There’s a truck that’s been parking close to my usual parking space in our city parking garage. When I first saw it sticking out so far into the aisle I actually assumed the driver had pulled only about halfway into the space, but as it turned out the front bumper of the truck was almost up against the wall.
This is an ordinary pickup truck, shiny and new, no cargo being carried, not being used by a work crew or anything like that, but it’s literally 1.5 times the length of most of the cars around it. As I walked by it, I realized the cab is taller than I am, and I’m 1.93m (6’4")! I absolutely don’t understand why someone can own and operate such a vehicle without a commercial license of some sort. Maybe it makes me a “freedom hater” or whatever, but vehicles like that should not be available for use as just passenger vehicles.
Vehicles with higher front ends and blunt profiles are 45% more likely to cause fatalities in crashes with pedestrians than smaller cars and trucks
it’s not that good road design can’t help in some cases; but modern suvs and trucks are a poor fit for the existing roads which were designed with smaller vehicles in mind.
and while we could perhaps look into redesigning the human body to be more “crash compatible” with the latest cars. i think there are easier options
Umm. That’s a yes. In Sweden traffic deaths have more than halved since vision zero was introduced and that the emphasize was changed from saying that the road users are responsible to saying that the designers of the traffic system is just as responsible for traffic deaths.
American road design emphasize speed for cars. If American road and street design were more focused on calming traffic there would be a lot less death. Narrower streets, more roundabouts and better sidewalks. This is not rocket science.
Of course taller cars and trucks are bad for safety. But it is not the reason why american streets and roads are so unsafe. It is not a matter of some cases. Design is the main cause behind accidents.
the point is not that sweden has gotten safer, it’s that the us has gotten more deadly. and one could invent various possible reasons: aging infrastructure, more cars, distracted driving, etc.
but the actual studies all point to the increased size of cars.
controlling the manufacturing is an easy fix - if politically unlikely. while changing all of america’s roads is a hard ( eta: ex. convincing all 50 states ), time consuming, expensive fix that cannot solve the problem in and of itself. ( and honestly, in the us, we’d be better sinking that money into public transportation; not just encouraging more car use )
on the specific matter of speed: the higher your sitting position, the slower driving feels. thus our tall cars also encourage faster speeds. hooray!
Fashion is a weird thing. I was in a garage in Oaxaca 20th years ago and beside a Ford Transit (the classic large commercial van that came to prominence when regulations on truck drivers work schedules came to be. So it was replacing cargoes that didn’t fill a whole lorry) was a vintage saloon with fins. It had a tiny cab barely able to fit four adults. Like it was pokey in there. The boot looked like you could only lay slim suitcases flat in it.
It was five metres long. Just a smidge shorter than the transit which could carry maybe 15 people versus the 4 (with the ones in the back needing to be small) of the ridiculous fashion mobile.
Modern trucks are just as ridiculous and impractical with the added bonus of being people killers by design, for fashion pusposes. The car companies need to be found liable for their choice to kill people in pursuit of profits.
Road design is definitely part of the cause of road deaths in the US and some municipalities have started to adopt changes to help. But the big trucks and SUVs are a huge issue and they are only getting bigger. It’s not just the size, it’s the design of the front end.
But road design isn’t the reason for the increase in fatalities. It isn’t like the road design has moved sharply in the direction of less safe.
I’m glad Sweden managed to implement changes that have reduced deaths. But that is Sweden. A place with better tools for implementing social good and a culture more supportive of that. And then there is the sheer bloody size of the US. The US changing as many miles of roads as Sweden has to the best and highest safety standards would be a minor fraction of US roads. Especially in a country where infrastructure spending has been throttled for decades. We absolutely should try and make those changes. But the possibility of mitigating the rolling death of these giant trucks and SUVs is more immediately possible if the US can find the political will.
Sweden is 450,295 km2 (**173,860 sq miles). The contiguous United States occupies an area of 8,080,464.3 km2 (3,119,884.69 sq miles). That is several orders of magnitude larger.
I’m curious if you live in the US or have visited often. Have you had exposure to the kind of vehicles we’re talking about?
As an owner of one of those “ordinary giant trucks”, I can tell you why we bought it – to drag a camper around. The larger the trailer, the larger the truck needs to be to maintain stability of the trailer in various conditions. The sudden crosswinds as a semi passes or when you emerge from under a bridge are especially dangerous.
We’ve since sold that camper, but keep the truck around for a couple of reasons: we still use it haul stuff “up north” frequently during the summer, we loan it out to family for their big-stuff-hauling needs, and we’d take a big loss on value if we resold it now.
We have an electric Chevy Bolt as our passenger car, and don’t drive the truck unless we have to. Ironically I have to keep the truck plugged into a charger so the battery doesn’t die between uses.
It’s easy to forget how huge Sweden is with its largely unpopulated North. The contiguous US (based on your figures) is only about 16 times larger but has about 30 times as many people.
What I’m trying to say is that “our country is too large” is so often used as an excuse in the US that it overlooks that change can start locally and spread afterwards if it proves effective
And I’m not making that excuse. I’m saying it is a more difficult task in US due to it’s size, the way our governments work, and our cultural failings. Many municipalities are changing roads to safer forms, including city I live in. When the changes have come up, I’ve taken the survey and asked for the safest options.
You’ve never seen most Americans try to navigate a roundabout, I gather? I like them if there are no other cars near, but despite becoming much more common over the last two decades or so, many of our drivers simply do not know how to use one properly and either stop completely when they should continue onward or just barrel right on through without regard for other vehicles.
So it seems like you had/have a purpose in owning one and don’t try to use it as your daily driver. I’m not completely against the existence of cargo vehicles, just would like to see better regulations on them. (e.g., license endorsements similar to those for a motorcycle.)
They’ve started putting more roundabouts where I am, and there is one right down the street from a 4 way stop in an area that is getting increasingly crowded. Despite people sometime getting confused, I prefer the roundabouts to the 4 way stop.
That’s been my experience. I drive on a freeway to get to work and there’s a posted limit of 70mph, but depending on the time of day traffic is going around 80mph.
Oh, me too! On my daily commute I have three 4-way stops and two roundabouts. I much prefer the roundabouts but I also see so many people that just don’t know what to do. (Okay, so I also still see people not knowing what to do at the 4-way stops, but it’s been a while since I’ve seen anyone do the equivalent of running across the island.)
It probably helped that I got used to them when I lived in the UK – these are just reversed.
Yeah, it’s the same in my corner of WI too and all the way down to Indiana as you travel around Chicago, no matter what the speed limit is. Of course if you try to slow down to the speed limit you become an obstruction which is also dangerous. I try to just go with what feels safe, which still ends up being over the posted limit because I don’t want to become a smear on the front of some semi on I-94!
Yeah, that’s true - though I’ve never seen anyone drive across the island! I have seen people start to go the wrong way in the roundabout, but figured it out… and people go when they shouldn’t.
I’d be interested in stats on accident, actually, for roundabouts v. 4 ways.
