This article was originally published by the Halifax Examiner on October 24, 2024. It is the first of a three-part series. Part 2 is available here, and part 3 here.
Why this series
Just after the turn of the millennium, in 2002, American journalist Keith Bradsher wrote a book called High and Mighty. SUVs: the most dangerous vehicles and how they got that way.
The book begins: “Sport utility vehicles have taken over America’s roads during the last decade, and are on their way to taking over the world’s roads. The four-wheel-drive vehicles offer a romantic vision of outdoor adventure to deskbound baby boomers.”
Bradsher continues:
Yet the proliferation of SUVs has created huge problems. Their safe image is an illusion. They roll over too easily, killing and injuring occupants at an alarming rate, and they are dangerous to other road users, inflicting catastrophic damage to cars that they hit and posing a lethal threat to pedestrians. Their “green” image is also a mirage, because they contribute far more to smog and global warming … The success of SUVs comes partly from extremely cynical design and marketing decisions by automakers and poorly drafted government regulations. The manufacturers’ market researchers have decided that millions of baby boomers want an adventurous image and care almost nothing about putting others at risk to achieve it, so they have told auto engineers to design vehicles accordingly. The result has been unusually tall, menacing vehicles like the Dodge Durango, with its grille resembling a jungle cat’s teeth and its flared fenders that look like bulging muscles in a savage jaw…
Cadillac, a division of General Motors, rushed the Escalade onto the market in 1998, a little over a year after the Lincoln Navigator went on sale and was an instant hit. To make the Escalade, GM essentially put lots of chrome and optional equipment on a GMC Yukon Tahoe SUV. The Tahoe, in turn, uses the underbody and a lot of other parts from the full-size Chevrolet Silverado pickup truck. So Cadillac was essentially taking a [US]$20,000 work truck, tricking it up with lots of chrome, leather seats, and a fancy stereo, and selling it for close to [US]$50,000. This is how automakers have earned enormous profits on full-sized SUVs.
That was 22 years ago.
Since then, everything Bradsher predicted has occurred, possibly even exceeding his gloomy forecast. The vehicles have grown much bigger and even more menacing, and far more numerous, marketed to more and younger demographics. Compared with the front ends of today’s pickups, the grille of the Dodge Durango of yesteryear looks as harmless as a kitten’s nose. In 2024, the best-selling vehicles in the U.S. were the Ford F-series, the Chevy Silverado, and the Ram pickup trucks, with some starting at over $100,000.
In 2023, for every regular passenger car sold in Canada, six trucks — primarily larger pickups, SUVs, and vans — were sold. The same is true in Nova Scotia.
Across North America, road safety and environmental groups have been blowing the whistle on this vehicle bloat for years, and numerous studies show that big vehicles threaten lives and living environments. Even The Economist recently ran a front-page story about big cars and pickups killing Americans. But so far in Canada, regulators don’t seem to be listening.
This series of three articles looks at what is driving the trend for ever bigger and higher pickups and SUVs, and the many reasons this is bad for people, roads, cities, the environment, and the climate. We start by looking at the risks these oversize vehicles pose to other road users.
Joan Baxter Today’s SUVs are larger and higher than are pickup trucks of yesteryear, as illustrated by this photo taken in Vancouver in 2024.
The day I was struck by an SUV driver
It was mid-morning so rush hour was over and there wasn’t a lot of traffic on the streets of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. I was headed east on Hawthorne Street, crossing Prince Albert Road. The reassuring pedestrian light — that striding white figure — was illuminated. I was more than halfway across the road when something struck me — hard — knocking me to the ground. Shocked and hurting, I looked up to see a large white vehicle pulling away and continuing its left turn before pulling over on the far side of Prince Albert Road.
I hauled myself to my feet, cradling a painful elbow, and limped across the road to speak to the person behind the wheel, a woman in her 50s or 60s.
I don’t know what I was expecting.
An apology, maybe?
