I wish car testing was less about the safety of the people inside of the car and more about the safety of the people outside of it, like pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles.
After all, people buying a car already have a strong incentive to purchase something that is safe for themselves, but how many people put any thought into reducing the risk that the force upon others?
For context, pedestrian and cycling deaths have increased for the past decade in North America [0] and it is known that tall blunt hoods increase fatalities [1]. Yet, nothing is being done about it in NA as far as I know.
[0] is kind of a useless article because it doesn't provide a graph and it doesn't provide per-capita statistics.
If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't be surprising that some population-level statistic (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high! And it could still be at an all-time high while reflecting a substantial increase in safety - if the population doubled (increased 100%) but deaths only rose 25%, for instance.
Similarly, I anecdotally observe that cycling is more popular than it was 20 years ago. So it would not be surprising (to me) to observe that cycling deaths are higher as well.
But without quantifying any of these factors, the significance of these statistics is difficult to evaluate.
> If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't be surprising that some population-level statistic (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high!
Indeed, it is per capita deaths that have increased since 2013 or so [0].
Criticizing that the article I posted doesn't contain rates is understandable.
Nevertheless, in the same amount of time that it took them to write a shallow dismissal they could have googled the raw data and shared a link. They didn't provide any sources whatsoever for their own claims.
Jumping down the rabbit hole of "find a statistic X via google" takes a lot of motivation, and that's also a limited resource.
Just because that information was easy to find this time, doesn't mean it is every time. Often when I go looking for statistics on various population level things, I have to do a lot of work to find and massage it into the form I was looking for.
Pedestrian figures are alarming, but I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise. The numbers have increased since 2009. Smart phones and distracted driving are a huge factor here. That combined with NA’s terrible pedestrian infrastructure is a terrible combination.
The fastest way to curtail pedestrian deaths is to build real pedestrian infrastructure and get serious about anti-cell phone technology for the driver’s seat.
Edit: Oh, also several NA cities just stopped enforcing all traffic laws post summer 2020. Can’t ignore that in the post pandemic spike.
> I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise.
Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard to prevent a human from being distracted. It's easy to make smaller cars, we used to have them.
The shape most definitely has a large impact (pun intended). The visibility from recent SUVs and trucks is abysmal without extensive assistance, like sensors and cameras. [0] Sometimes those cameras and sensors are another source of distraction and increase the cognitive load for what used to be "just look ahead", leading to the distracted driving.
> examined that front visibility with a group of elementary school children, ages 6 to 10, and several adults of different heights in the driver’s seat of four tall, square-hooded vehicles: Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra pickup trucks and Cadillac Escalade and Jeep Wagoneer SUVs. With the kids seated in a line stretching forward from the vehicle’s front bumper, it took nine to 11 of them before a 5-foot-2 driver could see a child’s head
I'm sure front visibility plays some role, but just as a counter example, squirrels are much smaller and can dart in front of my vehicle faster than any child, yet I have no problem spotting them while driving a large SUV (Kia Telluride).
Places like school parking lots are probably where front and rear visibility are of upmost importance, and that's where I think all of the sensors and cameras are critical and should be mandatory. For example, while backing up out of a parking space a rear sensor can detect cross traffic (people or cars) way before you can see it regardless of the vehicle size. My old Mazda Miata would probably fair far worse than my Telluride as rear visibility was poor and the car was so small and low to the ground it was hard to see over other cars.
> Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard to prevent a human from being distracted.
To prevent it entirely, perhaps. But there's quite a few things we could do to reduce the incidence of distracted driving:
* More thoroughly educate drivers on just how bad they are at distracted driving. I know that when I ran the red light while talking on the phone, I forswore any future use of the phone while driving, because I clearly couldn't be trusted to drive safely while doing so.
* Rip out the touchscreens of modern cars, and stop providing stuff in ways that requires distracted driving to operate.
* Laws against distracted driving can be more rigorously enforced by the police.
* Penalties could also be harsher. Drunk driving? You can lose your license. Distracted driving? Here's a $500 fine. Very light penalty for the crime that kills more people.
Speaking from a US perspective. I don't believe its hard to prevent a human from being distracted. The problem is these days there is zero enforcement of traffic laws in most parts of the US. Making cars smaller would require new laws that are most certainly impossible to get made at this point. Definitely would be great if cars were smaller but people need to get off their darn phone.
Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best when their proliferation peaked in the mid 00s and have been waning since while small SUVs have become dominant.
Straight ahead drive overs of unseen pedestrians are vanishingly rare compared to people cornering into pedestrians that are hidden behind pillars. From there the lethality of the vehicle takes over.
The largest of SUVs that you complain about are not increasing in frequency. What is happening is that sedans re being traded in for taller SUVs of comparable footprint and that's where the changes in statistics are coming from.
The small SUVs tend to have smaller side blind spots, but for killing pedestrians, the important one is the front blind spot, and that is about hood height, which just keeps going up because it looks "manlier"
Deaths are also about what happens when there is contact: High hoods lead to the unfortunate pedestrian hitting their head against the pavement, followed by the car trying to go over it with all its weight. Do the same with the very heavy, but low Tesla Model 3, and the pedestrian goes over the car, which happens to be much safer. The contact with the sedan is at around knee size, many a modern American truck will hit your ribcage, which is a bit more threatening.
A car can be tall and designed to be relatively safe on impact, but it'd look like a minivan. We all know that those kept losing in the marketplace because they didn't look aggressive enough.
So the switch from sedans to small SUVs was a disaster.
> Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best when they peaked in the 00s and have been waning
I'm not sure what's misleading, it's based on data which contradicts your opinion. Every link I can find on this points in the same direction.
As as summary: cars have increase continuously over the past decades and so have their blind spots, between 2012 and 2021 the total number of large cars has increased by 50% and each segment of large cars has seen 25-100% increase, the design can make even smaller cars more deadly, and the number of pedestrian deaths increased by 80% since 2009. [0][1]
> America's cars and trucks are getting bigger, and so are their front blind zones [0] [look for "Getting Bigger"]
> Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier [1]
> a blunt profile makes medium-height vehicles deadly too [1]
> Pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80 percent since hitting their low in 2009 [1]
> many safety advocates have also drawn a connection to the growing portion of the U.S. vehicle fleet made up of pickups and SUVs [1]
You call it misleading, I call it supported by data.
Pedestrian safety is already accounted for in a cars exterior design (American cars and ‘trucks’ being the exception). Most of pedestrian safety is about pedestrian awareness.
I can only speak for myself but when I’m driving, cycling or walking I’m always on the alert for idiots, there are plenty around. In almost all contexts it is people distracted by music and phones and are not paying attention to their surroundings.
And I think cyclists who don’t already have a driving license should have to do a basic provisional theory test. It’s for their own safety to understand the rules of the road.
The "rules of the road" argument here assumes that giving up huge amounts of public space for car infrastructure is inevitable and right, and that it's the fault of people walking or riding bikes if they get injured or killed since the system is not built for them.
Roads in the US are designed almost entirely around the speed and convenience of cars, and don't account for the externalities they impose on everyone else. As cars get larger and more dangerous, and as drivers get more careless, the cost borne by society is only going up. Asking people walking and riding bikes to be even more extra careful not to get killed is not the right solution. Changing the design of our roads and public spaces to make them safer for everyone is.
Sorry, I’m speaking from a European perspective (UK/London).
When driving I’ve had idiots on e-scooters dressed in black with no lights zooming towards me on a one way street at night, I’ve had people walk out in front of me when distracted by their phones. When cycling I’ve often seen other casual cyclists with headphones on, in their own dreamland, no helmet either, and I’ve seen the same when walking about. People are too careless and distracted thinking others are going to look out for them, everyone needs to pay more attention.
Spending a little time in Japan, it is hard not to see the general difference in size of vehicle compared to what I'm used to seeing in the US. I'm incredibly curious to know if other nations have similarly small cars compared to the states?
I'm also very curious on other impacts the vehicle sizes have on things. Easy to think it contributes to so many cyclist with basically no helmets. Curious if data backs that.
(Brit here) Europe in general has smaller cars than the US – here’s an Economist article [0] that claims ours are 20% smaller. I personally find it interesting that to many Brits, ‘truck’ means something like a semi, not a F-150.
One factor here in the UK is that many of our cities and towns predate cars (sometimes by centuries) and consequently the roads and streets are much smaller. Such that giant cars are a real nuisance for both the driver and everyone else. But there is a definite trend toward larger vehicles, as can be seen by how difficult it is to get them into older parking infrastructure.
