2021 Cadillac Escalade -- safe for pedestrians?
There is a clear correlation between vehicle design and the recent spike in pedestrian deaths. While the people driving SUVs are slightly safer (1.6 percent decrease in SUV occupant deaths in 2018, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration), the number of pedestrians killed by those drivers has skyrocketed by 81 percent in the last decade, according to a report released last year by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/19/21522959/cadillac-escalade-2021-first-drive-safety-oversized
The fact that you still think that I'm saying that bigger cars are better for pedestrians shows that you are not reading my comments. What, specifically, do you think my point of view is? I would like to see an answer to that...
p.s.: How do we know the correlation isn't with cell phone usage? Or with population density (and we just happen to be driving more SUVs)?
So while I'm not going to dispute that larger vehicles with bigger blind spots are more likely to cause injury, the way that these articles are presenting information tingled my spidey sense so I went poking around a little.
I went back through the linked articles until I ended up at the
freep story and it mentions how pedestrian deaths are getting closer to the all time high in 1979. What it does not mention is that the population of the US is nearly 50% higher than it was then.
They do claim that SUVs are involved in "about one third" of pedestrian crashes while causing 40% of fatalities. I really don't like the use of "about" numbers when presenting a mathematical argument, so after hunting for a bit I found their source NHTSA data table
here.
In order to arrive at their numbers of "about one third" and 40%, you have to include "large trucks or buses." To validate their math, we have 25063 injuries out of 72176 (34.72%) and 1894 deaths out of 4818 (39.31%).
If we re-run the numbers only with the categories of small SUVs/pickups, large SUVs/vans, and large pickup trucks (excluding large trucks and buses), we have 22861 injuries out of 72176 (
31.67%) and 1449 deaths out of 4818 (
30.01%).
Overall, large trucks or buses account for 3.05% of injuries and 9.24% of fatalities, but these are not the topic at hand (at least I don't recall suggestions of using sedans for freight and public transit).
Furthermore, the "unknown vehicle" category comprises 12.68% of injuries and 12.99% of deaths, which throws any concept of accuracy out the window.