Instead, her first words to me were, in an accusatory tone, “You were in my blind spot.”
I was so taken aback that I replied meekly that I would be okay, I didn’t think anything was broken. She didn’t apologize and wasted no time hopping back into her big SUV, and pulling quickly away.
In hindsight, I realize I was still in shock and not thinking at all clearly. I should have at least told her I was hurting, asked for her name and contact, and registered the make of her large white SUV (sport utility vehicle).
Although I nursed my bruised arm, knee, and ego for several weeks, I count myself very lucky not to have suffered any serious injury that morning.
Alas, many pedestrians struck by large SUVs and pickups are not nearly so lucky.
And as it turns out, when the driver said she had not seen me in the crosswalk as she made a left turn because I was in her “blind spot,” that was probably true.
New normal: ‘arms race’ on the roads
A 2022 study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that “SUVs, pickups and vans are more likely to strike pedestrians when making turns than cars, relative to when they are traveling straight at intersections. This finding suggests that visibility while turning may be an issue for these bigger vehicles.”
The “arms race” for ever bigger passenger vehicles — SUVs and light trucks — on roads in North America began more than two decades ago. Even then, researchers in the U.S. were finding that the larger pickups were “extremely deadly.”
Since then, the vehicle bloat has continued apace.
Between 2000 and 2008, “the average pickup grew 11% taller and became 24% heavier.”
Since then, they’ve become even bigger, a trend that has been dubbed “autobesity.”
A 2021 report from the Canadian environmental research and advocacy group Équiterre noted that “the average dimensions (height, width, length) of light-duty trucks and cars continue to increase, thereby transforming the entire automobile fleet.” The number of these vehicles has tripled in Canada since 1990.
In the past two decades, SUVs and pickups have been flying off the car lots, while the sales of regular-sized cars have decreased.
In 2010 in Canada, 874,285 trucks — minivans, sport-utility vehicles, light and heavy trucks, vans and buses — were sold in Canada, only slightly surpassing the 710,214 cars sold in the country. By 2023, however, sales of trucks outnumbered those of cars by a factor six to one; while just 253,453 cars were sold, the number of light trucks was 1.5 million.
In other words, sales of these larger vehicles accounted for more than 80% of all vehicles sold in Canada in 2023.
Joan Baxter Chevy “High Country” pickup for sale in a car lot.
The figures for Nova Scotia are similar. In 2010, car sales (24,256) still outnumbered truck sales (23,387). By 2023, truck sales in the province had gone way up, to 35,496, and car sales had plummeted to just 6,712.
It’s not just the number of large vehicles on the roads. It’s also their shape, weight and height.
Automakers profit from fuzzy categories
There is no one clear definition for “light trucks,” as Équiterre explains in detail in its 2021 report, ‘The rise of light-duty trucks in Canada.’
“Most of the terms used to describe and classify the vehicles are determined by the automobile industry, which does not provide a clear definition of SUVs and other light-duty trucks,” says the report.
Pickup trucks, it notes, are “increasingly difficult to distinguish from other vehicles brought to market,” which causes problems, and confusion, when it comes to regulating them.
“From a government standpoint, classification system disparities exist not only between the federal and provincial governments, but within the federal government itself. Finally, the fact that the responsibilities of each level of government towards the automotive industry are unclear makes the governance of light-duty vehicles all the more complex,” according to the Équiterre report.
“Maintaining this ambiguity benefits the automobile industry, as it allows for various marketing tactics.”
But there is no ambiguity about the oversize risks that oversize SUVs and pickups — which generally fall into the category of “light trucks” for regulators in the United States and Canada — pose to pedestrians.
Putting kids at risk
Valerie Smith is director of road safety and safe mobility programs with Parachute, a Canadian charity that works to prevent injuries. In an interview, Smith said research has shown that it can be more difficult for drivers in larger personal vehicles to see pedestrians, especially when they’re making left turns.
