feels like the tone of this title is forgetting about the shareholders, which I do not take kindly to
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
536 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
77090 readers
2794 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
536
U.S. Pedestrian Deaths Up 77% Since 2009 & The Auto Industry Knew It Would Happen
(open.substack.com)
In Japan, there is tax benefits if your car fits certain dimensions. That's why there are so many small boxy cars in Japan. I don't understand why this isn't a thing anywhere else. It has so many benefits: Fuel economy, parking space, pedestrian safety, …
But no, "I can see better if I sit higher" is still the #1 killer argument for these urban tanks.
Americans gladly go into more debt to show off the things they can't afford
In Finland, car sales tax and yearly tax are based on the Co2 output, and it worked quite well to keep most cars small, light and efficient. Until hybrid and electric cars arrived on the market, that is...
load more comments
(2 replies)
There really does seem to be a kind of social cohesiveness in other countries. In America it's dog eat dog and fuck everyone else as long as I get mine.
Very much true in my specific limited experience.
I live in a nice little town here in the US, and I'm a well educated middle aged white guy. It's safe to say that I get to see a pretty nice version of America even as horrible shit is happening all over the place.
I've gotten to spend a few weeks in Sweden of all places over the past few years. Plus I got to see the insides of some airports in other places luke Belgium and Germany.
There's just something different in the air over there, in a good way. I thought of it as a kind of dignity that came from respect for others as well as oneself, but I like how you call it social cohesiveness.
I think some of the details around food and drink showed it best, and they make good examples because they apply to a mix of the general public.
The food itself is obviously much better over there. Even things like the hotel breakfast or the cafeteria at a workplace had a huge variety of fresh, real foods as opposed to ultraprocessed manufactured branded products.
But the dishes and utensils were some of the most interesting to me as an american. In places like an office cafe at work, or a local restaurant, or I think even an airport, they would have actual GLASSES, plates, and silverware. And on top of that, you would often return your dishes to the kitchen or even put them directly on to the dish washer rack waiting for you.
This breaks my american mind. Fragile non-disposable cups in a public place? Other than coffee mugs on people's desks or restaurant glasses being dropped off and picked up with at your table, I'm not sure I've ever seen that within these borders. If you could use glasses and silverware in public places here, I can't decide what would happen first: somebody would get cut on one of the immediately broken glasses, or so much of the stuff would get stolen that they'd close it down.
I like to call out their bathrooms too. The way we do it over here is big men's and women's restrooms with next to no privacy (it's one big room with flimsy floating dividers forming the toilet stalls) and stupid culture wars about who should and should not get their genitals inspected or whatever. Over there it's just several individual doors, each with a small bathroom. Much better privacy, no fodder for the bigots, and much better utilization of the resources.
load more comments
(2 replies)
My freedoms>your kids life
-Americans
Dutch road tax is by weight.
It's at least partially the American emission standards, which loosen the emissions requirements as the size of the vehicle grows.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
Partly the ridiculous sized vehicles. Partly the fact that nearly every single person driving is watching Netflix, while browsing TikTok, while eating a big Mac and running late cause they have no time management skills. And they are driving 20-30 mph over the speed limit, full of road rage, with no concern for anyone or anything. The only person on the road that matters is them.
Not to mention poorly aimed LED lights rivaling the lumen output of the fucking sun.
Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and how the youth drive dangerously because they haven nothing to live for.
load more comments
(7 replies)
The article doesn't talk about the fact that the increase is far greater in dark conditions, which is not readily explained by the changes to car design the article discusses.
This article talks more about that, and the linked report suggests population trends have contributed to more people walking at night along arterial roads with poor pedestrian infrastructure.
To be clear, daytime fatalities are up by about 40% in the interval shown, which is much more than the increase in population. Increasing vehicle size and hood height are real problems too, but don't seem to be the biggest factor.
Daytime fatalities are up 26.5% on this graph. Not good, but not 40%. Population growth was 8.5% over that period
Vehicle numbers are also an important metric to look at, as they grew about 16-17% during the same timeframe. Add the two together and you're not far from 26.5%.
I don't think you can just add those together since an added person will mostly also be an added car. In fact, since cars grew faster than people, perhaps there are fewer pedestrians now. We can't really say.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Gee, there was no way they would have been able to change this....
I propose we trick our fellow Americans by making smol cars offroady enough to embarrass an F150:
Look at them! Who would want a rolling brick over that?
And the Ford Focus is already mostly there.
load more comments
(5 replies)
This is an accepted part of the economy. Our leaders have decided us dying for private profit is fine. Now add up all the accepted deaths per year from every product and service and see how many of us are sacrificed for profit.
load more comments
(1 replies)
The real horror is the trend. Between 2009 and 2023, pedestrian deaths rose a staggering 80%, while all other traffic fatalities increased just 13%. In a decade-plus span, pedestrians have been dying at a rate nearly seven times faster than population growth. This isn’t random. It’s the intentional outcome of systems designed to prioritize vehicles over people.
