Reply to WaPo: Pedestrians Deaths Have Doubled in Past 10 Years

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I feel like this conversation is missing a couple of things--first, vehicle size. Cars keep getting bigger. Bigger/taller/heavier cars are more likely to cause fatal injuries to pedestrians/cyclists. Visit https://www.carsized.com/en/ and compare a vehicle from 10, 20, 30+ years ago to even the small SUVs everyone drives these days. Then look at something like an Escalade or the Ford F-series trucks (best selling vehicles in America). The hood is taller than most young kids and even some small adults. Your survival odds when hit by a vehicle that comes up to your neck and weighs 5,500lbs are not good at any speed. As an example, here's a 2007-2012 Honda Accord vs the current Escalade: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/honda-accord-2007-sedan-vs-cadillac-escalade-2020-suv/front/?units=imperial

Read about how car manufacturers are incentivized to make gigantic vehicles: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/24139147/suvs-trucks-popularity-federal-policy-pollution. If you need a TLDR video version, try this: https://www.vox.com/videos/2023/7/25/23807518/cars-suvs-americans-big-automobiles-travel

Also--What's happened in the past 10 years that contributes to driver distraction? Widespread adoption of smartphones. I see people every single day driving at pedestrian-killing speeds, looking down at their phones. The infotainment screens in cars aren't great for this either, but phones are a huge problem.

Finally, there's a theory that the switch to mostly automatic transmissions in the US encourages distracted driving because driving an automatic can be such a passive activity when compared to a manual transmission.

All of that said, driver behavior is abysmal. [/quote]

All of this has been condoned (and ultimately encouraged) by the Council's policies. This was a deliberate choice. [/quote]

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