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Large vehicles, especially pickups with high hood heights, are a public health disaster; a deliberate atrocity on the part of those who manufacture and sell the

Large vehicles, especially pickups with high hood heights, are a public health disaster; a deliberate atrocity on the part of those who manufacture and sell them; and a gross dereliction of duty on the part of those who should be regulating their proliferation. In addition to killing pedestrians at high rates, they disproportionately kill occupants of other vehicles too--one study I saw recently found a 2.5x increase in fatality rate in cars colliding with trucks vs. other cars.

Arrath 5y ago
Sadly the typical response to this tends to be an arms race like "Well I better be the one in the bigger truck, then!"
- caconym_ 5y ago
  And the real shame is, it's a perfectly rational one. I might be starting a family soon, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to navigate this hazard.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    Minivan might be a good compromise, arguably more practical than the truck anyway, unless the truck is for work or other usage that actually justifies the truck-ness of it.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      Minivans are exactly what we need to go back to. Problem is, in an arms race like this they may have mass on their side but they don't put passengers high up enough to be safe from a truck, especially a modified one.
      - crooked-v 5y ago
        A starting point here would be regulations around driver visibility.
      - waiseristy 5y ago
        Minivans are part of the problem according to this paper "I find pickup trucks, minivans and SUVs all significantly increase pedestrian fatalities relative to cars. Converting 10% of the vehicle fleet from cars to pickups is estimated to increase the pedestrian fatality rate by .04 deaths per 100,000 residents (3.4% in the median metro). I find that converting 10% of cars to minivans would increase pedestrain deaths by .05 deaths per 100,000 residents (3.9% in the median metro). Converting 10% of cars to SUVs would increase pedestrian deaths by .03 deaths per 100,000, or 2.6% in the median metro. In column 4 I further break out SUVs into Large and Small SUVs." If I'm reading this right, it's the worst of the 3
        caconym_ 5y ago
        Interesting. I wonder if it's a visibility thing, or vehicle geometry, or traits common to the typical minivan driver, or what. I would expect to find that they are not as dangerous to occupants of other vehicles as trucks and larger, higher-riding SUVs, which is half of what I'm talking about here, but I could absolutely be wrong about that.
        waiseristy 5y ago
        Trucks have ground clearance, their bumpers are still at a side-crash-bar level. Minivans also weigh nearly as much as most trucks. Typically more than a light duty truck. This study and the title of this post obviously state that Large Vehicles == More Pedestrian Deaths. Be it a minivan, Tesla, Truck, or whatever. Everyone in this thread finger-pointing at their perceived cultural enemies identities is straight up moronic
        randerson 5y ago
        If I had to hazard a guess, minivans look to have a higher center of gravity than SUVs, so it is easier to lose control. And for whatever reason Porsche/BMW/Mercedes have performance-oriented SUVs with sports-car-like handling and braking, whereas nobody seems to be doing this with minivans, so this may skew the results in favor of SUVs. Why trucks fare better than minivans though, I have no idea..
        5y ago
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        The bumper on my stock F250 would hit almost any sedan directly in the door's crash beam. A minivan is a little taller. Lifted trucks are a different story.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I agree that minivans are very useful. There's also cost to consider. When I was looking, the basic minivan was at least $5k more than a basic work truck with extended cab.
  - louwrentius 5y ago
    Buy a used 18-wheeler. The mileage is not great but safety comes first right? And you won't even notice pedestrians, as a nice added bonus. Any reference to Mad Max - Fury Road is just coincidence. “If the government wanted people to drive safely, they’d mandate a spike in the middle of each steering wheel.” – Gordon Tullock May I invite you to migrate to Western-Europe? You can even do without a car if you want to.
    - caconym_ 5y ago
      I am actually a UK citizen, and you can bet I've been thinking about this possibility a lot in the last few years. (Though maybe the UK doesn't really count as "western Europe" anymore?)
      - louwrentius 5y ago
        Ok, thought it wasn’t as bad with regard to large cars over there as we don’t have those humongous trucks the US have. Or are you in the US? I would invite you to The Netherlands but the housing prices and rent are beyond insane… not sure that would work out.
  - nabilhat 5y ago
