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You're right. But our cars didn't suddenly get worse during the last 3 years. The behavioral changes we're seeing in drivers since the pandemic are very, very c

You're right. But our cars didn't suddenly get worse during the last 3 years. The behavioral changes we're seeing in drivers since the pandemic are very, very concerning to me. We need more understanding of this phenomenon.

bobthepanda 4y ago
This is the full press release the article is citing: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Full-Report22 https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli... It's worth noting that the trend has accelerated in the last three years but we are actually up over a much longer period of time. From 2009-2019 we erased the entire decline in pedestrian deaths from 1990: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17194.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17194.jpeg
- Symbiote 4y ago
  Are there statistics on the number of SUVs and trucks on the road? That is an obvious difference with Europe. Both have much worse pedestrian safety, especially the truck. The default vehicle for someone who needs to move tools, materials etc in Europe is not a truck but a van like a Ford Transit or Mercedes Sprinter. The other obvious difference is the huge, multi-lane roads in America, sometimes with no sidewalk. Changing either of these will take years.
  - kelnos 4y ago
    > Are there statistics on the number of SUVs and trucks on the road? I wouldn't be surprised if increasing numbers of SUVs and pickup trucks in the US is at least partly to blame for this. If you're hit by a sedan, you're likely to get thrown onto the hood, windshield, or roof of the car. If you're hit by an SUV or truck, you're much more likely to get dragged underneath, where you can get run over by the wheels. While neither situation is particularly fun, the latter is much more likely to result in death. > The other obvious difference is the huge, multi-lane roads in America, sometimes with no sidewalk. It would also be interesting to be able to classify what was happening when the pedestrian died in data like this. Were they crossing the street and a car going perpendicular ran into them? Were they crossing the street, and a car turning from the parallel street ran into them? Or were they walking along a road without a sidewalk, and a passing car hit them? Agreed that the US has a lot of wide, multi-lane roads, and poor sidewalk coverage on many roads, but I don't expect that situation has changed (for worse or better) all that much in the past few years, in a way that would explain the surge of fatalities. But anyway, to explain the increase in fatalities, my money would be on smartphones: more people driving distracted, and more pedestrians walking around buried in their phones, having no idea what's going on around them. Another posters somewhere here pointed out that pedestrian fatalities have been rising steadily since their all-time low back in 2009, which roughly coincides with the rise of smartphone adoption.
    - FreeFull 4y ago
      A huge SUV also has way worse visibility lines than a sedan. If there is a child standing in front of the SUV, you simply won't be able to see them from inside the vehicle.
      - Gibbon1 4y ago
        Airbags in the A pillars results in blind spots in the exact field of vision pedestrians tend to be in.
      - gorbachev 4y ago
        There's also the fact that when there are more SUVs on the road, the visibility from all the other cars is drastically worse. When you park an Escalade at a street corner, everyone who's trying to cross that intersection is screwed. I really hope parking too close to an intersection was made illegal everywhere in the US like it is in some European countries.
        bobthepanda 4y ago
        Parking laws are state, or usually local level. Interestingly, New York state does actually have a "no parking 30 feet (9m) from a crosswalk" but New York City has overridden that to make it legal
    - secretsatan 4y ago
      SUVs have a higher impact location I'm sure doesn't help, and then there's the legality of bullbars in the US which are pretty much outlawed in other places
  - bobthepanda 4y ago
    FWIWs, Ford eliminated all cars in is lineup except for the Mustang in the US, and otherwise sells SUVs and trucks.
squokko 4y ago
My guess: people disappeared completely into their phones during the pandemic and are continuing to use them while driving
- AstixAndBelix 4y ago
  it's incredible to me how laxly we treat driving multi-ton vehicles at high speeds. you'd think operating such beasts would be something for which a real license and strict guidelines were put in place, instead it's just treated as a more complicated form of taking a stroll around. see what running the equivalent of a red light does to you as a train operator or airplane pilot. in a car? who gives a crap lol! and let's not even touch upon maintenance...
- sundvor 4y ago
  And walking.
- meltyness 4y ago
  Definitely the rule these days that any other driver doing something stupid is usually staring at their crotch, cupholder, or dashboard.
libraryatnight 4y ago
I agree, I don't know what you notice where you are but where I am it's a bizarre passive aggressiveness - passive almost to the point of aloof. Cars either go 20mph over the speed limit, or float exactly at or some degree under it. They can also change this behavior at any time making passing or generally being anywhere near them dangerous. People also seem to have no qualms stopping in the middle of the road to make an exit or turn. Anyway, driving feels more dangerous the last couple years. Also, I wonder if cars haven't changed but the number of beast-mobiles gone up? I drive a car and most trucks these days look like they'd kill me instantly and they drive like they wouldn't mind.
fooblaster 4y ago
I think there's a convincing argument that trucks are getting significantly more lethal in recent years. https://news.yahoo.com/americas-cars-trucks-getting-bigger-142023779.html https://news.yahoo.com/americas-cars-trucks-getting-bigger-1... https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-dangers-of-big-trucks/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-danger...
KennyBlanken 4y ago
The reason for the behavioral change is that police stopped doing traffic stops during the pandemic and had already "quiet quit" in response to movements toward greater police accountability, and now people know they can now get away with almost anything. I cannot remember the last time I saw a police officer pulling someone over, either around town or on the highway. I was rear-ended by a guy who was clearly looking at his phone and the cop refused to write a ticket despite him rear-ending me at a stoplight that I had been waiting at for over half a minute. Cops are a legal gang and we cannot have police reform fast enough, starting with federal minimum standards for fitness, education, training, and on-the-job apprenticing/mentoring. In huge swaths of the US, all you need to be a cop is to pass a background check, have a pulse, and be young enough.
- switch007 4y ago
  And at the same time if you fall in to a certain bubble on social media (eg TikTok) you could be convinced that there are police pulling someone over every 5 seconds in every city. We need good stats on the topic I do feel the same way as you though. Running red lights, for example, has, at least in my experience, increased massively the past few years (UK)
- autoexec 4y ago
  > The reason for the behavioral change is that police stopped doing traffic stops during the pandemic I suspect there isn't just one cause, but I did see that several states have stopped requiring new drivers to take a road test. Teens who wouldn't have passed a drivers test, cell phones, higher than normal stress/anxiety/frustration, grief, and an increase in walkers may also have played a role .
occz 4y ago
U.S roads are designed in a fundamentally unsafe way (stroads in particular). In particular, the design speed of these roads are generally too high for their intended use, leading to high-speed collisions. However, on account of the inefficiency inherent in car-oriented infrastructure, these roads were often congested to the point of reducing the speed to less unsafe levels. The pandemic reduced the amount of vehicles on the road, leading to the vehicles left on the road being able to hit the unsafe design speeds again, leading to the worrying trend that we are seeing.

