---
title: 'Modern Trucks Are Getting Too Dangerous (The Roman Report)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=SkJXIyfJaUA'
video_id: 'SkJXIyfJaUA'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 0
---

# Modern Trucks Are Getting Too Dangerous (The Roman Report)

> Source: [Modern Trucks Are Getting Too Dangerous (The Roman Report)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=SkJXIyfJaUA)

## Summary

Pedestrian fatalities in the US have surged 75% since 2009, a trend not seen elsewhere. A new New York Times study and decades of research point to the American auto industry's shift toward larger vehicles—trucks and SUVs with hoods averaging 3 feet high—as a key driver. These vehicles create massive blind zones, increase the likelihood of fatal collisions, and even distort drivers' perception of speed.

### Key Points

- **Unique US Pedestrian Death Spike** [00:36] — Pedestrian deaths in the US have increased 75% since 2009, a statistic not replicated in any other developed nation.
- **New York Times Study Findings** [01:02] — The NYT study estimates 200–400 pedestrian deaths per year could have been avoided if vehicles had stayed the same size as 25 years ago, representing about 10% of the recent increase.
- **Hood Height and Blind Zones** [03:36] — Average hood height is now ~3 ft. A 5'8" person is 43% likely to be knocked down by today's vehicles vs. 31% in 2002. Blind zones on trucks like the Silverado have nearly doubled.
- **Thick A-Pillars and Rollover Regulations** [05:47] — 2009 rollover safety laws forced thicker A-pillars, reducing visibility. Combined with higher hoods, they raise the center of gravity, increasing rollover risk and the 'monster truck effect' in collisions.
- **Speed Blindness in Tall Vehicles** [08:46] — A 2006 study found drivers in high-ride-height vehicles drove faster with more variability and worse lane discipline, due to a disconnect from the sensation of speed.
- **Decades of Warnings Ignored** [12:31] — Researchers warned NHTSA in 2022 about pedestrian dangers, but no action was taken. Studies from 2003, 2009, and 2022 all confirm that light trucks (pickups, SUVs) are 50–100% more likely to cause fatal pedestrian injuries than cars.
- **Blame: Automakers vs. Consumers** [18:12] — While consumers buy popular large vehicles, automakers aggressively advertise and profit from them, creating a cycle. Smaller options are scarce, especially outside EVs.

## Transcript

All right. So, if I were to tell you
that pedestrian fatalities were on the
rise in the United States, you'd
probably think the cause was some kind
of distracted or impaired driving,
right? Texting, touch screens, talking
to passengers, buzzed driving, drunk
driving, bad driving, all of the typical
causes.
Except smartphones are everywhere.
Modern tech is pervasive in cars
throughout the world, and bad or
irresponsible drivers aren't exclusive
to one nation or region.
But you know what is?
The statistic that pedestrian deaths
have increased by 75%
since 2009.
And that statistic that exists nowhere
else in the world belongs to the good
old red, white, and blue, because of
course it does.
But why?
Well, a new study suggests that the
American auto industry's obsession with
larger vehicles is contributing to an
inescapably bleak landscape of
pedestrian danger.
And that sounds pretty ominous, but this
is also just what one study is saying,
and you know me, I can never just look
at one study. Okay, maybe not never,
just rarely.
So, we're going to get to the bottom of
this. Is the blame on large trucks and
SUVs for pedestrian fatalities
misplaced, or is it squarely where it
belongs? And is this ultimately the
fault of the drivers whose appetite for
these cars increases every year, or is
this on an industry that prioritizes
size at the expense of pedestrian
safety?
Or is it something else altogether?
>> Submit report at the end of the month
and I make what I want when I feel like
discussing cars.
>> On June 21st, the New York Times
published an extensive investigative
study on the cause of the 75%
increase in pedestrian motor vehicle
deaths in the United States since 2009.
And they came to the same conclusions as
far many people on Hinge. Size, or more
particularly height, matters.
