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Meanwhile in the UK pedestrian deaths are down despite the number of miles walked increasing.
The UK has among the lowest road deaths in the world.
I’m not quite sure why that is (although anecdotally as a pedestrian, you seem to be treated like royalty in the UK in comparison to other places I’ve been - so much as glance at a zebra crossing and cars come to an immediate stop).
Given how UK drivers often use summer tyres year-round, the weather is dark and cool, and the roads are usually damp, you’d logically expect poor results, but we see the opposite.
Perhaps it’s due to the rather strict yearly MOT safety check? Who knows.
Are you sure they aren’t selling you all seasons and calling them summer tires?
I don’t live there by my impression was that while people walk a lot it’s more within small dense areas and between those areas everyone buses etc, so maybe people and cars are better segregated?
The more people walking, the fewer people driving. Makes enough sense to me.
I wonder how much of that increase is from LED headlights, LED street lights, reduction in road safety education campaigns, phone use in cars, glaring LED lit dashboards and other in-car distractions. … Rather than just “cars bad”.
I’m not sure how you got to “cars bad” when it explicitly talks about an increase from 2009, and that it’s the largest increase of vehicle fatalities.
Modern cars have significantly larger blind spots than cars from 2009, which is part of what they’re suggesting is the cause.
I’ve also seen other reports pointing out that the taller hood height is more likely to kill a pedestrian, rather than just injure them, in the case of a collision
my c posts in my 2020 car are so big that i frequently have no idea there’s a pedestrian right in front of me about to enter a crossing. it stresses me out
A big part is due to the higher trucks making it not only harder to see in front if someone is crossing near you but also if you hit something it is more likely to go under the truck. The bar to get a license in the US is also ridiculously low compared to Europe.
Keep selling these massive juggernaut trucks. There is no reason for them beyond emotional driven buying and profits. Then there is the matter of low license barriers, poor vehicle maintenance, and a lack of regular driving fitness testing. The US is also pedestrian unfriendly. I have to drive almost everywhere since there is very little within walking distance to my home. If I do try to walk there are stretches with no sidewalks and very sketchy intersections I have to cross.
feels like the tone of this title is forgetting about the shareholders, which I do not take kindly to
What does it say under Jesus? Christians for what?
Just shareholders
In Japan, there is tax benefits if your car fits certain dimensions. That’s why there are so many small boxy cars in Japan. I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing anywhere else. It has so many benefits: Fuel economy, parking space, pedestrian safety, …
But no, “I can see better if I sit higher” is still the #1 killer argument for these urban tanks.
Japanese import here. :)
One woman nearly broke into tears when she saw how little I had to spend to fill it with fuel.
I think I can see better on my bicycle than in a car, nothing blocking my view and you also sit relatively high compared to cars.
I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing anywhere else.
A lot of it is because companies want to support the macho American image of guns, trucks, and bacon.
They know these insecure losers will spend more money to look tough in front of their idiot peers.
By 2030, they will be stand up driving like speedboats.
Americans gladly go into more debt to show off the things they can’t afford
In Finland, car sales tax and yearly tax are based on the Co2 output, and it worked quite well to keep most cars small, light and efficient. Until hybrid and electric cars arrived on the market, that is…
Canada had a carbon tax. Pickup sales soared, people will eat dog food before giving up their $200 fill-up trucks.
Do you mean the “fuel charge” tax on gas, at 17.6 CAD cents (0.11€) per litre?
Because that’s a rather adorable try.
There really does seem to be a kind of social cohesiveness in other countries. In America it’s dog eat dog and fuck everyone else as long as I get mine.
My freedoms>your kids life
-Americans
Very much true in my specific limited experience.
I live in a nice little town here in the US, and I’m a well educated middle aged white guy. It’s safe to say that I get to see a pretty nice version of America even as horrible shit is happening all over the place.
I’ve gotten to spend a few weeks in Sweden of all places over the past few years. Plus I got to see the insides of some airports in other places luke Belgium and Germany.
There’s just something different in the air over there, in a good way. I thought of it as a kind of dignity that came from respect for others as well as oneself, but I like how you call it social cohesiveness.
