The best way to kill a person and get away with it in the US is to hit that person with a SUV when they are walking. A jury of lifted truck owners will return a not-guilty verdict. Even better if the target is on a bicycle, you’ll get a pat on the back by the judge.
Not being able to see someone walking in front of you is a god given right.
This sentence no verb. But yes! More drivers licences to the blind.
75% more than what?
More than in 2009.
So in the course of seventeen years (since 2009), fewer than twice the number of people have been killed than in 2009 alone? That’s either a massive improvement, or something terrible was happening in 2009.
Math is clearly not your strong point. Or logic.
No, the problem is that I can actually read.
“Since 2009” would refer to the span of seventeen years since 2009.
75% more implies an increase of 75% (meaning a total of 175%, equivalent to 1.75×, or just shy of 2×) over some other quantity.
What is that other quantity? Surely not the deaths just in the year 2009. Is it the seventeen years prior to 2009? Something else? The article never appears to actually specify.
Mate, the article links to the study, rather than be pedantic about the title you could read the study and figure out how they did the math yourself.
You don’t think it’s valid to criticize a misleading headline?
Not how you’re doing it.
That’s not how percentages work.
+75% does not equal 175%.
Schools teach percentages at the age of 10… ouch.
Yes, it does. X + (75% × X) = (100% × X) + (75% × X) = (100% + 75%) × X = 175% × X
If you started with $100, and ended up with 75% more, how much money would you have ended up with?
I wanna vomit especially when I see carolina squatted pick up trucks or really any pick up truck that isn’t actually used for their original purpose.
Pavement princess is my favored term for trucks that clearly have had work done but do no work.
I was standing in front of a parked SUV the other day and I swear its grille was chest-high. I’m 5’4", I’d definitely not survive if one hit me.
Some years back, a couple of my friends drove Toyota Rav 4s. They were cute little all-wheel drive cars with three doors. This article tracks how the Rav 4 “evolved” into the ugly, massively bloated vehicle it is today. https://www.carwow.co.uk/toyota/rav4/news/8854/toyota-rav4-generations-evolution
The modern Rav4 has exactly the same length and width as the modern Camry. Cars have gotten bigger, for sure, but by no means is it huge.
And that giant truck has never hauled anything beyond kids to games and groceries.
Oh God the old RAV4s were so terrible. I used to sell cars and we had a RAV4 on our Toyota lot that was used and the thing was so terrible it got returned twice. I own a current RAV4 and it is a wonderful vehicle and it is not huge not massive and not bloated at all.
There’s thousands of Rav4 owners that love their older vehicles to death. The 3 “tire on the back” generations. Your single bad vehicle is anecdotal. Trade in? One of the most resellable vehicles in the market? I bet you the prior owner knew it was bad.
The current Rav4 is bloated. It started as a lifted Corolla with a taller roof and 4WD. Its been bloating rapidly for 10 years and is now closer to the Camry, going so far as to jump platforms. It’s now within 1" of the height and length of a 94 Explorer while being 3" wider. Just because it’s smaller than a current Explorer doesn’t mean it’s not bloated. You have a comfortable commuter car that Toyota reports is an offroad truck.
Well considering my vehicle was the rental for the dealership and so I got an amazing deal on it because I was doing work at the dealership on the computer systems and they gave me a massive discount as an employee. I’m pretty damn happy with it. I also have taken it off-road and it does actually perform pretty well off-road as well. My Tacoma does much better of course because the Tacoma is a purpose-built vehicle. But that doesn’t mean that my RAV4 is anything short of that. Also with it being a commuter car I don’t mind that because the purpose of that is to take the load off of my truck that I use daily for work. There’s no way in hell that I could or whatever own one of the old RAV4s. Just because there are thousands of people that own the RAV4s and like them. Doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands more that absolutely love their current RAV4s. So pretty much your argument is null and void when it comes to that. I personally have driven in and driven those older RAV4s and I think their pieces of shit and I would never personally own one. And yes that’s my antidote to levidence. But I’m also the one that would be looking at them as well. So it doesn’t matter what your opinion is in this case for me. Those older RAV4s also aren’t super great off-roaders as well. They had way underpowered engines they couldn’t really go many places because their tires were too small to make much of a clearance. Those were essentially old Corollas that were lifted as well. If you’ve ever ridden in an older curl as well. So you’re antidote to evidence about the new RAV4 simply being a lifted Corolla doesn’t make much sense either.