    It's a legitimately hard choice to base on real world statistics, more due to availability than anything else. IIHS does present some basic detail for occupants [0] [1], although only as recent as 4 years so statistics can have some time to build. That's okay, it's enough to put some perspective on new cars as well. It's at least a partially objective look at what safety by pickup vs sedan vs minivan vs whatever looks like for the people inside your vehicle. [0] https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-... [1] pdf https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf/55/2 https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
- giantg2 5y ago
  There are plenty of people who get trucks and SUVs because they don't make large cars anymore. I had an 89 Caprice and it was like riding a couch down the highway. Look at a Taurus or Impala today and I barely fit. Edit: Why downvote? It's all true
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    The average American male is 5 foot 9 inches. I’m average height and easily fit in sub-compact cars. Yes some people need the extra space, but that’s a minority of drivers.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Americans have gotten a lot fatter since the 80s and 90s and new car buyers have gotten a lot older. Getting in and out of a truck or SUV is worlds better for people who are overweight or who's joints have jumped the shark than getting down into a car.
      - jdavis703 5y ago
        Getting down or up in to a car shouldn’t matter. In order to get out the exact opposite action has to be performed.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Do you live in a world with spherical cows? The human body isn't that efficient. Getting down into a car if your body is old or packing a lot of weight requires exertion as does getting back out. And the average new car buyer probably has at least one of these or is married to someone who is.
      - kelnos 5y ago
        Maybe people would start to take better care of their health if they had to face pulling themselves out of a lower-to-the-ground car several times a day. SUVs and trucks address the symptom, not the disease.
- DFHippie 5y ago
  "Arms race" is very apt. For some reason "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a monstrous truck is a good guy with a monstrous truck" is echoing in my head.
crooked-v 5y ago
For some visual comparisons of absurdly tall trucks: https://twitter.com/heatxdeath/status/1338979670629429249 https://twitter.com/heatxdeath/status/1338979670629429249 https://twitter.com/lockheedfartin/status/1338985486510075906 https://twitter.com/lockheedfartin/status/133898548651007590... https://twitter.com/Powflip/status/1055946188430757890 https://twitter.com/Powflip/status/1055946188430757890 Modern consumer trucks have hoods taller than some full-grown adults, let alone children.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Smaller adults, for sure. I'm less than six feet tall and I can stand in front of my F250 and easily look down at the engine, and AFAIK it is one of the taller (if not the tallest) packages that Ford makes from the factory. That people modify their vehicles is without question, and the examples you gave look like they're all aftermarket lifts.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  These are misleading, cherry picked examples: - Your first link is comparing a new lifted truck with aftermarket body mods to an older model of a stock SUV. - Your second link is comparing one of the smallest vehicles on the market, an older Mazda Miata, to a newer F-250 (a larger Ford "Super Duty" truck) with a lift, aftermarket wheels, and aftermarket tires. - Your third link is comparing a boat of unknown size to a full-size pickup truck, and even from the angle provided, the boat is bigger.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Why do people lift their trucks? Is it just for the looks? I cannot imagine that many people need to much offroad capability, they don't live on a farm.
    - throwawaysea 5y ago
      I have no idea why people lift their trucks to the extreme - I don't own a truck or understand the culture well, although I am familiar with the vehicles to some extent. My take is that most people who lift their trucks do it more for looks or status than for practical reasons. Having a small amount of lift and larger wheels with offroad tires probably does help with practical capability. You can see this with newer trucks that manufacturers produce in offroad trims (example https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-tremor/ https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-tremor/). But larger lifts are indeed impractical for offroad capability since they would alter your center of gravity and other aspects. Most serious offroad vehicles have good clearance but not extreme clearance, since they are also accounting for numerous other factors to give the vehicle reliability, safety, and offroad capability.
throwawaysea 5y ago
> Large vehicles, especially pickups with high hood heights, are a public health disaster This feels hyperbolic. I, and I imagine most people in the US, don't think our daily lives are a "disaster" and don't go outside in fear of vehicles, let alone large vehicles. We also derive a lot of utility from vehicles that makes our lives better. The choice to rely on cars or purchase a larger vehicle isn't made with solely risks and nothing positive on the balance. I feel the focus on vehicle-related fatalities is safetyism, given that there is only 1 fatality per 100 million miles traveled in the US.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- version_five 5y ago
