Former car designer here - big3. The root cause is tax policies. Any vehicle classified as a “truck” is protected from overseas competition by a 25 pc tariff (jfk era), and since Clinton/Bush there is a tax write off available to business owners if the weight was more than 5600# it’s now 6500#.
I.E., there is a tax incentive to make trucks and buy them.
The occupant safety regulations means we make the worlds safest vehicles (for occupants) - roll over regulations have made the an and bill pillars thicker.
If we manage to remove the tariff protection and remove the tax incentives to buy trucks - we will save lives.
Finally some action from the NHTSA on this. As a driver of tiny Japanese shitboxes my entire life the last ten years of new vehicle development has been terrifying to watch from the driver's seat. Not only are these new (last 10 years) trucks and SUVs absurdly large and growing bigger, the sightlines from their driver seats are so bad pedestrians and small cars are largely invisible. Here's to hoping the car bloat arms race gets damped a bit with legislation stemming from the NHTSA's push.
I'm surprised there's no initiative around reducing blinds spots caused by A pillars. I try to be a carefully driver, but I am still caught off guard by pedestrians, cyclists, or entire vehicles hidden behind the a pillar.
There's an interesting whack-a-mole dynamic at play here, since, from what I've read, the proliferation of huge trucks is partly driven by regulations in the first place -- fuel efficiency standards are less stringent for large trucks, the normal existing safety regs (which focus on the people insider the car) are easier to pass in large vehicles, and (tho this probably isn't a huge driver) there are business tax write-offs that only apply to vehicles above a certain weight.
"Never in its 50-plus years in existence has the regulator issued new rules for automakers requiring them to change their vehicle designs to better prevent pedestrian fatalities."
Vehicle designs today, particularly front ends, but also door mirrors and other features, are a direct result of regulatory requirements designed to reduce pedestrian injury and fatality. For coming up on 100 years now, fenders have been required on passenger vehicles, in part because they reduce pedestrian injury and fatality. Perhaps they're claiming that this particular regulator, the NHTSA, is doing this for the first time, but it is very misleading to insinuate that no regulatory requirements have appeared on behalf of pedestrian safety for 50 years.
Regarding "truck bloat": the most outrageous bloat occurring now in production vehicles is electric trucks. The GM Chevrolet Silverado EV GVRW is 10,500 lbs. and has a curb weight of 8532 lbs. That is about 3000 lbs heavier than an ICE equivalent. These things are at the edge of requiring CDLs to drive, and when you get t-boned by something that heavy, even if you're in a large vehicle yourself, you're going to get annihilated.
grahamgooch ·126 days ago
I.E., there is a tax incentive to make trucks and buy them.
The occupant safety regulations means we make the worlds safest vehicles (for occupants) - roll over regulations have made the an and bill pillars thicker.
If we manage to remove the tariff protection and remove the tax incentives to buy trucks - we will save lives.
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chemeril ·126 days ago
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xnx ·126 days ago
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dilap ·126 days ago
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topspin ·126 days ago
Vehicle designs today, particularly front ends, but also door mirrors and other features, are a direct result of regulatory requirements designed to reduce pedestrian injury and fatality. For coming up on 100 years now, fenders have been required on passenger vehicles, in part because they reduce pedestrian injury and fatality. Perhaps they're claiming that this particular regulator, the NHTSA, is doing this for the first time, but it is very misleading to insinuate that no regulatory requirements have appeared on behalf of pedestrian safety for 50 years.
Regarding "truck bloat": the most outrageous bloat occurring now in production vehicles is electric trucks. The GM Chevrolet Silverado EV GVRW is 10,500 lbs. and has a curb weight of 8532 lbs. That is about 3000 lbs heavier than an ICE equivalent. These things are at the edge of requiring CDLs to drive, and when you get t-boned by something that heavy, even if you're in a large vehicle yourself, you're going to get annihilated.