Single-vehicle, single-pedestrian crash data for 2016-2021 finds hoods a problem.
When Tyndall controlled the data for vehicle body type, the effect of vehicle hood heights became more clear, actually increasing “the partial effect of front-end vehicle height, suggesting high-front-end designs are specifically culpable for higher pedestrian death rates, and this is not driven by other characteristics that are correlated with front-end height,” he writes. In fact, the study estimates that a 4-inch (100-mm) increase in front end height translates to a 28 percent increase in pedestrian death.
Source: Higher vehicle hoods significantly increase pedestrian deaths, study finds | Ars Technica
I’m glad that more people are starting to fuss about this. What I really want to know is how and why it seems that everyone in the automotive industry pivoted in this direction at once. Back when I worked in the market, the tier-1’s worked fairly diligently to disguise and, at least, nominally, not telegraph their design moves, and yet all the US makers have done this, and at basically the same time. It feels conspiratorial, but I can’t imagine a motivation that would account for it.
