American car buyers can’t get enough big, tall SUVs and trucks — but new data suggests that the downsides of this trend are growing increasingly deadly.
Crashes involving vehicles with hood heights that are 40 inches or higher are 45 percent more likely to result in a fatality as compared to vehicles with hood heights that are 30 inches or less with a sloping profile, according to a new report analyzing federal crash statistics by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The data comes amid an ongoing pedestrian safety crisis in the US in which fatalities are at a 40-year high and the number of pedestrians killed has increased by 80 percent since hitting a low in 2009.
