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The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

• Rover222 4mo ago
  Datac enters bad, big cars bad, nulcear bad (yeah those were people of the same ilk that ruined that industry). Keep it up. China will win, as we flagellate.
• kelseyfrog 4mo ago
  These are gender-affirming vehicles for a large number of men. Taking them away is a direct attack on their masculinity. When we say, "Men are under attack," it refers to things like this. Regardless of any safety claims, for that reason alone, I don't see it as a politically viable issue.
  • TacticalCoder 4mo ago
    > These are gender-affirming vehicles for a large number of men. I think people simply do find SUVs (which I don't like) convenient. Many women, including a huge number of moms, do happen to just love SUVs. Both in the US and in the EU. In the EU SUVs are now approaching 60% of all cars sold (59.25% or so, latest numbers). You don't get such a market share by being mostly cars sold to men needing to "gender-affirm".
    • tapoxi 4mo ago
      I drive an SUV. It's convenient! A Ford F150 is fucking ridiculous in comparison, and larger than any truck I remember seeing growing up, and there's people with F350s for personal use. One of them ran over and killed a kid outside a nearby children's museum. Those things are not safe.
    • bjt 4mo ago
      "SUV" is too broad a category. A RAV4 is an SUV. It's similarly sized to most of the SUVs I've seen in Europe. And a pedestrian getting hit by one would have a similar experience to getting hit by a sedan. It's nothing like the big Rams, GMCs or F250s with the high front grilles that are becoming more popular while also being far deadlier to pedestrians.
      • marek77 4mo ago
        A RAV4 in Europe is just a "SUV" (and one on the larger side). In the US, it's a "compact SUV"...
    • lojban 4mo ago
      What are the benefits of an SUV over a minivan though? They seem objectively worse in practically all regards: worse fuel efficiency, worse doors, less cargo space, worse visibility.
      • sublinear 4mo ago
        Not all "SUVs" are equivalent. The best ones have AWD and are basically just a beefier sedan/wagon. They more or less have the capabilities of a small pickup truck, but exchange the bed for more passenger space and inside cargo room. A minivan does have more space, but cannot tow and would immediately get stuck in the first mud patch it sees. I have no idea why people in the city buy them though (other than snowy regions).
        • alamortsubite 4mo ago
          Despite the fantasy manufacturers are selling, large pickups and SUV are terrible off-roaders. Visibility, weight, and approach, break-over, and departure angles are almost universally atrocious. Most don't even have live front axles, and the vast majority of SUV are unibody. I'm convinced locking differentials only continue to exist because the vehicles are so corpulent they'd be unable to move off-road without them.
      • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
        I noticed that your home is a little bit bigger than it absolutely needs to be to sustain your life.
    • kelseyfrog 4mo ago
      Sure, people can love SUVs, and trucks can be gender-affirming vehicles for a large number of men. Both can be true. Watch a US truck commercial. The market and the motivating themes are immediately obvious. Besides, drivers literally adorn trucks with prosthetic testicles. That's something that cannot be unseen.
  • bediger4000 4mo ago
    You're right, I don't know why you're getting down voted. You e got my admiration for being brave enough to write this on HN
    • aaron695 4mo ago
      [dead]
  • sublinear 4mo ago
    You might be the one saying this right now, but how old is this comment? I don't think I've ever heard any man ever say that in real life, but even online it's probably been almost a decade since this was memed into the ground.
    • kelseyfrog 4mo ago
      > I don't think I've ever heard any man ever say that in real life Um, because men get weird when you point out the gender-affirming actions they do? Try it irl and see what the reactions are. There's a reason the only place free of physical intimidation is where this can be safely said. Besides, how old is the privacy comment or the "parents should parent" comment we see dragged out on every kid's social media ban? It's almost like the age of the sentiment doesn't have any bearing on its relevancy.
      • roarkeful 4mo ago
        I exhaled through my nose when I thought of reversing your upset sexism. Let's start calling cosmetics "gender-affirming" and mock women who use them.
        • kelseyfrog 4mo ago
          Go ahead?
  • edbaskerville 4mo ago
    I can't tell if you think this is a good thing or a bad thing that men use big trucks to compensate for a masculine sense of inadequacy. But I think this is a good point, and I think we need to fight against it. I don't think it's politically impossible. These things are killing children (among many other people). "Giant trucks and SUVs are killing children" seems like a pretty powerful line.
    • RIMR 4mo ago
      I 100% agree with you, but I do sorta get the other point being made here. Assault rifles have been used to slaughter classrooms full of children in some of the most bone-chilling acts of violence imaginable, and people have such a weird identity complex around guns that they go to outrageous lengths to avoid any meaningful action. We've even seen parents of murdered children accused by gun-rights activists of being paid actors and deliberately threatening 2nd amendment rights. Car culture in America is similarly toxic, with people having strong automobile-centric identities. The culture surrounding giant trucks is the most extreme, and there's a mountain of dashcam video online suggesting that the kinds of people who buy these massive truck are also quite reckless behind the wheel and do intentionally aggressive things with them, including deliberately harassing behaviors like "rolling coal". These aesthetics and behaviors are enshrined by popular political establishments on the right, meaning that challenging any of it becomes a partisan fight. The backlash of banning these kinds of vehicles would be straight out of the movie Idiocracy, but there are enough jerks in this country that it would completely block any progress from ever being made.
• ortusdux 4mo ago
  Does the added risk translate proportionally to increased insurance costs? Or is there an imbalance? When I was a teen getting insurance for the first time, certain vehicle colors were significantly more expensive to insure, and that fact factored into my car buying decisions.
  • xnx 4mo ago
    There are almost never consequences for hitting someone with your car.
• protocolture 4mo ago
  I have 360 degree cameras (at toddler height), auto braking, every conceivable safety mechanism. I really think that once these are implemented, any hatred of large vehicles is just jealousy.
  • downrightmike 4mo ago
    None of that fixes an inattentive driver flying down the road playing with tiktok on their phone
    • doubled112 4mo ago
      Agreed. It definitely fixes backing over a toddler in your driveway though. I have a newer crossover. I put a hitch mount cargo box on and went to back out of the driveway. It slammed the brakes on harder than I ever have.
    • protocolture 4mo ago
      >None of that fixes an inattentive driver flying down the road playing with tiktok on their phone Automatic braking does alleviate this, but also, inattentive driving is already illegal?
      • asdff 4mo ago
        Yup, since it is illegal everyone pays perfect attention.
  • ungreased0675 4mo ago
    My normal sized car is at a significant disadvantage in a collision with a full-sized SUV. This creates higher injury risk for me and my family. Larger vehicles also cause more road damage over time, which raises my taxes or reduces the quality of roads I drive on. For those reasons, I think vehicles should be taxed by weight, to encourage more smaller, lighter vehicles.
    • protocolture 4mo ago
• adamsb6 4mo ago
  No mention of CAFE standards? How can you write this article without mentioning the policy that incentivizes larger vehicles?
  • technonerd 4mo ago
    No mention of the 1964 chicken tax either.
