FOURWHEELED DANGER
SUVs are a major factor in an alarming increase in deaths on nation’s roads
Robert and Karen Bonta, married 50 years last summer, explored all seven continents as they charged into their 70s. ❚ Amy Bonta Ferin didn’t worry about her parents each winter when they left their chilly Iowa home for the saguaro-dotted desert hills near Phoenix. Her mother, Ferin said, who kept a bag packed to travel to events involving her three children and 10 grandchildren, lit up a room with her hopeful, smiling face.
“One of the hardest things to see was her in a casket,” Ferin said. “She didn’t have a smile on her face.”
Robert, 72, and Karen Bonta, 71, were killed after an SUV struck them March 13 in the desert community of Fountain Hills, Arizona.
A Ford Explorer driven by 27-yearold Alex Bradshaw hopped a curb and hit them as they stood on a sidewalk. Canadians Patti Lou and Ronald Doornbos also were struck by the SUV as they walked toward the corner in a marked crosswalk. Patti Lou, 60, died immediately; Ronald died June 12.
The four deaths highlight a growing danger for America’s most vulnerable road users: death by SUV.
A Detroit Free Press/USA TODAY NETWORK investigation found that the SUV revolution is a leading cause of escalating pedestrian deaths nationwide, which are up 46 percent since 2009. Almost 6,000 pedestrians died on or along U.S. roads in 2016 alone – nearly as many Americans as have died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002.
Data analyses show that SUVs are the constant factor in the increase and account for a steadily growing proportion of deaths.
SUV sales topped sedan sales in 2014; pickups and SUVs account for 60 percent of new vehicle sales.
The investigation found:
❚ Federal safety regulators have known for years that SUVs, which have higher front-end profiles, are at least twice as likely as cars to kill the walkers, joggers and children they hit, yet they have done little to combat or publicize it.
❚ A federal proposal to factor pedestrians into vehicle safety ratings has stalled, opposed by some automakers.
❚ The rising tide of pedestrian fatalities is primarily an urban problem that kills minorities at a disproportionate rate.
❚ It is most prominent in cities in the industrial heartland and warm-weather spots on the nation’s coasts and Sun Belt. Detroit; Newark, New Jersey; St. Louis; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Miami; San Bernardino, California; Birmingham, Alabama; Tampa, Florida; Fayetteville, North Carolina; and Phoenix had the 10 highest per-capita death rates among cities with populations of at least 200,000 from 2009 to 2016.
Vehicle safety measures, which the federal government says could save hundreds of pedestrian lives every year, are available but not widely employed by some automakers.
Along with automakers, cities can take steps that save pedestrians. New York City cut such deaths nearly in half in four years.
The need for steps such as lower speed limits, more mid-block crosswalks and better lighting grows in urgency as automakers move strongly toward truck and SUV production.
SUV sales topped sedan sales in
2014; pickups and SUVs account for
60 percent of new vehicle sales. Ford announced plans to discontinue U.S. sales of most passenger cars, and Fiat Chrysler already did.
Among the 5,987 pedestrians who died in 2016, many were males, jaywalking or had alcohol in their systems on multilane roads in urban areas at night. Some might have been distracted, just as vehicle drivers could have been, by texting or talking on cellphones, although data are lacking to quantify distraction.
Some of these other factors saw increases in recent years, but the SUV component stands out.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety calculated an 81 percent increase in single-vehicle pedestrian fatalities involving SUVs from 2009 to 2016. The Free Press/USA TODAY analysis of the same federal data, counting vehicles that struck pedestrians rather than counting fatalities, showed a 69 percent increase in SUV involvement. The assessment showed increases each year in the proportion of fatal pedestrian crashes involving the popular vehicles.
Safety standards stalled
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) made the connection in 2015 that SUVs were deadlier for pedestrians than cars. That report, citing 12 independent studies of injury data, said pedestrians are two to three times “more likely to suffer a fatality when struck by an SUV or pickup truck than when struck by a passenger car.”
The safety agency, citing the finding in December 2015, announced a plan to overhaul its vehicle-safety rating system to include a new score for pedestrian safety. The plan was to roll out an overhauled New Car Assessment Program, or NCAP, in 2018 for 2019 modelyear vehicles. That hasn’t happened.
