city centers aren't caused by the people living in the city centers, but by people living outside the city wanting to get into the city. I fail to see how Forcing people to spread out into the suburbs will solve the problem. If the city infrastructure cannot handle the people living there, the focus should be on fixing the infrastructure.
- om3n 7y agoWhat if you have a large family, and need a large vehicle? This seems like a narrow and potentially discriminatory thing to do.
- probably_wrong 7y ago> What if you have a large family, and need a large vehicle? You get a van. If I read the article correctly, the measure would be targeted at SUVs only. I doubt the mayor of Berlin-Mitte was thinking about vans when talking about banning "tank-like cars".
- martius 7y agoThere are plenty of family-friendly cars which are not SUVs.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago> an SUV drove into a sidewalk As usual, this us worded as "the car did it", also known as the "absent driver" style. More examples here https://twitter.com/absentdriver https://twitter.com/absentdriver
- aequitas 7y agoMakes sense for reporters to play it safe I think, as what the car did is a clearly observable fact. Wording it like "The driver drove his car into the sidewalk" portraits the sense the driver deliberately performed the action. While other circumstances might be a play. Better to wait for official investigation to clarify this.
- robben1234 7y agoIt doesn't matter if it's deliberate action or not, cars do not drive themselves into accidents. The same logic, the car not driver, used for subject of the ban. Ban reckless driving and dangerous behavior. SUV ban won't stop accidents like these. At best they will achieve less injuries because the cars being drove into pedestrians gonna get smaller.
- SideburnsOfDoom 7y ago> portraits the sense the driver deliberately performed the action. Agreed, it's more likely that the driver lost control of their vehicle. The car has was not an autonomous vehicle, so it has no agency here: it did not do anything at all.
- jessaustin 7y agoThis is at least better than a totally passive style, like "four people were killed", which is used just below that caption. In this case the headline writer does a better job than the author, using "crash" while TFA has: 1 x "collision", 5 x "incident", 8 x "accident". To be clear, "accident" is an inaccurate word in this context. It seems remotely possible although certainly not likely that a 42yo man could have the first seizure event of his life while driving near pedestrians, so that small aspect of this crash could have been accidental. However, he certainly didn't "accidentally" drive an SUV through a dense urban area. Using the inaccurate term is prejudicial.
- lm28469 7y agoJust ban all personal cars from city centers, replace every 5 banned cars with 1 electric taxi and make it free for people with a public transportation subscription. Boom, every single "cars in city" problems solved. I'm sure that even with 100% state subsidised taxi rides it would still be a net positive if you consider costs of health, pollution, accidents, insurances, &c.
- rubbingalcohol 7y agoWhat if 5 people want to go to different places at the same time?
- ollie87 7y agoDoesn't have to be 5, you would model it and adjust.
- dagw 7y agoThen you'll just end up introducing more and more taxis until you're back to where you started.
- lm28469 7y agoYou'll never get back where you started since most cars are parked in front of an office / house / whatever 95% of the time using space for no reason whereas taxis are always moving.
- JoeAltmaier 7y agoWhat you gain in parking, you lose in congestion. Now most trips are 'deadheading' where the trip to pick up the passenger is as long as the trip the passenger wants to take. Doubles traffic, approximately?
- em-bee 7y ago
- dominicl 7y agoThis is somewhat a logical reaction, when realizing that a smaller car would have reduced the fatalities. In this regard I believe there is going to be an inflection point in the adoption of autonomous driving. As soon as autonomous driving is becoming safer than the worst human drivers, there should logically be calls following to ban "non-computer-assisted human driving", especially within densely populated cities. Similar of how gas stoves without flame failing device have been banned.
- Reason077 7y agoWe can significantly reduce the number, and severity, of accidents like this with advanced AEB (autonomous emergency braking) systems. It's much easier to implement AEB which can respond to lane departure, pedestrians in the vehicle's path, etc than to go all the way to fully autonomous driving, which remains an unsolved AI challenge. In Europe, AEB is mandatory on all new vehicles receiving type approval from 2020. In the US, it will be implemented on all new private vehicles from 2022.
