One pretty big factor to these getting bought is due to safety and for that reason I feel like we as a society has prioritized driver safety that we have sacrificed pedestrian safety
Nope, purely emotional buying:
… occupant death rate was 6% higher in SUVs than in conventional cars, and 8% in the biggest ones.
… children are eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared with an average passenger car.
… “These figures suggest that SUVs were probably killing around an extra 3,000 people in the US a year at that time – more than died at 9/11,” write Simms and Murray. Roughly a third of those died in SUV rollovers, and another third from being hit by one. The final third were being killed by respiratory problems because of the extra pollution caused by SUVs.”
Eh most of your points kinda proves my point of how we have been sacrificing pedestrian safety for driver safety the only considerable counterpoint you brought up is how SUVs are more prone to rollover and from what I understand about cars getting bigger is so crashing is less deadly but by being bigger you also make crashing more inevitable so I guess that’s a bit of a stalemate argument
I’d argue that it sacrifices the safety of any other car that’s smaller than it too, with sudans being the most vulnerable. No way a bumper difference of feet allows for the smaller car’s safety features to work as intended if not bypassed entirely.
especially when lifted, if you’re driving a corolla or some shit and get hit with a tonka truck you’re getting mostly lower suspension, luckily it’s still an engine block in front of you, but it’s still fucking horrifying.
I’ve also heard that these things almost never get insured because they’re a fucking mess.
Yeah crumple zones are enforced by the bumper so when you lift a car you’re making the colliding car smash into the other above the bumper and gliding above the crumple zone if I recall the Ford pento was unfairly judged because the cars that were used to rate it’s rear end crash safety had their front ends waghted down to simulate heavy breaking however it caused the cars to not only have more weight than normal but they also ramed into the pento going under the crumple zone and directly into the gas tank so I guess you can also make a argument for lowered SUVs and trucks to be just as bad as lifted trucks and suvs
it’s not safety, i mean, well, it is safety, at the cost of the poor sod that you crash into and fucking kill. Or the children that you’re statistically more likely to run over and even more statistically likely to kill if you do hit them.
You know what else is safe? Not ramming your car into a brick wall.
I’m just talking about car safety for the first bit here, not even pedestrian impacts.
