Car Culture was a Mistake 2: The Deadly Dreadnought Era

EV Hummer

 When speaking of pedestrian and cyclist fatalities one of the reasons contributing to the yearly rise in deaths is the size, weight and reduced sight lines of the modern era truck-class.  When coupled with the aggressiveness and inattentiveness of drivers you have a deadly combination.

Everyone knows that as the 19th century drew to a close and Naval commanders, National leaders, and war theorists around the world had absorbed and adopted the Alfred Thayer Mahan doctrine of the National strength and sea power required a concentration of power in the waters around the Nation, and this meant the construction of massive Capital ships.

Thus, began the Naval arms race of larger, faster, more powerful, more heavily armed, more heavily armored, capital ships culminating in the infamous HMS Dreadnought in 1906.  Dreadnought famously made all earlier battleships obsolete and pushed other Nations to catch up and expand their Navies.  But, such was the lag time of design and construction that any large capital ship launched was already obsolete compared to the next ship under construction.

Trucks, have supplanted cars in the imagination of, especially rightwing men, as the nebulous concept of Freedom and America.  Trucks of course are marketed to appeal to toxic masculinity, Rolling Coal being one of the most odious and obnoxious displays but, owning Truck = Masculinity is as deliberate andOnce St. Louis resident Bob Chandler modified his 1974 Ford F250 into the legendary BigFoot, the Truck arms race was on.

In accordance with the increase in size of trucks, sport utility vehicles often built on the same chassis have thus grow as well.  And it wasn't just the grotesque Monster Trucks which grew all facets of Trucks have increased.  This can clearly be seen in the front face of the current era of GM vehicles.  The noses on the current Chevrolet Silverado, Cadillac Escalade, GMC Yukon Denali are huge; 5 feet tall, broad and imposing.  The EV Hummer pictured above weighs 10,000lbs and has 0 to 60 speed of 3 seconds.

Great...

One of the obvious reasons, people have gravitated towards larger vehicles is safety.  Not overall safety mind you, but their own personal safety.  As I've noted cars y their very nature and design pit you against the multitude, you the beleaguered fighter pilot avoiding all the enemies around you.  Hence you want a bigger, taller vehicle to gain an advantage.  Modern construction techniques and advances in seatbelts and the wide-spread adoption of their use have made the occupants much safer in accidents.  Airbags help as well but, they seem to have had the paradoxical effect of making drivers more bold and less defensive knowing they have the shield deployment at their disposal.

But, while these roadway Dreadnoughts help keep drivers safer they've become killers for those around them in smaller cars, on bike, or on foot.

Though their designs have changed considerably over the past two decades, late-model SUVs still appear to be more likely to kill pedestrians than cars, a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found. 

Thanks to advances in safety, the number of people killed in motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. has fallen from more than 50,000 in 1980 to 36,560 in 2018. Over the past decade, however, the number of pedestrians killed on American roads has ticked steadily upward. 

In the Michigan crashes, SUVs caused more serious injuries than cars when impacts occurred at greater than 19 miles per hour. At speeds of 20-39 mph, 3 out of 10 crashes with SUVs (30 percent) resulted in a pedestrian fatality, compared with 5 out of 22 for cars (23 percent). At 40 mph and higher, all three crashes with SUVs killed the pedestrian (100 percent), compared with 7 out of 13 crashes involving cars (54 percent). Below 20 miles per hour there was little difference between the outcomes, with pedestrians struck by either vehicle type tending to sustain minor injuries. 

I posted the chart of the Governor's Highway Safety Administration (GHSA) Pedestrian fatalities for the past 12 years showing a steady and deadly rise in pedestrian fatalities  The report also notes;

GHSA previously issued a report finding that 3,434 pedestrians were killed on U.S. roadways in the first half of 2022, based on preliminary data reported by State Highway Safety Offices. A second report analyzing state-reported data for all of 2022 found that roadways continue to be incredibly deadly for pedestrians. There were 2.37 pedestrian deaths per billion vehicle miles traveled (VMT) in 2022, up yet again and continuing a troubling trend of elevated rates that began in 2020.

Trucks and SUVs are killers for people walking around but, even worse have been the tragic (and often) negligent deaths caused by the driver backing up over someone; many times their own young children.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration as part of the Department of Transportation has been analyzing and warning about Backover accidents for decades and noted in a 2006 report, 

A 1997 Research Note claimed “an annual average of 475 backover fatalities (85 on-road and 390 off-road) for 1992 and 1993.”  

Nowadays, every SUV is outfitted with a back-up camera and most cars have proximity warnings and oncoming perpendicular warning devices.  But, pedestrians and cyclists continue to get hit, injured, and killed.  And the roadway Dreadnought arms race is going to continue, perhaps culminating in the Simpsons parody vehicle the Canyonero

Land Rover has done this very commercial...

Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,

Smells like a steak and seats thirty-five..

Canyonero! Canyonero!

12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,

65 tons of American Pride!

Canyonero!

*- The Federal Highway commission has ruled the Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.