Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising given how many large pickups and SUVs there are now that pose a thread to smaller vehicles. Would be interesting to see how much the overall fatality rate would drop if the average vehicle size were smaller.
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It's hard to say, as it's not good for the occupants of both vehicles when two vehicles of the same mass collide. It's just that the onslaught of huge trucks/SUVs heavily weigh (literally) the level of impact to one vehicle over another. Perhaps if one were to dig into 1990s data, when vehicles had mostly the same safety systems that they have today, but before trucks and SUVs ballooned in size, and SUVs hadn't gained the level of popularity of today, there might be a hint as to how that would go.
To a pedestrian or cyclist, it's still not good to be hit by a small car, but at least you would tend to go over it, rather than being hit by, basically, a moving wall.
As Keith mentions, though, the bane of taller vehicles is higher center of gravity, which will tend to cause rollovers when a car would stay on all fours. EVs with heavy batteries in the floor area should help to reduce the rollover issue as we move forward. Then we may be talking about thermal runaway, but let's hope they solve that issue before it becomes the next problem that we are talking about.