  • dlcarrier 4mo ago
    I'm excited that EVs get to avoid CAFE standards, so we get to have small vehicles again. Even though legacy domestic car manufacturers aren't going to be involved, as they practically wrote the CAFE standards that eliminated small vehicles, and there's bipartisan support to tariff EV imports out of existence, there's still enough market demand for multiple domestic startups.
    • toomuchtodo 4mo ago
      Unfortunately, we still get abominations like the GMC Hummer EV (~9000 lbs, classified as a class 3 medium duty truck). Rumor has it the model has been cancelled after 2026 luckily. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/11/driving-the-biggest-least-efficient-electric-car-the-hummer-ev-suv/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/11/driving-the-biggest-lea... https://www.torquenews.com/17998/i-leased-hummer-ev-because-i-always-wanted-h2-seven-months-later-its-only-car-out-80-ive https://www.torquenews.com/17998/i-leased-hummer-ev-because-...
      • dlcarrier 4mo ago
        As long as I get to buy a small vehicle, I don't mind if someone else buys something inefficient. It's better that oversized EVs be on the market than just oversized diesel trucks.
        • toomuchtodo 4mo ago
          Bigger vehicles kill people in smaller vehicles in accidents. Heavy Toll: America's Huge, Heavy Cars Are Killing More People - https://www.motortrend.com/features/why-americas-roads-keep-getting-deadlier-safety-research https://www.motortrend.com/features/why-americas-roads-keep-... - September 24th, 2024 > More than 40,000 people die on America’s roads every year, making them nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven than those in other rich nations. What’s more, the death rate has increased over the past decade, despite the adoption of more sophisticated passive safety systems and advanced driver assistance systems such as lane keep assist and automatic braking. The number of pedestrians killed by motor vehicles has almost doubled since 2010. Why? “Weight is to blame,” The Economist insists. > Using data for 7.5 million two-vehicle crashes in 14 American states in 2013–2023, The Economist found that for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles killed 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest. The publication estimates that if the heaviest 10 percent of vehicles on America’s roads were roughly 1,000 pounds lighter, fatalities in multicar crashes would fall by 12 percent, saving 2,300 lives a year, without compromising the safety of the occupants of the heavier vehicles. > “For every life the heaviest one percent of SUVs or trucks saves in America,” The Economist wrote, “more than a dozen lives are lost in smaller vehicles. This makes traffic jams an ethics class on wheels.” > Of course, what’s behind those grim statistics is simple physics. Force equals mass times acceleration: The heavier a vehicle, the harder it impacts an object at any given speed. The core issue in America is the massive differential between the lightest and heaviest vehicles on its roads (and to be clear, The Economist’s reporting is focused on cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks, not heavy-duty commercial trucks or semis).
• avalys 4mo ago
  There are many factors driving this: 1. Fuel economy regulations that scale regressively with vehicle size, that incentivize automakers to build and market larger vehicles that are easier to hit regulatory targets. 2. Rollover and crash worthiness regulations that require thicker A-pillars and more robust roof structure. 3. Towing performance. The large pickup manufacturers are in an arms race to beat each other’s power and towing capacity numbers. This requires a large, upright grille to provide adequate cooling for a large engine. 4. Consumer demand. The idea that marketing is telling people what to buy is silly. People are spending $80k+ on massive vehicles because they like them. Simple as that. The industry puts lot of marketing effort behind vehicles that are flops. They can’t make people buy a product they don’t want. Disclaimer: I own a huge diesel pickup, along with a Tesla Model Y and a Porsche 911. Why? They’re fun! I use the pickup to tow an RV, but it’s also just fun to drive. I have definitely noticed the visibility problem though. Forget pedestrians, sometimes entire cars are hiding behind the A-pillar! You have to move your head to the side to clear the blind spot safely.
  • tinyplanets 4mo ago
    Okay, then sell your huge diesel pickup. Or is it just too much fun!
• tasty_freeze 4mo ago
  Recent Climate Town video on the move to trucks and SUVs: https://youtu.be/JPm4de6-eTg?si=Eu1y3uQIeCGnkR_2 https://youtu.be/JPm4de6-eTg?si=Eu1y3uQIeCGnkR_2 If you don't know Rollie Williams, Climate Town videos are informative but suffused with a lot of humor to prevent it from being too preachy.
  • frimmy 4mo ago
    ++ -- Rollie Williams == for edutainment. His channel is responsible for me becoming a patreon subscriber
• recursivedoubts 4mo ago
  all we want are 70-series land cruisers, prados and suzuki jimnys end the idiotic chicken tax and make small trucks and utes legal again while we are on the topic, full size vans make a lot more sense than "suvs" for most families
  • aeortiz 4mo ago
    Yeah, but no one want's to buy a mom van </s>
    • tinyplanets 4mo ago
      That's right, gotta buy that brodozer and show everyone what a real MAN you are!
• xnx 4mo ago
  Unfortunately, in the car size arms race, bigger and heavier cars are safer for their occupants. "Everyone outside the car be damned" is the expressed preference of US buyers.
  • Eddy_Viscosity2 4mo ago
    I don't think the US consumers are buying the bigger SUV/trucks because they are safer. At best it might be a minor contributing factor. It's primarily a status/identity thing.
    • toomuchtodo 4mo ago
      n=1, I dated a low empathy woman who specifically drove a Chevy Tahoe due to mass for safety reasons and transporting her only child in the vehicle frequently. “Good luck to the other driver.”
      • defrost 4mo ago
        On the flip side, there's a lot to be said for a low centre of gravity and it's still the case that US "trucks" get smushed by actual trucks (road trains and heavy haul outmass a tahoe). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TskUzmg6Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TskUzmg6Sk (Site safety video, engine and transmission removed in example vehicle .. still ..)
        • toomuchtodo 4mo ago
          Great video. She was sophisticated enough to understand the risk profile, anecdote shared to demonstrate that some folks do decision their purchase around winning the potential tonnage battle. Very “tragedy of the commons” that can only be solved with regulation. Otherwise, some will buy big because they can.
    • pseudohadamard 4mo ago
      Early SUVs were actually extremely unsafe, high wheel base made them more prone to tipping over (rollover), no crumple zones and similar safety measures because we'll just make it big instead, and so on. This is why newer SUVs have thicker A-pillars and other measures, because the earlier ones before safety regs were enforced were deathtraps.
• RickJWagner 4mo ago
  Yes, this is a problem. Look at a typical truck from the 90s or so, they are tiny compared to today’s trucks. The same thing is true of cars. Today’s civic is as big as an accord used to be. There is no Del Sol. We need to turn the incentive knobs that worked so successfully on consumption so we now work on vehicle size. Also, about the center of gravity discussion: I used to have an old friend that spent decades in business running a body shop. I asked him once what was the worst animal for causing vehicle damage. ( This was in rural South Dakota. I was thinking cow, horse, maybe bison. ) Nope. He said most animals would go up and over the hood, just like the people in the article. He said pigs were the worst. They stay low, going right into the car and not bouncing over. Often resulting in a total loss for that car.
  • tinyplanets 4mo ago
    Yeah, but who's going to get those incentives in place? In the US, it sure ain't gonna be the Republicans.