It's not just cities and towns, a lot of rural areas (particularly in Scotland) have single track roads with passing spaces i.e. a single lane, not a single lane in both directions.
These comparisons are always interesting because there are malevolent assumptions one can make about US car size, but there are also Occam's razor convenience aspects / differences in demographics.
Compare to Europe and Japan, US has - MUCH lower energy costs, larger family sizes, much further travel distances, and smaller % of population in pre-modern urban areas with pre-automobile sized roads.
Add to that a less top-down centralized government in the US and the resulting lack of mass transit, particularly inter-city, and you end up with more people, driving bigger cars, further.
Yet most of American traffic is single-occupant commuting. There is no reason why they need big-ass SUV or truck for that. Burn the planet while making fun on of Prius drivers.
Unfortunately due to duration / cost of ownership, families over-purchase in terms of vehicle capacity.
Yes, dad maybe does most of his driving to work alone in the car.
But on weekends he needs to be able to lug the kids around in their giant baby seats, strollers, etc.
So most parents I know end up owning 2 vehicles of sufficient size for their overall needs.
I know some families that have an extra car for commuting on top of the 2 family sized cars but this itself is something of a luxury.
(1) A remarkable example of a private agency that has pushed safety standards beyond what the government would do own its own, and
(2) An organization that has persuaded Americans to buy larger vehicles than they would have otherwise with all the associated costs (e.g. the “affordable car” crisis) and risks (to pedestrians.)
The IIHS is an organization of insurers so they are particularly concerned about quantifiable monetary costs. And when it comes to that much more of the benefit of larger vehicles is in avoided minor injuries such as broken bones which are more common than death and life changing injuries. The public focuses on the latter and the psychology is such that some people will spend another $50k on some German vehicle and spend the rest of their days at the dealer getting it fixed or subject their children to the trauma of riding in a minivan. (To generation X the minivan is like the toxic PFAS GenX)
IIHS claims that compatibility has improved between large and small vehicles but that large vehicles are still a menace to other road users
I'm surprised the "Actual vehicle tested may be different" section didn't mention the alleged fraud Ford engaged in with the 2015 F150 where they welded in extra crash safety bars only on specific configurations out of the factory... that just happened to be the exact configurations that were being sent to the IIHS for crash testing.
Did they add extra bars for the purpose of gaming the tests or did they add extra bars and then whoever chose what to send for the tests picked the obvious best choice?
> In a 2024 analysis of fatality rate per mile driven from 2018-2022, the worst car manufacturers were, starting from the worst, were Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai.
I don't think this is a tree Elon wants to be barking at too loudly. But then again, you never know, every time I read the news I can't tell whether I'm reading The Onion or not.
Unfortunately I have a hard time following the data for that quote. I wonder if he simply averaged out numbers but he also does not cite sources and instead he just has a circular link, the html writeup links to mastodon which links to his article. On the model ranking the Honda CRV Hyrbid comes ahead of a model y.
>he worst car manufacturers were, starting from the worst, were Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai.
Look at that list of brands though. You'd have to have to be blinded by motivated reasoning to not think that who buys what might have more than a little bit to do with it.
Edit: Just to be clear, I say this not in defense of any particular brand but in offense of anyone who engages in naive surface level assessment.
Maybe I'm missing something, what's the commonality? I thought Kia had a reputation for cheap compact cars, Dodge for trucks, Hyundai I hear of in the same conversation as Toyota, etc. They seem like they all target different markets?
It's not commonality, it's that even if like for like the vehicles are equivalent or even safer there's selection bias at play as a result of what they sell and who they sell it to. To use a very broad brush:
People who buy Tesla sedans are basically the "german car weaving with no blinker" demographics of yesteryear so if someone's gonna hit a pole at 100 it'll be them.
Buick sells pretty safe stuff to pretty conservative buyers buy they skew toward age where they'd keel over from an open hand slap so surviving more than a fender bender isn't likely and they're exactly the kind of people who are gonna get t-boned at 60 by something they just didn't see.
Dodge basically sells Challengers and Chargers these days (Ram is separate brand for the timeline listed) and the stereotype seems to generally check out.
Hyundai and Kia are kind of the odd ones out but they sell a lot of low end and small stuff which doesn't exactly attract the least risky buyer demographics and the cars aren't exactly loaded with safety themselves.
