alt Hacker NewsI 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.
Replies
> 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.
A better question is why is the US the only developed country that’s seen pedestrian deaths increase over the past 10-15 years. Every other developed country has seen both occupant and pedestrian deaths decrease over the same time period, and has seen a larger combined drop in deaths than the US. And to be clear, I’m talking about deaths per mile driven, not absolute counts, so the size of the US is already factored into the numbers.
You do need to justify it. There is a great moral hazard prioritizing the driver's safety over pedestrians, since the driver is most in control of the danger. There is very little a pedestrian can do to protect themselves from a driver on their phone who mounts the sidewalk.
March 2024: The effect of front-end vehicle height on pedestrian death risk
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221201222...
It's the hood geometry, stupid. An effective regulator could fix this. As a side-effect, it would make cars look like the new USPS delivery trucks, which would make petrosexuals big mad.
That can be very easily explained as "bigger cars are safer for their occupant and deadlier to the person getting hit by them".
I do think you need to defend your assertion, because the difference between a driver and a pedestrian is that the driver "knew the risks" while the risks were imposed on the pedestrian.