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RUCKERSVILLE, Va. 鈥� In a cavernous white room full of bright lights, video cameras and microphones, a driverless cart hurtles at 37 miles per hour into the side of a large SUV.
Researchers at the have crash-tested thousands of cars and trucks like this one over the past three decades at their facility in central Virginia.
But a few years ago, they noticed that those vehicles were getting bigger and heavier. So they decided to make the cart that crashes into them larger, too.
鈥淚t was meant to represent a small pickup or a midsize SUV, and those vehicles have gotten heavier and heavier over time,鈥� says Becky Mueller, a senior research engineer at IIHS. 鈥淪o it's 500 kilograms more weight because that's what the vehicle fleet now reflects.鈥�
础尘别谤颈肠补苍蝉鈥� , while roadway fatalities have also over the past decade.
Now lawmakers in Congress are expected to introduce a bill on Friday that would require federal standards for hood height and visibility to protect pedestrians and other vulnerable road users.
鈥淲e've seen these standards over time improve vehicle safety with a focus on the people in the vehicle,鈥� said Rep. (D-Pa.), the sponsor of the Pedestrian Protection Act, in an interview with NPR. 鈥淏ut this would sort of expand that to pedestrians, bicyclists and people outside the vehicle.鈥�
Larger cars tend to be safer for the occupants. But for people outside the car, it鈥檚 a very different story.
Bigger and taller vehicles are more dangerous for pedestrians, according to . Vehicles with higher front ends and blunt profiles are 45% more likely to cause fatalities in crashes with pedestrians than smaller cars and trucks, researchers found.
Safety advocates say that鈥檚 a big reason why annual pedestrian deaths in the U.S. are up more than 75% since reaching their lowest point in 2009.
鈥淧edestrians that are hit by trucks or SUVs are more likely to be killed,鈥� said Angie Schmitt, the author of : Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America.
鈥淭he vehicles are bigger. They hit people with a heavier force, but they're also hitting people higher on the body,鈥� Schmitt said. 鈥淪o a child may be more likely or a shorter person more likely to be struck in the head. That's more likely to be fatal for them.鈥�
Over the past three decades, the average U.S. passenger vehicle has gotten about 10 inches longer, 8 inches taller and 1,000 pounds heavier, according to IIHS.
SUVs and pickup trucks now make up more than three-quarters of all vehicles on the road in the U.S., up from only 38% in 2009 鈥� a phenomenon described as "car bloat" , a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative. The largest trucks and SUVs "create danger for everybody else on the street," Zipper said, "because of their mass because of their height, whether you're walking or biking or inside a smaller car."
But safety advocates hope that the right design modifications could make the impact of those vehicles a little smaller.
鈥淚 certainly like having an SUV,鈥� said Scanlon, noting that she used to drive a Chevrolet Suburban to get her kids鈥� soccer teams and their gear to practice. 鈥淗aving a good size vehicle is helpful. But it does appear that there are things we can do with respect to design that would reduce the blind zones on these larger vehicles.鈥�
Scanlon鈥檚 bill would require regulators to set standards for hood height, and to make the driver鈥檚 visibility part of the agency鈥檚 safety assessment for new cars.
The responsibility for setting those standards would fall to the , or NHTSA. Safety advocates say the agency has known for years that bigger SUVs and trucks are more deadly for pedestrians 鈥� and has done little about it.
But the acting head of the agency, deputy administrator Sophie Shulman, disputes that.
鈥淲e are looking at all the tools at our disposal to save the lives on our roadways,鈥� Shulman said in an interview last week.
NHTSA declined to comment on the pending pedestrian protection bill. So did the , an auto industry trade group.
鈥淎utomakers have voluntarily developed and introduced MANY crash avoidance technologies," the trade group said in a statement. "We鈥檝e introduced these technologies to make roads safer for drivers and all road users without NHTSA or Congressional requirements and continue to innovate ahead of government requirements.鈥�
This would not be the first time Congress has asked NHTSA to consider the safety of people outside of cars. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law directed the agency to expand its New Car Assessment Program to include pedestrians.
But the that NHTSA put forward last year left many safety advocates disappointed.
That proposal would create a pass-fail rating for pedestrian impacts that would be available only through NHTSA鈥檚 website 鈥� separate, in other words, from the five-star safety rating system that鈥檚 displayed in car windows at dealerships, where safety advocates argue it could have a bigger influence on consumers. And the program would be voluntary, allowing carmakers to exclude vehicles that they might expect to fail.
鈥淲e would prefer to have some teeth,鈥� said Jessica Cicchino, the senior vice president for research at IIHS. 鈥淲e thought it wasn't strong enough to really encourage automakers to make those changes.鈥�
Cicchino argues the on the safety of pedestrians and other road users, and says IIHS is working to develop new kinds of vehicle testing that could have help identify areas for improvement.
鈥淲e have this tension,鈥� Cicchino said, between drivers who 鈥渨ant to be in SUVs and pickups because those are the kinds of vehicles that are out there, and trying to figure out how we can design them in ways that are safer for everybody that's on the road.鈥�
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