The comparison really needs to be done on a higher resolution otherwise you get stuff like Volvo and Lexus looking artificially good because of course nobody dies in high end SUVs and sedans driven mostly by people of non-risky age and decent means and Ford and GM look good because they sell god knows how many fleet vehicles that only get driven responsibly on the clock and it's kind of hard to kill yourself in a 3/4 ton pickup anyway.
This is what I was wondering - around me, many of these cars were stolen by kids under 16 with no drivers license. I know of a few cases where they crashed on the highway killing 3+.
Driver demographics play a huge factor (young men are the deadliest drivers). Also, the makeup of your vehicle lineup skews the numbers. Small crossovers are the deadliest vehicles (low mass, prone to rollover). Tesla’s lineup is small (only 5 vehicles) and the Model Y dominates sales numbers. That hurts their overall fatality per mile number.
Looking at real world results is still important. The BMW F10 530i had zero worldwide fatalities over its entire production. Results like that should speak more than contrived sled tests.
I'd be very interested in a "deaths by weight class" comparison too. Size and weight are huge factors in an accident.
I'm not at all surprised if a Kia Rio is a death trap in an accident facing most likely an SUV twice the weight. I am surprised to see Tesla at the top of the fatalities chart though, punching a few weight categories above your average Kia.
> As we've seen over the past few years, loudly proclaiming something, regardless of whether or not it's true, even when there's incontrovertible evidence that it's untrue, seems to not only work, that kind of bombastic rhetoric appears to attract superfans who will aggressively defend the brand.
What does by Dann Luu mean by "loudly proclaiming something, regardless of truth, [seems to work]"? Let's try to make the claim more precise and testable.
Since I'm interested in the broader claim, let me "carve out" (put aside) Dan's specific point about attracting superfans, which I find persuasive. With that said, here are some attempts to reframe the broad claim:
Reframing #1: "Some people are persuaded of false things when a company loudly proclaims them." Yes, this seems obvious. But it isn't particularly useful in guiding action. The claim doesn't say anything quantitative.
Reframing #2: "On net, the accuracy of a population's belief goes down when a company loudly proclaims a false belief." Maybe, maybe not. I would expect it largely depends on what happens next; i.e. whether there is some kind of response. Here are two kinds of reactions that favor not lying. First, getting caught in a lie can damage brand reputation. Second, lying calls more attention to an issue which would have otherwise drifted out of public awareness as the news cycle churns. These depend on how much credibility people assign to the organization and their claims.
Reframing #3: "On net, it is in an organization's self-interest to loudly proclaim a falsehood about its quality." Maybe. It depends on many factors. This is the most interesting public policy question! If such a tactic works (see reframing #2 above), it is clearly a negative externality (a downstream effect than an actor does not feel directly).
How does wise public policy address externalities? One classic way is to internalize the cost -- by making the actor feel the pain themself. In #3 above, one way to internalize the externality would be to impose some penalty or cost for lying. How to do this in a targeted, effective, non-delayed, and legal way is non-obvious to me.
By non-delayed I mean temporally-immediate consequences provide better signal to correct a decision. This isn't just human nature; it is fundamental to the credit-assignment problem in reinforcement learning.
The problem of delayed feedback goes deeper than just credit-assignment; it has to do with fairness too. Often, the decision-maker isn't a monolith: the leadership composition changes over time. It may be impractical to punish one cog in the system without imposing a cost on the rest of the system, many of whom had nothing to do with the decision.
I wish car testing was less about the safety of the people inside of the car and more about the safety of the people outside of it, like pedestrians, cyclists and other vehicles.
After all, people buying a car already have a strong incentive to purchase something that is safe for themselves, but how many people put any thought into reducing the risk that the force upon others?
For context, pedestrian and cycling deaths have increased for the past decade in North America [0] and it is known that tall blunt hoods increase fatalities [1]. Yet, nothing is being done about it in NA as far as I know.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2023/06/26/1184034017/us-pedestrian-deat...
[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU
[0] is kind of a useless article because it doesn't provide a graph and it doesn't provide per-capita statistics.
If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't be surprising that some population-level statistic (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high! And it could still be at an all-time high while reflecting a substantial increase in safety - if the population doubled (increased 100%) but deaths only rose 25%, for instance.
Similarly, I anecdotally observe that cycling is more popular than it was 20 years ago. So it would not be surprising (to me) to observe that cycling deaths are higher as well.