• mcdow 4mo ago
  there’s another thing that started to get quite popular in the late 2000s… smartphones
  • deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  • soperj 4mo ago
    Almost like we need a study to figure out what the actual cause is. Oh, that's what the article is about, the study.
    • ericpauley 4mo ago
      Per tfa vehicle size “ represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths” so the title is really a distraction from the (likely) root cause that GP brings up.
      • estebank 4mo ago
        Could it be that the other differences are driven by differences in the built environment? Like narrower roads making people drive slower, or bollards, or alternatives to driving making it less likely to have people that shouldn't be driving doing so? Also, 10% is a huge effect.
  • buellerbueller 4mo ago
    that's called a hypothesis. now go author a study to test it, like the study being reported on. hypotheses without evidence don't stand up to hypotheses that have been tested.
    • kortilla 4mo ago
      And how did this study rule out smartphones?
      • 4mo ago
• mc32 4mo ago
  At the same time avoidance systems have become much better on those large new cars… so would it have even worse had collision avoidance not come into being? Also interesting that often people tend to imagine F-150s, Silverados ,etc., but if you see what people drive they are large Bentzs, Toyotas and of course Suburbans and F-150s. But everyone is building them not just American manufacturers.
  • estebank 4mo ago
    > But everyone is building them not just American manufacturers But for, and driven by, the American market. I would hazard a guess that Silverados sold outside of US, Canada, Mexico and Australia can fit in a single parking lot.
    • mc32 4mo ago
      The homemarket websites for Mecedes (Geländewagen), BMW (X series), LandRover (defender), Toyota (LandCruiser, Lexus LX), etc. have the large SUVs for sale. They are not as popular as they are in the US but they are available.
      • alamortsubite 4mo ago
        "Not as popular" or "nowhere near as popular?" Also, our absurd pickups effectively don't exist in those markets. Occasionally you'll see one and it stands out like a sore thumb.
        • mc32 4mo ago
          Parent suggested or intimated that their sole market was the USA.
          • alamortsubite 4mo ago
            Maybe I misinterpreted, but I think they meant that if the American market didn't exist, neither would most of those models.
• tonmoy 4mo ago
  While their conclusion is probably correct, I would have liked to seen the number of fatalities normalized by population, miles driven, number of pedestrian increase, speed limit change etc
  • MoonWalk 4mo ago
    I find any conclusion that doesn't focus on TEXTING to be suspect. By focusing on the wrong things (especially the endless caterwauling about "speeding"), people are letting legislators off the hook for abetting murder. Texting while driving should be a DUI-level offense, with the same penalties. But year after year, they refuse to do anything about it.
    • estebank 4mo ago
      What would make non-Americans text less?
      • MoonWalk 4mo ago
        Why non-Americans?
        • estebank 4mo ago
          Because the effects are explicitly called out for US roads and not other locales. https://m.youtube.com/shorts/FDvTWy0LMt4 https://m.youtube.com/shorts/FDvTWy0LMt4
          • MoonWalk 4mo ago
            Not only does that not have anything to do with texting, but it has nothing to do with the roads. That's about giant vehicles hitting people above the waistline. If you hit someone with a tall-ass truck in Portugal, I'm pretty sure he's going to fall over just like he would in the USA.
            • 4mo ago
• TulliusCicero 4mo ago
  WA state recently passed a law about e-bikes/e-motorcycles to deal with the issue of younger teens on these kinda moped-style e-bikes going very fast around town (and often riding quite recklessly). The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those riders. Meanwhile, everyone knows that these giant trucks and SUVs are killing people, but we do basically nothing. Even on the off chance that we passed a law about them, existing vehicles would certainly be grandfathered in, we would never outright ban current vehicles/motorists. If we banned existing SUVs and trucks, millions of people would be screaming bloody murder about their right to drive pedestrian-killing cars.
  • bluedino 4mo ago
    The e-bikes aren't that annoying, it's the kids (and adults) riding all over the city on 4 wheelers and UTVs. The cops chase them around but it doesn't do much good.
  • functionmouse 4mo ago
    that's because lobbyists own our souls :)
  • unixuser7104 4mo ago
    How would you react if told you could no longer drive your primary mode of transportation?
    • nimih 4mo ago
      I agree. We should legalize drunk driving so that no one can be denied their god-given right to drive a car.
      • mothballed 4mo ago
        ~No one in the US is letting their "god given right" be denied. They are driving their car anyway even when the government says they can't. So to answer the question, they would act in insubordination, and anything harsh enough to stop the insubordination won't be practically implemented.
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• hackingonempty 4mo ago
  In the USA, an order of magnitude more people on foot are killed each year by people driving cars and trucks than are killed in mass shootings. [0][1] It is a massive problem that receives a disproportionate amount of attention. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/pedestrian-bike-safety/about/pedestrian-safety.html https://www.cdc.gov/pedestrian-bike-safety/about/pedestrian-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_United_States_in_2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...
  • 0xbadcafebee 4mo ago
    We never invest effort in things that provide the most value; we invest in what we're the most emotional about. The number of people killed in 9/11 and every plane hijacking is dwarfed by any single year of deaths due to either vehicle accidents or gun shootings. But we do nothing about either of those things, and instead spend $180B on TSA, to save zero lives. We then roll back things like vaccine mandates, to kill more people (mostly kids).
    • coffeemug 4mo ago
      That’s a very uncharitable way to interpret public opinion. A more charitable way is that people have different ethical intuitions. Some of us lean more utilitarian than others, and almost no one is a pure utilitarian. It isn’t merely a matter of being more emotional; people very reasonably have different views on this stuff.
      • N_Lens 4mo ago
        I think it’s rational to lean more utilitarian if you’re administering a city, state or country.
      • deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
  • EA-3167 4mo ago
    This is often brought out as though it should engender gasps, but a moment of thought punctures the whole prospect. We need cars and trucks for a variety of purposes, and while I agree that most people don't need a pickup or a Unimog, there are many people and businesses who do. The ability to rapidly travel is a centerpiece of modern life, and has been for quite some time. Mass shootings by contrast are not economic or personal drivers of freedom, they're not an intended output of the system that creates them, they're a relatively modern perversity of it. Of course people are more concerned with seemingly random violence that many other countries seem to live without, or with much less of, compared to inevitable accidents. People also love to present "Vehicle vs Ped" as a de facto accident on the part of the vehicle or the driver, and that can certainly be the case! It's also true that about 30% of pedestrians involved in these accidents have a BAC over the legal limit. There are also issues with poorly designed and maintained lights, safety systems on roads, and so on that play a role. None of this is as simple as, "Just bike to work, dummy." I'd also add that recent stats show a REDUCTION in pedestrian fatalities, it's just that it's been on a rise since 2009, but it's going back down again. Possibly that comes down to addressing some concerns I've mentioned above, some comes down to fewer megamonsterSUV's, and some comes down to smartphone and in-car tech no longer promoting using said phones on the road. https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalities-2024-data https://www.ghsa.org/resource-hub/pedestrian-traffic-fatalit...
• carlosjobim 4mo ago
  Took less than 5 seconds of reading the article to find out the title is a total lie: “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.” Edit: The title of the OP has been changed after I made this reply.