  You're apparently wrong, as you can see from the moderation. Failure to acknowledge the public health crisis that is large vehicles makes you a denier whose opinions need to be fact checked.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > We also derive a lot of utility from vehicles that makes our lives better. Most of the people I know who have purchased SUVs do so in large part because they believe that there are a lot of other SUVs on the road, and they will be more likely to survive a collision with an SUV if they themselves are in an SUV. Another big reason is that they have kids, and in reality want a minivan, but minivans aren't "cool", so they get a SUV instead. Not many people I know buy them for "sport utility" reasons. Maybe they drive it out to Tahoe two or three times a year (which doesn't require an SUV; a 4WD/AWD sedan is probably more stable on windy, winding, snowy roads anyway), but that hardly justifies the need. > there is only 1 fatality per 100 million miles traveled in the US Just because a number "feels" low to you, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to eliminate preventable deaths in order to drag that number even lower. For people whose activities are genuinely made easier, safer, better, and more comfortable with an SUV than a sedan, that's great; I have no quarrel with them. But my -- perhaps non-representative, admittedly -- experience with SUV owners is that they are buying them for the wrong reasons, which reduces safety for the rest of us.
- 5y ago
giantg2 5y ago
One should note that crash safety ratings found on cars generally compare collisions with vehicles of the same size and weight. So it can be misleading when you consider the larger vehicles. Also, what is your proposed solution?
- caconym_ 5y ago
  > One should note that crash safety ratings found on cars generally compare collisions with vehicles of the same size and weight. So it can be misleading when you consider the larger vehicles. How does this relate to my comment? Or is it just a general observation that trucks may be a greater danger to drivers and passengers in smaller vehicles than said vehicles' crash safety results would suggest? In that case, I would agree. > Also, what is your proposed solution? Some starting points off the top of my head: * Higher taxes/registration fees/etc on owning and operating large personal vehicles. * More stringent licensing requirements for operating large vehicles. * Restrictions on how large personal vehicles can be marketed, and/or cigarette-style disclaimers on ads. * Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous stock vehicle configurations. * Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous aftermarket modifications. And, crucially, enforcement thereof. I could go on.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "Or is it just a general observation that trucks may be a greater danger to drivers and passengers in smaller vehicles than said vehicles' crash safety results would suggest?" Not only trucks, but yes. Even compact cars vs full size cars (eg Tesla S v Dodge Dart). There's only so much that engineering can do to compensate for mass discrepancies. "Higher taxes/registration fees/etc on owning and operating large personal vehicles." Most states do this already with the registration. Of course there's the second order taxation on the increased fuel usage. "More stringent licensing requirements for operating large vehicles." This should be done for all vehicles since the tests are a joke. Not to mention there's the possibility that the smaller cars involved in the crashes could be at fault (ie not all truck involved crashes are the fault of the truck and increased training just for the larger vehicle won't help them). "Restrictions on how large personal vehicles can be marketed, and/or cigarette-style disclaimers on ads." I don't really see the point of this. If anything the disclaimer would be promoting the safety for the prospective buyer, providing incentive to buy it. "Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous stock vehicle configurations." What would that look like beyond the current requirements? "Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous aftermarket modifications." I could see some utility in this. Is there any data to show the frequency with which non-illegal modifications where a contributing factor so that cost benefit analysis could be performed?
nabilhat 5y ago
There was an effort around 15 years ago to join all-parties death and major injury numbers on vehicle make and model (USA data only). I really wish I could find it now - it's a great example of how traffic safety data applicability can be improved, and it's a shame that public data doesn't support this without substantial amounts of work. I've made my own choices from this kind of ethical basis - I can't morally justify feeling like I've marginally increased my personal safety if doing so significantly increases the risk exposure to non-consenting bystanders.