I think ur definition of “off roading” and mine differ. Rav 4 cannot off road, hell the taco can barely do mild wheeling outside of a fire road LOL. IFS = I fucking suck at off road XD don’t talk about wheeling when u have 2 open diffs and independent suspension, ur going down a dirt road.
Yeah… idk how old you’re talking but I’ve got a 3rd gen with the v6. It’s pretty much the best car I’ve owned. Ugly, but awesome. Oh and only 1 mpg less than the i4 at the time.
Yeah the one he’s talking about is like the first and second gen typically the first end. 3 doors tiny not much power.
No more inexpensive cars for the masses. No one is building a sub-compact or a sedan anymore. Now I have 300 “options” I don’t even want on a vehicle and no way to get out of paying for them. Driving is becoming more of an upper-class activity nowadays and we all know how size matters to that crowd.
The EPA did this. It created a whole generation of customers wanting large vehicles because of their dumb emissions standards they wrote. Glad they are gone so we can make small cars again.
Edit: boy lemmings be lemming.
I’m not sure why ur getting downvoted, I think most lemmings must be very uneducated on the auto industry. There are regulations that define fuel economy required for wheel base x track width. Basically, the smaller the footprint of the car the larger the mpg target so manufacturers skirt around that by making the vehicles larger. The regulations literally encourage vehicles to be larger, because adding wheel base is cheaper and easier than improving the economy of the existing engine their using in 12 other model cars. If ur interested in this sort of weird regulation stuff check out how the pt cruiser qualifies as a TRUCK. There is a reason new 3 series are bigger than old, and why shit like the smart car isn’t sold in the US anymore, given it’s wheelbase it cannot get good enough economy to meet our regulations.
Thanks. This is exactly what happened. And when vehicles started becoming larger, consumers wanted to feel safe so it become an arms race of size. Now we have a whole generation of drivers that demand large vehicles.
Being this wrong takes effort.
They are wrong but there is a grain of truth to this. NTSA regulations about fuel efficiency and emissions are part of the reason that car manufacturers made vehicles bigger and more expensive. It is significantly harder to meet emissions standards and fuel efficiency standards in the US in a sedan or small compact car and on top of that car manufacturers know that people aren’t generally buying compact cars for $80-150K so it’s a win win for them. It’s greed, and them gaming the system in order to use the fact that larger vehicles aren’t beholden to the same emissions standards or fuel efficiency standards. So car companies convinced consumers they don’t want small cars, that instead they want SUVs and trucks and perhaps crossovers. And they lobbied to game the system and to continue pocketing money doing it.
https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-loophole-that-made-cars-in-america
The problem are not the emission standards, the problem is that authorities allowed the huge loophole which allowed to ignore them but only if the vehicle is extra large, wasteful and dangerous.
This is just another way of saying the policy lead to bigger vehicles.
No That is like saying that outlawing a cancerous die in fruit juice but not in lemonade lead to unhealthier diet because lemonades were exempted and remained exempted even when it became obvious that there was a huge loophole.
You say, the problem was that they outlawed that cancerous substance in fruit juice, rather than that the problem was that authorities failed to include lemonades in that ban and insisted on not expanding it either. That is not the same because your position implies one should not ban that cancerous substance because that only pushes lemonade sales.
The problem is not too much regulation it is deleberitely or by incompetence, too little regulation (vast exemptions)
No regulation is a problem, and incorrect regulation is also a problem. Both led to terrible outcomes.
