Congress wants to slam the brakes on dangerous cars

As the auto industry dives deeper into the electric and alternative fuel era, Ford CEO Jim Farley has warned American consumers about the future of the American auto industry.

He said that to increase EV adoption rates, Americans will have to commit to a type of car that is far from the threshold of Ford’s US operations — a suggestion that sounds downright un-American to many consumers.

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“We need to start falling in love with smaller vehicles again,” Farley told a crowd at the Aspen Ideas Festival in July.

“It is very important for our society and for the adoption of electric vehicles. We are in love with these monster vehicles and I love them too, but there is a major weight issue.”

Americans are madly in love with large, full-size SUVs like Ford (F) Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, General Motors (GM) Chevrolet Tahoe and Suburban and Stellantis’s (STLA) Jeep Wagoneer. These oversized vehicles are popular as family cars and are valued for their exterior size and perceived sense of safety.

However, recent IIHS test results show that not all perceived “safe” large cars are safer for families inside. New legislation introduced in Congress highlights the harsh reality for the safety of people outside these cars.

Chevrolet Tahoe RST 2025

General Motors

Oversized and exaggerated

With American family cars getting bigger and heavier, road deaths have also increased.

On Friday, August 23, lawmakers in Congress introduced a bill that would require federal standards for hood height and car visibility to protect pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.

The bill, known as the Pedestrian Protection Act, was introduced on the House floor by Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), who told NPR that car safety standards overlook those outside the car .

“We’ve seen these standards over time improve vehicle safety with an emphasis on the people in the vehicle,” Scanlon told NPR. “But (the bill) would extend that to pedestrians, bicyclists and people outside the vehicle.”

According to a November 2023 study by the IIHS, researchers found a correlation between the height of a car’s hood and its risk of causing pedestrian fatalities, where vehicles with tall fronts and smooth faces, such as tall SUVs and pickup trucks -s, are 45% more likely to kill the pedestrians they hit.

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Their data also found that the average car on American streets has gained nearly a thousand pounds and grown eight inches taller over the past thirty years. Many “family vehicles” on the market today stand more than 40 inches (3’4″) from the top of their hood to the ground, taller than the average height of a child under six, according to Children’s Wisconsin.

“Vehicles are bigger. They hit people with more force, but they also hit people higher in the body,” Angie Schmitt, author of Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America, said NPR. “So a child may be more likely or a shorter person more likely to be hit in the head. It is more likely to be fatal for them.”

Pedestrian safety advocates are recommending slight changes to car design that would make such large cars easier to see and less dangerous to pedestrians. The bill introduced by Scanlon would require regulators to set hood height standards and include driver visibility in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) safety rating for new cars.

“Manufacturers can make vehicles less dangerous to pedestrians by lowering the front end of the hood and tilting the grille and hood to create a sloping profile,” said Wen Hu, IIHS principal transportation research engineer, in November 2023. “There is no no functional benefit for these massives. , blocked fronts.”

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Scanlon told NPR that he likes “having an SUV,” adding that he used to drive a Chevrolet Suburban to transport his kids and teammates to soccer practice while hauling their equipment.

“Having a good-sized vehicle helps,” Scanlon told NPR. “But it looks like there are things we can do in terms of design that would reduce the blind spots of these larger vehicles.”

However, NHTSA has done little to address the problem. Their latest effort, in 2023, proposed the idea of ​​pedestrian impact testing, which would test vehicles for pedestrian impacts.

The proposal would create a pass-fail rating for a pedestrian impact test, the results of which would be displayed only on NHTSA’s website rather than on new car window stickers. In addition, the program would be entirely voluntary, which could discourage manufacturers from disclosing if their vehicles fail.

However, industry advocates at the Alliance for Automotive Innovation believe the legislation is completely unnecessary with the onslaught of new technologies such as forward collision detection.

“Automobile drivers have voluntarily developed and introduced MANY crash-avoidance technologies,” the trade group told NPR.

“We introduced these technologies to make the roads safer for drivers and all road users without NHTSA or Congressional requirements, and we continue to innovate ahead of government requirements.”

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