As the report notes, quote, "After
analyzing federal and industry records,
including never-before-examined
data on vehicle dimensions, we found
that the rise of large pickups and SUVs
is an important factor. Our estimate is
that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year
would not have died if vehicles had
remained approximately the same size
over the past quarter century. That
represents about 10% of the recent
increase in pedestrian deaths."
End quote.
I've linked the article in the
description, and I highly recommend
checking it out. It's fairly interactive
with 3D recreations and a drop-down menu
for you to put in your height to see how
much likelier you are to get knocked
down by today's cars and how much lower
that likelihood would have been roughly
25 years ago. So, for me, I'm a short
king at 5'7" and 1/2, so let's round
that up to 5'8" because shut up. And I'm
likely to be knocked down by about 43%
of vehicles today. In 2002, the same
model year as Estelle, my Toyota
that I drive every single day, that
number would have been 31%.
Either way, I am clearly in peril, but I
was in considerably less peril in 2002
than I am today. And I really hope I'm
not jinxing anything by saying that.
Regardless, it's a dramatic increase
caused by what the report found was the
even more dramatic increase in the
average hood height of American cars
today. And they're talking all cars, not
just trucks and SUVs, as the average
passenger vehicle today has a hood
that's roughly 3 ft high, meaning that,
as the study notes, quote,
"Anyone shorter than 5 ft 6, about half
of American adults, would frequently be
rammed to the pavement. So would most
children."
End quote.
Basically, in instances where a
pedestrian is struck by a vehicle with a
lower hood, the chances are better for
the person to be sent rolling over top
of the car rather than the car rolling
over top of them. The hood essentially
absorbs a lot of the momentum, so that
by the time the pedestrian falls off of
the car, they're hitting the ground at a
lower speed than they would have been
had they been struck by a vehicle with a
higher hood line that caught them higher
on the body and just, you know, planted
them straight onto the ground at full
speed. But then, taller hoods aren't the
only issue here with regards to
visibility.
There's another aspect of large trucks
and SUVs that make them uniquely
dangerous to pedestrians and even to
drivers themselves. And it's something
we complain about a lot on this channel.
And that's
thick A-pillars.
I mean, really, with a lot of the
contemporary trucks we've done recently,
it's a huge problem. When the A-pillars
are big and chunky, they hamper
visibility so that it feels like you're
driving with one eye closed or wearing a
dope eye patch like some kind of pirate
of the turnpike.
Just from the vehicle you chose, you're
starting off with a smaller visual space
than you might have had in a smaller
passenger car.
Your vision is as limited as the
availability of the McRib, and your
experience is hardly ever better for it
because the entire reason those
A-pillars are so thick has nothing to do
with improving visibility or sightlines
or anything like that. Rather, it's
because of laws enacted in 2009 that
required automakers to build roofs that
could support three times the weight of
the car in response to an increase in
rollover deaths. Except reinforcing the
roofs meant they had to also reinforce
the A-pillars to support them. And,
ironically, in trying to solve the
problem of rollover deaths, they created
a new problem that shifted the mortality
rate to a different cause while also
potentially contributing to exactly the
kinds of deaths they were trying to
prevent in the first place.
Because those taller hoods and
reinforced roofs with the chunky
A-pillars are going to have a center of
gravity that's a whole hell of a lot
higher than your average Camry or
Corolla, all the heavy front end
components necessary for the car's
operation are going to be higher off the
ground than they would be in that
aforementioned Camry or Corolla. So, at
best, you're at increased risk of body
roll, and at worst, you're increasing
the possibility for a rollover. And
worse than that, by being higher off the
ground, a collision with a smaller car
could lead to a sort of monster truck
effect, where you're overriding their
engine or trunk components, rather than
having that energy dispersed through
crumple zones. And now you're risking
causing fires, causing explosions, all
the ridiculous action movie BS that
leaves investigators checking dental
records.
And this is to say nothing of the
psychological effect of larger vehicles
on their drivers, namely the false
illusion of security that being higher
off the ground will give you. I mean,
it's true that in some ways you are
safer than the hypothetical car that
your truck would be hitting, but you are
not invincible up there in your Chevy
Colorado. Pickup truck drivers have
reported instances of speed blindness,
which is theorized to be a byproduct of
command seating, because the height can
create a disconnect from the sensation
of speed, so that you don't feel how
fast you're really going. And in fact,
while researching this topic, I read a
2006 traffic injury prevention study
that actually measured this by putting
test subjects in a driving simulator.