What are you talking about? Why would companies be more fuel efficient if not forced to? That’s why the regulations existed in the first place because companies weren’t doing the right thing unless forced to by law
And the law made the cars bigger
It created a whole generation of customers wanting large vehicles because of their dumb emissions standards they wrote.
Wut.
Fat people want big trucks.
It wasn’t emission standards it was the way they were enforced that was wrong. Smog filled cities were real things.
It was basing standards on vehicle footprints. Starting in 2012, a Toyota Corolla had less-strict emissions and fuel economy standards than a compact truck, so they stopped making the compact trucks after 2011.
They brought back the Ranger, but it’s larger than some of the older F150s.
And as standards got tighter, it impacted more an more vehicles. All the compact cargo vans (Transit Connect, ProMaster City, and NV200) were discontinued in 2022 because they no longer meet standards at that size.
No, it was the standard that made large vehicles. Not enforcement. And yes smog is a real thing.
Who upvotes this shit
People who work in environmental compliance. I worked for carb for 10 yrs
Just goes to show you can do something without learning.
“Mackerel are fish and thus all fish are mackerel.” -krisevol probably
No, that’s a logical fallacy, and you are using another one called a strawman. It’s common knowledge in the industry the epa created large vehicles. It’s not even disputed except here on lemmy for some reason
I’m sorry I wasn’t even aware that the EPA made vehicles. That’s disappointing to hear that they were single-handedly responsible for making all these large fuel inefficient vehicles.
Or maybe…. There was a rule made to prevent a problem that the infallible Free Market couldn’t solve. Then the mfgs found a loophole to exploit.
Nah, it’s probably the first one.
Your are the only one that thinks the epa didn’t cause large vehicles. Just Google “suv loophole” and get some free knowledge.
The policy had good intentions, but failed miserably. But keep defending a policy even the policy makers admit was a mistake.
What about large who worked for proteins?
Usually large works for carb.
car companies advertising like 3-4 decades to the masses about the big and powerful trucks and SUVs is what caused these customers to want large vehicles not some fucking government agency
That’s not what the CEO of gm and ford said when the epa started these rules
I shall disregard your opinion as rage bait
Just Google suv loophole. Knowledge is still free.
I wonder what the front collision/auto braking feature will do to this trend. Hopefully it’ll erase it. Isnt it mandatory on US cars made after X date now?
This is probably caused by a combination of big vehicles and distracted driving (including smartphones and infotainment).
I wonder what the front collision/auto braking feature will do to this trend.
not much, many pedestrians get side swiped and dragged under to their death by the Tonka wheels and lifted suspension.
plus, these are 100% legal.
And you’re basing “not much” on data and not Feels/anecdotal evidence?
This whole thread is based on feels since the data actually blames phone use not hood height.
They are very rarely getting side swipped and dragged to death like this. And those lug covers aren’t causing issues.
Low hood regular cars make peopke fall unto the hood. Tall, vertixsl SUV hoods rather lead to people being pushed under the car in case if a front collision. The latter is much more deadly.
Metal spikes or other stuff extending sideways outwards is obviously a danger towards others and wildly illegal in civilised countries for a reason.
Its ok though, we had to get rid of popup headlights because “oh no pedestrian safety”. But classify fucking everything as a light truck and you can do whatever the fuck you want.
including this…
Instead of headlights 2 feet off the ground, now we have overpowered searchlights (brighter = safer, amirite?) mounted 4 feet high, guaranteed to blind pedestrians and any shorter vehicle’s driver.
That, and the tiny distracted driver machines in our pockets and dashboards
Frontovers is the highest growing category of accident. They’re happening because people can’t see small children over the hood of their emotional support freedom truck, orphan crushing model.
Yes, cell phones but mostly lack of visibility.
“I’m less distracted with my Apple watch”
Says the ex who puts her full attention to it to write out a text response while slowly drifting into the next lane
Pulled into a parking lot the other day and one of those beasts had a camera in the grill. Didnt look after market so I looked it up and up they’re OEM. Maybe your damn truck is too big?
I’ve got a camera in the grill, one on each mirror, and one on the back, and they mesh together to create a top-down view of the car when I’m parking.
