Ford announced last month it’s dropping most of its passenger cars to make more SUVs. Great—now more of us pedestrians will die:
As the number of pedestrian deaths continues to climb nationwide, a recent report highlighted one likely contributor that’s only likely to get worse: a growing number of fatal SUV-pedestrian crashes.
Deadly SUV crashes are increasing at a far higher rate than crashes with any other type of vehicle. Fatal SUV-pedestrian collisions increased by 81 percent between 2009 and 2016, compared to 46 percent for all vehicles.
Fatal collisions with cars went up 41 percent in the same time, while they increased 32 percent with trucks and 15 percent with minivans and vans [Daniel C. Vock, “Pedestrian Deaths Are Rising. One Big Reason? SUVs,” Governing, 2018.05.14].
SUVs have more mass and higher, blunter profiles, meaning they pack more of a punch on us ambulatory and cyclatory meat machines.
The Koch Brothers are coming to town later this month to tell us that “not using fossil fuels will ultimately be disastrous for humanity….” The move from passenger cars to SUVs is increases the chances that individuals making that choice now will meet that disaster before the oil runs out.
By all means, let us as a nation (now that fuel economy standards have been scrapped – opening the way for more, larger cars and demanding more gasoline use) be sure to fully-fund the nations of the mid-east. Ensuring their wealth has had dire consequences for US policy and interests in the past, but let’s forge ahead with it again and see if it is different this time.
Melania will not hold our president’s and, Im sure an oil minister form Saudi Arabia will.
Bad domestic energy policy IS bad foreign policy.
o, it would seem that the only person in Washington that really knows what they are doing is Vladimir Putin. As we drift, we can remember the good old days when we had 50 states with names we could pronounce. South Dakota will now be Северная Дакота or Severnaya Dakota, where Russian will soon be the official language. So in the upcoming elections, We can thank NOem by saying NO. We can thank Jackley by saying NO way. We can thank Krebs/Opie by saying NO more lickspittle and that goes for Tapioca as well.
With gases going up I wonder if Ford will rethink this. I have a 2017 Fusion Hybrid and I get 40 mph.
I think Ford is making a mistake
O, we are witnessing a marketing coup for the Koch brothers. They’ve pushed us to a tipping point where enough people have chosen to drive big honking vehicles that they have scared enough of the rest of the market away from sensible smaller cars to impose higher fuel consumption on everybody. They have tricked carbuyers into thinking that fuel economy is really dangerous.