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Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

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Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#41

Post by asdff »

donw wrote: post #28
yboris wrote: post #14

Exactly on topic: a philosophy paper " Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked? " by Douglas Husak. Author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility with other vehicles (and pedestrians), SUV driving is immoral - imposing an oversized amount of harm to others with no proportional safety for self. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447

The big problem -- pun intended -- is that vehicles are de facto required by law to be huge. Imagine if we had cars that were built like cars from the 80s -- smaller, lightweight, tons of visibility, minimal equipment -- but with modern engine technology and a few of the electronics that don't add much weight, but add a ton of functionality (like 360-degree cameras). I'll take the road noise, less interior comfort, a…

I have a car like that. 2017 toyota yaris. 13 feet long and 2300 lbs like a toyota from 1995.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#42

Post by osigurdson »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #4

> Passenger cars were the striking vehicle in most fatal pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, though they were underrepresented relative to the proportion of all crashes in which they were involved. Though pickup trucks were the striking vehicle in just 5.6% of pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, they were involved in 12.6% of fatalities. SUVs were similarly overrepresented in fatalities relative to the proportion o…

The article is definitely missing some basic numbers such as what the composition of the current fleet is. In my observation, "flat" cars are definitely no longer the norm anymore. Also, the size of SUVs seems to have gone down since 2009. There are more small/medium sized SUVs in general but far fewer Yukons/Sequoias than there used to be. One thing that has obviously gone up since 2009 is driver distraction.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#43

Post by ocbyc »

rdtwo wrote: post #29
ars wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say we magically got rid of all SUV's. Then Douglas would find the next largest car and say the same thing. You need to have some kind of line that distinguishes moral from immoral, if you can't do that, then your calculation is risk based, not morality.

SUV problem is mostly a grill size problem. They are designed to be aggressive and kill, you could drop them lower increase visibility and improve pedestrian impact like they do in Europe

They're designed to kill?

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#45

Post by musha68k »

asdff wrote: post #39
mc32 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three trends: bigger mass, larger sizes and taller vehicles. Which one of the above is the most consequential? I'm guessing height. at 2500 or 5000 lbs, neither is going to be pleasant when you bang in to it. size maybe there is more surface area to get hit by, but that's unlikely to be significant. mass does influence stopping distance though, so that could be, but at the same time we now have large disc b…

Also, shape. Go look at the front end of a car like a ford F150. The hood is flat and sits 4 feet high. Now go look at a more compact car like a prius. The hood is low, and is angled like a wedge smooth into the windshield. When a prius hits you, its liable that you will just roll up and off of it and not get much of the force from the impact as a result. When an F150 hits you with its 4 foot tall wall of a grill str…

I once managed to barely jump and slide over the hood of a car that came up behind me and turned - at considerable speed - right into the pedestrian crossing I had been traversing on a green light. The driver looked right through me, didn’t even realize it until my - corner of the eye induced - leap. I would be dead for 15 years now if that would have been a SUV. Lots of people really don’t seem to have a good grasp of the sheer physics involved while driving these tanks especially.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#46

Post by dvzk »

ramraj07 wrote: post #36

Honestly as an upper middle class or rich American it looks like one of the more dangerous things you could do is probably go out cycling in a road shared by these monster machines. If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives. When I lived in College Station Texas I had to use a bike (because I was broke) but I stuck to the sidewalks, rules be damned. And even in the sidewalk had to keep an…

It's a different cycling experience to live in an area with 30+ continuous miles of a paved and forested riverside bike trail and 50+ miles of interlaced dirt trails. Cars can barely be a threat consideration most of the time.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#47

Post by asdff »

ramraj07 wrote: post #36

Honestly as an upper middle class or rich American it looks like one of the more dangerous things you could do is probably go out cycling in a road shared by these monster machines. If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives. When I lived in College Station Texas I had to use a bike (because I was broke) but I stuck to the sidewalks, rules be damned. And even in the sidewalk had to keep an…