• tantalor 4mo ago
  Okay. What's the correlation coefficient?
• srdjanr 4mo ago
  So this is only one of the reasons, and a relatively small one: “Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.”
  • giantg2 4mo ago
    Sadly, most will ignore your common sense just as they are ignoring the data.
    • sandeepkd 4mo ago
      Came here to highlight the same. The fact that only 10% are being attributed to bigger cars, but the exact reason isnt being discussed. More than likely its the addiction to technology, the smart phones, and somehow its not part of discussion in the article.
    • Fricken 4mo ago
      If ignored, it would imply that the sense you're referring to is not a common one.
      • giantg2 4mo ago
        Yes, the old joke about common sense not being common anymore. But of course it was always meant as a figure of speech to indicate plainly logical items.
      • cucumber3732842 4mo ago
        Common perhaps, just not in this particular filter bubble.
  • advisedwang 4mo ago
    Sometimes safety comes from lots of little adjustments. So perhaps we should see 10% as large, not small.
• b112 4mo ago
  It could be why. It could also be from people staring at their cell phone and walking down the road. I see it all the time. I've seen people walk right into intersections against the light. Maybe, it's even both, because while I can believe large cars aren't helping... I surely know staring on your phone, walking, and not paying attention is just plain dumb.
  • ack210 4mo ago
    The NYC DOT did a study on this a few years back and found it not to be the case: > Reports of device distraction are scarce in the New York City and national fatality data, and estimates of annual mobile device-related injuries are dwarfed nationally by pedestrian injury estimates where pedestrian distraction was not cited. In short, despite growing concerns, DOT found little concrete evidence that device-induced distracted walking contributes significantly to pedestrian fatalities and injuries. https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/distraction-shouldnt-be-deadly.pdf https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/distraction-shoul...
  • bluecalm 4mo ago
    You know what's way worse: drivers using their phones when driving. If you drive in a way that you kill a careless pedestrian it's a problem. It's cars and drivers almost exclusively.
• izend 4mo ago
  Vehicles accelerate a LOT faster on average than years ago, EVs and Turbo Engines...
• everdrive 4mo ago
  People spend a lot of time on Trucks, but I don't see why SUVs get a pass. Every single car is an SUV now. They're higher up, heavier, and have a higher beltline all so that drivers can "feel safer."
  • joe_the_user 4mo ago
    It's an arms race. My older SUV (Lexus 3XX) is worrisome in it's size and blindspots but it's still dwarfed by current trucks. Moreover, once most SUVs were basically built over a pickup chassis but it seems like pickups have gotten so large that it's unusual to see an equivalent SUV.
    • Marsymars 4mo ago
      The equivalent SUVs still exist, e.g. Toyota Tundra -> Sequoia, Ford F-150 -> Expedition, Nissan Titan -> Armada, etc.
  • Zigurd 4mo ago
    Anything with a hood that's so high primarily because it's gender affirming care is paid for with the deaths and injuries of innocents. Regulate the shape of the front end of any vehicle, as I'm sure any honest regulator would.
    • everdrive 4mo ago
      It's quite sad, the old 1997 F-150 (the first year of the quite-ugly-but-practical "bubble" aesthetic) specifically advertised its low front hood as an intentional measure to improve visibility. And that thing had better visibility than nearly any modern car. It was incredibly despite still being a relatively large truck.
      • rpcope1 4mo ago
        It's honestly frustrating that you can't buy anything like an S10, an O.G. Ranger, Jeep XJ, or even the 90's and early 00's GM and Ford full size trucks. I understand they were at least marginally less safe in a crash, but I think changes could have been made to get them safer and more efficient without compromising the ease of repair and generally more pleasant driving experience. It's amazing how much more divorced from the road and the outside world a new truck is compared to even the late 00's pre financial crash trucks, especially as any additional utility they provide is unchanged at best, and frankly so far as I can tell grossly net negative (i.e. how many 8 foot beds have you see recently? How many flatbeds have you seen that weren't on obvious fleet trucks? The Suburban is also frankly grossly less utilitarian now).
• ayhanfuat 4mo ago
  It is worth reading the interactive Times article. Amazing piece of work https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv-pedestrian-crashes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv...
  • jabroni_salad 4mo ago
    Glad they spent half the article on the a-pillar issue. As a recent recipient of a bit of back pain I'd be real happy if my next car didn't require me to try and peer around those things at every intersection.
  • jakub_g 4mo ago
    The animations and comparisons of current vehicles with two-three decades ago are extremely informative indeed.
• cyberax 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• bluescrn 4mo ago
  What also happened around 2009?... Smartphones taking off in a big way. Distracted pedestrians must be a significant factor too. Especially if they've got noise-cancelling Airpods or similar in their ears while looking at their phone.
  • knuppar 4mo ago
    if that was true, we'd see the same pedestrian mortality rise everywhere, which we don't.
    • trollbridge 4mo ago
      Other countries enforced not using phones when driving.
      • alamortsubite 4mo ago
        GP is blaming the victims (pedestrians), not the distracted drivers.
  • NopIdoN 4mo ago
    Yeah fuck those inattentive pedestrians not leaping out of my way
• groundzeros2015 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  • swarnie 4mo ago
    Do drunk people regularly wonder around in the countryside or is driving massive trucks around population centres common? I'm confused by this question.
    • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
      Talking about pedestrian deaths implies an image of an upstanding citizen crossing a street and being hit by a car. But the vast majority of deadly accidents are people in a bad mental state wandering into highways. A quick ChatGPT suggests about half of all these incidents clearly involve alchohol.
  • Zigurd 4mo ago
    And what were they wearing? Did they provoke the drivers? Why didn't they have flashing lights clipped to their belts?
    • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
      I know you’re not taking this seriously. But yes, wandering on to a freeway at night is provocation.
  • amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
    You think more people are wandering around drink post 2009?
    • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
      I do think there are more homeless people on the street.
• jrsj 4mo ago
  [flagged]
• abathologist 4mo ago
  The inevitable march of progress.
• jmward01 4mo ago
  I have long held that larger vehicles should have higher licensing requirements purely based on stats. We see it in the stats that large vehicles are disproportionately dangerous to other vehicles and people so licensing should catch up. We have motorcycle licenses, why don't we have SUV licenses? Similarly, the penalties and limits should be higher. BAC should be lower. Fines higher. Etc etc. You want to drive a big vehicle, fine, pay for it and do what is needed to protect other people from your choices. I shouldn't have to pay for your decisions. This is a fundamental principle that big vehicle drivers conveniently ignore when they believe 'their freedom' trumps my right to life.
  • dnemmers 4mo ago
    Larger vehicles do have different licensing standards: https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/cdl https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/cdl "Driving a Commercial Motor Vehicle (CMV) requires a higher level of knowledge, experience, skills, and physical abilities than that required to drive a non-commercial vehicle. In order to obtain a Commercial Driver's License (CDL), an applicant must pass both skills and knowledge testing geared to these higher standards. Additionally CDL holders are held to a higher standard when operating any type of motor vehicle on public roads. Serious traffic violations committed by a CDL holder can affect their ability to maintain their CDL certification." - I wonder how things compare for a pedestrian embracing a large SUV vs. a Semi.
