SUVs keep growing in popularity in America. Also, accidents in which pedestrians are struck by vehicles have been increasing. Now, connect the dots.
What connects the dots is a study that shows that SUVs—and pickup trucks, which are also gaining in popularity—have a significant zone immediately in front of them where something in the road would not be visible to the driver. This is because their hoods are higher.
So, owning and driving an SUV puts pedestrians at greater peril; not to mention the fact that SUVs have a greater impact on the environment. They burn more fuel, on average, than cars and thus emit a greater quantity of greenhouse gases.
The American road is on track to become nearly all SUVs as the major American car makers are dropping their sedan models. There is sort of a push-pull operating here: The car makers claim that buyers demand SUVs, but SUVs are more profitable to build, so auto makers are more than happy to switch their product lines, more and more, to SUVs. You cannot any longer buy a sedan from Ford or Chevrolet, both of which built several good small sedan models.
SUVs are not as popular in Europe. I frankly don't understand why they are so appealing to drivers, but one theory I have is that, as American cars grew smaller (look at, for example, the length of '60s cars and compare that with more recent models), people reacted against that by finding large vehicles in the form of SUVs.
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