But without quantifying any of these factors, the significance of these statistics is difficult to evaluate.
> If the US population has doubled since 1980, then it wouldn't be surprising that some population-level statistic (total pedestrian deaths) is at an all-time high!
Indeed, it is per capita deaths that have increased since 2013 or so [0].
Why speculate when you can Google?
[0] https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...
Because its not the readers job to support a writers position.
Criticizing that the article I posted doesn't contain rates is understandable.
Nevertheless, in the same amount of time that it took them to write a shallow dismissal they could have googled the raw data and shared a link. They didn't provide any sources whatsoever for their own claims.
What part of their claim specifically requires (or would even benefit from) a source?
As far as I am concerned you are conceding the argument by doubling down here. And in spite of potentially being right.
Jumping down the rabbit hole of "find a statistic X via google" takes a lot of motivation, and that's also a limited resource.
Just because that information was easy to find this time, doesn't mean it is every time. Often when I go looking for statistics on various population level things, I have to do a lot of work to find and massage it into the form I was looking for.
How much of that increase can also be attributed to distracted driving (ie driving under the influence of mobile phones)?
Pedestrian safety is a very big part of European car crash testing - some cars even have front / hood airbags that will deploy for pedestrians.
https://www.euroncap.com/en/car-safety/the-ratings-explained...
NCAP has a dedicated test battery.
Pedestrian figures are alarming, but I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise. The numbers have increased since 2009. Smart phones and distracted driving are a huge factor here. That combined with NA’s terrible pedestrian infrastructure is a terrible combination.
The fastest way to curtail pedestrian deaths is to build real pedestrian infrastructure and get serious about anti-cell phone technology for the driver’s seat.
Edit: Oh, also several NA cities just stopped enforcing all traffic laws post summer 2020. Can’t ignore that in the post pandemic spike.
> get serious about anti-cell phone technology for the driver’s seat.
How does this work?
> I doubt vehicle mass and shape are the largest factor contributing to their rise.
Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard to prevent a human from being distracted. It's easy to make smaller cars, we used to have them.
The shape most definitely has a large impact (pun intended). The visibility from recent SUVs and trucks is abysmal without extensive assistance, like sensors and cameras. [0] Sometimes those cameras and sensors are another source of distraction and increase the cognitive load for what used to be "just look ahead", leading to the distracted driving.
> examined that front visibility with a group of elementary school children, ages 6 to 10, and several adults of different heights in the driver’s seat of four tall, square-hooded vehicles: Ford F-150 and Toyota Tundra pickup trucks and Cadillac Escalade and Jeep Wagoneer SUVs. With the kids seated in a line stretching forward from the vehicle’s front bumper, it took nine to 11 of them before a 5-foot-2 driver could see a child’s head
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...
I'm sure front visibility plays some role, but just as a counter example, squirrels are much smaller and can dart in front of my vehicle faster than any child, yet I have no problem spotting them while driving a large SUV (Kia Telluride).
Places like school parking lots are probably where front and rear visibility are of upmost importance, and that's where I think all of the sensors and cameras are critical and should be mandatory. For example, while backing up out of a parking space a rear sensor can detect cross traffic (people or cars) way before you can see it regardless of the vehicle size. My old Mazda Miata would probably fair far worse than my Telluride as rear visibility was poor and the car was so small and low to the ground it was hard to see over other cars.
> Distracted driving might be the biggest factor but it's hard to prevent a human from being distracted.
To prevent it entirely, perhaps. But there's quite a few things we could do to reduce the incidence of distracted driving:
* More thoroughly educate drivers on just how bad they are at distracted driving. I know that when I ran the red light while talking on the phone, I forswore any future use of the phone while driving, because I clearly couldn't be trusted to drive safely while doing so.
* Rip out the touchscreens of modern cars, and stop providing stuff in ways that requires distracted driving to operate.
* Laws against distracted driving can be more rigorously enforced by the police.
* Penalties could also be harsher. Drunk driving? You can lose your license. Distracted driving? Here's a $500 fine. Very light penalty for the crime that kills more people.
Speaking from a US perspective. I don't believe its hard to prevent a human from being distracted. The problem is these days there is zero enforcement of traffic laws in most parts of the US. Making cars smaller would require new laws that are most certainly impossible to get made at this point. Definitely would be great if cars were smaller but people need to get off their darn phone.
Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best when their proliferation peaked in the mid 00s and have been waning since while small SUVs have become dominant.
Straight ahead drive overs of unseen pedestrians are vanishingly rare compared to people cornering into pedestrians that are hidden behind pillars. From there the lethality of the vehicle takes over.
The largest of SUVs that you complain about are not increasing in frequency. What is happening is that sedans re being traded in for taller SUVs of comparable footprint and that's where the changes in statistics are coming from.
The small SUVs tend to have smaller side blind spots, but for killing pedestrians, the important one is the front blind spot, and that is about hood height, which just keeps going up because it looks "manlier"
Deaths are also about what happens when there is contact: High hoods lead to the unfortunate pedestrian hitting their head against the pavement, followed by the car trying to go over it with all its weight. Do the same with the very heavy, but low Tesla Model 3, and the pedestrian goes over the car, which happens to be much safer. The contact with the sedan is at around knee size, many a modern American truck will hit your ribcage, which is a bit more threatening.
A car can be tall and designed to be relatively safe on impact, but it'd look like a minivan. We all know that those kept losing in the marketplace because they didn't look aggressive enough.
So the switch from sedans to small SUVs was a disaster.
> Citing blind spots fullsize SUVs seems misleading at best when they peaked in the 00s and have been waning
I'm not sure what's misleading, it's based on data which contradicts your opinion. Every link I can find on this points in the same direction.
As as summary: cars have increase continuously over the past decades and so have their blind spots, between 2012 and 2021 the total number of large cars has increased by 50% and each segment of large cars has seen 25-100% increase, the design can make even smaller cars more deadly, and the number of pedestrian deaths increased by 80% since 2009. [0][1]
> America's cars and trucks are getting bigger, and so are their front blind zones [0] [look for "Getting Bigger"]
> Over the past 30 years, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 4 inches wider, 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier [1]
> a blunt profile makes medium-height vehicles deadly too [1]
> Pedestrian crash deaths have risen 80 percent since hitting their low in 2009 [1]
> many safety advocates have also drawn a connection to the growing portion of the U.S. vehicle fleet made up of pickups and SUVs [1]
You call it misleading, I call it supported by data.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar...
[1] https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...
Pedestrian safety is already accounted for in a cars exterior design (American cars and ‘trucks’ being the exception). Most of pedestrian safety is about pedestrian awareness.
I can only speak for myself but when I’m driving, cycling or walking I’m always on the alert for idiots, there are plenty around. In almost all contexts it is people distracted by music and phones and are not paying attention to their surroundings.
And I think cyclists who don’t already have a driving license should have to do a basic provisional theory test. It’s for their own safety to understand the rules of the road.
The "rules of the road" argument here assumes that giving up huge amounts of public space for car infrastructure is inevitable and right, and that it's the fault of people walking or riding bikes if they get injured or killed since the system is not built for them.
Roads in the US are designed almost entirely around the speed and convenience of cars, and don't account for the externalities they impose on everyone else. As cars get larger and more dangerous, and as drivers get more careless, the cost borne by society is only going up. Asking people walking and riding bikes to be even more extra careful not to get killed is not the right solution. Changing the design of our roads and public spaces to make them safer for everyone is.
Sorry, I’m speaking from a European perspective (UK/London).
When driving I’ve had idiots on e-scooters dressed in black with no lights zooming towards me on a one way street at night, I’ve had people walk out in front of me when distracted by their phones. When cycling I’ve often seen other casual cyclists with headphones on, in their own dreamland, no helmet either, and I’ve seen the same when walking about. People are too careless and distracted thinking others are going to look out for them, everyone needs to pay more attention.
Spending a little time in Japan, it is hard not to see the general difference in size of vehicle compared to what I'm used to seeing in the US. I'm incredibly curious to know if other nations have similarly small cars compared to the states?
I'm also very curious on other impacts the vehicle sizes have on things. Easy to think it contributes to so many cyclist with basically no helmets. Curious if data backs that.
(Brit here) Europe in general has smaller cars than the US – here’s an Economist article [0] that claims ours are 20% smaller. I personally find it interesting that to many Brits, ‘truck’ means something like a semi, not a F-150.
One factor here in the UK is that many of our cities and towns predate cars (sometimes by centuries) and consequently the roads and streets are much smaller. Such that giant cars are a real nuisance for both the driver and everyone else. But there is a definite trend toward larger vehicles, as can be seen by how difficult it is to get them into older parking infrastructure.
