75% More Pedestrians Have Been Killed Since 2009. Giant Trucks and SUVs Are Why

theanonymousone 188 points 12 comments June 23, 2026
www.thedrive.com · View on Hacker News

Discussion Highlights (9 comments)

xnx

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48623347

ChrisArchitect

[dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48623347

nfriedly

The NYT article they link to is worth looking at, and I believe it's free for everyone: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv...

1p09gj20g8h

You can tell by a comment's content whether the user drives a normal car or monster suv/truck lol.

Lonestar1440

Between this and the Headlight situation, it's bad out there. One of those issues where the two-party politics are really toxic and prevent any action. Realistically, we need a new license class for vehicles >3T. This would mean anything from the biggest F-150 on up. It doesn't have to be any harder to get than a motorcycle cert, but we should put some burden on the driver to show that they know how to handle a big vehicle. That and a common sense rule on headlights could get pedestrian deaths back where they were a decade ago.

jmclnx

It is like an arms race :) people who went to large SUVs got better views and a greater false sense of security. Soon everyone was driving the same size SUV. So what happens, people way bigger, the everyone is buying bigger. Rinse and Repeat. Something has to be done to stop this.

wookmaster

My country proves time and time again ego and profits matter more than lives. It’s always so depressing watching it all happen and if you try and point out the cost it’s hand waived away or seen as a personal attack.

josefritzishere

The size of these SUVs is getting absurd.

brg

As part of a large research organization, I was involved in multiple studies about increased traffic fatalities. This work began in 2020, and was part of a larger epidemiological effort. Our findings contradict the headline, but are in agreement with the body of text. The most significant causal factor we found was the rise of mobile device ownership and usage. In fact, mobile device usage is the reason for the inflection of year over year decrease in traffic fatalities in 2012. The article states that 10% of the fatality increase can be attributed to vehicle size. This is far below the actual increase, and while a contributing factor, not the primary one.

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