The odds are in your favor to be honest. I live in a city of 4 million people. 10-20 cyclist die a year. I'll roll those dice when the variance is that high. I figure I bike safer than the average biker I see on the road anyhow, so my odds of survival go up even higher. Probably not a small number of those accidents involved intoxicated bikers or mentally ill; I see a lot of people, clearly out of their mind through mental illness or addiction or both, biking the wrong way into traffic, or otherwise not being aware of anything at all and blithely riding (sometimes pedestrians just walking on the freeway too). Things I do to be safe while biking that I rarely see others do:

- taking the lane

- wearing a helmet

- using lights

- filtering to the front of the intersection

- opting for those 25mph residential roads that hardly have any traffic whenever possible

- "dutch left": instead of cutting over across traffic to turn left as a car would, I instead go straight almost all the way through the intersection on the right hand side, turn right in front of the stopped perpendicular cars, and then angle myself to go straight on that perpendicular road when the lights cycle to green.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#48

Post by clairity »

kube-system wrote: post #27
Drunk_Engineer wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, drivers are only required to have $15,000 liability insurance.

And 17% of them just drive around with no insurance at all. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/uninsured-motor...

i just learned from a cop that you don't even need a license to drive in LA! she said that cops don't want to put undue burden on people in a city where driving is almost mandatory for livelihood (though i don't currently own a car myself due to the hassles and cost). i kid you not.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#49

Post by analog31 »

emmelaich wrote: post #6
sonofhans wrote: post #3

> Findings suggest larger vehicles are involved in pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes with more severe injuries that result in higher hospital charges. I've commuted 10s of thousands of miles by bike the last 30 years, mostly in an urban environment. This doesn't surprise me. I can't read the whole article, and the excerpt doesn't offer any data or speculation about the causes of this. So, with some experience, I'll…

Agree with your speculation. Here's another one. Even WHEN THE DRIVER sees you, some subconsciously ignore you. I'v had people look straight at me, keep driving then looking shocked when they finally realise and hit the brakes. I can only surmise they perceive traffic in terms of threats. When you're in a bigger car, threats are reduced.

There's that famous video of people dancing, where a person in a gorilla suit enters and leaves the action, and at the end, people don't remember seeing the gorilla.

I think drivers are creatures of habit, especially in heavy traffic on a familiar route such as their daily work commute. They are not really in complete control of their cars -- certainly if traffic is heavy enough that nobody is following at a safe distance. Now throw distractions into the mix.

I'm also an experienced urban cyclist, and I believe that route choice is a major safety factor. I have some rules of thumb for roads to avoid, and am extremely lucky that I live in a town that is fairly cycle- and pedestrian-friendly. I have a hunch that car drivers in my town have gradually adapted to the presence of cyclists, for the better.

I do ride on 55 mph roads in the countryside, but only ones with very little traffic, and the region has quite friendly drivers. Stories from cyclists living in other states suggest to me that straightforward aggression is a factor in a lot of the close passes and other antics that they experience.

Re: Effects of large vehicles on pedestrian and pedal-cyclist injury severity

#50

Post by s1artibartfast »

ajuc wrote: post #26
mc32 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are three trends: bigger mass, larger sizes and taller vehicles. Which one of the above is the most consequential? I'm guessing height. at 2500 or 5000 lbs, neither is going to be pleasant when you bang in to it. size maybe there is more surface area to get hit by, but that's unlikely to be significant. mass does influence stopping distance though, so that could be, but at the same time we now have large disc b…

E=mV^2/2 60 km/h car will kill you either way, 1 km/h car won't kill you either way, but somewhere in between there's a velocity range where a SUV will kill you and a compact car won't - simply because of the mass difference. I'd argue it's the velocity range in which a lot of collisions happen (especially in city traffic).

This is the wrong way to think of it. At some point the mass is irrelevant. If an inelastic lead object the size of a car hits you, the energy transfers is the same as if a lead 747 hits you at the same speed.

Both objects have an overwhelming amount of energy and momentum compared to a nearly stationary 100 kg person. They'll transfer enough energy to bring the person up to their speed, likely mangling them in the process.

Trauma depends on how quickly this energy is transferred to the individual.

More to your point, both a car and a truck have more than enough energy to not be meaningfully slowed down by a pedestrian. The difference is strike location, contact area, and crumple zones to slow the transfer.

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