New Study Shows That Tall Hoods Cause Deaths per Year
4 hours ago
- #vehicle design
- #pedestrian safety
- #traffic fatalities
- A NYT study links rising vehicle hood heights over the past two decades to thousands of preventable pedestrian deaths.
- Researchers used NHTSA crash and fatality data, vehicle measurements from Expert AutoStats, and registration info from S&P Global for analysis.
- Taller hoods on SUVs and trucks impact pedestrians above their center of gravity, pushing them to the ground instead of onto the hood.
- Larger A-pillars in modern vehicles increase blind spots, contributing to pedestrian safety risks.
- The study estimates that 3,000 pedestrian deaths from 2016 to 2024 are attributable to taller vehicle hoods, a conservative figure excluding non-traffic crashes.
- Each one-inch increase in hood height raises the odds of pedestrian fatality by 2.8%.
- Simulations suggest that reducing hood heights could have saved between 2,624 and 3,077 lives from 2016 to 2024.
- 3D scans show modern pickup trucks have significantly larger blind spots compared to models from the 1990s or early 2000s.