- Braighni 7y agoFrom the article. "You can't just say: SUV is basically more dangerous than [other types of vehicles]," accident researcher Siegfried Brockmann from the Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft (Association of the German Insurance Industry) told DPA.
- jdashg 7y ago"told DPA. Speed and the type of collision would have more influence than weight, he added. In the Berlin incident, however, the traffic light mast might have stopped a smaller car."
- n1000 7y agoRecently I visited a historical hydro power plant, which is still operational. The operators were in the process of adding huge shields and fences around the flywheels due to safety regulations to protect visitors. Apparently they had been only fenced off by a rope and the faith in humans‘ self preservation instinct for the last 100 years. However, when i saw those fences, it struck me as very odd why this is not mandatory on every road. The amount if kinetic energy of those flywheels is certainly comparable to a 1-2 ton car moving at 30+ km/h.
- djmobley 7y agoIn London, authorities have been doing the opposite—removing pedestrian guard rails. One study [1] found this has resulted in a significant (56 percent) decrease in collisions resulting in deaths or serious injuries. [1] http://foi.tfl.gov.uk/FOI-2274-1718/Pedestrian%20railings%20removal%20collisions%20analysis%20%28no%20stats19%29.pdf http://foi.tfl.gov.uk/FOI-2274-1718/Pedestrian%20railings%20...
- akadruid1 7y agoPresumably this means the new "malicious vehicle barriers" on the bridges will soon have killed more people than the terror attacks they are "preventing repeats" of. Apparently post-9/11 security theatre pushed so many people out of planes and into long distance driving that the additional road deaths overtook the 9/11 death toll in a few months.
- vfclists 7y agoYou can't protect the mentally ill, the careless, the ignorant or the foolish from themselves. How about those idiots who take selfies close to cliff edges? If that is how you feel why not fence of high mountains to prevent mountaineers from falling to their death? Why not fix child locks to vehicles driving in safari parks so the passengers cannot jump out and be eaten by lions? That wouldn't protect them from charging elephants though.
- n1000 7y ago
- t34543 7y agoVery disappointed in the opportunistic politician. All cars pose a similar risk. Whether it’s a SUV or regular car isn’t really material.
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- donastuto 7y agoEin dicker, fetter SUV und der Direktor der Deutschen Umwelthilfe am Steuer! Das passt ja nun auch nicht so wirklich! Wie sagt man: Sie predigen Wasser und trinken Wein! So sind sie, unsere auch so tollen Saubermänner, die uns als Vorbilder verkauft werden!
- lnsru 7y agoIt’s same political show playing people’s fears. Same insanity with disabling nuclear power plants (ready to be downvoted!). Jealous people now will vote for the good party proposing to punish the bad riches with SUVs. SUVs are also problem number one during climate warming, another reason to ban them according latest headlines in German newspapers. I was believer of the democracy, but this behavior of politicians is just ugly. Play with fears, go with the trend punishing riches and save the poor! That’s the recipe to win next elections. This is easy way! Providing laws for working from home and reducing traffic is beyond competency of these people. Plus don’t forget aging population, I am always scared when I see these 75+ years olds driving big powerful cars. In fact I have friends in this age group and I would like to see them in a taxi instead with their own cars.
- etrautmann 7y agoSo you’re decrying the political will to do something about SUVs and also saying that something must be done?
- moate 7y agoI think he's being sarcastic/putting up the opposing view points to his opinion? Phrasing seems like ESL speaker, so it might just be lost in translation.
- mantas 7y agoLooks like he was saying that it's stupid to go against a weirdly shaped group like SUV drivers. Yet there're some problems with driving that are not related wether the car is SUV or not.
- lnsru 7y agoWhat’s wrong about SUVs? People love them, carmaker produce them. Tax heavy cars and powerful cars more, people will stop buying them. Tax more fuel, people will think twice before driving these 2 miles in the city. Very simple regulation.
- wbl 7y agoSUVs do more damage to pedestrians and limit driver visibility of the road. Children can't be seen over the hood.