“And that puts our kids who are just trying to walk to school or those who might be a little slower even getting across the road at risk,” Smith noted.
Smith said Parachute advocates for vulnerable road users, including pedestrians and cyclists, and noted that the most vulnerable of all are small children, older adults, and those with mobility aids who are using intersections.
“And the bigger vehicles do, in fact, make it trickier for pedestrians and cyclists, and we want them to be able to use the road safely,” Smith added.
Oversized vehicles, oversized danger
A new report from the United States National Safety Council says this of pickups and large SUVs: “Their weight, poor visibility from the driver’s seat, and high, flat front ends prove far more lethal, especially to pedestrians, than smaller passengers cars,” and “some popular pickup trucks have a blind zone that can obscure the view of almost a dozen young children in front of the vehicle.”
Kids and Car Safety has researched the blind spots for drivers of very large SUVs and pickups, and provides terrifying graphics such as this one.
A 2024 report on the dangers of oversized vehicles from Canada’s Coalition to Reduce Auto Size Hazards (C.R.A.S.H.), lays out the problem in simple but stark terms:
The design features that make pickups and large SUVs more dangerous—and distinguish them from dangers inherent in all motor vehicles—include driver blind spots, vehicle size and weight, and the high, blunt vehicle front-end design, which changes the point of impact with a human.
The large front ends of many pickups are now so high that drivers sometimes cannot see pedestrians directly in front of their vehicles. Putting drivers higher up also makes pedestrians less visible during turning manoeuvres by drivers. Specific design features (including broader roof support pillars, necessitated by excessive vehicle weight to preserve the safety of vehicle occupants during rollovers) create larger blind zones that may make it more difficult for drivers to see pedestrians that are beside them and, therefore, more likely for collisions to occur.
Consumer Reports has also done numerous studies detailing these risks to pedestrians in the U.S., and is calling on automakers to fix the front-end blind spots in pickups and SUVs.
Joan Baxter The front end of this new GMC pickup is almost shoulder-level for this man who stands 1.85 metres.
Bigger, blunter, and more brutal
A 2023 study from the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) looked at nearly 18,000 pedestrian crashes, and found:
Vehicles with especially tall front ends are most dangerous to pedestrians, but a blunt profile makes medium-height vehicles deadly too …Whatever their nose shape, pickups, SUVs and vans with a hood height greater than 40 inches [102 centimetres] are about 45 percent more likely to cause fatalities in pedestrian crashes than cars and other vehicles with a hood height of 30 inches [76 centimetres] or less and a sloping profile … However, among vehicles with hood heights between 30 and 40 inches, a blunt, or more vertical, front end increases the risk to pedestrians.
IIHS president David Harkey described these front ends as “aggressive-looking” and the vehicles as “pretty intimidating.”
Joan Baxter New pickups and SUVs are not just large, many also have extremely aggressive and intimidating front ends.
The problem is up front
A 2024 study by University of Hawaii professor Justin Tyndall, published in Economics of Transportation, estimated that “a 10 cm increase in the vehicle’s front-end height is associated with a 22% increase in fatality risk.” Tyndall calculated that a cap on front-end vehicle heights of 1.25 m would reduce annual US pedestrian deaths by 509.
While cars tend to have front ends well under 1.25 metres, Tyndall noted that 70% of light trucks — SUVs and pickups — have front ends over 1.25 metres.
And while people inside these lofty, big vehicles may feel safer themselves, the SUVs and pickups put those on the outside at higher risk.
A 2022 study in the U.S., published in the Journal of Safety Risk, found that children are eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared with children struck by a passenger car.
These findings from the U.S. are equally alarming for Canadians.
The vehicles sold in the two countries are “much the same given the highly integrated nature of the North American automative market,” according to the comprehensive Équiterre 2021 report, ‘The rise of light-duty trucks in Canada.’
The Ontario Ministry of Transportation has found that “a pedestrian involved in a crash with a light truck is 3 to 4 times more likely to die than in a collision with a conventional car,” notes the C.R.A.S.H. report.