  • retired 4mo ago
    In most of Europe you can drive a 4250kg EV with a simple drivers license you got after taking six lessons in 1972. Madness. Anything over 2000kg should require a truck license including retesting every five years imho.
    • baq 4mo ago
      A reasonable range small EV weighs more than that. 3500kg is reasonable. Regenerative braking and brakes in general are much better than when those weight limits were imposed.
      • 4mo ago
• ixtli 4mo ago
  Ban private vehicles tbh
• ApolloFortyNine 4mo ago
  >“Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.” Am I crazy? The article itself points out that only 10% of the increase would have been 'saved' if cars had remained the same size. This goes directly against the title no? There's certainly more than one reason, my gut would point to more smart phone use both by drivers and even by pedestrians themselves. I wonder if one day using a smart phone while driving will have the same stigma as a DUI (and similar punishment). I struggle to argue it shouldn't, its sometimes a little crazy to think about that if the person in the other lane gets distracted on their phone, I might be involved in a head on collision at 60+mph.
  • joeyhage 4mo ago
    > “While vehicle safety is critical, blaming larger vehicles for pedestrian deaths overlooks systemic issues” including the design of roads, said Mike Levine, a spokesman for Ford. This is from the NYT article
  • jmaw 4mo ago
    I do think the article title is a bit misleading. "75% More Pedestrians Have Been Killed Since 2009. Giant Trucks and SUVs Are *One Reason*" would be a more accurate title based on my reading.
  • petcat 4mo ago
    And it doesn't quantify how many other lives have been saved specifically because the accidents involved bigger, sturdier, safer cars/trucks/SUVs. That has to be a significant statistic.
    • timw4mail 4mo ago
      For the bigger vehicle, perhaps, but a smaller vehicle, even if up to modern standards, is less safe due to the larger one.
• giantg2 4mo ago
  The headline is wildly incorrect. Large vehicles are only responsible for about a 7.5% increase. Odd they aren't talking about the bigger issues at play and chose to mislead us. “Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.” "According to the report, pedestrian deaths have not only increased by 75% since 2009, but the fatalities have been correlated with the hazards presented by the physical heft, height, and blind spots inherent to today’s big trucks and SUVs."
  • Rover222 4mo ago
    NYT editors are so subtly deceptive. It's disappointing.
• tumdum_ 4mo ago
  I think that in Europe the trend is in the other direction: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_672 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_... - e.g. -15% since 2019.
• thrownaway561 4mo ago
  "Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century" They're making loud noise about nothing. 200-400 people in a country of 200+ million is nothing. Yes... big trucks and SUVs might have something to do with it. Could also be that people are not paying attention more because of their phones. Could also be that the people in these vehicles suck at driving them. The data doesn't account for particular instances, it's just a guess at what is the cause.
• ChrisArchitect 4mo ago
  non-paywall link: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv-pedestrian-crashes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sVA.4tiZ.20tQubFeyx7R&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv...
• rayiner 4mo ago
  Data shows that introduction of iPhones in 2007 is a better explanation for the increase in pedestrian deaths than heavier trucks and SUVs: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ubbfrv/oc_usa_smartphone_adoption_pedestrian_fatalities/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ubbfrv/oc... (All the credit for this analysis goes to the reddit user, I’m just summarizing.) Trucks and SUVs have been getting heavier consistently since 1980 while pedestrian deaths consistently decreased from 1980 to 2009. Truck sizes went up much more from 1980 to 2009 than from 2009 to present. But pedestrian deaths dropped almost in half from 1980 to 2009. The NYT study on which this article is based acknowledges that pedestrian deaths dropped in half from 1980 to 2009, but then does nothing with this information.
  • pm90 4mo ago
    If the issue is distracted drivers, I don’t see how heavier trucks is still not the issue. With lighter vehicles you would likely have a higher chance of surviving.
    • giantg2 4mo ago
      They can both be factors, just one is much more influential than the other. Alcohol is involved in about half of all pedestrian deaths. So it seems that's the issue, but people would rather talk about vehicle size.
      • nkrisc 4mo ago
        Drunk driving is already criminalized, generally socially unacceptable, and has received lots of attention over the decades. Vehicle size is a relevant factor in vehicle-pedestrian collisions regardless of the cause of the collision.
        • giantg2 4mo ago
          Alcohol is also a factor on the pedestrian side, not just the driver side. This has not been addressed. It is still a relevant factor on both sides. Yes, vehicle size/design is another factor.
• kev009 4mo ago
  To make a stronger case of their graphic "you go under vs over" you'd only need to sample coroner reports and find evidence of crushing, which shouldn't be that hard given the sample size. This seems a bit correlation != causation pushing hard into p-hacking given the bounds from the 1980 data long before the hood-height hypothesis could carry and other obvious hypothesis like smart phone adoption curve.
• thegrim33 4mo ago
  "200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died" Or, put another way, 0.000058% to 0.0001159% of the population.
  • estebank 4mo ago
    Or, put another way, 1% of every traffic fatality, or 8% of every pedestrian killed by cars. Those are not a small number being affected by a single variable.
• jandrewrogers 4mo ago
  2009 coincides with the invention of the smartphone. I've lost count of how many times I've nearly been run over because people are staring at their phones while driving. The attribution to larger vehicles while ignoring smartphones seems misplaced.
  • sparrish 4mo ago
    And I'm sure some of these stats are caused by pedestrians staring at their phones as well.
• cryptoegorophy 4mo ago
  Self driving cars can’t come soon enough. Can’t believe there is debate between Waymo tesla and others while completely missing a goal.
• dudeinhawaii 4mo ago
  Weird question that popped into my mind (not a judgement on this), but is there a similar jump in prosecutions for vehicular manslaughter or are these "whoopsie'd" away? Seeing today's distracted drivers, driving their mini armored troop carriers around in parking lots, makes me wonder what happens when someone "didn't see the person" and runs them over. Edit (after some research): "Philadelphia review found only about 16% of drivers who killed vulnerable road users were charged; 30% were closed with no charges, and 46% had no data provided." So that's a bit concerning but I'm not sure what I'd want if I or a loved one were personally on the end of "making the mistake" vs being a victim of a mistake.
• petcat 4mo ago
  > Pop quiz: You’re going to get hit by something coming at you at 50 miles per hour; given equal mass, would you rather that be a small object, or a large object? > Whap! Time’s up. What did you get hit by? If you picked small, you might be dead. If you said “large,” your odds are lower. Why? Two reasons. First, F=ma and second, P = F/A. OK, I suppose that’s really just one reason, and it’s called “physics.” I drive a big SUV because I have a better chance of surviving if something hits me. That has to be a significant statistic somewhere too, right? How many lives were saved because of big cars?
  • matchbok3 4mo ago
    Are you joking? Your huge SUV class kills more people than saves by easily 10x. What happens when you hit a car? Selfish behavior is ruining our streets.
  • topaz0 4mo ago
    You decrease the risk to you but you dramatically increase the risk to other people, especially pedestrians. The total deaths go up.
