The taller nose of an SUV better distributes forces across more of a pedestrian’s body, which reduces injury. And you get pushed ahead of the car instead of being scooped up to hit the windshield with your head. This is again better for the pedestrian as long as the car stops in time not to run over the person lying on the ground.
You’ll notice that non-SUV noses have been getting taller and flatter for the past ~15 years. This is a direct result of Euro NCAP rules for pedestrian safety.
edit: if you’re downvoting, I really suggest you watch the linked video. It’s great food for thought.
This is wrong. SUVs kill pedestrians by crushing their bones and organs and popping their skulls like watermelons when they end up under the wheels. With lower hoods pedestrians instead go over the hood, suffering relatively minor broken bones and concussions.
Is that true? My understanding is lower hoods roll pedestrians over, whereas tall, solid hoods basically bring them to full speed immediately, doing a bunch of damage in the process.
You can see in the video that it’s true. In their experiment, the lower hood, at same speed, makes the pedestrian hit the car 3 or 4 times instead of twice with the taller vehicle.
Mind you the taller car was only about elbow height, not like some lifted trucks you see these days where the bumper roughly aligns with a person’s hips.
> In the Michigan crashes, SUVs caused more serious injuries than cars when impacts occurred at greater than 19 miles per hour. At speeds of 20-39 mph, 3 out of 10 crashes with SUVs (30 percent) resulted in a pedestrian fatality, compared with 5 out of 22 for cars (23 percent). At 40 mph and higher, all three crashes with SUVs killed the pedestrian (100 percent), compared with 7 out of 13 crashes involving cars (54 percent). Below 20 miles per hour there was little difference between the outcomes, with pedestrians struck by either vehicle type tending to sustain minor injuries.
Notice even in the thumbnails on that page, the car has a much taller flatter nose than a comparable car would’ve in the early 2000’s.
It does look like modern SUVs are less safe than the SUVs of old, however. I guess they’re getting too big. If you look at the SUV that Fifth Gear was testing with in the early 2000’s, it basically counts as a “small compact” in modern USA. https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-study-suggests-todays-s...
As someone else mentioned, the biggest problem may be turning visibility. This combined with right-turn-on-red creates a uniquely American safety issue.
It's not so much that we've stopped calling them 4x4 - it's more than the 4WD market has diverged. A 4x4 is designed to get muddy. An SUV is designed to traverse speed bumps & children's bodies with dignity.
To my mind 4x4 still very much calls to mind vehicles that are 4WD for a functional reason.
We'd still call a genuine off road vehicle a four by four.
Americans have gone a bit nuts with the SUV label - we don't call things like a Model Y an SUV, it's just a hatchback. Some other models Americans call SUVs are Estates or People Carriers. We probably wouldn't call things like a Porsche Cayenne a 4x4 because it's never going off road. That will happily be called an SUV with all the selfish egotism implied. Other names for it would be more deliberately insulting e.g. Chelsea Tractor etc.
https://youtu.be/4aCumC7sJIg
The taller nose of an SUV better distributes forces across more of a pedestrian’s body, which reduces injury. And you get pushed ahead of the car instead of being scooped up to hit the windshield with your head. This is again better for the pedestrian as long as the car stops in time not to run over the person lying on the ground.
You’ll notice that non-SUV noses have been getting taller and flatter for the past ~15 years. This is a direct result of Euro NCAP rules for pedestrian safety.
edit: if you’re downvoting, I really suggest you watch the linked video. It’s great food for thought.