Piétons Québec graphic summarizing how and why SUVs and pickups are a threat to road safety.
Like ‘a brick wall’
In an interview, Becky Mueller, senior researcher with the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, explained that the risk to pedestrians from left-turning pickups and large SUVs relates to the “pillar area” at the front of the vehicle. Bigger and heavier vehicles require larger pillars, she said, causing blind spots, and the pedestrian can be walking at a speed that keeps them in the blind spot caused by a pillar or even a large rearview mirror on the left-turning vehicle.
Then, if the vehicle does hit the pedestrian head on, because it is taller than a regular sedan, it may mean the tall blunt end strikes the pedestrian’s head, making the collision more dangerous than it would be if they were struck by a smaller vehicle with a sloping hood.
Being hit by one of these tall pickups, Mueller said, is “like being hit by a brick wall.” She explained the difference between being hit by a regular car and a vehicle with a tall and blunt front end:
You’d just be hit by the front end of the vehicle [in the case of a large SUV or pickup] and then thrown to the ground, which is actually a more deadly scenario because you risk then being run over by the vehicle. It’s like a direct impact with your head for those big vehicles, which means the entire the speed of the vehicle is the speed at which the head is being hit. If you’re rolling up the [sloped hood of a] car, you’re losing some momentum as you go, and you’ve got a more indirect impact, which is better.
But these risks for pedestrians and other road users are not taken into account by safety tests for vehicles, at least not in North America.
The U.S. group Kids and Car Safety stages photographs to illustrate the blind spots caused by the blunt and high front end design of large SUVs.
Only people inside vehicles count in North America
Mueller said that in Europe, there is a big difference in how regulators test vehicle safety. Since 2000, she explained that unlike North American regulators who test only risks to people inside a vehicle, in Europe they assess the risks that vehicles pose both for those inside and outside.
“So [in Europe] they’ve had over 20 years of vehicle manufacturers making advancements towards being more protective to pedestrians,” said Mueller. Thus European regulators have data on how to reduce head and leg injuries with vehicle design, which explains why in Europe, large SUVs and pickups are uncommon.
“It’s a shame we’ve been lagging behind for so long,” Mueller added, noting that the test protocols have not accounted for the size and shape of these newer, large vehicles.
contributed Becky Mueller, senior researcher with the U.S. Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
U.S. looking at new testing protocols
However, Mueller notes that in the U.S., the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now proposing a new rule that would bring in testing protocols for these vehicles that would include pedestrian head protection, and conform with global technical regulations.
On Sept. 9, 2024, the NHTSA announced that it would “establish a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard requiring new passenger vehicles be designed to reduce the risk of serious-to-fatal injuries in child and adult pedestrian crashes.”
The new rule would apply to “multipurpose passenger vehicles (trucks, SUVs, crossovers and vans)” weighing 10,000 pounds [4,536 kilograms] or less.
“The proposed standard would establish test procedures simulating a head-to-hood impact and performance requirements to minimize the risk of head injury,” says the NHTSA. It estimates the new standard would save 67 lives a year, and align with global standards for pedestrian head protection.
In November 2024, the NHTSA finalized the updates to the standards, the “5-Star Safety Ratings program—known as the New Car Assessment Program, or NCAP,” which “emphasizes several new and emerging safety technologies and vehicle safety features that will help protect people both inside and outside a vehicle.”
‘Significant step’ but not enough
Mueller thinks the pedestrian protection standards should go further, and expand testing to see what happens when other parts of the vehicles strike other parts of the human body, as is done in Europe.
“About 40% of pedestrians that we see in our data sets have torso injuries, injuries to their chest and their pelvis that no testing is currently addressing,” said Mueller. “But those injuries account for a large portion of the fatal crashes, and they’re not being addressed at all.”
