A Dodge Ram taking up space on the streets of Melbourne.
They’re hard to miss:you’ll find them struggling to fit into car parks and overhanging into footpaths and bike lanes.
It turns out that they’re not just an oversized annoyance,they’re also dangerous.
Car crashes are now theleading cause of death of Australian children,and these monster trucks are their deadliest incarnation.
Part of the problem is the shape of the vehicles. While they might feel like they sit nice and high with good visibility,the boxy front grille (which primarily exist to make the vehicles look “tough”) actually creates huge blind spots. A news crew put this to the test. They lined up a group of kids in front of a Ford F-150 until they were visible from the driver’s seat. It wasn’t until the eleventh child joined the row that a ponytail and the top of their head could be seen. These deadly blind spots have led to numerous tragedies where children have inadvertently been driven over in their own driveways.
After decades of work in improving road safety in our country,there’s a real chance that these vehicles will undo a lot of this progress. They’re not designed for Australian streets,which are generally narrower and have more cyclist and pedestrian interactions than their natural habitat in America. Having just returned from a trip to the US and seen how common these vehicles are,I’m not surprised thatpedestrian deaths in America are now at a 40-year-high – a public health crisis we should work to avoid.
The square shape and huge mass of these suburban tanks means that when they are involved in an accident,it’s much more likely to be a deadly one. In fact,one study found kids areeight times more likely to die when hit by a SUV compared to a normal passenger car.