Regulators have proposed tougher vehicle design rules

Predicting Pedestrian Accidents with Head-to-Half Impact Test Dummies: NHTSA and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation

The trade group said safety was a top priority. “Automakers have voluntarily developed and introduced many crash avoidance technologies to help make roads safer for pedestrians and road users. In the early stages of the process we provided input to NHTSA and will review the proposal released today.

The rules announced this week would update the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), the government’s bible for everything that’s required in a new vehicle before it’s sold — from steering wheels to rearview mirrors — to set testing procedures to simulate head-to-hood impact, with the aim of reducing head injuries. If enacted, automakers will have to test their vehicles using crash test dummies representing adult and child pedestrians for the first time. The changes could save up to 67 lives a year.

The new standard is a step in the right direction, but it falls behind what Europe has successfully done according to the president of the Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety. It is essential that proven solutions are used to improve the safety of vulnerable road users.

Lawmakers in Congress have introduced a bill that requires the federal government to set standards for hood height and visibility.

Traffic and pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. climbed sharply for over a decade before leveling off last year. The reasons for that rise are complicated, and likely include road and sidewalk design, an increase in speeding and a corresponding decline in law enforcement, as well as the growing size and weight of vehicles.

David Harkey, the president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, is pleased that NHTSA has taken steps to make vehicle designs less dangerous to pedestrians. This move is in line with recommendations that IIHS has made to NHTSA in the past to ensure that every new vehicle comes with baseline protection for pedestrians in the event of a crash.”

But the auto industry may not be so welcoming. The Alliance for automotive innovation is still analyzing the proposal that NHTSA unveiled Monday.

Increasing use of technology in vehicles, such as cameras and automatic braking, can help reduce pedestrian deaths. The role that vehicle design plays in crash deaths is rarely addressed. That’s because big trucks and SUVs are not only popular but also better moneymakers than smaller vehicles. SUVs have a higher profit margin than smaller cars because of their higher cost and they have a better profit margin than small cars due to their higher price.

“It’s good to see NHTSA acknowledge that a myopic focus on pedestrian detection — which is imperfect — is no substitute for actually regulating car bloat,” said David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative and a Verge contributor.

“The US has never used pedestrian crash test dummies officially,” said Angie Schmitt, author of Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. “I thought they were going to continue to avoid doing that even though Congress had sort of told them to do this — but apparently not.”

The Shape of a Car: A Key to the Mortality Rate in Autonomous Vehicles, as Determined by Its Hood Height and Width

SUVs and trucks, two of the most popular segments in the US, have become larger and heavier than ever before. The proportion of new cars that weigh more than 5,000 pounds in America has increased in the last decade, according to an investigation by The Economist. Many of those vehicles have become even heavier with the shift to electric vehicles. The Ford F-150 is roughly 60 percent heavier than the gas equivalent.

The shape of the vehicle, and especially the hood, play a pivotal role in determining whether someone can survive being hit. Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.