What kid deadning machine do you drive?
Just look at that. This truck is taller than a used kid (10 years old). I assume the truck can run over pretty much any other age but probably the driver might be able to see older kid's heads. Or we could teach our kids to jump to school rather than walk. If you see a truck, jump and make eye contact before jumping while crossing the street. Or we could tell our kids to never go outside until they are 21.
NHTSA recently published a proposed rule taking on pedestrian safety, specifically calling out this problem. Expect it to be killed early next year.
Oh you mean the new kid regulations requiring stilts and helmets to bring your kids outside? We probably also need new construction regulations to required bollards along the side of the property facing the street so as to prevent damage to trucks if the house happens to get too close.
There's a link to the proposed rule in the first paragraph. Note the diagrams on page 35, page 51, then page 84. They're working on it. NHTSA is slow, and they won't be allowed to finish.
You can comment here if you'd like to actually do something besides be snarky on a website nobody reads.
Yep sounds like "burdensome regulation" to be.
Just gonna keep on posting this
I'm surprised a school bus isn't on this list
School busses have barriers to force children to walk far enough away. When you don't care about smooth lines, practical solutions are possible.
I swear GM and Ford are competing with each other on blind spot length
They sort of are. Long hoods and large grills look powerful (like there's a huge motor in there) so they compete to look tougher and more powerful
I like how they put a golf cart in there.
That's a tuktuk
I don't disagree with the general premise.
But saying "this quarry hauler is only barely worse than pickup trucks" when it takes double the distance to see one...feels disingenuous. Same with the "this tractor cab has better visibility but requires a special license", yeah cause a heavy laden trailer massively increases the stopping distance and requires a more advanced skill set.
I also feel like the kinda situations where "a three year was suddenly less than 1m from my bumper with zero warning" is more of a walkability/road design/driver awareness issue than one specifically solvable by increased visibility. I'm also aware I'm no traffic safety scientist; also more visibility is of course better.
I feel like this focuses on something that's rooted more in emotion than logic or data, but there is a link between hood height and pedestrian injury severity iirc, and lowering that does increase visibility as a result.
Used kid?
Not everyone can afford a new one bro. Don't sound so put off about it.
Once they've been run over a few times, they tend to be longer for some reason.
I believe the proper nomenclature is “adopted kid”, not used. They don’t like either term however.
From the legendary Used Kids Records store, maybe?
This truck is taller than a used kid (10 years old).
Well there's your problem: you've got a used kid. New kids are, on average, about 5'9" - plenty tall to compete with today's civilian tanks.
We're gonna need their average size at 10yos.
If we need a bigger sample size, I'm open to pulling in Backstreet Boys, and Nsync
bruh… a used kid
But can we talk about how comically awful those tiny-ass wheels look that raised truck
Looney-toons-ahh-truck, smh
Technically they aren't that badly sized. You don't want the whole wheel well filled with the tire, it needs room to move around. If they were ever to go offroading they would have plenty of room without their tires scraping against the body of the truck, although this pavement princess probably never sees dirt.
Here's another such killer truck just steps from the previous one in the same parking area.
You know that kid is just like "Mom, can we just go home? No I don't wanna stand in front of any more trucks! Mom, stop being weird."
Why does that person have a bull bar on their truck in a garage?
Its Nevada. Nevada has signs for drivers to watch out for deer, cattle, donkeys, horses, pigs, slow trucks, rams and I'm probably missing a few others. Not signs about kids. They probably put those near schools only where parents actually drop off the kids at the front entrance.
Also for this:
That bar also looks designed to push its target down under the vehicle. I bet that performs super deadly in the crash tests it has never done
Drivers are warned that bull bars (commonly "roo bars" here) will make the car less safe by preventing correct deployment of airbags in a collision, yet people fit them. They also add steel tubes to carry four fishing rods, which emergency services people call "sausage makers" for their effect on vulnerable road users
I was at a car dealership recently. In the front was all their pickup trucks. My car was lower than half of them.
All the cars in that picture are ginormous. That's crazy. Cars are trending to be larger here in Europe, but that is something else.
I recall about 10 years ago, a guy at a shop i used to work at bought a GMC6500. I'm 6'2" and could easily walk under the side mirrors.
I noticed the truck was parked in the same spor for about a month. I asked some of the guys I worked with why it hadn't moved. Apparently, the owner was getting into it when he fell out backward, injuring himself.
lol
I'm 5'3 and had to do an oil change one one when I worked at wal-mart. I was in the pit so I had to stand on the top rung of the step ladder we had down there just to reach the suspension so I could hang off it to get at the oil filter.
It's nice when stupid vehicles attack their owners rather than pedestrians and cyclists
They don't make kids like they used to. Can you imagine that a brand new kid in 2024 is much shorter than this 10 year old used kid!
