Gee, there was no way they would have been able to change this…
I propose we trick our fellow Americans by making smol cars offroady enough to embarrass an F150:
Look at them! Who would want a rolling brick over that?
And the Ford Focus is already mostly there.
My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do
My old job had me going to a lot of places in very bad conditions and off road. I always drove an audi or a subaru and watched the lifted trucks spin out / go in the ditch / flip over / get stuck / and generally have a poor showing.
Concur.
love this
these look dope af
And functional! You’re looking at Dakar rally champions, and hatchbacks so unreasonably fast on dirt, their league was banned.
This is what actual off-roaders look like.
Meanwhile in the UK pedestrian deaths are down despite the number of miles walked increasing.
The UK has among the lowest road deaths in the world.
I’m not quite sure why that is (although anecdotally as a pedestrian, you seem to be treated like royalty in the UK in comparison to other places I’ve been - so much as glance at a zebra crossing and cars come to an immediate stop).
Given how UK drivers often use summer tyres year-round, the weather is dark and cool, and the roads are usually damp, you’d logically expect poor results, but we see the opposite.
Perhaps it’s due to the rather strict yearly MOT safety check? Who knows.
The more people walking, the fewer people driving. Makes enough sense to me.
Hood heights. You have pickup trucks that have to have a front camera now.
And mechanics now use stepladders.
FFS guys just buy a strap on dildo, she’ll never know the difference.
I want to know how many are related to drivers blinded by LED headlights. I’ve seen (and been a part of) dozens of near hits in the past few years because of this.
edit: Let me just be very clear about this — if you think that the issue is only aftermarket headlights or modified vehicles, you are mistaken. you can look at pretty much any modern Toyota or Subaru or Mazda or pickup with LED headlights and see that the low beams are just as bright as the high beams, just aimed lower. and that aim lower does not matter when the low beams are shining in somebody’s face, which happens often because roads are not level and flat. and you know where this is often the case? intersections. intersections often are raised in the middle, which means the car on the other side is angled slightly upwards, which means their low beam LED headlights are blasting the person on the other side in the face, even with their “but much cutoff is correct excuse”.
the simple inexcusable unavoidable fact is that headlights that blind people like this with this frequency are simply bad design and dangerous, and yes they also make the driver an asshole for having that vehicle and treating other people like this. like how would people feel if I just went around blasting them in the face with a flashlight that bright while walking around. they’d be livid. this is literally not any different, you’re not special just because you bought a 4,000 lb vehicle that has dangerous features.
It is insane how bright they are now and due to LEDs appear as point sources. Even if they are adjusted correctly for flat roads as soon as you get to any ripples in the road now they are aimed right into your eyes. For some reason insurers and the gov don’t recognize this problem.
If you have powered mirrors, reflect the light back into their eyes…works great
doesn’t work well in my experience. now I typically just leave my mirrors all the way out and up when driving at night, so the headlights never hit my eyes from them
I can see everything I need to from the rearview and turning my head. it’s not like you can see anything using the side mirrors at night when somebody with LED headlights is behind you anyways, all you see is a giant flare and you can’t even tell if it’s in your lane or the next lane or how close it is
LED headlights are literally making the roads less safe by decreasing visibility and awareness
Bigger vehicles with high hoods too.
Whoever invented LED bulbs for cars needs to be blacklisted from the auto industry
There are plenty of cars with stock LED headlights and proper cutoffs, so they’re less blinding than traditional headlights
It’s aftermarket “illegal” LEDs, LEDs that are misaligned or started at a bad height, and way too many drivers who never turn off their high beams. Yet another safety rule we only pay lip service to, resulting in unnecessary deaths
I swear some people really must not know you can toggle between normal headlights and high beams.
I thought the same and then got a recent-ish car that had an “automatic” setting to dim or engage the high beams. It’s terrible. Taking tight corners on a dark rural road, they dim because the sensor detects the car’s own headlight reflection off of the trees, defeating the purpose.
So, I think a bunch of dipshit city folk leave the high beams on (in the city where they aren’t fucking necessary) and let the “automatic” setting handle it, poorly.