My crossover is a “mid-size” and pretty reasonable in dimensions compared to other vehicles on the road, and all those cameras are absolutely fucking necessary to park it.
*In the US.
It’s just such a fucking constant thing everywhere online, anything about America is just written like it’s a worldwide thing because most Americans need to be told that the rest of the world exists for their broken brains to remember that.
It’s so fucking tiring just seeing the never ending “here’s a thing” that’s very specifically about the US but posted everywhere and never titled or talked about like it’s a US specific thing.
It’s not just titles either, it’s the articles those posts link to, the videos, the everything all the way that not a single person thought “oh, this is US specific and should probably be shared as such”.Sadly this is spreading everywhere. It’s a race to the bottom because no one’s adult enough to step in.
I don’t get it who needs this car. I drove suzuki swift for 3 years and it was plenty of space gor 2 people and I’m 1.9m tall even. I don’t even understand how people enjoy these giant cars - it’s so uncomfortable, you can’t even u-turn. And parking?
You don’t even get the niceness of high seat because hoods are so giant. You take a van or something and at least you sit high with good visibility but thats not what people buy.
Truly weird.
people buy what they want to buy. auto-makers respond to demand. the sales numbers over the last few decade show people overwhelmingly prefer SUVs and trucks to traditional passenger sedans or vans.
folks have decided they prefer larger and more expensive vehicles, and systematically do not purchase smaller or cheaper vehicles.
I’m the only person I know who owns a small sedan. everyone else has mid-large SUVs and trucks. they endlessly complain the cars are too large, and too expensive to drive… but to refuse to purchase anything smaller or cheaper. if you point out you can get a loaded civic for 30K that does 40mpg+, and costs $30-40 to fill up, or similar, they basically start telling you how ‘tiny’ those cars are and they couldn’t possible ever drive one because it’s ‘not safe’ and ‘doesn’t have enough space’. when they buy a new car, they buy a 50K+ SUV or truck that gets 25mpg or less, and often complain they wish they’d been able to purchase a larger vehicle but it cost too much.
nobody is forcing anyone to purchase these cars. they choose to do it. lots of wonderful are still on the market, but folks do not want to buy them, large sedans have basically disappeared apart from luxury brands.
the RAV4 sells double the units of the corolla now. the last time they sold equal units was 2015, a decade ago. in 2005, the corolla had 4x the sales of the RAV5. in another decade, Toyota likely won’t even make the Corolla anymore because the sales numbers are falling year over year to the point in 2035 the rav4 will sell 4x the Corolla.
personally I don’t see any value to buying buying a large suv/truck, but most folks do.
People don’t buy what they want to buy, they buy what the constant barrage of advertising tells them to buy. Starting with those most susceptible, then peer pressure gets added to the adverts, add in government lobbying and a list of other underhanded tricks, and bosh, job done.
E-cigs, wank tanks, social media, “designer products”, the list goes on.
They can’t force people to buy SUVs, but when it’s much more profitable for car companies from the USA to make SUVs, thanks to that EPA loophole, then they are going to do everything to make sure everyone “wants” SUVs.
nobody is forcing anyone to purchase these cars. they choose to do it.
Decades of
propagandaadvertisements telling people they need to buy an SUV, plus the (real or not) perceived danger of having a smaller car… that might not technically count as “manufactured consent”, but imho it’s not too far off.
I keep saying it, you don’t need trucks. Maybe 1 out of a thousand. No, that isn’t you.
The problem is, most people can only afford one vehicle (per adult, sometimes household) as such, they shop for something that will meet their edge cases and not their “90% of the times” cars. Annoyingly is also why you see hesitation for EVs.
Rather than saying “I can just rent a truck for the 1 day a year I need haul something” (and most likely would be cheaper), they think “well what if I need to haul something? Then what?”
Not saying that’s right, but edge cases are usually what drives their decisions.
BUT I HAVE TA TOW MAH BOAT.
it isn’t about need. it’s about want.
no doubt you own many things other people don’t think you need, but you think you do.