A brand new kid, in this economy?!
I’ve seen one that had a front camera specifically added so you can see what’s in front of you for parking the monster. It looks like the dumbest design that’s just screaming how impractical it is for both safety and driving.
Like, maybe if you need a front facing camera to use this thing, maybe this limited visibility is also inappropriate for driving, no?
I mean it worked for the Boeing 747 🙄
The perfect height to deliver devastating head and chest injuries. It’s almost like they deliberately designed this thing to kill kids.
Not to mention it's so high up and the hood is so massive, you can't see the ground for like 10 feet in front of it.
A 2005 Ford Focus is my kid deadening tool of choice.
And 30lb e-scooters that can fit under your desk are the problem! /s
In all seriousness, is it any wonder why pedestrians get murdered at crosswalks? The drivers of those tanks can't see anything below the dash!
Anyday now American kids will start wearing a big pole with a high viz contraction at the top whenever they leave the house.
A used kid?
I think OP is probably a non-native english speaker and meant something like: "the child used in the example above (10 years old)"
What? 10 years old? you think that's a new kid? Nah that kid is almost a new teenager.
2016 kia soul, it's named "sir-hops-a-lot" because the gas petal is sensitive and someone who hasn't driven it will 'hop' (also my love of frogs and that it's green).
It was like ~$11.5k and we got it from a pretty small car dealership which is family owned that doesn't squabble about prices. What's on the website is what you get.
I love my little frogmobile to death :3
Imagine trying to work on that thing. You need a step ladder to open the hood.
The hood is really just for checking fluids or minor repairs (bu-dum-tss). For anything big, the body gets lifted off the frame.
A lot of the time the truck is put on a lift and the part is dropped out from under it. Removing body off frame is a ton of work, no one is doing it unless they absoultely have to
You don't have to open the hood, you just bend a bit and work from under it. There probably even isn't a hood.
Look at my load.
Fucking A' Julian
Bicycle or skateboard usually, if I have to drive it's either a 5 speed Subaru Legacy or a Prius
I'm told this makes you a lesbian.
Hmm, I do like women...
2021 RadPower Radrunner 2, a 2018 Chevy Bolt, and a 2008 Dodge Sprinter that runs on used cooking oil. The sprinter smells of fish and chips when I actually need that capacity of carry ability.
Even the Sprinter's hood is at least a foot and a half, if not two feet lower than that monstrosity, and I can shove way more into it than that thing can carry. I know because I have used it to move 10 ton loads of river rocks for a friend that was removing their lawn.
Lexus RX450h Advance
It's not big big, but still big enough to fall into the SUV class, and certainly quite big for the tiny roads in the UK
picrel isn't mine, but is very similar
The bus
what's the mileage on it?
I used to live on a farm without trash pickup, so she got a good bit of work done. Not longer on the farm since my parents passed, but didnt have the courage to trade her in since it was my moms favorite vehicle.
Still get the occasional full load since I'm a big dude with a truck. Makes me feel good helping out people with small cars.
Reminds me of the safety flags we used to have to attach to our Big Wheels so that drivers could see us.
I drive a Gazelle.
2013 VW Golf 2.0 TDI. Although I’ve not driven it since February due to a complaint with the financial ombudsman service as it’s evident I have a blown head gasket which was causing me issues from buying it used.
Now have a 35 mile each way trip on the Metrolink and train to work. Luckily Incan WFH three days a week.
I drive a civic but ask the average American and you might hear something like this. https://youtu.be/MI7Tq6sRxE4
Touran. Its a piece of shit, but good visibility and reasonable mpg.
Good visibility? You can't even see what's in front of your tires.
Good visibility for a car generally. But not driving at all isn't realistic with 4 children in the Arctic.
I don't fucking drive.
Used kid?
Used for the photo. Also, he's not brand new. The new ones cry a lot.
I drive a 20 ton vehicle with dual rear tires, it gets about 4 mpg. I don't own a car though.
(I drive a city bus)
Subaru Outback. You should see the kids roll off that hood at 80mph.
The Impreza I drive is lower so the kids fly higher since I'm hitting them lower down.
This morning I was driving to work and I saw off in the distance something moving behind an F250 truck. As I got closer and got to see the back, I realized it was the owner of the truck offloading tools at the worksite. He was on the shorter side, true, but a fully grown man completely hidden by the box of the truck.
I have a gmc sierra about that size
Me too, and I’ve only hit one kid. Launched him about 15 feet and he survived. All i experienced was a thud and I seen a skateboard and kid flying side by side.
I’ve accidentally killed like 3 pedestrians and 4 deer in mine. I wonder what the national average is.
Seriously, only one of the deer damaged the grill. The people just rolled right under it, except for the kid of course.