bobthepanda 4y ago

This is the full press release the article is citing: https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotlight-Full-Report22 https://www.ghsa.org/resources/news-releases/GHSA/Ped-Spotli... It's worth noting that the trend has accelerated in the last three years but we are actually up over a much longer period of time. From 2009-2019 we erased the entire decline in pedestrian deaths from 1990: https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17194.jpeg https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/17194.jpeg

Symbiote 4y ago
Are there statistics on the number of SUVs and trucks on the road? That is an obvious difference with Europe. Both have much worse pedestrian safety, especially the truck. The default vehicle for someone who needs to move tools, materials etc in Europe is not a truck but a van like a Ford Transit or Mercedes Sprinter. The other obvious difference is the huge, multi-lane roads in America, sometimes with no sidewalk. Changing either of these will take years.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > Are there statistics on the number of SUVs and trucks on the road? I wouldn't be surprised if increasing numbers of SUVs and pickup trucks in the US is at least partly to blame for this. If you're hit by a sedan, you're likely to get thrown onto the hood, windshield, or roof of the car. If you're hit by an SUV or truck, you're much more likely to get dragged underneath, where you can get run over by the wheels. While neither situation is particularly fun, the latter is much more likely to result in death. > The other obvious difference is the huge, multi-lane roads in America, sometimes with no sidewalk. It would also be interesting to be able to classify what was happening when the pedestrian died in data like this. Were they crossing the street and a car going perpendicular ran into them? Were they crossing the street, and a car turning from the parallel street ran into them? Or were they walking along a road without a sidewalk, and a passing car hit them? Agreed that the US has a lot of wide, multi-lane roads, and poor sidewalk coverage on many roads, but I don't expect that situation has changed (for worse or better) all that much in the past few years, in a way that would explain the surge of fatalities. But anyway, to explain the increase in fatalities, my money would be on smartphones: more people driving distracted, and more pedestrians walking around buried in their phones, having no idea what's going on around them. Another posters somewhere here pointed out that pedestrian fatalities have been rising steadily since their all-time low back in 2009, which roughly coincides with the rise of smartphone adoption.
  - FreeFull 4y ago
    A huge SUV also has way worse visibility lines than a sedan. If there is a child standing in front of the SUV, you simply won't be able to see them from inside the vehicle.
    - Gibbon1 4y ago
      Airbags in the A pillars results in blind spots in the exact field of vision pedestrians tend to be in.
    - gorbachev 4y ago
      There's also the fact that when there are more SUVs on the road, the visibility from all the other cars is drastically worse. When you park an Escalade at a street corner, everyone who's trying to cross that intersection is screwed. I really hope parking too close to an intersection was made illegal everywhere in the US like it is in some European countries.
      - bobthepanda 4y ago
        Parking laws are state, or usually local level. Interestingly, New York state does actually have a "no parking 30 feet (9m) from a crosswalk" but New York City has overridden that to make it legal
  - secretsatan 4y ago
    SUVs have a higher impact location I'm sure doesn't help, and then there's the legality of bullbars in the US which are pretty much outlawed in other places
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  FWIWs, Ford eliminated all cars in is lineup except for the Mustang in the US, and otherwise sells SUVs and trucks.