Ban individual owned large vehicles. Force them to be licensed under a business, or force a rental agreement with extra tax and duration limits.
Tell that to every dipshit in the US South…light kit, brush guard, spray in liner, knotted tires, extra fancy box in the back, and a pristine winch. The dirtiest it’s ever gotten is when it rains
They’re easy enough to rent if you need one.
1 out of a 1000? Don’t be silly, way more people than that have inferiority complex.
Hence the word ‘need’ probably
And out of the people who do need them, vans are still a much better way to go for many of them. Vans which have at least a margainally better field of view with their short, sloped hoods.
I know someone who insists that a pickup truck is more practical and her example is “you can lift a bookshelf over the side of a pickup truck instead of having to put it in the back like a van”. Apparently it’s more practical to lift something like 4 feet off the ground to the side of a pickup truck bed instead of like 1 foot to the floor of a van
I have a large family and we drive a Transit 350 van.
One day we needed to move a pair of beds and mattresses. We asked my father in law to help us since he has a F150. But it soon became apparent how much more we could fit in the van (with the two back seats removed) than we could fit in the truck, which couldn’t even fit one mattress in the truckbed without hanging out the back of the tailgate.
From what I’ve seen my van is far superior to a truck in almost every need I’ve had. It can carry more stuff and it can do so in the rain keeping the cargo dry.
The one thing a truck could do that my van can’t is pick up a scoop of mulch or gravel dumped from a loader.
bro pulling up with the sprinter, how many bitches you fit in there?
Vans are work trucks. Pickups are poser trucks.
And it’s not just the field of view, it’s how the impact occurs. On a lower, sloped hood you bounce over the bonnet instead of a head-on bang with a higher, vertical, one.
Or COE light trucks … I had a ride a while back in a Thaco Frontier -carries 1/2 ton, available in a crewcab, available in an off-road variant, and no visibility problems :-)
And those who actually need them would be far better served by a VW Transporter with an aluminium bed.
This is true, but there’s also a real lack of small pickups on the market. The fuckers just seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I used to have a Proton Jumbuck and it was really useful. Used it a lot for hauling wood and soil, it was small enough to get around and park easily in the city. I got rid of it eventually because it was so hard to find parts, shame, it was a handy little machine.
this is now typical…
It’s super frustrating because if you talk to anyone in a blue collar or rural area they all tell you they wish they still made small trucks. The manufacturers keep upping the size and cost adding shit nobody even asked for.
the Ford Maverick has been on the market for 5 years now.
The F150 sold 150K units, the F-series sold 830K units, last year.
Folks overwhelmingly choose larger cars even when smaller options are available.
A front wheel drive unibody “truck” is a slap in the face to the small trucks of old. A dent in the bed and you either total it or replace a rear tire ever 6 months do to unfixable alignment issues.
right, so you buy a f150 instead and bitch there are no small trucks.
lose lose
you can go buy a used small body on frame truck. just expect to pay 30-40K for one, because they are highly desirable.
Whether rightly or wrongly, without a body on frame construction they were never really trying to sell that to traditional truck consumers.
The increased size is to flout emissions regulations. Costs (aside from greed) is due to increased requirements from the NHTSA.
I saw a chart that showed a much stronger correlation with smart phones
Why not both?
If phones are causing more collisions… then bigger vehicles have more kinetic energy, hence more deaths…
The kinetic energy difference between a 180 pound person and a 3,000 pound vehicle or a 6,000 pound vehicle is completely irrelevant. The height of impact from a truck or suv is what makes it worse.
Either way, it’s surely more like 90% cell phones distracting drivers than it is vehicle type.
A 3,000 punt vehicle will have a lot less braking distance than a 6,000 pound one.
A big vehicle like that has a lot more horizontal blind spot, it’s been a major thing with drivers of those monstrosities literally not seeing kids, people in wheelchairs etc.
Most people are out of their depths with such big vehicles in many ways, they should require a specific license because it’s such a different thing compared to a normal sized car in so many ways.
