Comment by VBprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by VBprogrammer | Hacker News Reader

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Whether they like it or not, American cars have become a lot more European over the years. I wish I had figures to back it up but from my own anecdotal experience when we traveled to the US when I was young almost every car was different and, for me at least, this made it feel strange and exciting.

Taking my own kids back there this year, most of the normal cars were common, or at most variations of the ones from Europe. Even many of the vans and work vehicles are now common European shapes, occasionally with a different badge. Trucks and full size SUVs were the last hold outs of US specific models.

Which makes me wonder, are the pedestrian deaths really heavily weighted towards these models?

For what it's worth we hired a full sized SUV. There was one point where I was about to drive out of our Villa's driveway when my partner shouted "wait!" There was a 8ish year old kid walking down the sidewalk towards where I was about to cross it who was completely invisible from the driving position. It was actually safer to forward park that thing because the visibility in the reversing camera was much better than driving forward.

Large portions of it can be attributed to fuel economy and safety requirements (ironically the “dangerous” safety requirements are tied to people unwilling to wear seatbelts).

Fuel economy tends all vehicles to the same aerodynamic shape (similar to how all big planes look quite similar), and safety is requiring airbags (which protected unbuckled passengers) in the side pillars and elsewhere, making them larger and larger.

I not really talking about general styling, I'm talking about the specific models being available. A lot of this might better be described as the world becoming globalised rather than the US cars becoming more European. But the end result is the same, many of the best selling US cars must meet or exceed European safety standards.

At a rough count a list of the best selling 25 cars in the US, 16 of them are available to buy in the UK that I know of (including cars like the Jeep Wrangler which are obviously American classics).

Most of the different is Trucks and full-size SUVs. And a couple of Chevy's which gave up on the UK market a few years ago. So either pedestrian fatalities are concentrated in those areas or there are other factors at play (road design, driver training, enforcement of rules etc).

As an American who sometimes travels to Europe and sees and rents cars there, my experience has not matched with yours.

The problem of poor visibility due to fat A-pillars is not limited to large SUVs, it's a problem on normal cars too.

Fat A-pillars is a noticeable problem on modern cars for sure. But the thing with A-pillars is that you can see around them if you use sufficient care to move your head. It is impossible to lift your head high enough to see a small child walking past a vehicle where the bonnet (hood if you prefer) is at an adult males chest height.

Anecdotally you got a different impression of the cars than 10 or 20 years ago.

Yes. Congratulations, it appears you can read.

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