Shameful and pathetic, what a material abandonment of the social contract.
Hood heights. You have pickup trucks that have to have a front camera now.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Meanwhile in the UK pedestrian deaths are down despite the number of miles walked increasing.
The UK has among the lowest road deaths in the world.
I'm not quite sure why that is (although anecdotally as a pedestrian, you seem to be treated like royalty in the UK in comparison to other places I've been - so much as glance at a zebra crossing and cars come to an immediate stop).
Given how UK drivers often use summer tyres year-round, the weather is dark and cool, and the roads are usually damp, you'd logically expect poor results, but we see the opposite.
Perhaps it's due to the rather strict yearly MOT safety check? Who knows.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
We need to switch to EVs to protect the environment
But also no efforts to keep vehicles from getting bigger and heavier, which not only uses more resources (in construction and during use) but also increases danger to pedestrians and cyclists.
load more comments
(3 replies)
My wife is a medical coder for the ED, for more than a dozen hospitals and says the overwhelming area for vehicle fatalities she codes is intersections crossing in front of traffic. Particularly trying to make the yellow. The plural of anecdote isn't data mind you, but she's been at this for 15+ years and has a pretty good sense of it.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Those are pretty staggering numbers considering the population has only grown by maybe 12% in that same timeframe.
I want to know how many are related to drivers blinded by LED headlights. I've seen (and been a part of) dozens of near hits in the past few years because of this.
edit: Let me just be very clear about this — if you think that the issue is only aftermarket headlights or modified vehicles, you are mistaken. you can look at pretty much any modern Toyota or Subaru or Mazda or pickup with LED headlights and see that the low beams are just as bright as the high beams, just aimed lower. and that aim lower does not matter when the low beams are shining in somebody's face, which happens often because roads are not level and flat. and you know where this is often the case? intersections. intersections often are raised in the middle, which means the car on the other side is angled slightly upwards, which means their low beam LED headlights are blasting the person on the other side in the face, even with their "but much cutoff is correct excuse".
the simple inexcusable unavoidable fact is that headlights that blind people like this with this frequency are simply bad design and dangerous, and yes they also make the driver an asshole for having that vehicle and treating other people like this. like how would people feel if I just went around blasting them in the face with a flashlight that bright while walking around. they'd be livid. this is literally not any different, you're not special just because you bought a 4,000 lb vehicle that has dangerous features.
Bigger vehicles with high hoods too.
Whoever invented LED bulbs for cars needs to be blacklisted from the auto industry
There are plenty of cars with stock LED headlights and proper cutoffs, so they’re less blinding than traditional headlights
It’s aftermarket “illegal” LEDs, LEDs that are misaligned or started at a bad height, and way too many drivers who never turn off their high beams. Yet another safety rule we only pay lip service to, resulting in unnecessary deaths
load more comments
(12 replies)
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
A truck drove by me the other day that was so high up and had such a big body there is no way the driver could see anything 10 feet around the truck in all directions.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Options for reasonable sized cars is the US have decreased. Mega trucks ans SUVs are what sells, I guess.
Part of this increase may also be because there are a lot of people out there driving like there are no consequences to their actions. Is it just because I am older, or are there more aggressive speeder out there?
Mega trucks ans SUVs are what sells, I guess.
Unfortunately, people buy what they are told to buy through advertising and marketing. The demand for sports cars didn't dry up because people lost interest, but because better margins were found in large vehicles (and since emissions requirements were easier to hit for large vehicles than small powerful ones).
If the auto industry decided small cars were more profitable, the entire marketing machine would start touting the benefits of small cars, and in a few years, people would be claiming they always loved small cars and are so glad they are back so they can replace their monster trucks with tiny hatches.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I'd love to see EU numbers side by side for a fair comparison.
I'll stick with my boring, boomer sedans. I genuinely don't enjoy driving SUVs and light trucks--primarily due to the blind spot issue and high hoods that the article describes.
load more comments
(2 replies)
I wonder how much of that increase is from LED headlights, LED street lights, reduction in road safety education campaigns, phone use in cars, glaring LED lit dashboards and other in-car distractions. ... Rather than just "cars bad".
I'm not sure how you got to "cars bad" when it explicitly talks about an increase from 2009, and that it's the largest increase of vehicle fatalities.
Modern cars have significantly larger blind spots than cars from 2009, which is part of what they're suggesting is the cause.
I've also seen other reports pointing out that the taller hood height is more likely to kill a pedestrian, rather than just injure them, in the case of a collision
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Interesting to me is some new cars will auto brake before crashing, so I guess the issue is "fixed".
That would be included in the data. The auto braking is also worse when it comes to to pedestrians than other cars if I'm remembering a report from a little while that came out correctly.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›