It’s a real bad combination of way to big cars with all the negatives + phone and in car touch screen use. It’s absolutely not 90% either of them, it’s a combination.
This is also mostly American, no other country has cars like that in those numbers (per capita), and Americans also have a higher phone usage while driving percentage than most of the world.
I’ve been an EMT and firefighter for nearly 20 years, buddy. I’m on scene at these vehicle crashes. The drivers are usually so shaken by what’s happened that they usually just straight up tell the truth if it to me. It’s cell phones. It’s almost always cell phones. "Texting spouse. Reading a text. Dropped my phone and was reaching for it. Changing songs on my phone. Just looked down at my phone for a moment. ".
I’m literally there and have seen the change for 20 years. Personally watched it. It’s cell phones. Not your little opinion based on nothing but your flawed thoughts.
It’s also almost never braking distance. All the bad wrecks and fatalities tend to never have much distance at all showing they applied brakes before contact. Bigger issue with suvs and trucks (aside from higher impact point I mentioned to begin with) in crashes is that they aren’t as stable. Easier to roll over or lose control of them after jerking the steering wheel.
Thats not how kinetic energy works, no pedestrian is heavy enough to stop any car, small or large.
Thats not how kinetic energy works
Force= Mass X Acceleration, so any any given speed, more mass nets more force. More force = more trauma.
A higher kinetic energy means the vehicle takes longer to stop from the same speed (that’s true even with better brakes and better tires, because if you try to reduce the energy faster than a certain rate the vehicle just starts skidding) which in turn means collisions with pedestrians happen at a higher speed, which is more deadly.
I couldn’t find a page of info for specifically light trucks, but here’s one for trucks.
This is not to deny the effect of higher fronts and hence lower driver visibility, just to point out that kinetic energy too matters.
Bigger in the context of vehicles means not only heavier, but also a higher point of impact. It could be the difference between getting hit in the legs vs the torso. Or the difference between rolling onto the hood vs knocked down and run over.
I agree, large cars are generally much more lethal to pedestrians, due to their shape, not kinetic energy.
Kinetic energy is related to mass and the square of velocity
A heavier vehicle absolutely has more killing power against a pedestrian…
You’re right. The mass of the pedestrian makes no difference… any vehicle is going to turn them into a red mist
You have it backwards. Larger vehicles of course have more energy, but pedestrians are too light for that to make a difference.
If you get hit by an oil tanker ship going ~1 kmh, that ship has orders of magnitude more kinetic energy than a car at highway speed, yet, unless theres a wall or something, the ship will merely push you harmlessly aside.
Its about the manner of delivery, not the vehicles energy.
Larger cars are more dangerous because they hit you higher up, where you have more vital organs.
The danger from higher kinetic energy comes from the longer break distance and time to stop: given the same driver reaction time and distance to the pedestrian, a heavier vehicle will take longer to break to a stop and thus have a higher velocity when it collides with that pedestrian than a lighter vehicle.
This is not to deny the difference that a higher front makes, just pointing out that kinetic energy does in fact make a difference, though of course as you point out not because of any “higher energy transmission on collision” or such, but rather indirectly because the vehicle is more likely to collide at a higher speed because it takes longer to break.
I couldn’t find info on this for explicitly for light trucks, but here’s some for trucks.
The instant messengers on the smart phones might have played a critical role. Whatsapp started in 2009.
Texting and driving is a thing, so there’s a way to derive causation and not only correlation from that.
…it triggers a certain kind of rage/hate in me when I spot people texting and driving, which I usually do several times each day.I don’t think that we see the same increase in pedestrian fatalities in other countries though, which do have smart phones but do not have massive personal trucks.
In Europe:
In the US:
Not exactly the same years, of course, and comparing data sets is tricky.
The minima at 2009-2010 is absurdly clear though. You undid 20 years of progress in about 10 years. I’m honestly shocked - what happened in 2009 to cause this? I would think increasing truck sizes would cause a much more shallow minima, since truck sizes don’t suddenly increase from one year to the next.