Arrath 5y ago

Sadly the typical response to this tends to be an arms race like "Well I better be the one in the bigger truck, then!"

caconym_ 5y ago
And the real shame is, it's a perfectly rational one. I might be starting a family soon, and I honestly don't know how I'm going to navigate this hazard.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Minivan might be a good compromise, arguably more practical than the truck anyway, unless the truck is for work or other usage that actually justifies the truck-ness of it.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    Minivans are exactly what we need to go back to. Problem is, in an arms race like this they may have mass on their side but they don't put passengers high up enough to be safe from a truck, especially a modified one.
    - crooked-v 5y ago
      A starting point here would be regulations around driver visibility.
    - waiseristy 5y ago
      Minivans are part of the problem according to this paper "I find pickup trucks, minivans and SUVs all significantly increase pedestrian fatalities relative to cars. Converting 10% of the vehicle fleet from cars to pickups is estimated to increase the pedestrian fatality rate by .04 deaths per 100,000 residents (3.4% in the median metro). I find that converting 10% of cars to minivans would increase pedestrain deaths by .05 deaths per 100,000 residents (3.9% in the median metro). Converting 10% of cars to SUVs would increase pedestrian deaths by .03 deaths per 100,000, or 2.6% in the median metro. In column 4 I further break out SUVs into Large and Small SUVs." If I'm reading this right, it's the worst of the 3
      - caconym_ 5y ago
        Interesting. I wonder if it's a visibility thing, or vehicle geometry, or traits common to the typical minivan driver, or what. I would expect to find that they are not as dangerous to occupants of other vehicles as trucks and larger, higher-riding SUVs, which is half of what I'm talking about here, but I could absolutely be wrong about that.
        waiseristy 5y ago
        Trucks have ground clearance, their bumpers are still at a side-crash-bar level. Minivans also weigh nearly as much as most trucks. Typically more than a light duty truck. This study and the title of this post obviously state that Large Vehicles == More Pedestrian Deaths. Be it a minivan, Tesla, Truck, or whatever. Everyone in this thread finger-pointing at their perceived cultural enemies identities is straight up moronic
        randerson 5y ago
        If I had to hazard a guess, minivans look to have a higher center of gravity than SUVs, so it is easier to lose control. And for whatever reason Porsche/BMW/Mercedes have performance-oriented SUVs with sports-car-like handling and braking, whereas nobody seems to be doing this with minivans, so this may skew the results in favor of SUVs. Why trucks fare better than minivans though, I have no idea..
        5y ago
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      The bumper on my stock F250 would hit almost any sedan directly in the door's crash beam. A minivan is a little taller. Lifted trucks are a different story.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I agree that minivans are very useful. There's also cost to consider. When I was looking, the basic minivan was at least $5k more than a basic work truck with extended cab.
- louwrentius 5y ago
  Buy a used 18-wheeler. The mileage is not great but safety comes first right? And you won't even notice pedestrians, as a nice added bonus. Any reference to Mad Max - Fury Road is just coincidence. “If the government wanted people to drive safely, they’d mandate a spike in the middle of each steering wheel.” – Gordon Tullock May I invite you to migrate to Western-Europe? You can even do without a car if you want to.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    I am actually a UK citizen, and you can bet I've been thinking about this possibility a lot in the last few years. (Though maybe the UK doesn't really count as "western Europe" anymore?)
    - louwrentius 5y ago
      Ok, thought it wasn’t as bad with regard to large cars over there as we don’t have those humongous trucks the US have. Or are you in the US? I would invite you to The Netherlands but the housing prices and rent are beyond insane… not sure that would work out.
- nabilhat 5y ago
  It's a legitimately hard choice to base on real world statistics, more due to availability than anything else. IIHS does present some basic detail for occupants [0] [1], although only as recent as 4 years so statistics can have some time to build. That's okay, it's enough to put some perspective on new cars as well. It's at least a partially objective look at what safety by pickup vs sedan vs minivan vs whatever looks like for the people inside your vehicle. [0] https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-... [1] pdf https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf/55/2 https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
giantg2 5y ago
There are plenty of people who get trucks and SUVs because they don't make large cars anymore. I had an 89 Caprice and it was like riding a couch down the highway. Look at a Taurus or Impala today and I barely fit. Edit: Why downvote? It's all true
- jdavis703 5y ago
  The average American male is 5 foot 9 inches. I’m average height and easily fit in sub-compact cars. Yes some people need the extra space, but that’s a minority of drivers.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Americans have gotten a lot fatter since the 80s and 90s and new car buyers have gotten a lot older. Getting in and out of a truck or SUV is worlds better for people who are overweight or who's joints have jumped the shark than getting down into a car.
    - jdavis703 5y ago
      Getting down or up in to a car shouldn’t matter. In order to get out the exact opposite action has to be performed.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        Do you live in a world with spherical cows? The human body isn't that efficient. Getting down into a car if your body is old or packing a lot of weight requires exertion as does getting back out. And the average new car buyer probably has at least one of these or is married to someone who is.
    - kelnos 5y ago
      Maybe people would start to take better care of their health if they had to face pulling themselves out of a lower-to-the-ground car several times a day. SUVs and trucks address the symptom, not the disease.
DFHippie 5y ago
"Arms race" is very apt. For some reason "the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a monstrous truck is a good guy with a monstrous truck" is echoing in my head.

