A Detroit Free Press/USA TODAY NETWORK investigation found that the SUV revolution is a key, leading cause of escalating pedestrian deaths nationwide, which are up 46 percent since 2009.
Almost 6,000 pedestrians died on or along U.S. roads in 2016 alone nearly as many Americans as have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002. Data analyses by the Free Press/USA TODAY and others show that SUVs are the constant in the increase and account for a steadily growing proportion of deaths.
- Federal safety regulators have known for years that SUVs, with their higher front-end profile, are at least twice as likely as cars to kill the walkers, joggers and children they hit, yet have done little to reduce deaths or publicize the danger. - A federal proposal to factor pedestrians into vehicle safety ratings has stalled, with opposition from some automakers. - The rising tide of pedestrian deaths is primarily an urban plague that kills minorities at a disproportionate rate.
- It is most prominent in cities both in the industrial heartland and warm-weather spots on the nations coasts and Sun Belt. Detroit; Newark, New Jersey; St. Louis; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Miami, San Bernardino, California, Birmingham, Alabama; Tampa; Fayetteville, North Carolina; and Phoenix had the 10 highest per-capita death rates among cities with populations of at least 200,000 in 2009-16.
Vehicle safety measures, which the federal government says could save hundreds of pedestrian lives every year, are available but not widely employed by some automakers nor are they required.
Along with automakers, cities can take action that saves pedestrians. New York City, for example, cut such deaths nearly in half in just four years. The need for steps such as lower speed limits, more midblock crosswalks and better lighting grows in urgency as automakers move strongly toward truck and SUV production.
SUV sales topped sedans in 2014; pickups and SUVs now account for 60 percent of new vehicle sales. Ford recently announced plans to discontinue U.S. sales of most passenger cars, while Fiat Chrysler has already done so.
It might seem obvious that a larger vehicle can cause more damage in a crash, whether to a smaller car or an unprotected skull, but some researchers have been hesitant to assign blame for the spike in pedestrian deaths to Americas love of SUVs, in part because various factors are at play in every crash.
Each of the 5,987 pedestrians who died in 2016, according to federal data, had his or her own tragic ending.
Many who died were males, were jaywalking or had alcohol in their systems on multilane roads in urban areas at night. Some might have been distracted, just as vehicle drivers could have been, by texting or talking on cellphones, although data is lacking to quantify distraction.
Some of these other factors also saw increases in recent years, but the SUV component stands out.
Data and safety experts verified that long-standing common factors in pedestrian deaths, such as alcohol and jaywalking at night, did not account for the growth.
A key factor consistently backed by data is growing involvement of higher-profile, blunt-nosed SUVs.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety calculated an 81 percent increase in single-vehicle pedestrian fatalities involving SUVs in 2009-16. The Free Press/USA TODAY analysis of the same federal data, counting vehicles that struck and killed pedestrians rather than the number of people killed, showed a 69 percent increase in SUV involvement. The assessment also showed increases each year in the proportion of fatal pedestrian crashes involving the popular vehicles.