New Study Shows That Tall Vehicle Hoods Cause Hundreds More Deaths Per Year
8 328joshuark shares a report from Car and Driver: A new study conducted by the New York Times shows that the increase in vehicle hood height seen over the last two and a half decades, mainly due to the rise in popularity of large SUVs and trucks, has resulted in several thousand deaths that otherwise may not have happened. The study shows that while automakers and regulators have focused on occupant safety, they have turned a blind eye to pedestrian safety, which has fallen since around 2009. Researchers looked at four main datasets in their investigation: crash test data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Crash Report Sampling System (CRSS) from 2016 to 2024; NHTSA's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS); vehicle measurement data from Expert AutoStats; and vehicle registration data from S&P Global from 2002 to 2024. The researchers concluded that the increased danger to pedestrians is caused by two main culprits.
First, large SUVs and trucks have taller hoods, raising the point of impact above most people's center of gravity and pushing them to the ground, typically hard asphalt, rather than up and onto the hood, which is designed to absorb impacts. Second, with larger A-pillars designed to protect occupants in rollover crashes, modern cars tend to have larger blind spots than cars sold at the turn of the century (presuming the 21st century). The shift toward vehicles with taller hoods led to roughly 3000 deaths between 2016 and 2024. This number is conservative because it does not include crashes that take place in parking lots, driveways, or private roads, which aren't part of the federal database.
The data also showed an estimated 2.8 percent increase in the odds of a pedestrian fatality for every one-inch increase in vehicle hood height. Between two different scenarios, one decreasing the hood height of every vehicle in the dataset by 3 inches, and the second using a random sampling of hood heights from 2002 across 10,000 simulated crashes, between 2624 (for scenario two) and 3077 (for scenario one) lives could have been saved from 2016 to 2024.
8 comments
Re:And water (Score: 5, Informative)
by PsychoSlashDot ( 207849 ) on Thursday June 25, 2026 @01:45PM (#66210404)
Bet you feel much more safer in a thing with a battery that can't be extinguished (and the dashcams will catch your screaming as you burn up).
So...
1} Aside from some Teslas, there's nothing preventing an EV driver from getting out of a car that wouldn't also prevent an ICE driver.
2} Basically nobody extinguishes an ICE fire either.
3} ICE are more prone to burning than EVs are.
4} Just as EV SUVs exist, ICE sedans exist. The height of the hood isn't tied to powerplant.
5} Dashcams typically point out of the vehicle and rarely record audio (though many can).
Re:Build stupid cars (Score: 5, Insightful)
by JoshuaZ ( 1134087 ) on Thursday June 25, 2026 @10:37AM (#66209998)
Unfortunately, the people buying or building the big cars are not the people being hit by them.
Re:Why (Score: 5, Interesting)
by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday June 25, 2026 @08:21AM (#66209628)
Cars don't have tall hoods, trucks and SUVs do to ridiculous proportions now. Your average truck sitting at a red light can't see pedestrians at a crosswalk, especially children. https://lloydalter.substack.co... [substack.com]
I'd like a new rule. If you drive truck and the hood is taller than your shoulders you should require a CDL.
Re:Why (Score: 5, Insightful)
by rocket rancher ( 447670 ) on <themovingfinger@gmail.com> on Thursday June 25, 2026 @12:24PM (#66210206)
Why do cars have tall hoods, long hoods and off-centre driving positions? I dont think every car should be a go kart but I never understood why a centred view with more near visibility would not be desirable.
The off-center driver position is not the bad design choice here. That part is mostly boring old human-factors engineering. You are on the right track when you talk about a centered view with more near visibility. You just need a slightly bigger picture. In right-side traffic countries, the driver sits on the left because that puts the driver’s eyes closer to the centerline of the road, which improves sight lines for oncoming traffic, passing, lane placement, and not shaving the paint off opposing vehicles. The view you are optimizing is not the center line of the vehicle, but the center line of the road it is travelling down. In left-side traffic countries, you just mirror this. The “best” side is whichever side puts the driver closest to the middle of the road.
With that said, to bring this back to your question about tall and long hoods—the defenders of the modern brodozer will inevitably point to two things: physics and the EPA. They aren't entirely wrong. Pushing modern trucks to absurd 15,000-lb towing capacities requires massive radiators, which dictate taller front ends. Furthermore, the EPA's CAFE footprint rules actively incentivized automakers to bloat vehicle dimensions to qualify for laxer fuel economy targets. But while engineering requirements and federal loopholes provided the massive canvas, they don't explain the aggressively hostile design language painted onto it.
