A vehicle drives past a memorial for 5-year-old Allie Hart, who was struck and killed in 2021 by a driver while riding her bicycle in a crosswalk in Washington. (AP)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Alyssa Milligan was someone who intuitively knew when one other person needed help, encouragement or a sort word. Although she was latest to Tennessee, the 23-year old physical therapy student, whose mother called her “Sweet Alyssa,” had already made many close connections, especially inside the tight-knit cycling community around Nashville — before she was killed this month, struck by a pickup truck while cycling with a friend.
Roadway deaths within the U.S. are mounting despite government test data showing vehicles have been getting safer. While the variety of all car-related fatalities has trended upward during the last decade, pedestrians and cyclists have seen the sharpest rise: over 60% between 2011 and 2022.
It coincides with a steep increase in sales of SUVs, pickup trucks and vans, which accounted for 78% of latest U.S. vehicle sales in 2022, in line with Motorintelligence.com.
Current U.S. rankings only consider the protection of the people contained in the vehicle. The National Association of City Transportation Officials is leading an effort asking U.S. transportation officials to start factoring the protection of those outside of vehicles into their 5-star safety rankings.
“We don’t know exactly what’s happening with the rise in pedestrian fatalities. It definitely looks like the rise in larger vehicles is contributing to it,” said Jessica Cicchino, vice chairman of research on the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“Many studies have shown that larger vehicles like SUVs and pickups usually tend to kill or seriously injure pedestrians and cyclists after they’re involved in a crash,” she said, noting that enormous vehicles usually tend to strike people in the pinnacle and vital organs, somewhat than the legs.
The design of those vehicles may pose visibility problems. An Insurance Institute for Highway Safety study of crashes with pedestrians at intersections found that the vehicles almost certainly to be involved in left-turn crashes were SUVs and pickups, suggesting “they is perhaps having a harder time seeing a few of those pedestrians,” Cicchino said.
Subaru, which has performed well in IIHS pedestrian crash avoidance tests, considers visibility its first line of safety, in line with spokesperson Todd Hill. But that has turn out to be more difficult as safety standards for rollovers have required vehicles to enhance the strength of the pillars that support the roof.
“The smaller the glass you make, the more design flexibility you’ve got … nevertheless it really comes on the sacrifice of outward visibility,” he said.
While there was less research on blind spots directly in front of passenger vehicles, Consumer Reports present in 2021 that prime hoods obstructed driver views of pedestrians. Meanwhile, a January 2023 report from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center determined “the increasingly large blind zones in SUVs and pickups have been related to fatal ‘frontover’ crashes,” where persons are run over by slow-moving vehicles.
The Volpe Center, which works to deal with the nation’s most pressing transportation challenges, recently collaborated to provide a web application called VIEW, which uses crowd-sourcing to create a database of auto blind zones. For instance, the app shows that as many as eight elementary school children could stand shoulder-to-shoulder in front of a 2016 Chevrolet Silverado without being visible to the driving force.
The U.S. first began crash testing cars within the Seventies, and it implemented the 5-star rating system in 1993. In 2006, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began requiring window labels on latest vehicles to incorporate those rankings.
Because of vehicle improvements, seatbelt laws and other changes, fatal crashes within the U.S. trended downward for many years, hitting a low of 29,867 in 2011. But that trend has reversed. Government estimates of fatal crashes in 2022 show a 43% increase to 42,795 — partially due to increases in speeding and drunk driving and reduces in seatbelt use. Fatal crashes also increased as a percent of total miles driven. Pedestrian and cyclist deaths increased by 64% since 2011, to an estimated 8,413 in 2022.
NHTSA has proposed latest pedestrian crash avoidance tests, but they might be voluntary and never a part of the agency’s 5-star rating system, said Billy Richling, a spokesperson on the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which is pushing to make pedestrian safety testing mandatory.
“A vehicle could fail the pedestrian crash-worthiness test and still receive five stars,” he said.
A voluntary evaluation isn’t enough for Jessica Hart, whose 5-year-old daughter Allie was struck and killed of their Washington, D.C., neighborhood in 2021. Her petition on Change.org, which demands the NHTSA include a vehicle’s risk of killing a pedestrian in its 5-star rating system, has collected greater than 28,000 signatures.
“She had just began kindergarten,” Hart said of her daughter. “She was riding her bike within the crosswalk, a block from our house in the varsity zone. She was along with her dad. And a Ford Transit van got here as much as the 4-way intersection, and didn’t see her, and just proceeded through the stop sign, and hit and killed her.”
John Capp, the director of auto safety technology, strategy and regulation at General Motors, stressed that there just isn’t enough data about pedestrian traffic deaths to know the causes. He also acknowledged there are tradeoffs in design and said safety emphasis up to now has been on the people inside vehicles.
“Ultimately, there’s less we are able to do when someone is hit outside a vehicle,” he said. “That’s why we’re focused on pedestrian crash avoidance.”
Nearly all latest GM vehicles come equipped with automatic emergency braking, and cameras are recuperating at seeing pedestrians at night, when the vast majority of those fatal crashes occur.
That’s consistent with an NHTSA proposal that might require latest cars and lightweight trucks to have automatic emergency braking in a position to detect pedestrians, including at night, inside three years.
Advances in that technology promise to assist compensate for blind spots, but safety experts say it is simply a part of an answer that requires infrastructure changes, speed limit enforcement and even changes to vehicle design.
“You desire to be getting it from all angles,” Cicchino said. “You desire to prevent the crashes from occurring, but when the crashes occur, you wish them to be less dangerous.”
Hart is now an advocate with the Washington chapter of Families for Protected Streets, a nonprofit working to finish fatal crashes.
“I’ve been speaking out and advocating for protected streets, safer vehicles, alternatives to driving,” Hart said, “just because I just can’t fathom that my daughter was killed — it’s violent and it’s traumatic — and that nothing would change.”
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