One group had their simulator set to the
ride height of a sports car, while the
other group had their set to one of
these Mount Everest-ass trucks. And
while you would think that the people
with the sports car ride heights would
be going faster, the study found that
while ride height ultimately didn't
influence things like follow distance or
driver aggression, they did influence
speed and consistency.
Quote,
"When viewing the road from a high eye
height, drivers drove faster with more
variability and were less able to
maintain a consistent position within
the lane than when viewing the road from
a low eye height."
End quote.
But okay, what about the visual
obstruction of tall hood lines?
Well, the New York Times study compared
the hood height on current models to
their counterparts from 25 to 30 years
ago. In this case, the Chevrolet
Silverado, the Ford F-150, the GMC
Sierra, and the Toyota Tacoma.
Their findings,
quote,
"The Silverado's blind zones have nearly
doubled. The Sierras and the Tacomas
grew by about 60%.
The smallest increase was the F-150's.
Its blind zones grew by about 25%."
End quote.
Per their example, there's been an
alarming Jack and the Beanstalk kind of
growth in production cars the past two
decades and change.
As they put it, a 2002 Toyota Corolla
had a 26-in hood. 12 years later, the
2014 Ford Escape would have a 36-in
hood. By 2022, the Chevrolet Silverado
had a 47-in hood. And now, options like
the Ford F-250 and the Chevrolet
Silverado 2500
have hoods in excess of 50 in.
Now, while I appreciate the Times as
study, I find it kind of dumb to compare
completely different classes of vehicles
as if a sedan transformed into an SUV
and then into a pickup. But even just by
looking at, say, a 2002 Toyota Tacoma
rather than a Corolla, the hood height
was around the mid-30s in inches, while
the current Tacoma has a hood height
around 48 in. And frankly, that
difference is stark enough to be a
problem because at 4 ft high, that truck
is not hitting you in a way that safely
disperses anything except brain matter.
It's hitting you higher up on the body,
and your likelihood of survival is
likely to drastically decrease as a
result.
But I think what's most troubling about
all of this is how none of it is new.
Yeah, the information gleaned from the
New York Times study is new, but the
concept of higher ride height vehicles
being a nightmare for pedestrian safety
is about as far from new information as
we can get short of an email blast about
the color of the sky and the price of
printer ink.
Researchers allegedly met with senior
officials from the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration to warn
about the dangers to pedestrians as far
back as November 2022,
only for no action to be taken,
supposedly. Worse, there was outright
denial as a senior official for the
NHTSA argued that safety was already
improving thanks to pedestrian sensing
technology in cars. And while I'm sure
that's true, it's bad enough that we
rely on technology for as much as we do.
But if we're really expecting sensors to
replace our own eyes, then I'm not even
sure why cars need drivers in the first
place. Because as we've learned through
years of experimentation with autonomous
driving, sensors fail. And even when
they don't, they're not exactly batting
a thousand when it comes to detecting an
object in the road before it's too late.
But even ignoring the New York Times
article completely, we can find
instances going back nearly 30 years of
height being an issue on American cars,
starting with a report in 2022 by the
Insurance Institute for Highway Safety,
which researched causes of 14,000 fatal
pedestrian accidents, and found that
pickup trucks were 51% more likely than
cars to be involved in a fatal
pedestrian hit-and-run than an average
car. While SUVs were 25% more likely.
And the likelihood of a pedestrian
accident occurring during a left turn
jumped through the roof if you aren't
driving a run-of-the-mill passenger car
like a sedan or a coupe, as SUVs saw
double the accident rate of cars, vans
and minivans nearly triple, and pickup
trucks nearly quadruple.