If you can't see them does it really even count
If you just mount an industrial wood mulcher on the front grill you won't get as much damage from colliding with children and animals.
That’s either a pregnant lady who is too old to be pregnant, or a kid wearing his backpack the wrong way.
It's a bumbag but worn over the shoulder because somebody found a new way to sell all their leftover early 90s stock to kids.
I drive one of these trucks and occasionally a ‘fuckcars’ post pops up in my feed like this one. Here’s my F-350 with standard size girlfriend for scale. Ask me anything.
Okay, a question: Can you understand why other people—pedestrians and bicyclists especially—might look at that kind of vehicle rolling on city streets and be inspired to say, "fuck cars"?
Trust me, I get it. There was a brief period of overlap where I owned a condo in a downtown area with this truck. Most of my movement within the city was walking so I’d often encounter vehicles with a complete disregard for the safety of pedestrians.
In my personal opinion, it’s typically the attitude of the driver that impacts my safety in a crosswalk more than the type vehicle. I’ve almost been run over by tuned civics racing between lights, clueless tourists in a Prius gawking at buildings, city busses, and the occasional truck driver who has never driven downtown before. Like any type of vehicle, I believe awareness of your surroundings and limitations of the vehicle is key to ensuring your safety and the safety of others.
I can't imagine how much work you must get done with your absolutely pristine heavy duty work vehicle.
Why drive the environment fucker 3000 and not maverick or Tacoma or one of the several other smaller trucks?
Why do you need a special step so that your "standard size girlfriend" get get in?
What do you use it for that a smaller truck, hatchback, mini van or other vehicle would be unable to also get the job done?
The truck is my primary vehicle. Here’s a summary of its use:
So that’s about ~74 trips where a truck is not needed and about ~20 trips where it has been invaluable. In my personal opinion, the sheer convenience of ownership outweighs alternatives such as renting when a need arises.
Planning activities around truck rentals would significantly delay / impact progress on my home and frankly, it would add a large amount of stress / reduce motivation to complete work. The nearest rental place is thirty minutes away and they don’t offer trucks with fifth wheel hitch compatibility. It would be another hurdle in an already complicated process.
What's the colour called?
Ford calls it Glacier Gray Metallic.
What do you use this monstrosity for?
"Taller than a kid" is a bad metric. My bike is taller than a kid
Do you hold it in front of your face?
The kid or the bike?
That's a very deliberate approach to completely missing the point.
Why do people forget that not everyone lives in an urban place without deer or other dangerous wildlife encounters at high speed on the road?
The increase in height is not a narcissism thing. I agree however that trucks of this height need to be outfitted with better sensors to make sure pedestrians don’t end up dead in bad encounters.
Meanwhile, everywhere else in the world which has the same dangers, which isn't the US: no manslaughtering penis enlengthernes, just regular station wagons and the occasional Subaru. Curious how that is.
Idk about rest of the world, but let’s take Europe.
Fact is that European cities have smaller roads and many places in Europe are denser. Europeans have been getting bigger cars just the same as Americans, https://www.motor1.com/news/707996/vehicles-larger-than-ever-usa-europe/
Don’t care about this topic that much, I just think discounting the experience of people who are impacted by more wildlife encounters is just very narrow minded.
No one forgot rural areas exist.
It is 100% a narcissism thing. The entire rest of the world does just fine with regular sized vehicles. Sensors are never going to replace actually just seeing. Really all you end up with is a vehicle with way more blind areas (because a vehicle like that doesn't have blind spots, it' now likes blind regions).
I vote for sensors installed under the driver’s forehead.
We can increase their scanning efficiency by removing obstructions in the vehicle’s design. Less construction, fewer moving parts, simpler design.
You know what would be a lot simpler and cheaper? Busses and trains and neighborhoods designed so that you can walk or bike to get basic necessities.
My Sprinter is taller with a shorter hood, and more cargo capacity. The increase in size and height of pickups is bad design for ego.
I live in Canberra, Australia. Eastern grey kangaroos are the car killers here. The main road connecting my cluster of suburbs and the city centre is 20km of 100km/h limit through bushland. I have stopped for kangaroos on it.
The people I know who hit kangaroos were driving fast without regard for them. I have heard that deer enter the road with less warning than 'roos, but surely you can recognise dangerous places and times of day?
You're right, it's impossible to survive in a rural area without one of these emotional support trucks. Sucks for the rural kids who the drivers can't see, but they shouldn't have been so short.
A kid could be taken out with a bicycle. Why do you train your kid to walk that close to vehicles? Do you also give them pointy objects to stab into outlets?
Oh, why didn't anyone else think of that! Tens of thousands of kids get injured this way per year, why don't they just stop getting injured? Are they stupid?
Are they stupid?
Well yes, but that's besides the point here.