crooked-v 5y ago

For some visual comparisons of absurdly tall trucks: https://twitter.com/heatxdeath/status/1338979670629429249 https://twitter.com/heatxdeath/status/1338979670629429249 https://twitter.com/lockheedfartin/status/1338985486510075906 https://twitter.com/lockheedfartin/status/133898548651007590... https://twitter.com/Powflip/status/1055946188430757890 https://twitter.com/Powflip/status/1055946188430757890 Modern consumer trucks have hoods taller than some full-grown adults, let alone children.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Smaller adults, for sure. I'm less than six feet tall and I can stand in front of my F250 and easily look down at the engine, and AFAIK it is one of the taller (if not the tallest) packages that Ford makes from the factory. That people modify their vehicles is without question, and the examples you gave look like they're all aftermarket lifts.
throwawaysea 5y ago
These are misleading, cherry picked examples: - Your first link is comparing a new lifted truck with aftermarket body mods to an older model of a stock SUV. - Your second link is comparing one of the smallest vehicles on the market, an older Mazda Miata, to a newer F-250 (a larger Ford "Super Duty" truck) with a lift, aftermarket wheels, and aftermarket tires. - Your third link is comparing a boat of unknown size to a full-size pickup truck, and even from the angle provided, the boat is bigger.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Why do people lift their trucks? Is it just for the looks? I cannot imagine that many people need to much offroad capability, they don't live on a farm.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    I have no idea why people lift their trucks to the extreme - I don't own a truck or understand the culture well, although I am familiar with the vehicles to some extent. My take is that most people who lift their trucks do it more for looks or status than for practical reasons. Having a small amount of lift and larger wheels with offroad tires probably does help with practical capability. You can see this with newer trucks that manufacturers produce in offroad trims (example https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-tremor/ https://www.ford.com/trucks/f150/models/f150-tremor/). But larger lifts are indeed impractical for offroad capability since they would alter your center of gravity and other aspects. Most serious offroad vehicles have good clearance but not extreme clearance, since they are also accounting for numerous other factors to give the vehicle reliability, safety, and offroad capability.