A year prior to that study, Consumer
Reports found that the average hood
height of passenger trucks has seen an
11% increase since 2000, with some
heavy-duty trucks having hoods as tall
as the roof of some sedans. A completely
different study by economist Justin
Tyndall of the University of Hawaii,
which analyzed traffic fatalities
between 2000 and 2019,
theorized that had all light trucks
involved in those accidents been
replaced by standard cars, over 8,000
pedestrian deaths could have been
avoided.
And we can keep going further back, like
a different traffic injury prevention
study, this one in 2009, that found that
the risk of fatal injury for pedestrians
is 50% greater in collisions with light
truck vehicles than in conventional
cars.
And this is backed up by a 2003 report
by the Association for the Advancement
of Automotive Medicine, citing that
light truck vehicles have greater
instances of severe injury or death than
standard passenger cars. Meanwhile, a
study on pedestrian injuries by vehicle
type in Maryland between 1995 and 1999
noted that, quote, at lower speeds,
pedestrians struck by sport utility
vehicles, pickup trucks, and vans were
approximately two times as likely to
have traumatic brain, thoracic, and
abdominal injuries. At higher speeds,
there was no such association.
End quote.
So, at higher speeds, you're pretty much
boned either way, but at lower speeds,
the danger is evident. And look, I can
keep going on, but at a certain point,
the past becomes prologue and then main
story and then epilogue and then sequel,
because we've been warned about this
forever while virtually nothing is ever
done about it. I mean, I guess you could
say that pedestrian detection technology
is something being done about it, but I
don't know that it accounts for the
basic problem that people have less
visibility now than they did a quarter
century ago. And while I like giving
both potential sides to the story and
even considered trying some kind of
devil's advocacy for taller trucks and
SUVs, you know, really making an
argument on their behalf, I kind of feel
like that would have been irresponsible.
But even if I were to go through with
it, I couldn't find a single scholarly
source that could point to this fear
being overblown in any way whatsoever.
Bigger vehicles impose bigger dangers
and greater risks for pedestrians and
for drivers. And so, if the dangers are
not being overblown, then that leaves us
to question who's at fault here. Is it
automakers for producing these taller
vehicles, or is it consumers who buy
these vehicles that compel automakers to
continue making them?
After all, the F-Series pickups are
routinely among the top-selling vehicles
in America in any given year, in
addition to being among the tallest. And
the companies that have abandoned
internal combustion sedans might not
have done so had people still bought
them, or had tall crossover SUVs and
pickup trucks not been as popular at
high dollar values as they became. At
least theoretically, right?
But think about it. Consumers are often
at the mercy of what's advertised to
them and how it's advertised to them.
There's more than a little manipulation
involved in talking people into a car.
Our buttons are pressed and our strings
are pulled, and sometimes we're
compelled into cars we didn't know we
wanted. And it's because
we didn't want them.
>> [laughter]
>> Not at first, anyway, but we got talked
into them by seductive advertising,
celebrity endorsements, or just the envy
that goes along with keeping up with the
Joneses. Like, "Oh, my neighbor has the
new Tacoma. I want the new I want the
new Tacoma because that guy sucks and
I'm better than him. So, why shouldn't I
have it, too? Hell, why shouldn't I have
better?" It's a confusing rat race that
has the potential to affect even those
who consider themselves immune to
targeted advertising. People who feel
their brains can never be touched by the
subliminal or the overt. But as
advertising becomes more sophisticated
and more integrated into our everyday
lives,
I don't actually know how to finish this
sentence because I realize now
>> [laughter]
>> that there's a non-trivial chance
YouTube interrupts it with an ad and
torpedoes any kind of point I'm trying
to make. So, the question, back to the
question, the central question that
remains and it's this.
If we say grace, eat the meal, and then
go up for seconds, do we need to say
grace for the seconds? Wait, sorry. Uh
wrong notebook. That is
my notebook for toilet seat
observations.
Um
All right, you know what? Just
Oh oh okay here.
The real question. Who is truly to blame
for cars getting larger?
And at the risk of having already made
my own argument for myself just now, I
do think this is a corporate issue.
People defending the auto makers might
say that they had large, tall vehicles
imposed upon them by legislation that
required them to start making reinforced
roofs by legislators who have no idea
what goes into making a car or what the
trickle-down effects of such a mandate
would be.
