IIHS Says Taller Vehicles Are More Dangerous To Pedestrians

Vehicles with taller front ends present a higher risk of inflicting serious injuries on pedestrians, according to the findings of a recently published IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety) study.

The figures show statistical proof for what common sense already suggests – that a modern pickup or full-size SUV with a tall vertical front end is more likely to seriously damage a person it hits than a sedan or other vehicle with a lower, sloping front end.

Crunching the numbers, the IIHS looked at collisions between pedestrians and vehicles traveling at 27 mph, the average speed for the accidents studied. A car inflicted moderate injuries 60 percent of the time while a pickup truck with a front end 13 inches taller did so 83 percent of the time. Serious injuries resulted 30 percent of the time with the car and 62 percent with the pickup.

The higher nose of pickups, SUVs, and similar tall vehicles inflicts damage over a larger area of the body because of a bigger contact area, and also strikes higher up the body where the most vital organs are concentrated.

The IIHS also found that accidents in which pedestrians are struck are considerably more likely to be serious in the U.S. than in Germany, even at the same speed at impact. Digging into the information, taller vehicles were again found to be the culprits, with IIHS statistician Sam Monfort noting “although SUVs are a growing share of the market in Europe, the passenger vehicle fleet there has long been dominated by cars. In contrast, the majority of passenger vehicles on U.S. roads today are SUVs or pickups.”

While a common phrase is “speed kills,” it appears to kill more when the vehicle is taller. Collisions with pedestrians at 15 mph show almost identical risk of serious injuries for cars and pickups – 9 percent and 11 percent respectively. However, at 25 mph, the likelihood of serious injuries is 52 percent with cars and a whopping 91 percent with pickups.

Working from these results, the IIHS recommends several possible changes to help mitigate injuries from taller vehicles. One is suggesting that automakers redesign their pickups and SUVs to incorporate a lower, less dangerous front end. Another is a suggestion to lower speed limits in urban and suburban areas to 15 mph from the typical 25 to 30 mph.

The IIHS notes that front end design is the critical issue, not vehicle weight, since any vehicle is heavy enough to inflict serious damage on a human. Sam Monfort remarked that consumer choices of vehicles, and by implication the front end design of popular body styles such as those found on the Cadillac Escalade and Chevy Silverado, “have very real consequences for pedestrian safety.”