You and I have until November 18, 2024, to send comments to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (here's the link) on its proposed new vehicle safety standards. They would require passenger vehicles under 10,000 pounds — finally — to be less dangerous to people outside the vehicle.
That means pedestrians, and likely people on bikes, too.
The standards would set up test procedures and performance requirements related to hood heights, which have been getting higher and higher in recent years. Increased hood heights are documented as particularly dangerous in two important ways: they decrease drivers' ability to see in front of them, and when a person does get hit, they make the injury worse because the pedestrian's head is hit instead of their torso. (The hood designs are also often blunt, rather than curved, which is another danger.)
David Zipper, Senior Fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative, wrote about the rules in Fast Company in late September.
It's time to say yes to what Europe has been doing for quite a while, and bring the SUV/truck bloat and and blunt under control.
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