squokko 4y ago

My guess: people disappeared completely into their phones during the pandemic and are continuing to use them while driving

AstixAndBelix 4y ago
it's incredible to me how laxly we treat driving multi-ton vehicles at high speeds. you'd think operating such beasts would be something for which a real license and strict guidelines were put in place, instead it's just treated as a more complicated form of taking a stroll around. see what running the equivalent of a red light does to you as a train operator or airplane pilot. in a car? who gives a crap lol! and let's not even touch upon maintenance...
sundvor 4y ago
And walking.
meltyness 4y ago
Definitely the rule these days that any other driver doing something stupid is usually staring at their crotch, cupholder, or dashboard.

libraryatnight 4y ago

I agree, I don't know what you notice where you are but where I am it's a bizarre passive aggressiveness - passive almost to the point of aloof. Cars either go 20mph over the speed limit, or float exactly at or some degree under it. They can also change this behavior at any time making passing or generally being anywhere near them dangerous. People also seem to have no qualms stopping in the middle of the road to make an exit or turn. Anyway, driving feels more dangerous the last couple years. Also, I wonder if cars haven't changed but the number of beast-mobiles gone up? I drive a car and most trucks these days look like they'd kill me instantly and they drive like they wouldn't mind.

fooblaster 4y ago

I think there's a convincing argument that trucks are getting significantly more lethal in recent years. https://news.yahoo.com/americas-cars-trucks-getting-bigger-142023779.html https://news.yahoo.com/americas-cars-trucks-getting-bigger-1... https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-dangers-of-big-trucks/ https://www.consumerreports.org/car-safety/the-hidden-danger...

KennyBlanken 4y ago

The reason for the behavioral change is that police stopped doing traffic stops during the pandemic and had already "quiet quit" in response to movements toward greater police accountability, and now people know they can now get away with almost anything. I cannot remember the last time I saw a police officer pulling someone over, either around town or on the highway. I was rear-ended by a guy who was clearly looking at his phone and the cop refused to write a ticket despite him rear-ending me at a stoplight that I had been waiting at for over half a minute. Cops are a legal gang and we cannot have police reform fast enough, starting with federal minimum standards for fitness, education, training, and on-the-job apprenticing/mentoring. In huge swaths of the US, all you need to be a cop is to pass a background check, have a pulse, and be young enough.

switch007 4y ago
And at the same time if you fall in to a certain bubble on social media (eg TikTok) you could be convinced that there are police pulling someone over every 5 seconds in every city. We need good stats on the topic I do feel the same way as you though. Running red lights, for example, has, at least in my experience, increased massively the past few years (UK)
autoexec 4y ago
> The reason for the behavioral change is that police stopped doing traffic stops during the pandemic I suspect there isn't just one cause, but I did see that several states have stopped requiring new drivers to take a road test. Teens who wouldn't have passed a drivers test, cell phones, higher than normal stress/anxiety/frustration, grief, and an increase in walkers may also have played a role .

occz 4y ago

U.S roads are designed in a fundamentally unsafe way (stroads in particular). In particular, the design speed of these roads are generally too high for their intended use, leading to high-speed collisions. However, on account of the inefficiency inherent in car-oriented infrastructure, these roads were often congested to the point of reducing the speed to less unsafe levels. The pandemic reduced the amount of vehicles on the road, leading to the vehicles left on the road being able to hit the unsafe design speeds again, leading to the worrying trend that we are seeing.