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Comment by bryanlarsen | Hacker News Reader

It looks like it's designed to inflict maximum harm, but it seems that it's actually less likely to kill you than an F-150 or Silverado or Ram. It has a lower hood height which is the aspect that has been hypothesized to be the reason that trucks kill pedestrians at a much greater rate than cars.

I'm not trying to condone Cybertruck here. I hope the Cybertruck becomes a rallying cry to mandate pedestrian safety in the US, and that mandate becomes data driven and indicts F-150 et al.

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Are there enough Cybertrucks on the roads for us to detect their danger levels statistically? I’ve never seen one and I don’t live in the middle of nowhere or anything…

We seen a good dozen or more in a couple of weeks in Orlando.

To be clear, I agree with you on them being statistically insignificant.

The problem is that Cybertruck drivers are likely to have a boisterous driving style which may skew the results - what other kind of personality would purchase a vehicle that is less practical than other trucks, less practical than other EVs and, whether we like it or not, carries a signal to other people on the road.

> The problem is that Cybertruck drivers are likely to have a boisterous driving style

What leads you to believe that?

FortNine did a great rundown on this phenomenon last year:

"Grilles That Kill"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU

NJB did as well: https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo

For the stereo-typical truck driver, a motorcycle Youtube channel is going to be much more sympathetic than a bicycle channel.

Of course the stereotype doesn't always apply, I certainly know people who have transporting bicycles as a major use case for their truck.

Two wrongs don't make a right. Stupidly tall grills that look butch, kill people who would've survived the impact but for the vanity of the truck buyer. Now we get the only pickup that is bucking that trend, but it has knife-sharp edges. We live on the stupid timeline.

It's certainly a conversation worth having, but a fundamental difference between the CT and something like an F150 is utility -- the CT is unapologetically a lifestyle vehicle emphasizing form over function. A regular pickup is very utilitarian. I know it's fashionable to argue that half-ton pickups are very commonly used as lifestyle pickups too, but at least the design is clearly aimed at function over form.

So the argument probably is less about how the design should change, but how to avoid incentivizing the use of utility vehicles for family duty.

Disclaimer: I drive an F150 Lightning, so I'm part of the problem I suppose; but damn if it isn't just about the most useful all-around family vehicle I've ever owned. As long as you don't routinely drive downtown, and I don't.

I can't say I agree that "regular pickups" are very utilitarian, unless you're talking about the base trim work trucks. They seem to me to be incredibly expensive luxury vehicles for the most part.

A pickup from the last century is utilitarian with their 8 foot beds and a box height low enough to reach in from the side. Modern pickups much less so.

90s trucks sure. But they turned into tonka trucks over the last 30 years. The grills and everything just keep getting bigger.

It’s actually worse than that though. Ford got rid of the heavy duty package on the f150 and said to customers “just buy the f250 instead”. Which is even more tonka.

The design 100% has to change. There is a marketing battle for the highest hood, since it looks dope as fuck. We should mandate a maximum hood height for all vehicles that's dependent on driver visibility. When the next F-150 needs three steps to enter because the hood is too high and we woke up and mandated that pedestrian visibility needs to be maintained, then that's when change will happen.

It's been slowly increasing in size. Pickups last century were slightly smaller but not dramatically so -- if you look at like-for-like. A bigger driver of size IMO is the appreciate we now have for crew cabs. Those used to be rare to see on the road, now it's regular cabs that are extremely rare.

> When the next F-150 needs three steps to enter

This is mostly an aftermarket thing, and a superduty thing. My Lightning has running boards that are a little awkward to use because it isn't tall enough to justify them. I use them when getting in and out but only because they're otherwise in the way of my leg, not because the truck is hard to just step into.

My kids are old enough right about now that if Ford were to come out with an electric Ranger, I might trade. I do like how the midsize trucks drive (though the Lightning is quite remarkable in how well it drives for a half-ton size truck).

Pickups are about 10 inches taller now than they used to be. That seems like a lot to me.

According to the youtube video that a different commenter linked (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU), lowering the hood height by 10 inches will make the truck 81% less likely to kill a kid in a collision.

Cybertruck is a great case study in how people confuse form for function.

In a world where technology is advancing exponentially, aesthetics increasingly offer a poor signal for performance, and only those who obsessively look under the hood and disregard form will see through it all.

Yep. There were endless articles and hundreds of comments here about how atrocious the crash safety of the cyber truck must be for occupants. Everyone knew for a fact it had no crumple zone, etc.

Then the actual crash testing data comes out…… And crickets.

Peoples intuition is very, very wrong.

Yeah it seems like a lower hood height would be an improvement, but it's also pretty obvious that sharp corners are going to make things much worse! There's no way you can say "it seems that it's actually less likely to kill you"...

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