SUVs, pickups, vans and minivans are more likely than cars to hit pedestrians when making turns.
According to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, pedestrian crash deaths have increased nearly every year since hitting a low point in 2009, rising 59 percent to top 6,500 fatalities in 2020, the latest year for which data are available. The same year, another 54,700 pedestrians were injured in motor vehicle crashes. One suspected factor is the growing prevalence of larger vehicles.
Where vehicle type is concerned, earlier research has shown that SUVs and pickups are more lethal to pedestrians than cars. The new study shows that certain types of pedestrian crashes — including those that occur while the vehicle is turning — are more likely to occur with SUVs, pickups, vans and minivans.
**At intersections, the odds that a crash that killed a crossing pedestrian involved a left turn by the vehicle versus no turn were about twice as high for SUVs, nearly 3 times as high for vans and minivans and nearly 4 times as high for pickups as they were for cars. The odds that a crash that killed a crossing pedestrian involved a right turn by the vehicle were also 89 percent higher for pickups and 63 percent higher for SUVs than for cars. Such turning crashes accounted for more than 900 of around 5,800 fatal pedestrian crashes at or near U.S. intersections during 2014-18.
**At other locations, SUVs and pickups were associated with 51 percent and 25 percent greater odds than cars of killing a pedestrian walking or running along the road versus a fatal straight-on crash with a crossing pedestrian. The fact that larger vehicles and walking-along-the-road crashes are both more common in rural areas might have contributed to those heightened odds, though the researchers considered whether the crash occurred in a rural area and other environmental factors in their analysis. Such incidents accounted for around 2,500 out of some 14,000 U.S. fatal pedestrian crashes that did not involve intersections.
**More research will be needed to understand the role of visibility in these crashes. Earlier studies have shown that A-pillars — the struts connecting the roof to the vehicle’s body on either side of the windshield — can create blind spots that can make it difficult for drivers to see pedestrians and that these blind spots grow larger as A-pillars become wider.