I think some of the details around food and drink showed it best, and they make good examples because they apply to a mix of the general public.
The food itself is obviously much better over there. Even things like the hotel breakfast or the cafeteria at a workplace had a huge variety of fresh, real foods as opposed to ultraprocessed manufactured branded products.
But the dishes and utensils were some of the most interesting to me as an american. In places like an office cafe at work, or a local restaurant, or I think even an airport, they would have actual GLASSES, plates, and silverware. And on top of that, you would often return your dishes to the kitchen or even put them directly on to the dish washer rack waiting for you.
This breaks my american mind. Fragile non-disposable cups in a public place? Other than coffee mugs on people’s desks or restaurant glasses being dropped off and picked up with at your table, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that within these borders. If you could use glasses and silverware in public places here, I can’t decide what would happen first: somebody would get cut on one of the immediately broken glasses, or so much of the stuff would get stolen that they’d close it down.
I like to call out their bathrooms too. The way we do it over here is big men’s and women’s restrooms with next to no privacy (it’s one big room with flimsy floating dividers forming the toilet stalls) and stupid culture wars about who should and should not get their genitals inspected or whatever. Over there it’s just several individual doors, each with a small bathroom. Much better privacy, no fodder for the bigots, and much better utilization of the resources.
I feel like if I were in USA, confronted by that wall of
ultraprocessed manufactured branded products
and I asked for real food; ingredients to cook a meal from,
it’d be like asking for water in Idiocracy.
Yeah there is a real trend in conservative culture (at least where I grew up) that fits right in with the rest of the anti-intellectualism. And it’s not taught explicitly but it permeates social interactions.
I’m trying to decide how to describe it… Basically, you look down on people who are trying to improve themselves.
It’s a cost thing, you can get fresh ingredients to make anything and lots of people do. But it comes down to price in terms of dollars and more importantly time. We gotta work 40 hours a week and usually an extra 5 to 10 unpaid commuting in cars we have to pay insurance on (liability in case we have an accident and hurt someone or their property, and if your car is nice liability in case someone hits it and doesn’t have insurance) and fuel.
And when so much of your time and resources are taken this way it’s really easy to take the cheap processed route. Lots of times it’s hard not to
During the time I was most impoverished, I survived (certainly not thrived) on eating mostly moong dal (mung bean kernels and rice ~ combined, they create a complete protien ~ or could use just hempseed/kernels (which would be cheap if we all grew it prolifically like we did a century ago before Bernays, Anslinger and Hearst messed us up)). About 10x cheaper than processed food. Moong dal was not ideal for my constitution and ailments, but 100x to infinitely healthier than replacing food with junk. There be cheap ways to eat healthy food. Just takes a little more thought and strategizing than just taking the cheap plastic wrapped junk. Sympathies for suffering the system that robs us of time and that little cognitive capacity to so strategize better. Every little effort to cease succumbing to it, the better.
Yeah lots of folks do what you did and I think there’s a kind of rugged individual thinking in that. Which is really favored in America but lots of people just do what the people around then do to. So if everyone eats chicken nuggies and tater tots and cheeseburgers then that’s what you eat. Have you made kitchari? It’s really hearty and good rice and dal. I just made a rice and dal and mirepoix lamb stew the other day. I was winging it though and it did come out super tasty, I kinda messed up the salt ratio I think. But it was hearty af, just kinda bland
kitchari
Thanks. The very word for it. I forgot that. Thanks. Yeah.
A little ghee, and a scrimp of meat and veg in with it, and it can go far, for cheap.
Ayurveda has a lot of savvy for how to make things (very) tasty, satiating, and healthy. A balance of all six tastes, tweaked for dosha. Good stuff.
Not to mention readily available and clean pay toilets. When I was first there I was shocked to learn I had to pay to pee, but now that I’m a gig worker finding a toilet is a pain in the butt
“I can see better” says so much about a person’s psychology.
And their relationship with reality. It always reminds me of that graph that shows a modern tank is less likely to hit a child in the road than a GMC Sierra.