I learned how to drive in a rural area where using the brights is normal when you get out of town, with the caveat that you have to pay attention and switch back when cresting a hill or coming around a corner.
Edit: “creating” -> “cresting”
doesn’t matter when lowbeams are just as bright as high beams and aimed at somebody’s face, though
Some people also don’t know you can set your headlights to “auto” so you aren’t driving at twilight with your headlights off.
This may be another case of needing technology to rescue people who are just that dumb.
- Auto-high beams have been getting better over the years to the point that humans can no longer claim to be more responsive. They just work. Every time. And never forget
- my car has active matrix headlights and it’s freaky to drive at night with the high beams on and watch a dark spot follow surrounding cars
In ten years we’ll all forget how to toggle off high beams, as it will just work most of the time. But at the same time we’ll be blinded less as the machine never forgets
auto high beams do not work every time.
I am routinely blinded by them when people drive through my neighborhood at night and I’m walking my dog, or when I’m biking to the store. and this is in a neighborhood with street lights where high beams are completely and utterly not required in the first place at 40 km/h.
Every attempt to make something idiot creates a bigger idiot
While I totally see the point this is already “solved” in that they shouldn’t have high beams on in the first place.
Pedestrians and cyclists are tough because drivers don’t think to toggle their high beams, even If they see pedestrians and auto-high beams aren’t any better. We’re out of luck
In my neighborhood we have very narrow streets and where there are sidewalks not pavement right next to the street. I never thought I’d appreciate the small amount of separation a standard sidewalk give but it actually does make a difference in how blinded your u are by traffic. But the bottom Line is similar to yours: this is a high density neighborhood with streetlights where no one should use high beams to begin with. Realistically there are several Poorly placed houses whose owners are probably even more frustrated
Yah, I drove a rental with these for the first time and didn’t like it. It left the high beams on far longer than I would’ve manually and when I tried to manually switch them off it would turn them back on without me knowing.
I just bought a 2012 as my ‘new’ vehicle because I don’t want to deal with any stupid tech issues like that
hell, I don’t even like standard traction control - if I press the accelerator, I want the wheels to get power. I’ve been stuck slowly crossing in the middle of an intersection too many times because ESC ‘helped out’ and cut power to the wheels. no mf just spin them until they get to the hard surface below the snowslush
incorrect. cutoff just means it isn’t blinding on flat level ground. which roads and streets are very much not
I’ll take being briefly blinded as a car hits a pothole over ten terrifying seconds of zero visibility as a monstrous vehicle careens toward me and I have no idea where the street is or what’s in it
see the thing is we don’t need to put up with either of those situations, neither is acceptable
They need to make them frosted so they disperse the light and they need to design headlights that are focused downwards so they can’t hit your eyes directly.
Those are aftermarket lights, or people with lifted pickups. Lights are designed to work at a set distance off the road, when people lift the truck, everything is now hi beams.
The problem is not the industry, it’s a lack of safety laws and enforcement. North America does not safety inspect vehicles.
lol it’s not just aftermarket or modified stuff dude, look at any new stock Subaru/Toyota/Mazda. blinding
The law is a max of 2400/3600 lumens.
Aftermarket LEDs are all illegal, but police do not enforce. Again, no safety inspections.
I think this is the biggest issue here…
A truck drove by me the other day that was so high up and had such a big body there is no way the driver could see anything 10 feet around the truck in all directions.
When you need a step ladder to get into your truck maybe it is too high for public roads.
Great stuff. Big car go splat.
Keep selling these massive juggernaut trucks. There is no reason for them beyond emotional driven buying and profits. Then there is the matter of low license barriers, poor vehicle maintenance, and a lack of regular driving fitness testing. The US is also pedestrian unfriendly. I have to drive almost everywhere since there is very little within walking distance to my home. If I do try to walk there are stretches with no sidewalks and very sketchy intersections I have to cross.
feels like the tone of this title is forgetting about the shareholders, which I do not take kindly to
The article doesn’t talk about the fact that the increase is far greater in dark conditions, which is not readily explained by the changes to car design the article discusses.
