It’s sad to me that this type of car is street legal. It’s so clearly unsafe for everyone on the outside of it (other cars and all humans who share the streets). It’s a massive steel battering ram with acceleration that has no purpose other than entertainment and peacocking. Meanwhile I’m pushing my child in a stroller in fear.
I’m glad the NHTSA is going to start actually testing car safety with pedestrian dummies. That’s a start.
The height of the vehicle makes it really difficult for the driver to see obstructions.
Smaller vehicles would see the child and stop. The cyber truck would not.. (just because other trucks and suvs are big, doesn't make the cyber truck safer)
The driver's literally can't see front of the vehicle. 2 weeks ago I was at a mall in Orlando and saw two separate SUV drivers fail to see the 4ft metal traffic pole in the parking lot and just plowed right over it, damaging their vehicle.
Here is my scientific data:
> Whatever their nose shape, pickups, SUVs and vans with a hood height greater than 40 inches are about 45 percent more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes than cars and other vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches or less and a sloping profile, an IIHS study of nearly 18,000 pedestrian crashes found.
- IIHS [0]
> After controlling for crash characteristics, I estimate a 10 cm increase in the vehicle’s front-end height is associated with a 22% increase in fatality risk.
- University of Hawai'i professor [1]
> [A study] found that between 2009 and 2016, pedestrian fatalities increased in nearly every circumstance examined. But among all types of vehicles, SUVs had the biggest spike in single-vehicle fatal pedestrian crashes, and crashes were increasingly likely to involve high-horsepower vehicles.
As someone who has gotten hit by a small car before, I would probably be toast if it was a truck. It just hit me in the legs.
Whenever someone gets killed on the road in my country, it is always someone on a moped getting run over by some truck. And I don't mean a pickup I mean one of those heavy commercial trucks.
I would rather self-driving cars not exist though. Just for the simple reason that it gives the government or corporations a plausibly deniable way to assassinate anyone at the push of a button by hacking their car. And with AI is all sorts of adversarial stuff you can do with image recognition. idk I just dont trust computers in cars
The amount of active safety sensors and monitors on newer/modern vehicles tend to make up for all that. My SUV is so loaded with cameras, sensors, and automated braking systems that it is significantly safer for anything that might be within the classic “blind spots” of larger vehicles than the smaller cars I have driven. My vehicle barks at me and will auto brake if I am anywhere near anything that I might hit. I’d venture to say that I would have to try and intentionally hit something to override the safety features it has.
I’m not a fan of the cyber truck, but the reviews I have seen show that vehicle is also loaded with these safety systems.
The high sharp corners are indeed intimidating when Cybertrucks pass near cyclists.
Paradoxically for a vehicle that's surely received oodles of aerodynamic attention, it at least doesn't seem like a design that might push a pedestrian to the side or lift them up onto a hood, but rather knock them forward (and then under the vehicle).
A Cybertruck crossed in front of me at a traffic light this weekend in my first Cybertruck encounter as a cyclist. I was surprised by my lizard-brain's involuntary concern as the hood's corner passed by.
Edit to add: it seems like a wide vehicle, too, which adds to the effect.
Do you think vehicle safety regulations give pedestrian safety an appropriate amount of consideration, in light of the poor forward visibility of many vehicles that are currently for sale?
Where are you that pedestrian injuries in auto accidents is of greater concern or more prevalent than passenger and driver injuries?
Seems to me that if the bulk of the injuries encountered during a vehicle accident occur to passengers by an order of magnitude greater than pedestrians, it would make sense that design elements that protect passengers even at the expense of pedestrian safety would be a positive overall safety impact.
I’m glad the NHTSA is going to start actually testing car safety with pedestrian dummies. That’s a start.