Meanwhile in the UK pedestrian deaths are down despite the number of miles walked increasing.
The UK has among the lowest road deaths in the world.
I’m not quite sure why that is (although anecdotally as a pedestrian, you seem to be treated like royalty in the UK in comparison to other places I’ve been - so much as glance at a zebra crossing and cars come to an immediate stop).
Given how UK drivers often use summer tyres year-round, the weather is dark and cool, and the roads are usually damp, you’d logically expect poor results, but we see the opposite.
Perhaps it’s due to the rather strict yearly MOT safety check? Who knows.
I wonder how much of that increase is from LED headlights, LED street lights, reduction in road safety education campaigns, phone use in cars, glaring LED lit dashboards and other in-car distractions. … Rather than just “cars bad”.
I’m not sure how you got to “cars bad” when it explicitly talks about an increase from 2009, and that it’s the largest increase of vehicle fatalities.
Modern cars have significantly larger blind spots than cars from 2009, which is part of what they’re suggesting is the cause.
I’ve also seen other reports pointing out that the taller hood height is more likely to kill a pedestrian, rather than just injure them, in the case of a collision
my c posts in my 2020 car are so big that i frequently have no idea there’s a pedestrian right in front of me about to enter a crossing. it stresses me out
Gee, there was no way they would have been able to change this…
🤏
A truck drove by me the other day that was so high up and had such a big body there is no way the driver could see anything 10 feet around the truck in all directions.
I want to know how many are related to drivers blinded by LED headlights. I’ve seen (and been a part of) dozens of near hits in the past few years because of this.
edit: Let me just be very clear about this — if you think that the issue is only aftermarket headlights or modified vehicles, you are mistaken. you can look at pretty much any modern Toyota or Subaru or Mazda or pickup with LED headlights and see that the low beams are just as bright as the high beams, just aimed lower. and that aim lower does not matter when the low beams are shining in somebody’s face, which happens often because roads are not level and flat. and you know where this is often the case? intersections. intersections often are raised in the middle, which means the car on the other side is angled slightly upwards, which means their low beam LED headlights are blasting the person on the other side in the face, even with their “but much cutoff is correct excuse”.
the simple inexcusable unavoidable fact is that headlights that blind people like this with this frequency are simply bad design and dangerous, and yes they also make the driver an asshole for having that vehicle and treating other people like this. like how would people feel if I just went around blasting them in the face with a flashlight that bright while walking around. they’d be livid. this is literally not any different, you’re not special just because you bought a 4,000 lb vehicle that has dangerous features.
If you have powered mirrors, reflect the light back into their eyes…works great
Whoever invented LED bulbs for cars needs to be blacklisted from the auto industry
There are plenty of cars with stock LED headlights and proper cutoffs, so they’re less blinding than traditional headlights
It’s aftermarket “illegal” LEDs, LEDs that are misaligned or started at a bad height, and way too many drivers who never turn off their high beams. Yet another safety rule we only pay lip service to, resulting in unnecessary deaths
I swear some people really must not know you can toggle between normal headlights and high beams.
doesn’t matter when lowbeams are just as bright as high beams and aimed at somebody’s face, though
This may be another case of needing technology to rescue people who are just that dumb.
- Auto-high beams have been getting better over the years to the point that humans can no longer claim to be more responsive. They just work. Every time. And never forget
- my car has active matrix headlights and it’s freaky to drive at night with the high beams on and watch a dark spot follow surrounding cars
In ten years we’ll all forget how to toggle off high beams, as it will just work most of the time. But at the same time we’ll be blinded less as the machine never forgets
incorrect. cutoff just means it isn’t blinding on flat level ground. which roads and streets are very much not
I’ll take being briefly blinded as a car hits a pothole over ten terrifying seconds of zero visibility as a monstrous vehicle careens toward me and I have no idea where the street is or what’s in it
Those are aftermarket lights, or people with lifted pickups. Lights are designed to work at a set distance off the road, when people lift the truck, everything is now hi beams.