This article talks more about that, and the linked report suggests population trends have contributed to more people walking at night along arterial roads with poor pedestrian infrastructure.
To be clear, daytime fatalities are up by about 40% in the interval shown, which is much more than the increase in population. Increasing vehicle size and hood height are real problems too, but don’t seem to be the biggest factor.
Daytime fatalities are up 26.5% on this graph. Not good, but not 40%. Population growth was 8.5% over that period
There are sidewalks on both sides of the street in my neighborhood. People are walking 2 abreast in the street at night and joggers are commonly running about 4 feet into the street from the curb.
Regardless of the article’s findings, some people are just oblivious.
What is the condition of your sidewalks? My sidewalks are uneven and a neighborhood grandma who I walk with still prefers the street even though my street is not well lit. Uneven sidewalks are a tripping hazard that can be avoided by walking in the street. Her vision isn’t great so a paved stretch of road is just easier to walk with a flashlight.
Mine are pristine, I use them all the time and they are equal or better than the road. The idiots around me walk on the fucking road like chickens. Fuck em.
Top tip: don’t hit them.
I knew someone who did that because the sidewalks were too uneven. She had bad ankles and kept rolling them trying to walk in the sidewalk
Since pandemic I’ve fallen twice because of bad sidewalks. It’s embarrassing as shit
This is an accepted part of the economy. Our leaders have decided us dying for private profit is fine. Now add up all the accepted deaths per year from every product and service and see how many of us are sacrificed for profit.
But I need a massive truck to carry groceries and 2 kids.
/s
I need a 14 ft SUV to carry an 8 lb baby.
It’s literally style. Those pickup lifts often ruin durability and off-road capability.
It’s hilariously stupid. First, they lift the trucks to pretend they off road, then they have to put wide wheels and spacers because the idiotwagon is tippy, which sprays water everywhere, then finally the suspension breaks because of geometry.
Two days ago near me. She was 75 and could not see the sidewalk or the building in her Barbie Boomer truck.
How the fuck does a 75 yr old woman even climb into this thing? She must need a stepstool to do it, and I’ve seen people do exactly that.
you can see the stepladder under the door, comes with the lift kit.
Pretty hilarious to see some dude fall to the pavement trying to get out, or watch someone have to make 3-4 tries to get in. Elevators are next.
My wife is a medical coder for the ED, for more than a dozen hospitals and says the overwhelming area for vehicle fatalities she codes is intersections crossing in front of traffic. Particularly trying to make the yellow. The plural of anecdote isn’t data mind you, but she’s been at this for 15+ years and has a pretty good sense of it.
My similar anecdote is people taking a right on red without stopping (or apparently looking), and would probably be included in those statistics. Since there may be a pedestrian or cyclist just around the corner you can’t see until you’re at the intersection, stopping and looking is critical for safety
I used to be a proponent of right on red, because who wants to be stuck at a dead intersection? If you only consider cars, it’s a nice efficiency gain. But now non-car users like pedestrians and cyclists don’t have a safe time to cross the intersection. And it’s so much worse now that people turning right on red seem to have forgotten the parts about “after coming to a complete stop” and “yielding to other traffic”
For sure! When driving downtown this is what freaks me out most while driving around. Last thing I want to do is hit someone.
When in NYC and Makati it shocked me to see how flagrant people are with just crossing the street wherever. Two places I’ll never drive, I’m not a good enough driver to not hit people in places like that.
At least in Manhattan, traffic is usually slow enough that pedestrians are at least as fast. Also they tend to go as a crowd. I’ll usually wait for the light but when hundreds of other pedestrians swarm into the street I figure we’re fairly visible and safe.
I would never drive in Manhattan simply because it’s the slowest and most frustrating way to get around. I used to drive around queens when I had a girlfriend there but we’d always take a train around the city, and I’m sure traffic has only gotten worse. It’s just not worth it
Those are pretty staggering numbers considering the population has only grown by maybe 12% in that same timeframe.