The agency did not respond to questions about what caused the delay. The NHTSA has been without a permanent administrator since President Donald Trump took office. Regulators said in a brief statement that the agency “plans to continue our efforts to update NCAP by following our process for public engagement, including a public meeting during summer 2018.”
That meeting has not been scheduled, and the SUV finding has not been widely shared. The Governors Highway Safety Association reported this year on its estimates of pedestrian deaths in 2017 and did not cite SUVs as a factor, speculating that legal marijuana played a role.
In a separate statement Wednesday, federal regulators said they were “working on a proposal for a standard that would require protection against head and leg injuries for pedestrians impacted by the front end of vehicles.”
The federal agency said it launched research to examine interactions between motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists, to explore distractions and to highlight strategies states can use to protect pedestrians and improve education on “this important topic.”
The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents the industry on policy issues, views advanced driver-assistance and crash-avoidance technology “as a much better approach” to improving pedestrian safety than an overhauled NCAP, spokeswoman Gloria Bergquist said in an email.
“These technologies are well researched and have proved to be beneficial,” Bergquist said.
Size and profile are not the only vehicle factors involved in the increased fatalities. Power also increased. The Insurance Institute noted that the trend toward more powerful vehicles could contribute to higher speeds, which in turn could lead to more crashes and more severe injuries.
And speed can clearly kill.
For crashes in which a vehicle is traveling 20 mph, 5 percent of pedestrians die. At 30 mph, the percentage increases to 45 percent. At 40 mph, the percentage skyrockets to 85 percent, according to research from 1995 cited by the European Commission, an arm of the European Union.
“Speeding is the most important determinant of whether a pedestrian dies in a crash,” said John Wetmore, a national pedestrian advocate who hosts the public access program “Perils for Pedestrians.”
The toll automobiles have taken on pedestrians dates to the beginnings of the automotive age.
In 1896, Britain saw its first pedestrian death by a motor vehicle when a woman was struck in south London. That year, the country raised its speed limit from 4 to 14 mph, according to Steve Parissien’s “The Life of the Automobile.”
The first U.S. pedestrian death by automobile came in 1899 when a man was struck and killed in New York after hopping off a trolley, Parissien noted.
The more than 8,000 pedestrians killed in the USA in 1979 represent a high point, according to the Insurance Institute, but more than 51,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes that year. Total traffic deaths had fallen to 37,461 in 2016, according to government data, as vehicle safety improved.
Pedestrians are not seeing the benefits of the lifesaving safety improvements that helped reduce overall fatalities. People on foot represent 16 percent of those killed in traffic crashes in 2016, a steady increase over the past decade.
Known safety measures
As the number of pedestrian fatalities has spiked, some communities have worked to change the narrative. Reduc- ing traffic lanes and adding “refuge islands” and mid-block crossings can help reduce speeds and improve pedestrian safety.
Advocates pointed to efforts such as those in New York as examples for other cities. Through a combination of enforcement targeted at driver behavior, lowered speed limits and training for cab drivers, the city saw its pedestrian deaths last year drop to their lowest number, 101, since the city began tracking the statistic in 1910.
In Seattle, Rainier Avenue in 2015 was reduced from four lanes to three, enforcement was stepped up and other changes made it easier for pedestrians to cross. Eleven people died from 2004 to 2014 on one portion of the road, but no one has died in that section since the changes were made, according to the Seattle Department of Transportation.
Cities including Honolulu and Montclair, California, have chosen to focus on pedestrians to reduce fatalities. Both cities passed laws against texting and walking when crossing streets. Honolulu council member Brandon Elefante told the Free Press in May that “the hope is more municipalities will adopt similar language looking at pedestrians and vehicles.”
Vehicle safety features could be just as crucial in reducing pedestrian deaths.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center found that the use of pedestrian crash avoidance/mitigation systems and features such as automatic emergency braking could eliminate up to 5,000 vehicle-topedestrian crashes and 810 fatal crashes of that kind a year.
Most automakers have committed to installing low-speed automatic emergency braking systems by 2022.
The progress varies greatly, from 99 percent of Tesla’s and 96 percent of Mercedes-Benz vehicles with automatic braking to just 6 percent of Fiat Chrysler and 2 percent of Ford autos.
Catherine Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said the voluntary nature of the 2022 commitment means automakers can walk away. “We think that they should be put in as standard equipment in all vehicles,” she said.