The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finally announced this week that it will do what I and others have been prodding it to do for years: force vehicle makers to consider pedestrian safety.
The new "standard" — the details of which aren’t 100 percent final and are very wonky and voluminous — will require auto makers to meet certain thresholds for adult and child head impacts. This means they will have to design their hoods/front ends to be more “forgiving” in the event of a pedestrian crash.
This is what car makers have done in the European Union since 2009. And what we’ve done basically to the inside of cars since the 1970s.
To be clear, the new standard is a little less awesome than the rules in Europe, where carmakers must pass crash tests relating to leg injuries for pedestrians. And that has not been proposed in the U.S.
Still, I was pretty excited. Like I said, I did not expect U.S. regulators to make this move. Never got a whisper of it. In the U.S., NHTSA has never regulated vehicles for pedestrian safety. They have never done crash tests involving crash test dummies.
When I wrote a book about the “pedestrian safety crisis in America” four years ago, pedestrian deaths were about 20 percent lower than they are now. Quotes from earlier generations of auto safety advocates were especially telling.
For example, in my book, I quoted Consumer advocate Clarence Ditlow, who had told Automotive News before his death in 2016 that “pedestrian protection is one of the last frontiers of vehicle safety.” He added, “NHTSA has been reluctant to regulate it because it so closely relates to styling.”
In other words, Ford trucks might look less homicidal and macho if they consider pedestrian safety, which is why we didn’t act sooner (whomp whomp).
Hoods can be designed to be softer, basically, so that when a pedestrian is struck by them they “cushion” the blow a little bit. This is basically the premise of airbags and the fundamental technique behind crash safety for car passengers.
The new rules are also gratifying because they come shortly after NHTSA announced it will require Automatic Pedestrian Detection — sensor technology which prevents cars from hitting pedestrians in the first place — in upcoming model years.
When I finished writing my book and went into business this was something I wanted to work on. I always thought auto regulations were sort of the “low-hanging fruit” in this problem. It seems some folks inside NTSHA are fighting the good fight.
Pedestrian deaths, according to their data, are up 83 percent in the United States since Europe started requiring this stuff a generation ago.
NHTSA has known about this problem since at least 2015, when it released research finding pedestrians were much more likely to be killed if they are hit by an SUV or pickup. But instead of acting swiftly, it spend years sorta blaming pedestrians for their own deaths and offering impotent advice like “wear bright clothing.”
Then-President Barack Obama did try to address this late in his last term and the Trump administration squashed it.
I’m happy NHTSA is acting right now because who knows what’s going to happen in the fall. But this is federal “rule making,” a new regulation which is administratively introduced (but with Congressional backing in this case) and these can be difficult to reverse. That being said, I’m not sure about this impacts of this new Supreme Court ruling which weaklings regulatory power.
Anyway, I still think this, combined with automated pedestrian detection will have a big impact. Wouldn’t that be something if we acted to resolve a problem? Fingers crossed!