Yeah, for sure. There’s an element of failing to grasp basic concepts of physics here, intertwined with a psychology of not wanting to feel small I suppose.
I tried to explain to my sister that you don’t actually see more of the road when you sit higher up, it’s just that the road takes up a larger portion of your field of view. You actually see less of the road because the part directly around your car (the most important part) is obscured. She thought I was twisting words and got angry. If we lived in the USA her 150 cm ass would be driving an F-150.
If the other vehicles around you are blocking your view, she is technically right, and you are technically wrong.
And so many vehicles now have [what I would assume to be factory standard but still illegally] overtinted windows, you can’t even reliably see through the vehicle in front of you
You’re trying to tell me that we need an arms race of taller cars, so we can see past the cars in front of us? For road safety?
Dutch road tax is by weight.
It’s at least partially the American emission standards, which loosen the emissions requirements as the size of the vehicle grows.
I’m not buying that. Sure, what you say is absolutely true but we’re talking pedestrian deaths. That’s more of the fault of the high steel wall at the front, and that is purely a style choice.
I can see better if I sit higher
we have a solution for that, actually
its to stroke the egos of soccer moms, and overcompensating men.
Partly the ridiculous sized vehicles. Partly the fact that nearly every single person driving is watching Netflix, while browsing TikTok, while eating a big Mac and running late cause they have no time management skills. And they are driving 20-30 mph over the speed limit, full of road rage, with no concern for anyone or anything. The only person on the road that matters is them.
Not to mention poorly aimed LED lights rivaling the lumen output of the fucking sun.
That just comes standard on pretty much every SUV now. Half the electric vehicles here have a fuckin light bar across the front. It’s insane how much worse visibility is at night outside of towns. Add in more aging drivers and everyone else not even looking at the road and it’s not surprising.
Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and how the youth drive dangerously because they haven nothing to live for.
Have you…ever been near another person before?
American here living in a car-only area.
I didn’t even raise an eyebrow at that previous comment. Sure most drivers are fine, but there are plenty of people who make me wonder what the hell combination of these issues (and others) is going on with them.
The most common example I get to see is the people speeding through the elementary school parking lot in their luxury SUVs. I especially love it when they start a phone call as they start driving, after they just finished standing around, collecting their kid, and walking back to the parking lot.
They said nearly every single person
I’d say it’s 1%
Let me introduce you to a figure of speech called hyperbole.
Familiar, but changing 1% to 99% is no longer hyperbole.
That’s exactly what hyperbole is.
Ok bud, go away now
You mean, I wouldn’t care about them if I saw them up close, too?
Wat??
Well, I mean, I can’t make sense of what you wrote
I can’t help you with that
The article doesn’t talk about the fact that the increase is far greater in dark conditions, which is not readily explained by the changes to car design the article discusses.
This article talks more about that, and the linked report suggests population trends have contributed to more people walking at night along arterial roads with poor pedestrian infrastructure.
To be clear, daytime fatalities are up by about 40% in the interval shown, which is much more than the increase in population. Increasing vehicle size and hood height are real problems too, but don’t seem to be the biggest factor.
Daytime fatalities are up 26.5% on this graph. Not good, but not 40%. Population growth was 8.5% over that period
Vehicle numbers are also an important metric to look at, as they grew about 16-17% during the same timeframe. Add the two together and you’re not far from 26.5%.
I don’t think you can just add those together since an added person will mostly also be an added car. In fact, since cars grew faster than people, perhaps there are fewer pedestrians now. We can’t really say.
There are sidewalks on both sides of the street in my neighborhood. People are walking 2 abreast in the street at night and joggers are commonly running about 4 feet into the street from the curb.
Regardless of the article’s findings, some people are just oblivious.
Top tip: don’t hit them.
I knew someone who did that because the sidewalks were too uneven. She had bad ankles and kept rolling them trying to walk in the sidewalk
Since pandemic I’ve fallen twice because of bad sidewalks. It’s embarrassing as shit
Morons existed long before 2009. They are not a new phenomenon that accounts for a 40% increase in casualties. So your point, astute though it may be, is tangential to the article.
