is transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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How it started
When I was growing up in the Midwest, everyone I knew drove small cars. My dad had a light pink Volvo 240, my mom drove a Dodge Dart, and my grandmother had a 1988 Honda Accord — which would eventually become my first car. We lived in the suburbs, so almost no one drove a truck, but if they did it was something small like a Ford Ranger or Toyota Hilux.
Over time, those small cars were replaced by SUVs of increasing size. Today, anyone searching for anything smaller than a compact SUV will probably come up dry. Ford killed its sedan production in North America a number of years ago. GM took a little longer, but eventually, with the Chevy Malibu leaving the lineup in 2024, it got there as well.
The decisions, the companies argue, were a reflection of shifting customer preferences. Four in five cars sold in the United States last year were either SUVs or pickup trucks. That’s a far cry from the 1990s, when that number was closer to 25 percent of all sales. Americans just aren’t that into sedans anymore, preferring higher riding vehicles that confer a sense of safety and dominance over the road. Small cars were out; big ones — and often really big ones — were in.
How it’s going
But these big trucks and SUVs can be deadly. Vehicles with extra-tall hoods and blunt front ends are more likely to cause fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. There have been numerous studies and investigations examining how tall, flat-nosed trucks and SUVs are more likely to cause serious injury and death than smaller, shorter vehicles. Larger front ends mean pedestrians are more likely to suffer deadly blows to the head and torso. Higher clearances mean victims are more likely to get trapped underneath a speeding SUV instead of pushed onto the hood or off to the side. And front blind zones associated with large trucks and SUVs have contributed to the injury and death of hundreds of children across the country, studies have shown.
As Americans flocked to these dangerously tall and heavy vehicles, the pedestrian death rate soared: between 2013 and 2022, pedestrian fatalities increased 57 percent, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports. In 2022, 88 percent of pedestrian deaths occurred in single-vehicle crashes.
When confronted with these statistics, automakers usually point to the increasing use of technology in vehicles — cameras, sensors, blind-spot detection, automatic braking — to help reduce pedestrian deaths. But rarely do they address the role that vehicle design plays in crash fatalities. That’s because big trucks and SUVs are not only popular but also better moneymakers than smaller vehicles. SUVs have a profit margin that’s 10–20 percent higher than smaller cars because they command a higher price while costing only slightly more to manufacture.
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