Electric vehicles recently received a massive boost in the U.S., with a
promotional spin by President Joe Biden on the White House lawn, and a
non-binding federal mandate to make half the vehicles sold in the U.S. electric by 2030.
A number of car companies have piled on with their own electrification goals, and are committing to make even some of their most carbon-intensive vehicles electric.
The development of vehicles like the 9,000-pound GMC Hummer EV and 6,500-pound Ford F-150 Lightning are seen by some as a
win for fighting climate change, with the potential to convert the large population of truck-loving Americans.
The problem is, while these trucks are reducing the ecological destruction of motor vehicles, they are exacerbating another public health crisis: traffic violence. The auto industry is greening itself by building vehicles that will make our streets run red.
Globally, traffic crashes
kill 1.35 million people a year — including almost
40,000 in the U.S. annually, where the traffic death rate has
historically been the highest among high-income countries. They are the
leading cause of death for children and young people around the world. In the U.S., Black and Indigenous people are
especially likely to be killed in traffic crashes, as are
older adults and
bicyclists. Between 2015 and 2030, fatal and non-fatal crashes will
cost the world economy an estimated $1.8 trillion.
In the U.S., enormous vehicles
are largely to blame for increasing death counts.
Over the decades, as almost every other technology has gotten smaller, from laptops to cell phones, cars keep getting bigger and more dangerous. Now, SUVs and light trucks are so large that they spur
comparisons to World War II tanks and
complaints that they’ve outgrown garages. As they have expanded in size, they’ve also
become heavier. Between 2000 and 2019, the average weight of vehicles involved in a fatal crash
increased by 11%. One new GMC Hummer EV, for example,
exceeds the Brooklyn Bridge’s 3-ton weight limit by 50%. Larger and heavier vehicles
tend to have longer stopping distances, and hit with greater impact on collision.
These enormous personal transportation devices loom over our streets, requiring steps for drivers to climb up to their seats. Their
increasingly flat fronts and tall hoods create front blind zones
two to three times larger than a sedan’s; one experiment
sat 18 children in front of an SUV, and all were fully hidden from the driver by the massive hood. This exacerbates the risk of “frontover collisions,” in which a vehicle moving forward slowly hits a person the driver can’t see. Most frontover collision victims are
between one and two-years-old, and the vast majority of frontover fatalities since the 1990s
have involved an SUV, van or light truck. A recent study in the
Economics of Transportation estimates that if between 2000 and 2019 all light trucks were replaced with cars, more than 8,000 pedestrians
would still be alive today.