[ben7799]

Blame for killing falls on the driver of the vehicle, not on the company designing it or the shape of the front of the vehicle.

Don't hit anyone with your vehicle and you won't kill anyone. I've been hit by a truck bicycling, thankfully not too hard. But I don't really think it would have been better to have been hit by a low slung sleek car. It would have put all the force through my legs.

[ajross]

"Blame" is something you argue in a civil suit.

Vehicle safety regulations aren't about "blame", ever. They're designed to save lives. If you can do that with better driver behavior, great. If you can do it with assistive technology, great. If you can do it with different vehicle designs, great. You do what you can, based on the techniques available and the costs involved.

To wit: if you start your safety analysis with "fuck the pedestrians, that's the driver's fault, not Ford's", then you're doing it wrong.

[syshum]

How about we start with banning Cyclist and Pedestrians, that would save the most lives?

[xxpor]

The problem is the high front makes it such that there's a huge blind spot.

[codyswann]

A blind spot that wasn't a blind spot five feet back. Like, when does this come into play? Describe a scenario.

[hannasanarion]

Ever heard of crosswalks? They're these things that people use to travel in front of cars while they're standing still.

Ford trucks are the #1 killer of children and adults at crosswalks because drivers can't see what they're about to run over, vehicles of that front-end design account for 40% of all pedestrian traffic deaths.

[codyswann]

So, you're trying to tell me, it's the truck's fault that a driver doesn't know they're at a crosswalk?

Do you own a truck? I do. I've owned a truck for 15 years. Some of them lifted, and unless you are pretty much parked on top of a crosswalk, there is no problem seeing the crosswalk. Especially 3-4 foot objects in said crosswalk.

Edit: F150 is the most popular vehicle in the US. So, yeah, it stands to reason it will kill more people than any other vehicle, too

[hannasanarion]

I'm telling you it's the truck's fault that the driver can't see the crosswalk.

There is a such thing as good and bad design. If I sell a hammer that shoots a bullet whenever you swing it for no good reason, I'm responsible for people getting shot.

[codyswann]

That analogy doesn't hold water. A hammer isn't meant to shoot bullets. So shooting bullets would be something the hammer was never intended to do.

What I'm telling you is that you have an opinion that is different from mine and also probably an ignorant one since you didn't answer my question about whether you have ever owned a truck.

[Der_Einzige]

My lexus has a 360 camera that turns on when the car is moving at low speeds (e.g. when stopped at a crosswalk). I assume new ford trucks at even a few trim levels up will have this feature. You can prevent these kind of fuck-ups with cameras easily.

[hannasanarion]

You shouldn't need to take your eyes off the road to look at a camera screen just to see what's on the road in front of you. It's a car, not an armored fighting vehicle.

[jbay808]

You get into your parked vehicle, check your phone for directions, find a route, confirm your arrival time, then put the key in the ignition and immediately run over a kid who stepped in front of your truck to grab their ball.

[codyswann]

So you run into the kid at 1 mph? Are we thinking people hammer down on the accelerator when leaving Walmart? And if so, we then blame the vehicle?

[xxpor]

Children playing in front of a stationary car, people walking in front of cars at gas stations/charging spots/parking lots in general.

https://youtu.be/NDH3FDfVQl0?t=68

[codyswann]

And you don't see those children there when you get into the vehicle?

[xxpor]

Sure, you do 99.9% of the time. But all it takes is once, you're distracted, someone's yelling at you from the house, whatever, and then that's it.

[codyswann]

And so that's the vehicle's responsibility? Like, you're complaining that a truck/suv has a 9-foot blind spot.

What's an acceptable blind spot - where if someone hits a laying down/sitting kid in front of their car, it's the driver's fault and not the vehicle's?

[buzzy_hacker]

That’s why I wish car manufacturers would affix big metal spikes to the front of cars for the aesthetic value. After all, they’d be blameless for any casualties.

[arwhatever]

Judging the appearance of some late model vehicles, I'll joke that we might as well skip a few small steps and go straight to mounting Hellfire missiles on the front. :-)

[zip1234]

Blame for killing almost never falls on drivers. Look at news headlines--"Car runs over person" and not "Driver runs over person" and you can see how this is viewed. There is a term to describe this--"windshield bias." Auto safety takes multiple approaches and not just saying the drivers are responsible because they are currently not, at least in the US. Does the person that hit you with a truck still have their driving license?

[pm90]

Please no more of the personal responsibility bullcrap. “Don’t make a mistake and you won’t make a mistake” is a pretty useless statement.

When designing mass manufactured items, it is a responsibility of manufacturers to ensure that their products are as safe as they can be.

[aeharding]

Indeed.

Even HN cannot see past the perverse dangers and flaws of modern auto design responsible for the current vulnerable road user epidemic in America. [1] When it comes to cars - it's "personal responsibility". When it comes to treadmills - it's a "manufacturing flaw" [2]

[1] https://www.freep.com/story/money/cars/2018/06/28/suvs-killi... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26846641

[nradov]

Should manufacturers also install governors that limit maximum speed to 55 mph? That would make them as safe as they can be, right?

[DHPersonal]

You're actually really on to something there.

[Tiktaalik]

yes