The problem is not the industry, it’s a lack of safety laws and enforcement. North America does not safety inspect vehicles.
lol it’s not just aftermarket or modified stuff dude, look at any new stock Subaru/Toyota/Mazda. blinding
the regulations on intensity never presumed we’d use such small arrays to produce that intesity. in the cabin, the lights projected onto the road don’t seem that different from 20 years ago. but from the other way it’s dazzling
I think this is the biggest issue here…
Bigger vehicles with high hoods too.
I propose we trick our fellow Americans by making smol cars offroady enough to embarrass an F150:
Look at them! Who would want a rolling brick over that?
And the Ford Focus is already mostly there.
these look dope af
My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do
Concur.
love this
Hood heights. You have pickup trucks that have to have a front camera now.
And mechanics now use stepladders.
FFS guys just buy a strap on dildo, she’ll never know the difference.
Partly the ridiculous sized vehicles. Partly the fact that nearly every single person driving is watching Netflix, while browsing TikTok, while eating a big Mac and running late cause they have no time management skills. And they are driving 20-30 mph over the speed limit, full of road rage, with no concern for anyone or anything. The only person on the road that matters is them.
Not to mention poorly aimed LED lights rivaling the lumen output of the fucking sun.
Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and how the youth drive dangerously because they haven nothing to live for.
Have you…ever been near another person before?
American here living in a car-only area.
I didn’t even raise an eyebrow at that previous comment. Sure most drivers are fine, but there are plenty of people who make me wonder what the hell combination of these issues (and others) is going on with them.
The most common example I get to see is the people speeding through the elementary school parking lot in their luxury SUVs. I especially love it when they start a phone call as they start driving, after they just finished standing around, collecting their kid, and walking back to the parking lot.
They said nearly every single person
I’d say it’s 1%
You mean, I wouldn’t care about them if I saw them up close, too?
Wat??
Well, I mean, I can’t make sense of what you wrote
I can’t help you with that
In Japan, there is tax benefits if your car fits certain dimensions. That’s why there are so many small boxy cars in Japan. I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing anywhere else. It has so many benefits: Fuel economy, parking space, pedestrian safety, …
But no, “I can see better if I sit higher” is still the #1 killer argument for these urban tanks.
Japanese import here. :)
One woman nearly broke into tears when she saw how little I had to spend to fill it with fuel.
By 2030, they will be stand up driving like speedboats.
I think I can see better on my bicycle than in a car, nothing blocking my view and you also sit relatively high compared to cars.
I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing anywhere else.
A lot of it is because companies want to support the macho American image of guns, trucks, and bacon.
They know these insecure losers will spend more money to look tough in front of their idiot peers.
It’s at least partially the American emission standards, which loosen the emissions requirements as the size of the vehicle grows.
I’m not buying that. Sure, what you say is absolutely true but we’re talking pedestrian deaths. That’s more of the fault of the high steel wall at the front, and that is purely a style choice.
I can see better if I sit higher
we have a solution for that, actually
“I can see better” says so much about a person’s psychology.
And their relationship with reality. It always reminds me of that graph that shows a modern tank is less likely to hit a child in the road than a GMC Sierra.
Yeah, for sure. There’s an element of failing to grasp basic concepts of physics here, intertwined with a psychology of not wanting to feel small I suppose.
I tried to explain to my sister that you don’t actually see more of the road when you sit higher up, it’s just that the road takes up a larger portion of your field of view. You actually see less of the road because the part directly around your car (the most important part) is obscured. She thought I was twisting words and got angry. If we lived in the USA her 150 cm ass would be driving an F-150.
If the other vehicles around you are blocking your view, she is technically right, and you are technically wrong.
And so many vehicles now have [what I would assume to be factory standard but still illegally] overtinted windows, you can’t even reliably see through the vehicle in front of you
Americans gladly go into more debt to show off the things they can’t afford
In Finland, car sales tax and yearly tax are based on the Co2 output, and it worked quite well to keep most cars small, light and efficient. Until hybrid and electric cars arrived on the market, that is…
Canada had a carbon tax. Pickup sales soared, people will eat dog food before giving up their $200 fill-up trucks.
