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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

#151

Post by watwut »

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…

> If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives.

I suspect that attitude also have to do with obesity rates and with people being too sedentary for their own health no matter what their weight.

It should be good and accepted that people incorporate low key physical activity into their lives. It should be good and accepted that people choose mode of transport that have them move little bit. Whether someone craves physical activity or not does not matter.

Cheaper, healthier mode of transport is as much entitlement as car. Making physical activity something for those who "crave it" is wrong.

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

samatman wrote: post #147
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

I'm willing to go along with this so long as blame is apportioned where it belongs: with the Federal government of the United States. My case is that manufacturing vehicles is a public good. We can talk about restoring city centers to human beings and I'll agree with you all day, but if you want to make the case that motor vehicles, cars included, are themselves immoral, we don't share enough values to have a product…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by sidewndr46 »

samatman wrote: post #147
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

I'm willing to go along with this so long as blame is apportioned where it belongs: with the Federal government of the United States. My case is that manufacturing vehicles is a public good. We can talk about restoring city centers to human beings and I'll agree with you all day, but if you want to make the case that motor vehicles, cars included, are themselves immoral, we don't share enough values to have a product…

I don't agree that consumers are strictly limited by price. It's been the norm to finance vehicles with loans for a while now. So much that dealerships make more on financing than they do on selling cars in some cases.

As profit in the industry has grown, so too has the amount of available credit. We now see 7 year loans on vehicles becoming more common.

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

#154

Post by Eric_WVGG »

kqr wrote: post #65
emmelaich wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At one point when biking to work I stopped at an intersection and filtered to the front. The head vehicle was a huge yellow thing built for construction work. I turned my head to see if I could see the driver (then at least he would have a chance of seeing me) and you know what he did? He understood what I was doing and pointed straight at me to indicate he had noticed me. This is something I've started doing when I'…

I do this as a cyclist, a sort of reverse two-fingered peace sign/salute, that’s usually met with a wave or nod. It’s quite humanizing.

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

#155

Post by NBJack »

mc32 wrote: post #19
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

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…

Note that minivans have been around longer than SUVs, but do not appear to be as disproportionate in fatalities. I suspect part of this is that they are typically lower to the ground and, more importantly, tend to only weigh about 500 lbs more than the average car at ~4500 lbs. Contrast this with full size SUVs, which are often taller and weigh on average closer to ~5900 lbs.

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

#156

Post by pif »

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 drove a Prius only once, for around ten minutes. I used to dislike the Prius, but following that short experience I now hate it from the deepest of my heart.

The Prius is an abomination, because it is too low to be comfortable and because of its wrong, arcuate shape. The natural and right shape for a car includes only vertical walls and horizontal surfaces, apart from the windscreen which is allowed to be slanted, but not too much.

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

#157

Post by Eric_WVGG »

jccalhoun wrote: post #140

Last summer someone pulled out in front of me and totaled my Honda Fit. I would have loved to replace it with a new one but they don't sell them in North America any more. In the 90s I had a small Nissan truck (apparently it is called a Hardbody? The manual just said "nissan truck") You can't buy any truck anywhere near as small as that any more. I also had a Dodge Dakota at one point and you can't even really find a…

The thing I’m curious about is, why did sports cars stop being cool?

They were everywhere in the eighties, and of course critics would describe their drivers as compensating for a subconscious lacking in masculinity or something… they understandably died off in the nineties… and now we seem to be back to compensating with huge trucks?

Sports cars might be dangerous but at least that’s mostly just to the occupiers, what do we have to do to make Ferraris and Porsches (real Porsches, not those disgusting SUVs that have become their bread and butter) cool again?

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

#158

Post by pif »

mc32 wrote: post #19
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

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…

I'll always choose height for my car because I want comfort.

My top priority when driving is safety for everybody, as in doing all my best to prevent accidents.

My second priority is personal comfort, which helps in guaranteeing the first priority to be respected.

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

#159

Post by analog31 »

Chris2048 wrote: post #148
david-gpu wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It applies because drivers tend to look for other cars, which are a threat to them, while filtering out pedestrians and bicycles. It is very noticeable as a pedestrian, e.g. when a driver enters a road through a right turn and only looks left to avoid incoming traffic, ignoring the possibility of a pedestrian coming from their right.

Why would a driver filter out pedestrians and bicycles?

I tend to think of the drivers, not as reacting to threats, but navigating an evolving mental model of their surroundings -- with a primary focus on opportunities rather than threats. The mechanism that updates that model doesn't have "training data" with cyclists in the picture.

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

#160

Post by Chris2048 »

analog31 wrote: post #159
Chris2048 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a driver filter out pedestrians and bicycles?

I tend to think of the drivers, not as reacting to threats, but navigating an evolving mental model of their surroundings -- with a primary focus on opportunities rather than threats. The mechanism that updates that model doesn't have "training data" with cyclists in the picture.

again, why do cyclists not provide opportunity/threat data more or less than other cars?
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