[iainmerrick]

Yes, I really have a hard time understanding that trend.

More than just the overall sizes of the cars (and they are big) it's those very high, flat fronts. That surely must be bad for visibility and bad for fuel efficiency at speed. I can only imagine people like that style because it looks more like a car and less like a minivan, which is what those enormous SUVs really are.

[toast0]

The market (either producers or consumers or both) don't seem to care about visibility. If you sit in a 20 year old car vs a brand new car, visibility is clearly better in the 20 year old car; if you go back to a 40 year car, it's even better. I've got an 81 VW Vanagon, the visibility is really good: cabover [1] means there's no hood in front, clear vertical windows and no safety features makes it easy to see out in every direction. Terrible side mirror attachments are a negative, but I'm putting aftermarket windows that promise to hold position after adjustment.

[1] It's not really a cabover, the engine is in the rear. but the front seats are slightly in front of the front axle, and the windshield is at the front of the vehicle. Some contemporaries were really cab-over, like the Toyota Van (aka TownAce) although that has a sloped front which reduces drag and visibility.

[hinkley]

The visibility is great and the side impact survivability is roughly equal to that of a claymore mine operated by an expert. Who knows you cheated on his sister.

The IIHS didn’t even start side impact ratings until 2003, which is a lot more recent than I would have ever guessed.

[Peanuts99]

Perversely they're higher partially because of pedestrian safety. More space between the engine and the bonnet and hinges that extend that space when a force is applied to the front of the car to cushion the impact. Euro NCAP has a whole category for pedestrian safety to test exactly these features.

[habosa]

I’m confused. I read (see below) that these very tall fronts are significantly more deadly to pedestrians. Which is true?

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/vehicles-with-higher-more-v...

Not to mention how much bigger the blind spot is now:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna52109

[Marazan]

You are correct, they are more dangerous. But the way the EuroNCAP test is constructed doesn't capture that danger. Leading to perverse, bogus results where SUVs are rated more safe for pedestrian collisions than small cars due to the artificial standard being applied.

[potato3732842]

Not partly, pretty much wholly.

Like every other safety regulation, it's a stupid game of stupid optimization. You "score best" by keeping the dummy's head off the windshield so you make a big giant flop/crunch zone full of engineered plastics and empty void spaces that is (ideally) at least as tall as the dummy's center of mass (belly button). This is why every car, suv, crossover, whatever that's expected to be sold in europe (including most of the small SUVs and crossovers that people complain about in North America) has a tall(er than it would have been 20yr ago) hood line these days.

[iainmerrick]

It can’t be just that, surely? Or the more traditional sloped fronts would be gone completely.

I don’t think people are buying these because they’re safer for pedestrians, they’re buying them because they like the way they look, and/or because they (the drivers) feel safer when they’re in a huge box sitting high up, looming over the surrounding cars.

[jansper39]

For the most part, cars are being designed to meet the required safety regulations in a way that constrains what they are able to build. Gone are more angular designs because sharp angles are all points which people get caught/trapped by - definitely no flip up headlights either for the same reason. Larger A pillar supports to provide roll over protection and door frame rigidity. Larger fronts to provide better small overlap collision deference.

All together it results in all cars kind of looking the same. Shame in a way because my favourite looking car of all time is the Golf Mk2, very angular and boxy but it wouldn't have been made now.

[potato3732842]

When they started it was mostly a styling thing, think like Toyota copycatting the Dodge Charger front profile. The big tradeoff was "but muh fuel economy" and those people got over-ruled. And now 10-20yr later the industry has adapted and optimized for them in the form of utilizing them for crash purposes (and big cooling systems). The safety people consider them integral and so they can't be gotten rid of and the aerodynamics people are no longer whining so hard because they've spent the years figuring out how to somewhat mitigate them.

I think in an alternative universe where none of that happened we likely would have invested the R&D elsewhere and found creative ways to get the same results (you can see inklings of this like the airbag style hood lift thing) with much lower more aerodynamics and visibility friendly hood lines.

But that's just my opinion from being on the fringes of the industry.

[p_j_w]

Does the Euro NCAP test for the likelihood of a collision occurring or only what happens if we assume a collision will occur? It's important, because if a class of vehicles is safer under the assumption of a collision but the collisions happen more frequently versus another class of vehicles, then it's pretty easy to imagine numbers such that the second class of vehicle is actually much safer for pedestrians in spite of a worse safety rating.

[Marazan]

Except the NCAP test is flawed and everyone knows it. They are testing a SUV-pedestrian collision that doesn't actually happen and then rating the SUV's as super safe based on it when based on empirical evidence SUVs are vastly more dangerous to pedestrians in a collision as pedestrians (especially children) and vastly more likely to be dragged under than thrown onto the bonnet.