    • petcat 4mo ago
      > You decrease the risk to you Yes, that's the point. No offense to other people, but I'm trying to not die when I drive to the store. Driving a tank with a sun roof is a good way to do that.
      • BrenBarn 4mo ago
        Do you also run around firing bullets at random people just in case they might decide to attack you at some undetermined point in the future?
        • deleted 4mo ago
          [deleted]
        • petcat 4mo ago
• flerchin 4mo ago
  I don't know the answer to this, and I don't know how to find it. The stats seem to mirror Bird and cohort uptake. Are these datapoints muddied with escooter death and injury?
• PaulHoule 4mo ago
  “Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century,” the report continued. “That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths.” What's responsible for the other 90%?
• genxy 4mo ago
  The Grille Trend that Kills 509 People per Year https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU video discussed previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39584166 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39584166 These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo The original designer wanted the truck to feel like you were driving a fist, punching through the air. So we are killing people so that the driver can have an aggressive aesthetic. And the design has spread like a contagious meme, even BMWs have it now.
• bob1029 4mo ago
  A major aspect of this are side effects of "safety-first" obsession over the occupants of the vehicles themselves. Mandatory airbags in the A-pillars is probably the single biggest killer out of everything. The blind spots are massive compared to cars before these regulations. I've seen some models where it seems bad on purpose. Why don't federal regulators want the drivers of these gigantic vehicles to be able to see where the hell they are going?
  • simplyluke 4mo ago
    US standards are bad at considering everyone outside the vehicle in general. Headlights are another great example. I've seen videos of headlight designers bragging about how they can put a dim spot in the exact place the regulators measure glare to cheat the test. Most pedestrian deaths are at night. With many new vehicles on the road with their low beams on coming at me head-on I have no chance of seeing a pedestrian for hundreds of yards because I'm so blinded.
• earleybird 4mo ago
  I can't take the argument seriously when they ask "Pop quiz: You’re going to get hit by something coming at you at 50 miles per hour; given equal mass, would you rather that be a small object, or a large object?" Either way you're dead.
• expedition32 4mo ago
  I take my 7 year old daughter to learn how to ride a bicycle You take your 7 year old daughter to the gun range We are not the same.
• verytrivial 4mo ago
  The article keeps mentioning "unintended consequences" but I'm not convinced these are. Trying to come across as scary (perhaps because you are yourself scared) seems to be the whole point. "Get out of my way, look at how little I care about your safety, look at the size of this thing." The article mentions machismo but I don't think that quite covers the (profitable) pathology here.
  • alamortsubite 4mo ago
    Yep. Automotive grille design became sharply more aggressive over the last 20 years (not just in terms of hood height). It says a lot about the psychology of consumers.
• ElijahLynn 4mo ago
  I recently visited Portugal and it was so refreshing not to see huge near monster trucks on the road. Which have a very intimidating vibe to them. I was like oh look at people can actually function without big trucks, wow! What a surprise!
  • 9cb14c1ec0 4mo ago
    Very urban perspective. If you are a contractor or farmer in rural America, there is no way to survive without a good sized truck.
    • trinix912 4mo ago
      There’s plenty of rural Europe too, but Europeans mostly use vans (tradesmen) or tractors (farmers) instead. Both have much better visibility than those tall trucks with a long hood, at least from my experience.
    • tumdum_ 4mo ago
      Did you know that only 1,6% of US population works in agriculture compared to 5% in Portugal? See https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/employment-in-agriculture-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/employmen...
      • Helloworldboy 4mo ago
        [dead]
      • LearnYouALisp 4mo ago
        Uh huh, and how far away is everything? What kind of work?
    • tinyplanets 4mo ago
      Plenty of oversized trucks and SUVs in urban areas. The majority of the population in the U.S. is considered urban, so why exactly is the "urban perspective" not legitimate?
• simplyluke 4mo ago
  The problem is that other countries have seen nearly identical trends in vehicle market share trending towards larger vehicles and have seen sustained declines in pedestrian fatalities. John Burn-Murdoch went deep on this in the FT a couple of years ago (archive link at bottom). > Most of the explanations commonly put forward for why US roads remain so deadly focus on broad structural factors such as vehicle size or time spent on the road, but a review of the evidence suggests this may be mistaken. Last year’s improvement is a case in point. Two reasons often cited as key causes of poor US performance both worsened: the total number of miles driven by Americans increased, and US cars continued to grow larger. Yet fatal collisions still declined. > Adding to the evidence that this is not a dominant factor, car sizes in Canada, Australia and New Zealand have traced similar paths to the US without resulting in a spike in fatalities. > Another theory is that the rise of homelessness in the US may be pushing pedestrian deaths higher. A recent study found that there had indeed been a marked rise in traffic-related deaths among the homeless, but this, too, can only explain a small portion of the overall rise. > Instead, an underrated factor seems to be not American cars but American drivers [...] The determining factor seems to be different attitudes to safety, with Americans twice as likely as Canadians or Europeans to say they find it acceptable to use a phone while driving. https://archive.is/Lggyg#30% https://archive.is/Lggyg#30%
  • wak90 4mo ago
    [dead]
  • 1970-01-01 4mo ago
    I too am unconvinced bigger truck/vehicle means things are getting of control. It's terrible how the NYT article has no facts on overall road deaths, so here I state one for everyone: Occupant deaths have a clear falling trend. So while pedestrian deaths are climbing, the overall deaths are still trending downward, and I shouldn't have to defend that the overall count is more important than the pedestrian subset.
    • MengerSponge 4mo ago
      [flagged]
• deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
• paulsutter 4mo ago
  Human drivers are killing people, not the cars. Weirdly NYC just blocked Waymo again.
  • groundzeros2015 4mo ago
    Isn’t Waymo a guy driving a car remotely (or at least supervising)?
• rpmisms 4mo ago
  Blah. It's a regulation problem. Allow powerful trucks to be small again and they will. Perverse incentives are a bitch.
• whall6 4mo ago
  I believe that as self-driving cars become more ubiquitous, these deaths (and other traffic-related deaths) will decrease. I was driving on a 4 lane road at 5 in the morning and all of a sudden my Tesla model 3 slams on its brakes, missing a deer that jumped across the road by ~2 feet. Its path was completely perpendicular to the road and I couldn't see it until a few seconds after my car started braking. Imagine a future when a much larger proportion of drivers have 360 degree vision with no blind spots, infinitesimally small reaction times and a human failsafe in the driver seat.
• normalaccess 4mo ago
  [dead]
• neves 4mo ago
  They also drink a lot more fuel and contributing for co2 emissions. Thank you Americans for destroying Earth
• whatever1 4mo ago
  Deadly for the rest. Not the owners. We need more trucks. Be the good guy in a truck.
  • baq 4mo ago
    Precisely. Want to cross the street? Get in the truck. Want to walk to that Starbucks next door for a quick espresso? Take the truck. Are you a newborn in a stroller? Your fault for not being in a truck and putting yourself at risk.