- donastuto 7y agoDer Fahrer soll angeblich zuvor ein Medikament eingenommen haben und kurz vor dem Unfall einen epileptischen Anfall bekommen haben und der Sohn (zeitgleich) einen Beinkrampf, so die Beifahrerin. Das ich nicht lache.... https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/panorama/Beifahrerin-bezeugt-wohl-Details-der-Unfallursache-article21262591.html https://www.n-tv.de/mediathek/videos/panorama/Beifahrerin-be...
- holri 7y agoWhy are there no crash tests with pedestrians and cyclists dummys for homologation?
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- emilfihlman 7y agoThis is pretty damn stupid and not grounded in any fact.
- HunOL 7y agoI am disgusted with society and the way they want ban everything for sake of alleged safety.
- rad_gruchalski 7y agoTalk about a knee jerk reaction. Ban, ban, ban seems to be an answer to everything in Germany.
- tilolebo 7y agoSo, can one say that they... Autobahn?
- mfer 7y ago> after veering onto a sidewalk Am I the only one seeing a problem with someone driving on the sidewalk? Did this somehow become acceptable? I've driven large trucks and not been forced onto a sidewalk. Maybe I'm missing something.
- otoburb 7y ago>Am I the only one seeing a problem with someone driving on the sidewalk? Did this somehow become acceptable? You're not the only one agreeing that driving on the sidewalk is/was unacceptable. But the article mentions the following which may indicate that this was not deliberate: >>It is thought that the driver could have had a medical emergency, such as an epileptic seizure according to the latest police findings, causing him to accelerate at a fast speed.
- godshatter 7y agoI wish people's first thoughts when a tragedy happens wasn't to have the government ban something. This ban idea came up because one person driving an SUV killed some pedestrians in a horrific accident. What actually happened there? Would the same accident not have happened if the same person was driving an economy car rather than an SUV? Was it the great size of the SUV that made the accident happen? What was the root cause of the accident? Could something be done to make it safer for pedestrians in the future, whether it's from SUVs or smaller cars, that didn't involve banning one entire class of vehicles?
- jdashg 7y agoThe article mentions these discussions. One point it makes is that a smaller car would likely have been stopped sooner, while the SUV plowed through a traffic mast, bollards, and a construction fence. Cars are also safer for pedestrians than taller, wider SUVs, as well as SUVs being better at minor offroading.
- jillesvangurp 7y agoThis happened 200m from where I live. It was pretty bad. I think they initially considered this might have been a terrorist attack and they basically sent everything with wheels and sirens to the scene. I'm not joking. Dozens of police vehicles; fire trucks, and ambulances. The whole area was blocked for traffic most of the night. It's not yet clear completely what happened but knowing the street and local situation, I can make an educated guess that this guy was looking to make it past the green/orange light for the pedestrian crossing, swerved left to avoid some traffic/obstacles near the construction site on his side of the road before the crossing and then lost control before plowing over the traffic light (destroyed completely) into four people waiting to cross. One possible reason for him having to swerve left may have been some traffic emerging from the side road (no traffic light there). This would be hard to see if you are driving way too fast. Also there's a construction site with some scaffolding right before that crossing; which further reduces visibility. They had an temporary traffic light there for a few weeks recently but it was removed again. The problem is not SUVs as such but a culture of unsafe driving being OK and the police looking the other way as a matter of policy (because car lobbies). The accident happened 150m from a police station on the same street. If the driver knew that; he apparently did not care and in all likelihood was speeding anyway. Cars in Berlin jump red lights, double park, and speed throughout the city with a very low chance of getting caught. So, this is not unusual. On an average bike ride through the city you'll see all of that happening multiple times. Most crossings with traffic lights don't have cameras. I've never seen a speed camera in Berlin; I'm not even sure there are any at all. The local culture is "it's all fine". Drivers behave accordingly. Also, the fines are pretty low if you do get caught compared to other countries. Another issue is that Berlin does not seem to have safety very high on the agenda when doing construction work. The road in question went through a lengthy and expensive reconstruction project that took something like five years that was only finished a few years ago. This was a great and missed opportunity to make the road safer. This crossing definitely was poorly designed. You have two roads crossing each other there without traffic lights and then a traffic light right after the crossing just for the pedestrian crossing.
- whenchamenia 7y agoAnd I thought germans were the logical ones. Can we stop rushing to ban everything?