The minima at 2009-2010 is absurdly clear though. You undid 20 years of progress in about 10 years. I’m honestly shocked - what happened in 2009 to cause this?
Dumb as fuck EPA emissions standards
But the US Department of Transportation was concerned that smaller vehicles are less safe in the event of an accident, and this department oversees Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. Hence, the agency discouraged manufacturers from reducing vehicle size to meet the standards by ensuring that the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards require higher fuel economy for smaller vehicles than for larger vehicles.
…
Since the adoption of size-based standards in 2012, new vehicles have been getting larger, and sales have shifted from cars to light trucks. Between 2011 and 2022, the average vehicle footprint (roughly, the area defined by the four wheels) increased by about 4 percent, and the share of cars in total sales dropped from about 65 percent to 40 percent. In the GHG standards that EPA proposed in April this year, the agency notes that the increasing size and shift from cars to trucks has increased average emissions rates by about 10 percent.
That’s not the EPA’s fault, that’s the fault of government that allows the loophole because trucks are high profit vehicles for Ford, GM and Stellantis.
The rise of smartphones with instant messengers might have contributed to that.
Texting and driving is a thing…
…which triggers a certain kind of rage/hate in me when I spot people doing that, which I usually do several times each day.That also happens in Europe and yet you don’t see a similar increase in pedestrian deaths.
What did not happen in Europe but did in the US during that time frame was the invasion of roads by personal tanks.
So many other variables though. European cities are designed so much better for pedestrians and cyclists. I’d argue that the driving standards are also higher in a lot of areas. Speeds often slower too since infrastructure is designed for mixed use. In North America the actual design of most roads is almost hostile to pedestrians. It’s clearly a mix a factors.
Such differences remained steady during that time frame, so whilst they explain the actual baseline levels, they don’t explain the change in trend that happened in the US but not in Europe.
(What you suggest would only make sense if in 2009 the road infrastructure design, driving standards and average speeds became much worse in the US and kept getting worse, something not really supported by observation of those things)
The most logical conclusion is that something changed in one place that did not change in the other.
The biggest change that happened in the US but not in Europe in that time frame was the in the US the prevalence and size of light trucks increased massivelly but not at all in Europe. Further, as we see in this study such vehicles are far more dangerous to pedestrians, so this specific change that happens in one geographical zone but not the other does seem to be the most likely explanation. Certainly this is a lot more logical than an increase in mobile phone use whilst driving (as that also happened in Europe) or the better road conditions in Europe vs the US (as that didn’t change even though the rate of pedestrian deaths in the US reversed its trend and started climbing up whilst in Europe it remained on a trend of slowing falling down)
deleted by creator
You may be right, but as with the trucks, I would expect a much less sharp minima: Smartphone and instant messaging adoption didn’t happen all at once, but from this graph we see that we’re going from a substantial year-on-year decrease directly to a large year-on-year increase. A change that is gradually adopted over the course of several years can’t really cause that kind of effect.
…yeah because they are fascist chariots
“i wonder why the fascists drive dangerous chariots”
it is because they are fascists
I don’t like these giant cars either. But if we use “fascist“ for everything that is harmful the word end up losing its meaning and power because fascism and giant cars are not in the same ball park of harm.
what a Fascist would say!
okay but they are literally built by literally fascist companies and sold under fascist loans to asshole americans who fund fascist wars around the world
i’m not misusing the word
They’re a “me, me, me”, “don’t give a shit about endangering the lives of anybody else”, anti-social choice of vehicle.
Those are core character traits of people who are Fascists, though, granted not all people with those character traits are Fascists.
Personally I do believe that the spread if that mindset and the increasing immunity from consequences for being like that towards others is one of the things backing the rise of Fascism.
That said, I do agree with you that “Everything that’s bad is Fascism” just devalues the word and reduces its impact.
To be fair, the percentage of fascists among giant truck owners is probably far greater than it is for the rest of car owners.
