This article only touches on what exactly makes roads deadlier, but it's an interesting topic. For example, increasing the curb radius at an intersection is ge

This article only touches on what exactly makes roads deadlier, but it's an interesting topic. For example, increasing the curb radius at an intersection is generally seen as good for drivers, because it allows the driver to take the turn at faster speeds. However, this increased speed increases both the curb to curb distance for pedestrians and the speed of collisions. The article touches on SUVs being more common and deadlier, but doesn't go into why that is. For a typical sedan, a pedestrian is struck at the legs, then rolls over the car. By contrast, an SUV strikes a pedestrian in the chest, and is pushes the pedestrian forward because it is too high to roll over. This means that the pedestrian both has a higher delta v (direct impact vs glancing blow), a shorter collision duration (single impact vs roll), and a more fragile region (the torso has important organs that the legs so not). All of these combine to increase the fatality rate when hitting pedestrians, turning a broken leg into a death. I know that sometimes SUVs or trucks are needed, such as for electrical workers who need to get to a repair site during/after a snowstorm. In most cases, though, there is a social responsibility not to buy SUVs, due to the danger they pose to society in general.