There really does seem to be a kind of social cohesiveness in other countries. In America it’s dog eat dog and fuck everyone else as long as I get mine.
My freedoms>your kids life
-Americans
Very much true in my specific limited experience.
I live in a nice little town here in the US, and I’m a well educated middle aged white guy. It’s safe to say that I get to see a pretty nice version of America even as horrible shit is happening all over the place.
I’ve gotten to spend a few weeks in Sweden of all places over the past few years. Plus I got to see the insides of some airports in other places luke Belgium and Germany.
There’s just something different in the air over there, in a good way. I thought of it as a kind of dignity that came from respect for others as well as oneself, but I like how you call it social cohesiveness.
I think some of the details around food and drink showed it best, and they make good examples because they apply to a mix of the general public.
The food itself is obviously much better over there. Even things like the hotel breakfast or the cafeteria at a workplace had a huge variety of fresh, real foods as opposed to ultraprocessed manufactured branded products.
But the dishes and utensils were some of the most interesting to me as an american. In places like an office cafe at work, or a local restaurant, or I think even an airport, they would have actual GLASSES, plates, and silverware. And on top of that, you would often return your dishes to the kitchen or even put them directly on to the dish washer rack waiting for you.
This breaks my american mind. Fragile non-disposable cups in a public place? Other than coffee mugs on people’s desks or restaurant glasses being dropped off and picked up with at your table, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that within these borders. If you could use glasses and silverware in public places here, I can’t decide what would happen first: somebody would get cut on one of the immediately broken glasses, or so much of the stuff would get stolen that they’d close it down.
I like to call out their bathrooms too. The way we do it over here is big men’s and women’s restrooms with next to no privacy (it’s one big room with flimsy floating dividers forming the toilet stalls) and stupid culture wars about who should and should not get their genitals inspected or whatever. Over there it’s just several individual doors, each with a small bathroom. Much better privacy, no fodder for the bigots, and much better utilization of the resources.
I feel like if I were in USA, confronted by that wall of
ultraprocessed manufactured branded products
and I asked for real food; ingredients to cook a meal from,
it’d be like asking for water in Idiocracy.
Yeah there is a real trend in conservative culture (at least where I grew up) that fits right in with the rest of the anti-intellectualism. And it’s not taught explicitly but it permeates social interactions.
I’m trying to decide how to describe it… Basically, you look down on people who are trying to improve themselves.
Dutch road tax is by weight.
its to stroke the egos of soccer moms, and overcompensating men.
Great stuff. Big car go splat.
The real horror is the trend. Between 2009 and 2023, pedestrian deaths rose a staggering 80%, while all other traffic fatalities increased just 13%. In a decade-plus span, pedestrians have been dying at a rate nearly seven times faster than population growth. This isn’t random. It’s the intentional outcome of systems designed to prioritize vehicles over people.
Shameful and pathetic, what a material abandonment of the social contract.
But I need a massive truck to carry groceries and 2 kids.
/s
I need a 14 ft SUV to carry an 8 lb baby.
It’s literally style. Those pickup lifts often ruin durability and off-road capability.
It’s hilariously stupid. First, they lift the trucks to pretend they off road, then they have to put wide wheels and spacers because the idiotwagon is tippy, which sprays water everywhere, then finally the suspension breaks because of geometry.
Two days ago near me. She was 75 and could not see the sidewalk or the building in her Barbie Boomer truck.
feels like the tone of this title is forgetting about the shareholders, which I do not take kindly to
What does it say under Jesus? Christians for what?
Just shareholders
I’ll stick with my boring, boomer sedans. I genuinely don’t enjoy driving SUVs and light trucks–primarily due to the blind spot issue and high hoods that the article describes.
They are impossible to park in a multilevel garage but hilarious to watch Chuck Boomer driving round and round to find a spot. These people are fucking idiots.
I’m driving my little Subaru into the ground before I buy a big ass overpriced piece of shit crossover or pickup truck with pillars thicker than my thighs. I like being able to actually see out of my car.