The aesthetic decisions behind these front ends flow from a fairly straight-forward psychological model of the truck-buying American public. They are based on a phenomenon that social psychologists call "status signalling compensatory consumption." Study [oup.com] after study [wiley.com] show that an economically significant chunk of the male demographic buys status-signaling products to patch perceived deficits in their social power, status, identity, or masculinity. Marketing departments didn't accidentally discover that pickups sell better when wrapped in dominance cosplay, cliff-face grillework, and ad copy that smells faintly of elk musk. These front ends aren't optimized for pedestrian safety, or even aerodynamic efficiency; they are optimized to extract $80,000 from buyers desperate to project the authority they feel they lack.
Re:Taller hoods? (Score: 5, Informative)
by Insanity Defense ( 1232008 ) on Thursday June 25, 2026 @11:11AM (#66210070)
You could do a study in other countries and compare the results. They have the same gadgets, but not the increased hoods on their cars. Once you corrected for the gadget distraction, you will still find higher casualty rates.
If you are American then no need. The U.S. postal service needed a replacement for one of the larger van styles and went electric. They listened to what the workers said and one was designed. Workers complained it was ugly and had limited range. Part of the ugly was a short, sharply down sloping "hood". They were made to use it and found that ugly or not it was better. Designed for function over form. Ugly or not the workers loved it and both the workers and pedestrians ended with fewer injuries occurring.
Re:Taller hoods? (Score: 5, Interesting)
by damn_registrars ( 1103043 ) on <damn.registrars@gmail.com> on Thursday June 25, 2026 @07:40AM (#66209594)
One does not negate the other.
That said, my own current work car is a 2025 Chevy Equinox. I previously had a 2021 Equinox. The 2025 pushed the top of the hood up a good 3-4 inches compared to the previous, and changed a few other functional angles as well. The goal was evidently the "truckification" of a small crossover SUV. The result was terrible. Sight lines are dramatically worse out of the front of the vehicle. Short people can disappear in front of the hood now that it is that much taller. This is even worse on actual trucks; Chevy Silverado full-sized pickups are leaving dealer lots with hoods that are 5 feet off the ground for no functional reason.
It is fair to point out that such collisions shouldn't happen often at normal driving speed. However you're overlooking other places where collisions do happen often between vehicles and pedestrians; namely parking lots and driveways. While the new cars have far more mandatory cameras to help drivers spot obstacles, they don't prevent every situation. Car manufacturers should be taken to the woodshed over this awful decision, and it's not just the American auto makers.
Ever wonder why so many new pickups pull backwards into parking spots? I had a new Silverado recently as a rental and I believe I discovered why. Those new trucks don't have forward facing cameras, but they do have backup cameras. They sit so high the driver can't easily see the lines or obstacles in front while attempting to park but when backing up the camera shows what's coming up behind. Terrible, terrible decisions.
Re: Taller hoods? (Score: 5, Interesting)
by dj245 ( 732906 ) on Thursday June 25, 2026 @09:41AM (#66209852)
Not to mention these vehicles are a huge pain to work on. I changed the spark plugs in a 150/1500 class truck recently and had to lay down on to of the engine on a chunk of old mattress to reach any of them. And needed a 2-step stepladder to get up there. I've since changed to a Ridgeline and you can reach anywhere in the bed and most of the engine without a ladder. The interest in the Slate and recent sales of smaller trucks suggest that this is a growing market.
Re:So do people who don't raise their seats (Score: 5, Informative)
by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Thursday June 25, 2026 @08:46AM (#66209698)
Belt-lines in cars got really high because that is how you achieve that roll over safety rating.
As a driver I hate that every sedan and SUV has these super high belt lines and wide as my head A-pillars now. Every time I get in my 80s classic on the weekend it reminds me how much my visibility is in fact impaired in my daily.
Do and realistically am I much safer in my 2020's car - yes, do I also belive I am more likely to be involved in some for of accident because I can't see as much also yes.
Most common case country T intersection with yield on one road and no stops. (Probably the most dangerous type of intersection) There will be a 30 yard long space along the perpendicular road, that is a blind spot because of that thick pillar. Obviously that leads to the only safe driving practice being, be slow enough to come to a complete stop at the intersection until you are near enough to see completely down the road looking over your shoulder. Which by extension forces you to approach quite slowly or subject you and your passengers to uncomfortably short stops, should there be another vehicle approaching.
Meanwhile in the vintage car with A-pilars just bulky enough to hold up the roof, there basically isn't a blind spot large enough to conceal a vehicle or cyclist for any period of time, so they will be detected on the second look if not the first, and you able to see for miles down the perpendicular road over top of the soy beans..
Modern cars kind of suck for driving..