New study results from Justin Tyndall at the University of Hawai’i’s Economic Research Organization, examined how high the front end of a vehicle needs to be to begin to show an outsized effect on pedestrian deaths.
Translating the study starts with knowing that almost 7,400 pedestrians died after being struck by vehicles in 2021; in 2005, that number was 3,813 pedestrians.
Tyndall says that a four-inch rise in the height of a vehicle’s front fascia results in a 22% rise in the risk of pedestrian death. If regulators capped front fascia height at 49.2 inches, the numbers point to 509 lives being saved every year in the U.S., nearly 7% of 2021’s death figure.