“I think that is unfortunate because we’re missing out on an opportunity to save some of the people from some of the most dangerous vehicles,” she added.
David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT mobility lab who writes frequently about vehicle bloat, is cautiously optimistic about the change. He calls it a “significant step towards addressing the crisis of killer cars.”
“Should the proposal become law, hulking SUVs and pickups would face particular challenges passing NHTSA’s mandatory tests,” Zipper wrote in October 2024. “Some cars would have to get a little bit smaller.”
But that modest proposal is limited to the U.S.
Meanwhile, in Canada …
I sent a list of detailed questions to Transport Canada about the new safety standards and testing for large pickups and SUVs in the United States. I asked if something similar is being looked at in Canada, given the proven risks that large pickups and SUVs pose for pedestrians and cyclists, and if not, why not.
A spokesperson for Transport Canada sent a statement, part of which reads:
In Canada, road safety is a shared responsibility among all levels of government, industry partners and all road users. Under the Motor Vehicle Safety Act (MVSA), Transport Canada regulates the safety performance of motor vehicles and equipment to strengthen road safety in Canada.
While vehicle size and design are important factors in determining safety, risks are examined from an approach that similarly accounts for the driver, vehicle, road, traffic and vulnerable road users’ safety factors. The department has been conducting ongoing research to measure blind spots on different vehicles and to examine safety risks. This includes large trucks, buses, pick-up trucks, and SUVs.
Transport Canada is also evaluating the latest vehicle safety features. Specifically, this includes testing the performance of automatic emergency braking systems (AEB) … Furthermore, Transport Canada conducted a consultation with regards to creating standards for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) including blind spot detection/warning and AEB systems.
The Canada Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (CMVSS) are highly aligned with the [U.S.] NHTSA Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). Transport Canada is exploring the adoption of pedestrian head protection requirements in the future. However, for harmonization purposes, it is necessary for the United States final rule be issued before Transport Canada can determine if full alignment will be sought, or if slight deviations will be necessary to account for our Canadian regulatory regime.
In other words, it seems Canada’s regulators are going to do nothing except hope new auto tech will save us, and only look at new safety tests when the U.S. does.
‘What if it was my kid?’
Albert Koehl is a Toronto lawyer and cycling advocate and author, and also a coordinator of C.R.A.S.H., the coalition of Canadian organizations working to bring the problems of ever-larger and higher SUVs and pickups to the attention of the public and policy-makers.
contributed Albert Koehl, a Toronto lawyer and coordinator with C.R.A.S.H. (Coalition to Reduce Auto Size Hazards)
“We’re dealing with a powerful industry,” Koehl said in a telephone interview. “Federal transportation can’t or doesn’t want to take this on. Provincial politicians don’t. The best short-term success will probably be at the municipal level. But it’s an issue of very high public importance, community importance, public importance, because we’re talking about road safety.”
“It’s going to take a big community mobilization,” Koehl said. So far, the coalition (C.R.A.S.H.) he coordinates has no members in Nova Scotia or the Maritimes, but he’s hoping that will change.
Valerie Smith of Parachute hopes that people buying the big vehicles will also start recognizing the dangers to people on the outside:
We all have friends, family, older parents, younger children who are using the roads and using intersections while they’re not in cars. So we are trying to get people to start thinking “What if that was my kid? What are the implications of these big vehicles on people I know, people I care about?”
End Part 1.
Safety is just one of the problems with the large SUVs and pickups, as we’ll see in Part 2 of this series, which explores the origins of the vehicle bloat, and why it’s bad for cities and the climate. Part 3 is available here.
[…] This is the second in a series of articles looking at the ongoing trend in North America for ever bigger and taller pickups and SUVs, and some of the problems these pose both for human health and safety, and for the health of the planet. In this article we look at what has driven the trend, and what it means for the climate, the environment, and our cities. Part 1 is available here. […]
[…] what governments in Canada could, at least in theory, do to tackle the bloat. Part 1 is available here and Part 2 is […]