The Truck Stops Here

As usual, I will add my disclaimer that I’m not talking about ordinary pickups that are used for actual work. I’m talking about the gratuitously large, posh consumer models that suburbanites and cowboy cosplayers use to haul air 99% of the time.

I rarely link to the NYT these days because I believe they’ve failed to hold the line against authoritarian ideologies. Nonetheless, they recently had a good investigative piece on the increase in pedestrian deaths due to blind spots and grille height. You can watch a short video summary of the article here.

The full article, which I now can no longer view, had a terrifying diagram of all the massive blind spots, which result from both vehicle front height and the thick beams called “A-pillars” used to support the roof of the cab.

Vehicle fronts are now so tall they hit pedestrians in the chest, knocking them down to the ground and gruesomely running over them instead of having the pedestrian fall onto the hood (ah, the good old days).