    • whatever1 4mo ago
      City planners need to rethink from scratch. Imagine how many parking spaces we would save if everything was drive through for trucks. Restaurants, office work, cinema, hospitals, schools etc And now with self driving, newborns can also have their truck
• piker 4mo ago
  Those A pillars are MASSIVE liabilities in the UK where people just hop right out onto "zebra crossings" expecting the right-of-way to be yielded to them. On a number of occasions I have nearly hit people who I simply could not see crossing in my Volvo XC90 due to these pillars. I've been driving for nearly 30 years in the US and UK and have never felt anything like it. [edit: for future readers, please note that I am not saying it would be legal or correct to hit these people. I am saying precisely that the A pillars on the XC90 are dangerous as they introduce blind spots that I've never experienced before. We test drove the vehicle, and they weren't apparent during that test drive. I am now responsible for them. Down in this thread you will read some responses that seem confused about that point. No, it is not legal to run people over in the road. You will be at fault. No, that doesn't make it smart to jump into the road until it's clear that the traffic has yielded you your lawful right of way. IAAL]
  • bijowo1676 4mo ago
    I like Teslas Forward Collision Warning system which alerts me if it sees the obstacle such as car, a corner, or pedestrian on a path. there is also Active collision avoidance that will adjust vehicle if it senses a car on the nearby lane about to hit my side I think these safety systems need to be mandatory
    • ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
      > I think these safety systems need to be mandatory Why do you think that?
      • iknowstuff 4mo ago
        because there are a lot of externalities resulting from car crashes, the burden for which is not paid by the driver, manufacturer, or even their insurer.
        • ErroneousBosh 4mo ago
          Have you considered looking out of the windscreen once in a while? How many crashes do you think these prevent?
• neves 4mo ago
  What a marvelous piece of visualization. Best in class
• dinkblam 4mo ago
  All of the problems (high hood, bad visibility downwards) are fixed by sports cars and especially mid-engined and rear-engined sports cars. Plus, the brake distance is much lower.
• andrepd 4mo ago
  It's really astonishing how virtually every single quality of life indicator is negatively correlated with number of cars in the road. One of the most effective things you / your city / your nation can do do improve your live in every dimension is to take measures to reduce the number of cars.
• elektronika 4mo ago
  We all know how much local PDs like collecting traffic fines, but I wish they would enforce the laws around yielding to pedestrians with the same enthusiasm as speed limits. I walk a lot and pretty much every day someone blows by in front of me while I'm in the crosswalk or takes a right on red into me because they're not looking. It'd be trivial to set up a sting for this sort of driving, just have one plain clothes officer cross back and forth with another cop parked on a side street ready to flash their lights.
  • kccqzy 4mo ago
    In Sunnyvale the police definitely does this! At one point the sting was a small child crossing the road repeatedly while an officer observed nearby.
• yboris 4mo ago
  Super relevant: Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked? by Douglas Husak One of my favorite philosophy papers. The author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility of SUVs, they are immoral - imposing needless harm on others. It's also ironic that on average, there is no net safety benefit to those who drive them -- because of higher rollover risks! https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447
• rconti 4mo ago
  We've already lost the war on outward visibility. Virtually every bit of our safety regulatory system encourages or demands vehicles that you can't really see out of anymore. Side impact standards and higher door sills all around, curtain airbags, etc. Hell, they encourage (more profitable) SUVs because they don't have to be built to passenger car safety standards. And the market's doing the rest. The only response from the safety industry is more doodads. Auto braking, backup cameras, lane departure warnings, blind spot warning. Cars going too fast in your neighborhood? Build huge speed bumps you need an SUV to navigate to navigate at any speed over 5mph! I don't think there's actually any hope for human-driven cars, long-term. The system doesn't want them.
  • cucumber3732842 4mo ago
    We've lost a more general war against the social acceptability of demanding something must be done while simultaneously being stupid to think a few steps ahead. All these concerns were raised back when vehicles were getting crappy to see out of in the late 00s but "something must be done" and "the statistics say" screeched the exact same demographics if not literal individuals, and so, things were done, and now here we are. And this is just the tip of the goddamn iceberg. Seems like every axis of discourse and policy is afflicted by this. I have no idea how we fix it.
• tinyplanets 4mo ago
  As I'm sure the commentors here from outside of the U.S. can plainly see - it's going to be a long road to get regulations in place to somehow incentivize smaller vehicles (and that's assuming we ever have a functioning government again). For Americans, a lot of our self-image/worth is tied up in the vehicles we drive. I suppose it's a combination of cultural history (hyper-individualism) and decades of marketing and advertising from auto manufacturers.
  • NegativeLatency 4mo ago
    And a lack of other good options, so anything other than a personal vehicle just doesn't compute for lots of people.
• bfrog 4mo ago
  Sitting in a modern pickup is worse than a school bus for visibility. You cannot see in front of the truck at all. Real blue collar work seems to mostly have moved to work vans like the sprinter which have much better visibility, much more friendly height for storing, can still tow, etc. Pickups are 1000% pointless now
• chris_money202 4mo ago
  I drive a 2004 truck, it's not as big as the newer trucks but it's still pretty big. My 2004 truck also has 0 sensors on it and no cameras. If I were driving a newer truck, I believe pedestrians would be safer because of the added safety sensors and cameras.
  • RIMR 4mo ago
    Well, the statistics say otherwise, so I don't get the argument you're making. That you would trust the car's sensors over your own observations and judgments might actually mean you'd be a more dangerous driver in a newer truck.
    • chris_money202 4mo ago
      Don't recall saying I would trust them over my own judgement, they are an additional layer of perception
      • RIMR 4mo ago
        What you did say, anecdotally, is that pedestrians would be safer, in direct response to being presented with empirical evidence that pedestrians are, in fact, not safer... So my point here is that, whatever argument you are making, it is already debunked. You're arguing against statistics with platitudes.
• realo 4mo ago
  No problem with big SUVs ... Just cap their top speed at 40 mph, use thin A pillars to better protect pedestrians and make them ugly as hell. But make damn sure they comfortably transport the family to the soccer game, yes...
• aucisson_masque 4mo ago
  There was an excellent documentary on it in France from cash investigations. Not only it kills more pedestrians, but also when you get an accident with one of the people driving these monstrosity, you get a lot more chance of dying. So if either you want to be safe, you got to buy an even heavier car. This is a race to the bottom. Hopefully with the rise of gas price, people will start to rethink buying SUV.
• washbasin 4mo ago
  Very thankful for Reader Mode. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll. Just no.
• WalterBright 4mo ago
  There needs to be tax incentives to put truck trailers on rail cars.
• tills13 4mo ago
  Beyond just being dangerous, it's also incredibly frustrating to go down to my local grocery store and 50% of the stalls have these massive trucks and SUVs sticking out over the sidewalk / into the through-road / taking up literally the entire width of the stall. It boggles me that people buy these things and then use them for puttering around town 99% of the time.
  • Rover222 4mo ago
    You sound like a good candidate for EU citizenship.
    • tills13 4mo ago
      I'm Canadian so that would be an honour.
      • Rover222 4mo ago
        Wouldn’t mind it myself
• akouri 4mo ago
  I'd like to start or contribute to a philanthropic effort to see the pickup truck and SUV arms race fought somehow. I think the strongest avenue, at least in the USA, would be better litigation and direct criminal responsibility for those that own them and are negligent in their operation (cell-phone use, speeding, illegal lift-kits, etc). Does anybody know of such a nonprofit or organization that is currently making meaningful progress here that I can contribute to?
