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Comment by imgabe | Hacker News Reader

Why focus on SUVs in particular? Cars in general don't belong in inner cities.

I would not care to be struck by any vehicle, thank you, but IIRC, vehicles with higher front ends may be more dangerous to pedestrians:

studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also blamed SUVs for the higher death rate, concluding that "pedestrians are two to three times more likely to suffer a fatality when struck by an SUV or pickup than … by a passenger car."

https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-pedest...

I’d like to see the study, the first question I have is whether they accounted for the proportion of SUVs on the roads increasing relative to cars.

It’s common for second- or third-hand accounts to gloss over details like that.

Another angle to consider would be making pedestrian safety mandatory and setting standards, rather than waiting for vague promises from manufacturers.

Volvo created a “pedestrian air bag” years ago that inflated on the hood of the car when it detected what could be a pedestrian being struck.

They replaced that with systems that auto-brake at low speeds when they detect pedestrians or bicycles. Other manufacturers have this kind of tech too, but there are zero standards and no enforcement AFAICT.

> Volvo created a “pedestrian air bag” years ago that inflated on the hood of the car when it detected what could be a pedestrian being struck.

I wonder how effective that would be - given that a pedestrian hitting the hood could be coming from a ton of different vectors compared to the collision of a driver with a steering wheel, I wonder if you'd just end up throwing more energy and chaos into the collision.

Good question. There is a bunch of information about it on the Internet, here's a post that seems somewhat informative:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-pedestrian-airbags-wo...

But note, they have moved on to trying to avoid striking pedestrians and/or reduce injury through reducing speed.

Ah, so it looks to provide cushion for the hood. I had visions of the bumper exploding into a giant airbag ahead of the car.

Seems like that's a better choice - moving to prevention rather than mitigation.

I was amazed this weekend when Vilnius city center was closed for cars due to the yearly marathon taking place. The 6am-6pm closure felt great: - All streets are free to walk, a sense of freedom - No car noise, you start hearing other people foot steps which is weird - A lot of people, not sure where they parked or have they used public transport but no one seemed bothered

I wouldn't be surprised that cars in city centers become things of a past.

far easier sell to voters a ban on SUVs (a small minority of city dwellers) than on cars outright (a sizeable minority of city dwellers).

In Berlin, given public transport it would seem feasible to live without a car for the majority of people

Still ... Berlin is a very car-friendly city, with lots of parking space, large wide roads going on for long straight stretches. While the public transportation in Berlin is also great, as a foreign visitor, I like the fact that I can easily bring my car into all but the most central bits of Berlin. (And the Berlin metro-area is gigantic)

Agreed, but you need to start somewhere.

Yeah, I fail to see how the car being an SUV is a factor in the article. Would a smaller car have made a difference? It would have needed to be a lot lighter to be stopped by the traffic light. (the influence of mass being linear and that of speed being cubic)

Cars are more designed to have the front crumple, and that makes the influence much less, because less kinetic energy is conserved in the collision.

I don't think there is much of a difference in the crumple zone for a German SUV and a German sedan. Do you have any sources?

Look up "Bradsher Bars." They're designed to make sure in a collision with a car, the SUV frame will catch the car and not overtop it, which would be even worse for the car's occupants. BUt they also mean less crumpling because the bars have to connect directly with the frame.

SUVs also tend to have much more powerful engines.

If the accident was really caused by an epileptic seizure (as the media speculate), a smaller car with a less powerful engine wouldn't have accelerated as quickly as that Porsche Macan.

But not all SUVs are Porsches. Plenty of smaller cars accelerate much more quickly than SUVs.

Obviously, a different mass would make a difference in a wide variety of situations. SUVs don't drive slower than other automobiles. Also, kinetic energy has velocity squared, not cubed.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=SUV+...

I've seen numbers showing in pedestrian accidents, SUVs are twice as likely to kill the pedestrian than smaller cars. Nonetheless, I'd rather we just phase cars out of inner cities entirely.

As others have said elsewhere, it's the height that's particularly important. As I understand it, there are two reasons: taller vehicles are more likely to send pedestrians under the vehicle than over it, and the point of impact is likely to move from the legs (unpleasant but usually survivable) to the trunk (often not).

SUVs have higher and steeper fronts that tend to hit directly and relatively high on the body, directly impacting vital organs.

With smaller cars the pedestrian often ends up rolling over the front.

SUVs are just a little bit worse on all measures.

I don't think it's reasonable to expect to get rid of all ic vehicles in the short term, but we can certainly focus on the worst offenders.

As far as I know, road damage is not linear to weight, it is exponential. See for example https://www.vabike.org/vehicle-weight-and-road-damage/

SUV that is 25% heavier than a sedan, destroys the road much quicker than a sedan would.

Electric cars are even worse though

But they have other benefits.

Just like SUVs

I'm okay with that. Just don't ban them out in the suburbs!

Probably seen as "American" - you would be just as dead if a you where hit by a Audi Estate or A BMW Saloon.

Note that its the Chair of the Greens - bit tacky to be using a tragedy to argue for their anti car agenda.

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