throwawaysea 5y ago

> Large vehicles, especially pickups with high hood heights, are a public health disaster This feels hyperbolic. I, and I imagine most people in the US, don't think our daily lives are a "disaster" and don't go outside in fear of vehicles, let alone large vehicles. We also derive a lot of utility from vehicles that makes our lives better. The choice to rely on cars or purchase a larger vehicle isn't made with solely risks and nothing positive on the balance. I feel the focus on vehicle-related fatalities is safetyism, given that there is only 1 fatality per 100 million miles traveled in the US.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
version_five 5y ago
You're apparently wrong, as you can see from the moderation. Failure to acknowledge the public health crisis that is large vehicles makes you a denier whose opinions need to be fact checked.
kelnos 5y ago
> We also derive a lot of utility from vehicles that makes our lives better. Most of the people I know who have purchased SUVs do so in large part because they believe that there are a lot of other SUVs on the road, and they will be more likely to survive a collision with an SUV if they themselves are in an SUV. Another big reason is that they have kids, and in reality want a minivan, but minivans aren't "cool", so they get a SUV instead. Not many people I know buy them for "sport utility" reasons. Maybe they drive it out to Tahoe two or three times a year (which doesn't require an SUV; a 4WD/AWD sedan is probably more stable on windy, winding, snowy roads anyway), but that hardly justifies the need. > there is only 1 fatality per 100 million miles traveled in the US Just because a number "feels" low to you, it doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to eliminate preventable deaths in order to drag that number even lower. For people whose activities are genuinely made easier, safer, better, and more comfortable with an SUV than a sedan, that's great; I have no quarrel with them. But my -- perhaps non-representative, admittedly -- experience with SUV owners is that they are buying them for the wrong reasons, which reduces safety for the rest of us.
5y ago

giantg2 5y ago

One should note that crash safety ratings found on cars generally compare collisions with vehicles of the same size and weight. So it can be misleading when you consider the larger vehicles. Also, what is your proposed solution?

caconym_ 5y ago
> One should note that crash safety ratings found on cars generally compare collisions with vehicles of the same size and weight. So it can be misleading when you consider the larger vehicles. How does this relate to my comment? Or is it just a general observation that trucks may be a greater danger to drivers and passengers in smaller vehicles than said vehicles' crash safety results would suggest? In that case, I would agree. > Also, what is your proposed solution? Some starting points off the top of my head: * Higher taxes/registration fees/etc on owning and operating large personal vehicles. * More stringent licensing requirements for operating large vehicles. * Restrictions on how large personal vehicles can be marketed, and/or cigarette-style disclaimers on ads. * Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous stock vehicle configurations. * Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous aftermarket modifications. And, crucially, enforcement thereof. I could go on.
- giantg2 5y ago
  "Or is it just a general observation that trucks may be a greater danger to drivers and passengers in smaller vehicles than said vehicles' crash safety results would suggest?" Not only trucks, but yes. Even compact cars vs full size cars (eg Tesla S v Dodge Dart). There's only so much that engineering can do to compensate for mass discrepancies. "Higher taxes/registration fees/etc on owning and operating large personal vehicles." Most states do this already with the registration. Of course there's the second order taxation on the increased fuel usage. "More stringent licensing requirements for operating large vehicles." This should be done for all vehicles since the tests are a joke. Not to mention there's the possibility that the smaller cars involved in the crashes could be at fault (ie not all truck involved crashes are the fault of the truck and increased training just for the larger vehicle won't help them). "Restrictions on how large personal vehicles can be marketed, and/or cigarette-style disclaimers on ads." I don't really see the point of this. If anything the disclaimer would be promoting the safety for the prospective buyer, providing incentive to buy it. "Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous stock vehicle configurations." What would that look like beyond the current requirements? "Safety-focused regulation that effectively bans dangerous aftermarket modifications." I could see some utility in this. Is there any data to show the frequency with which non-illegal modifications where a contributing factor so that cost benefit analysis could be performed?

nabilhat 5y ago

There was an effort around 15 years ago to join all-parties death and major injury numbers on vehicle make and model (USA data only). I really wish I could find it now - it's a great example of how traffic safety data applicability can be improved, and it's a shame that public data doesn't support this without substantial amounts of work. I've made my own choices from this kind of ethical basis - I can't morally justify feeling like I've marginally increased my personal safety if doing so significantly increases the risk exposure to non-consenting bystanders.