Crash data shows that truck bloat is killing us

A Study of the Effects of the Front Profile on Pedestrian Accidents in High-Rising UAVs: IIHS and NHTSA

The shape of the vehicle’s front matters too, researchers found. The IIHS study shows that a blunt front profile is more likely to cause pedestrian accidents in medium-height cars with a hood height between 30 and 40 inches.

The data comes amid an ongoing pedestrian safety crisis in the US in which fatalities are at a 40-year high and the number of pedestrians killed has increased by 80 percent since hitting a low in 2009.

The front ends of some of the best selling cars in America are as high as 55 inches, making them very dangerous to children and wheelchair users.

The average passenger car in the U.S. has gotten bigger, taller, and heavier over the past three decades according to the IIHS. The organization is a beneficiary of auto insurance companies and associations, trying to find ways to reduce crashes.

“We need automakers to pay attention to these kinds of results and start to think about what they can do with regards to designing their vehicles to protect the vulnerable road users in our system,” Harkey said. “We really need to think holistically about what we need to do to protect everybody on our roadways — not just those in the vehicle, but those outside the vehicle as well.”

It also comes at a time when the auto industry is embracing bigger, more brutish designs for its SUVs and trucks, reasoning that these vehicles are safer for drivers in the event of a crash. And car buyers are increasingly buying into that marketing, snapping up these high-riding vehicles in record numbers.

A new report shows that crashes with high hood heights are more likely to result in deaths than crashes with hoods that are 30 inches or less.

IIHS president David Harkey said in a statement that some of today’s vehicles are intimidating when you pass them in a crosswalk. These results show that more aggressive-looking vehicles can be more harmful.

Recently, NHTSA said it would update its New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), also known as the five-star safety rating, to include advanced driver-assistance system features like automatic emergency braking, blind-spot detection, and lane-keep assistance. But the agency has yet to take into account vehicle design — and especially size — in its assessment, which has advocates fuming.