• deadbabe 4mo ago
  I propose a radical solution where the US government pays people by buying back their big trucks, after which they are scrapped for raw materials.
• suralind 4mo ago
  I was in US three times for work events. Every single time I would try to walk somewhere and would be forced to navigate around pickup trucks stopped in the middle of a freaking crosswalk. Sometimes those cars were so large that I could stand right in front of it and I’m convinced the driver would not be able to see me. It was by far the worst thing about my time in the US. Like you have so much space, why do you need to block the damn crossing?
• Rover222 4mo ago
  The solution is not to ban large vehicles. Self-driving vehicles are what will solve this problem (slowly, as the current fleet of human-driven vehicles phases out). In general, having humans drive vehicles is incredibly dangerous. Small cars too.
• schaefer 4mo ago
  > The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs... safety stilts.
• CapitalistCartr 4mo ago
  For work, I drive an F-350 diesel with a work-bed full of tools and supplies, and a ladder rack. It's a bit nerve-wracking driving through city side streets, especially with pedestrians. It's 22 feet (6.7m) long. Across the tow mirrors is 8.5 feet (2.6m). It probably weighs 4 tons. Yet people happily choose to drive bigger vehicles as commuter cars!
  • antonymoose 4mo ago
    What common commuter vehicle do you imagine here exactly? I’m riding 2.5 Ton full-frame SUV and struggle to see anything much more than a solid 3-ton vehicle.
• brikym 4mo ago
  These are the epitome of individualism. It's a Fuck you I'm safe. They're even designed to look like fists. Here is a quote from General Motors truck designer Karan Moorjani: “I remember wanting it to make it feel very locomotive… my first week in Detroit I was driving through downtown and seeing the fist of Joe Louis, and remember thinking that’s what this truck should look like – a massive fist moving through the air.” ... we spent a lot of time making sure that when you stand in front of this thing it looks like it’s going to come get you. It’s got that pissed-off feel, but not in a boyish way, still looking mature. It just had to have that imposing look,” explained the GM designer." The design of these things is deliberately antisocial. The huge hood is not even needed since it's possible to stand inside the mostly empty engine bays of these things as FortNine showed: https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?t=431 https://youtu.be/YpuX-5E7xoU?t=431 But it's not just the hood heights wrong with modern vehicles. Multiple design trends are hostile to other road users and reduce safety equality if you will. - Headlight hues are white and blinding - Headlight positioning has increased with the hood height which tends to blind people. - The pillars in vehicles are really thick and raked which is safer for the occupants but also means visibility is reduced. Great, so now people in bigger, newer, safer vehicles are more likely to hit pedestrians and people in older, smaller vehicles. - Windows are more tinted and often smaller meaning vehicles are opaque walls now which hinders visibility and communication at intersections.
• Gene5ive 4mo ago
  I've always hated trucks for all of these reasons. Thanks for doing the science to help me explain why, NYT.
• by_the_bay 4mo ago
  https://xkcd.com/3167/ https://xkcd.com/3167/
• apparent 4mo ago
  Weird that this article did not mention the Chicken Tax [1] and the differences in CAFE standards and safety standards applicable to passenger vehicles and light trucks/trucks. Basically, the latter were more profitable for automakers, so they shifted toward selling SUVs that qualified as light trucks. This was a crucial step in the arms race toward larger/higher vehicles. While I don't disagree with what the article says, it is surprising that they have completely missed these aspects of causality, which have been well-known and discussed by policymakers for decades. 1: https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2024/11/25/the-unchecked-rise-of-trucks-and-suvs-in-america/ https://publications.lawschool.cornell.edu/jlpp/2024/11/25/t...
• ishankunam 4mo ago
  i really enjoyed the interactive elements / visualization in this post.
• LandenLove 4mo ago
  Seems like they put a lot of time and effort into this article. It's a shame that I cannot read it because it is covered by, "Sale ends soon. $0.50/week for your first six months year. Subscribe!", on my screen.
• GarnetFloride 4mo ago
  Wasn't there a case of a F-150 running over a Lamborghini in a parking lot a few weeks ago, because the driver of the pickup couldn't see the supercar?
• LandenLove 4mo ago
  I hate everything about modern vehicles. Built cheaply, yet cost a fortune. Are filled with laggy infotainment computers that requires subscriptions and replace reliable and easy to locate climate controls. They are the size of tanks despite having a smaller bed size than a Japanese kei car. The list goes on and on.
• yanhangyhy 4mo ago
  https://carnewschina.com/2026/06/05/chinas-passenger-cars-gained-392-kg-in-12-years-as-the-ev-era-hits-a-heavy-turning-point/ https://carnewschina.com/2026/06/05/chinas-passenger-cars-ga... China’s passenger cars gained 392 kg in 12 years as the EV era hits a heavy turning point, report says
• Dig1t 4mo ago
  A huge number of people in the US use these cars for transporting large items like plywood and drywall (4 feet by 8 feet), a full sized truck or SUV are the best options for this type of work. Additionally, most tradespeople need these types of vehicles for their work, ask any carpenter, plumber, electrician what they drive. A non-trivial portion of the US economy relies on these types of vehicles. Safety can dramatically be improved just by focusing on the design of our infrastructure. For example adding bike lanes to a road can dramatically improve safety for both pedestrians and cyclists. The vast majority of the US road network has no bike lanes. Instead of trying to regulate the types of vehicles people are allowed to own even more, why isn't the focus on improving the design of our infrastructure? The amount of taxes we pay is a staggering sum, there's more than enough room in the government budget to spend on roads.
• linzhangrun 4mo ago
  Look at those BEVs in the Chinese market — they're truly scary, 3-ton heavyweights running all over the streets.
• aristofun 4mo ago
  How easy it is to put all tge dogs on a vehicle, rather than on drivers. If you ban a truck - the asshole driving it will just buy bmw instead. Don’t you see? Why all the good people have to suffer?
• cieslak 4mo ago
  Besides the news being very concerning, this article is beautiful. NYT really delivered on this one.
• meristohm 4mo ago
  One way to reduce the speed of such large vehicles in urban areas is cyclists to conspicuously use the wider lane. I do this regularly with my Class 1 ebike (assists to 20mph), in part because the wider lane is smoother (I often carry a child whose disability means they don't handle bumps well), there's less debris, and especially because I'm so much more visible. Yeah, I get honked at (which means drivers see me!), but the speed limit is an upper limit, not a minimum, and I'm usually going close to that (yeah, I know that doesn't matter when we get splattered by a road-rager in a toy tank, but I will not sit idly by). The normalization of massive climate-controlled lazy-boxes is both bonkers to me as a person who thrives on moving under my own power, and understandable: we like getting something for ~nothing, and it's so easy not to consider the long-term consequences of regularly spending fuel to move a couple tons of metal and plastic to drive two miles to pick up some groceries.
• nacozarina 4mo ago
  Blaming inanimate objects instead of drivers is just gaslighting.