What is the condition of your sidewalks? My sidewalks are uneven and a neighborhood grandma who I walk with still prefers the street even though my street is not well lit. Uneven sidewalks are a tripping hazard that can be avoided by walking in the street. Her vision isn’t great so a paved stretch of road is just easier to walk with a flashlight.
Mine are pristine, I use them all the time and they are equal or better than the road. The idiots around me walk on the fucking road like chickens. Fuck em.
Gee, there was no way they would have been able to change this…
🤏
🔬
🍆💦💦💦💦💦💦💦💦⛽ 🫦
I propose we trick our fellow Americans by making smol cars offroady enough to embarrass an F150:
Look at them! Who would want a rolling brick over that?
And the Ford Focus is already mostly there.
My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do
My old job had me going to a lot of places in very bad conditions and off road. I always drove an audi or a subaru and watched the lifted trucks spin out / go in the ditch / flip over / get stuck / and generally have a poor showing.
these look dope af
And functional! You’re looking at Dakar rally champions, and hatchbacks so unreasonably fast on dirt, their league was banned.
This is what actual off-roaders look like.
love this
Concur.
This is an accepted part of the economy. Our leaders have decided us dying for private profit is fine. Now add up all the accepted deaths per year from every product and service and see how many of us are sacrificed for profit.
accepted part of the economy
… You got me thinking how far car caused deaths have to go to catch up with iatrogenic deaths.
sacrificed for profit.
The real horror is the trend. Between 2009 and 2023, pedestrian deaths rose a staggering 80%, while all other traffic fatalities increased just 13%. In a decade-plus span, pedestrians have been dying at a rate nearly seven times faster than population growth. This isn’t random. It’s the intentional outcome of systems designed to prioritize vehicles over people.
Shameful and pathetic, what a material abandonment of the social contract.
But I need a massive truck to carry groceries and 2 kids.
/s
I need a 14 ft SUV to carry an 8 lb baby.
It’s literally style. Those pickup lifts often ruin durability and off-road capability.
It’s hilariously stupid. First, they lift the trucks to pretend they off road, then they have to put wide wheels and spacers because the idiotwagon is tippy, which sprays water everywhere, then finally the suspension breaks because of geometry.
Two days ago near me. She was 75 and could not see the sidewalk or the building in her Barbie Boomer truck.
How the fuck does a 75 yr old woman even climb into this thing? She must need a stepstool to do it, and I’ve seen people do exactly that.
you can see the stepladder under the door, comes with the lift kit.
Pretty hilarious to see some dude fall to the pavement trying to get out, or watch someone have to make 3-4 tries to get in. Elevators are next.
Hood heights. You have pickup trucks that have to have a front camera now.
And mechanics now use stepladders.
FFS guys just buy a strap on dildo, she’ll never know the difference.
We need to switch to EVs to protect the environment
But also no efforts to keep vehicles from getting bigger and heavier, which not only uses more resources (in construction and during use) but also increases danger to pedestrians and cyclists.
What kind of EVs?
The Aptera?
Peter Perkins’ Solar Powered Van?
If we switch to painting the entire bodywork in cheap recyclable low-light efficient photovoltaic paint made from carbon buckyballs and nanotubules, and photovoltaic dyes in the windows… and hemp sourced graphene capacitor bank batteries, EVs could help protect the environment, yup.
… And likely help protect pedestrians and cyclists too… certainly far more than the high-mass high-inertia high-hood high-glare low-visibility SUV tanks going around.
Edit: Hrmm… why’d those image links no work? http://www.evuk.co.uk/imgs/solarvan_ev1.jpg http://www.evuk.co.uk/imgs/solarvan_ev2.jpg Edit: Oh, because http not https?
The Aptera?
I hear the Easter Bunny drives one of these. Aptera deliveries have been imminent since 2009 but you have to believe in elves and fairies if you think that small area of solar cells will charge that motorcycle (it’s not a car).
We need simple laws restricting vehicle weights. The hummer EV is 10000 lbs and wastes most of it charge just carrying around a stupidly large 3000lb battery pack. In a rear end collision, the car in front, and the car in front of that are all dead.