[0] https://archive.vn/wusnE
It's not just cities and towns, a lot of rural areas (particularly in Scotland) have single track roads with passing spaces i.e. a single lane, not a single lane in both directions.
These comparisons are always interesting because there are malevolent assumptions one can make about US car size, but there are also Occam's razor convenience aspects / differences in demographics.
Compare to Europe and Japan, US has - MUCH lower energy costs, larger family sizes, much further travel distances, and smaller % of population in pre-modern urban areas with pre-automobile sized roads.
Add to that a less top-down centralized government in the US and the resulting lack of mass transit, particularly inter-city, and you end up with more people, driving bigger cars, further.
Yet most of American traffic is single-occupant commuting. There is no reason why they need big-ass SUV or truck for that. Burn the planet while making fun on of Prius drivers.
I drive an EV, I don't make fun of Prius drivers.
Unfortunately due to duration / cost of ownership, families over-purchase in terms of vehicle capacity.
Yes, dad maybe does most of his driving to work alone in the car. But on weekends he needs to be able to lug the kids around in their giant baby seats, strollers, etc.
So most parents I know end up owning 2 vehicles of sufficient size for their overall needs.
I know some families that have an extra car for commuting on top of the 2 family sized cars but this itself is something of a luxury.
>Burn the planet while making fun on of Prius drivers
Not defending status symbol trucks but he rear seats of compact cars aren't known for getting a lot of ass.
Japan has vehicle weight taxes, which directly incentivizes what you observed there.
I can offer two takes on the IIHS:
(1) A remarkable example of a private agency that has pushed safety standards beyond what the government would do own its own, and
(2) An organization that has persuaded Americans to buy larger vehicles than they would have otherwise with all the associated costs (e.g. the “affordable car” crisis) and risks (to pedestrians.)
The IIHS is an organization of insurers so they are particularly concerned about quantifiable monetary costs. And when it comes to that much more of the benefit of larger vehicles is in avoided minor injuries such as broken bones which are more common than death and life changing injuries. The public focuses on the latter and the psychology is such that some people will spend another $50k on some German vehicle and spend the rest of their days at the dealer getting it fixed or subject their children to the trauma of riding in a minivan. (To generation X the minivan is like the toxic PFAS GenX)
IIHS claims that compatibility has improved between large and small vehicles but that large vehicles are still a menace to other road users
https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight
I'm surprised the "Actual vehicle tested may be different" section didn't mention the alleged fraud Ford engaged in with the 2015 F150 where they welded in extra crash safety bars only on specific configurations out of the factory... that just happened to be the exact configurations that were being sent to the IIHS for crash testing.
Did they add extra bars for the purpose of gaming the tests or did they add extra bars and then whoever chose what to send for the tests picked the obvious best choice?
>Checking to see if crash tests are being gamed with hyper-specific optimizations isn't really feasible for someone who isn't a billionaire.
hmm, operation "Trick Elon into Wasting His Money" has published its latest trick!
> In a 2024 analysis of fatality rate per mile driven from 2018-2022, the worst car manufacturers were, starting from the worst, were Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai.
I don't think this is a tree Elon wants to be barking at too loudly. But then again, you never know, every time I read the news I can't tell whether I'm reading The Onion or not.
Unfortunately I have a hard time following the data for that quote. I wonder if he simply averaged out numbers but he also does not cite sources and instead he just has a circular link, the html writeup links to mastodon which links to his article. On the model ranking the Honda CRV Hyrbid comes ahead of a model y.
>he worst car manufacturers were, starting from the worst, were Tesla, Kia, Buick, Dodge, and then Hyundai.
Look at that list of brands though. You'd have to have to be blinded by motivated reasoning to not think that who buys what might have more than a little bit to do with it.
Edit: Just to be clear, I say this not in defense of any particular brand but in offense of anyone who engages in naive surface level assessment.
Maybe I'm missing something, what's the commonality? I thought Kia had a reputation for cheap compact cars, Dodge for trucks, Hyundai I hear of in the same conversation as Toyota, etc. They seem like they all target different markets?
And certainly Tesla's aren't cheap right?