That by being forced to build sturdier
hoods, they would need to obstruct
visibility through chunky A-pillars, and
that the hoods would rise to meet all
these dimensional changes over the years
once people actually started buying
these bigger cars en masse to where the
American automotive industry couldn't
have survived without them. And maybe
there's something to that since the law
about the rollover prevention was
instituted on the back of the near
collapse of the entire industry in 2009.
But even if we allow that, I don't think
it absolves automakers from nearly two
decades of concerted advertising
intended to get consumers into
ever-growing monstrosities to justify
profit margins. Because while these
trucks aren't cheap to make, it's always
been my understanding that the
production cost difference with a
smaller crossover isn't that extreme.
Yet because these sell at such a high
dollar value, these bigger vehicles
stand to be more profitable. And so we
see trucks with dollar values and hood
lines that reach
while consumers in search of smaller
options find slim pickings among new
offerings unless they want to get an EV.
And EVs aren't always practical in
certain regions because the
infrastructure might not be there yet.
So pedestrian bodies stack like flaccid
hotcakes while ads convince emotionally
stunted gas pump sticker vandals that
they need a heavy-duty road hulk just to
go see their divorce attorney or
convince a married mother of one that
she needs a three-row boulder of
Sisyphus just to get her son to karate
practice. But by instilling in consumers
the desire for these cars, automakers
have reinforced the belief that they
deserve these cars, which presumably
would make this a lot harder for the
industry to walk back if they ever did
try and shrink their collective
automotive output.
It's getting to the point where we're
going to need to start putting amusement
park ride height signs by the front door
of every home. You need to be this high
to go outside unless you're cool with
getting flattened playing the world's
most dystopian version of Frogger.
It's like the solution to the danger is
to simply retreat from it, or to get a
tall vehicle of your own. You know, if
you can't beat them, join them. And it
got me thinking, there have been a lot
of comedians over the years who have
made a mint on talking about the old
days and how parents didn't care where
you went as long as you were back by
dark and how soft current generations
are because their parents only let them
play between the front porch and the
family car in the driveway. And all
because they're afraid of their kid
being swiped by some weirdo in an
unmarked van. And maybe that's true, but
honestly, I don't think it's entirely
implausible to suggest that there's a
parent out there who tells their kid to
stay close, not simply because of some
vague threat of a weirdo in an unmarked
van, but because that weirdo's unmarked
van is too high to see their kid in the
first place.
But okay, that is all just worst-case
scenario dooming. It's outlandish, it's
over the top, and it's probably
unnecessary.
But then maybe it's not.
Maybe the thing that's really
unnecessary is pretending that tall
cars, trucks, and SUVs aren't a problem.
Either way, it does seem that the likely
outcome for this, sadly, is that
pedestrian injuries continue unabated,
and people find that they have to adjust
by exhibiting an abundance of caution.
Call it
an evolutionary adoption of additional
precaution.
But, the reason these studies and their
results matter is because they suggest
that not everybody has the information
available to them to be cautious. I
mean, if a driver doesn't have visual
evidence of your presence, if their eyes
are not taking in that visual
information because they've been
physically impeded from doing so, then
they can't adjust their speed. They
can't adjust their movement. And by the
same token, the pedestrian can't adjust
their behavior to account for the sudden
acceleration or turning of a driver who
doesn't even see that they're there.
Is the solution shorter cars?
Probably.
But I also feel like putting the
toothpaste back in the tube is harder
than just brushing with the excess,
which is to say, we need to make the
best of a less-than-ideal situation. And
while fighting for lasting change is
always going to be the best route
forward, sometimes you kind of have to
figure out how to exist in a world that
resists change. Then again,
maybe I'm just bitter because I'm 5'7
and 1/2 and 1/2.
But what do you think? Are taller trucks
and SUVs really the bane of pedestrian
existence, or do you think that there's
an argument that this has all been blown
out of proportion? I really want to hear
your thoughts. Hit me up in the
comments. I'll be in there, too. Keep an
eye out for me. My screen name is
Limited Time Roman. If you enjoy this
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rest of your week.