America’s new vehicles preserve getting larger and taller. A brand new invoice launched in Congress would impose limits on that progress.
Entrance Blind Spots a Rising Security Danger
A current Client Stories examine discovered that the typical hood top of pickup vans elevated by 11% between 2000 and 2020. That creates a entrance blind spot – an space in entrance of the automobile the motive force can’t see.
“Full-sized pickup vans — that are the most well-liked fashions in the marketplace — can have a blind zone 11 toes longer than a automotive, and seven toes longer than an SUV,” the group says.
Researchers preserve documenting the alarming dangers. An insurance coverage trade examine from 2022 discovered that SUVs and pickup vans are considerably extra probably than vehicles to hit pedestrians when making a flip. They’re additionally extra more likely to kill them after they hit them.
One other insurance coverage trade examine discovered SUVs and vans a higher hazard to cyclists. A taller automobile, researchers discovered, is extra more likely to hit a bicycle owner increased on their physique and push them underneath its wheels.
In an evaluation of almost 18,000 crashes revealed final yr, the Insurance coverage Institute for Freeway Security concluded, “No matter their nostril form, pickups, SUVs, and vans with a hood top higher than 40 inches are about 45% extra more likely to trigger fatalities” than decrease automobiles.
However taller automobiles create a way of security for the motive force – they let drivers see over everybody else of their more and more tall automobiles. So long as customers need that, automakers are incentivized to maintain elevating automobiles.
Except the federal government stops it.
New Invoice Would Impose Limits
Final Friday, The Avenue reviews, a member of Congress “launched a invoice requiring federal requirements for vehicle hood top and visibility to guard pedestrians and different weak individuals utilizing the roadways.”
Rep. Mary Homosexual Scanlon (D-PA) proposed the Pedestrian Safety Act. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) has signed on to co-sponsor.
Most Payments Fail. However This Is the Second of its Form.
We not often trouble to report on a member of Congress introducing a invoice as a result of it means little. Most payments get launched and die instantly, by no means advancing to a committee listening to.
Within the 117th Congress, which met from 2021 by means of 2023, members launched greater than 15,000 payments. Simply 365 – fewer than 3% – handed into legislation.
Scanlon shouldn’t be a member of Home management or the Home Power and Commerce Committee that may shepherd the invoice by means of its subsequent steps. That’s usually an indication {that a} invoice will fail.
However the invoice mirrors an effort within the higher hours began by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in 2022. Client Stories threw its weight behind that invoice, urging its subscribers to jot down to Congress to push for its passage.
The hassle failed. However its rebirth means that the power behind it stays.
For her half, Scanlon tells NPR she’s an SUV driver, the proprietor of a Chevrolet Suburban. “Having a good-sized automobile is useful. Nevertheless it does seem that there are issues we are able to do with respect to design that would cut back the blind zones on these bigger automobiles,” she stated.