It's not commonality, it's that even if like for like the vehicles are equivalent or even safer there's selection bias at play as a result of what they sell and who they sell it to. To use a very broad brush:
People who buy Tesla sedans are basically the "german car weaving with no blinker" demographics of yesteryear so if someone's gonna hit a pole at 100 it'll be them.
Buick sells pretty safe stuff to pretty conservative buyers buy they skew toward age where they'd keel over from an open hand slap so surviving more than a fender bender isn't likely and they're exactly the kind of people who are gonna get t-boned at 60 by something they just didn't see.
Dodge basically sells Challengers and Chargers these days (Ram is separate brand for the timeline listed) and the stereotype seems to generally check out.
Hyundai and Kia are kind of the odd ones out but they sell a lot of low end and small stuff which doesn't exactly attract the least risky buyer demographics and the cars aren't exactly loaded with safety themselves.
The comparison really needs to be done on a higher resolution otherwise you get stuff like Volvo and Lexus looking artificially good because of course nobody dies in high end SUVs and sedans driven mostly by people of non-risky age and decent means and Ford and GM look good because they sell god knows how many fleet vehicles that only get driven responsibly on the clock and it's kind of hard to kill yourself in a 3/4 ton pickup anyway.
I’m wondering if the “Kia Boys” phenomenon moves the needle of fatality rates.
This is what I was wondering - around me, many of these cars were stolen by kids under 16 with no drivers license. I know of a few cases where they crashed on the highway killing 3+.
Driver demographics play a huge factor (young men are the deadliest drivers). Also, the makeup of your vehicle lineup skews the numbers. Small crossovers are the deadliest vehicles (low mass, prone to rollover). Tesla’s lineup is small (only 5 vehicles) and the Model Y dominates sales numbers. That hurts their overall fatality per mile number.
Looking at real world results is still important. The BMW F10 530i had zero worldwide fatalities over its entire production. Results like that should speak more than contrived sled tests.
I'd be very interested in a "deaths by weight class" comparison too. Size and weight are huge factors in an accident.
I'm not at all surprised if a Kia Rio is a death trap in an accident facing most likely an SUV twice the weight. I am surprised to see Tesla at the top of the fatalities chart though, punching a few weight categories above your average Kia.
From the "Bonus: reputation" section:
> As we've seen over the past few years, loudly proclaiming something, regardless of whether or not it's true, even when there's incontrovertible evidence that it's untrue, seems to not only work, that kind of bombastic rhetoric appears to attract superfans who will aggressively defend the brand.
What does by Dann Luu mean by "loudly proclaiming something, regardless of truth, [seems to work]"? Let's try to make the claim more precise and testable.
Since I'm interested in the broader claim, let me "carve out" (put aside) Dan's specific point about attracting superfans, which I find persuasive. With that said, here are some attempts to reframe the broad claim:
Reframing #1: "Some people are persuaded of false things when a company loudly proclaims them." Yes, this seems obvious. But it isn't particularly useful in guiding action. The claim doesn't say anything quantitative.
Reframing #2: "On net, the accuracy of a population's belief goes down when a company loudly proclaims a false belief." Maybe, maybe not. I would expect it largely depends on what happens next; i.e. whether there is some kind of response. Here are two kinds of reactions that favor not lying. First, getting caught in a lie can damage brand reputation. Second, lying calls more attention to an issue which would have otherwise drifted out of public awareness as the news cycle churns. These depend on how much credibility people assign to the organization and their claims.
Reframing #3: "On net, it is in an organization's self-interest to loudly proclaim a falsehood about its quality." Maybe. It depends on many factors. This is the most interesting public policy question! If such a tactic works (see reframing #2 above), it is clearly a negative externality (a downstream effect than an actor does not feel directly).
How does wise public policy address externalities? One classic way is to internalize the cost -- by making the actor feel the pain themself. In #3 above, one way to internalize the externality would be to impose some penalty or cost for lying. How to do this in a targeted, effective, non-delayed, and legal way is non-obvious to me.
By non-delayed I mean temporally-immediate consequences provide better signal to correct a decision. This isn't just human nature; it is fundamental to the credit-assignment problem in reinforcement learning.
The problem of delayed feedback goes deeper than just credit-assignment; it has to do with fairness too. Often, the decision-maker isn't a monolith: the leadership composition changes over time. It may be impractical to punish one cog in the system without imposing a cost on the rest of the system, many of whom had nothing to do with the decision.