75% More Pedestrians Have Been Killed Since 2009. Giant Trucks and SUVs Are Why

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75% More Pedestrians Have Been Killed Since 2009. Giant Trucks and SUVs Are Why

We knew bigger cars were killing more pedestrians; now there's data to prove it.

By Byron Hurd

Published

Jun 23, 2026 10:31 AM EDT

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Key Takeaways

Bigger cars, bigger danger. Pedestrian fatalities have surged 75% since 2009, linked to the rise of larger vehicles like SUVs and pickups.

Size matters in safety. Larger vehicle dimensions contribute to increased pedestrian deaths, with 200-400 lives potentially saved annually if cars hadn’t grown.

Regulations and repercussions. Changes in emissions and fuel economy rules inadvertently encouraged bigger cars, impacting pedestrian safety.

Physics of impact. Larger vehicles distribute force differently, but their height and mass increase the risk of deadly collisions.

Bottom line: The rise of larger vehicles has significantly increased pedestrian fatalities, highlighting the unintended consequences of regulatory changes and vehicle design trends.

AI assisted, editor reviewed

Since 2009, there has been a documented shift in road safety for American pedestrians. After decades of declines, pedestrian fatalities have been steadily increasing since the Great Recession. Deep down, we already knew why: it’s because the cars keep getting bigger. According to a new study by The New York Times and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, thousands of deaths would have been prevented over the past 16 years if cars had not grown so significantly in both height and weight.

"After analyzing federal and industry records, including never-before-examined data on vehicle dimensions, we found that the rise of large pickups and S.U.V.s is an important factor," the Times report said.

"Our estimate is that about 200 to 400 pedestrians a year would not have died if vehicles had remained approximately the same size over the past quarter-century," the report continued. "That represents about 10 percent of the recent increase in pedestrian deaths."

According to the report, pedestrian deaths have not only increased by 75% since 2009, but the fatalities have been correlated with the hazards presented by the physical heft, height, and blind spots inherent to today’s big trucks and SUVs.

Why 2009? The answer lies in the confluence of several consequential events of that decade. The truck and SUV boom really started in the ’90s, and likely would have kept right on roaring through the late aughts had it not been for the financial crisis. The interruption was brief, and soaring gas prices pushed nearly-new SUVs into the secondary market even quicker than usual.

Then, in the immediate aftermath of 2008, we saw not only the introduction of a stricter emissions regimen, but the restructuring of the way vehicle fuel economy was calculated to begin with. Not long after that, Cash for Clunkers came along and erased nearly 700,000 cars from the used market entirely, forcing buyers into newer models that were ostensibly more fuel-efficient.

The Obama-era revision is now referred to as the “footprint model.” It’s a formula that classifies cars by several different factors, including physical dimensions and tire size. The EPA’s new rules basically allowed automakers to pollute more so long as they made their cars a larger at the same time, but the minutiae of the government’s regulatory framework is of less importance than its unintended consequences, including the (literal and figurative) rise of the crossover, which has since supplanted the low-slung midsize sedan as America’s favorite family car—for now, at least.

Pop quiz: You’re going to get hit by something coming at you at 50 miles per hour; given equal mass, would you rather that be a small object, or a large object?

Whap! Time’s up. What did you get hit by? If you picked small, you might be dead. If you said "large," your odds are lower. Why? Two reasons. First, F=ma and second, P = F/A. OK, I suppose that’s really just one reason, and it’s called "physics."

In long hand, those formulas represent two related concepts. The first is force (equals) mass (times) acceleration. In other words, the force an object hits you with scales...