A new NYT analysis found that anyone shorter than 5-foot-6 — about half of American adults — would frequently be knocked to the ground in front of today's average vehicle.
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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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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.
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 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.
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.
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Dumb as fuck EPA emissions standards
…
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.