In the past few decades, the automotive industry has made incredible strides in occupant safety. Crumple zones in the front and side of modern cars are designed to fold and deform on impact, lowering crash momentum. Airbags deploy immediately after a collision to prevent passengers from slamming into the interior of the car. Seat belts restrain occupants in place, preventing them from being ejected. However, despite these monumental advances in car safety, the single biggest determinant of survival in a crash remains the most intuitive one: size. The general consensus is that the bigger the car, the safer you are. There is a simple physics explanation for this relationship: larger cars have more momentum and thus absorb impacts better than smaller cars.
Indeed, the average American car has grown a whopping 12 inches longer and 22 inches wider between 2013 and 2023. Similarly, the average car size has ballooned to 4,400 pounds. This is 1,100 pounds heavier than the EU average and 1,800 pounds heavier than the Japanese average. Further demonstrating this trend is the fact that in 2022, a staggering 80 percent of new cars bought by consumers were SUVs and trucks.
Nonetheless, despite these innovations and size increases, the roads for American motorists remain dangerous. In 2022, motor vehicle traffic crashes actually increased to its highest point in 16 years. There is a troubling reason for this.
As it turns out, while larger cars may be safer for its occupants, they are more dangerous to those outside. The same physics logic that explains the safety of a larger car in a crash also explains the peril of driving a small car in that crash. The more compact car cannot absorb as much momentum as the more expansive one, leading to a higher chance of severe injury or death. Furthermore, the tall hood sizes of larger cars alongside their wide blind spots also pose a danger to pedestrians. Vehicles with hoods taller than 40 inches are over 45 percent more likely to kill pedestrians compared with those lower than 30 inches. Moreover, the extra parking space required by larger vehicles often obscures the visibility of pedestrians on busy street intersections, a surefire recipe for disaster.
The consequences of these factors are illustrated in a study done by The Economist, which revealed, somewhat unsurprisingly, that increasing car weight decreases occupant fatality: the fatality rate of a Ford F-150 is only half that of the comparatively smaller Honda Civic. However, the study also demonstrated that for every one life a SUV or pickup truck saves in a crash, an average of 4.3 lives are lost. This number skyrockets to 12 lives lost for the top one percent of SUVs with an increase in 1,000 pounds causing a 66 percent increase in fatality for other people.
Even more concerning is the fact that there is evidence that size provides a safety edge only to a certain point: any additional increase in size does not provide any increased security. Indeed, the same study found similar occupant fatality rates for the cars in the top 10 percent of the sample versus the next 10 percent. However, fatality rates for those hit by these vehicles doubled as one moved up the sample.
If SUVs and pick-ups are leading to an increase in traffic fatalities, the question remains as to why Americans are scrambling to buy bigger and bigger cars. It is easy to dismiss this craze as the product of selfish individuals or a culture that emphasizes competition and showmanship. But beyond an individual or even a cultural problem, the real concern is the poorly designed, archaic legislation which both incentivizes carmakers to produce larger cars and consumers to buy them. This phenomenon has contributed most to what David Zipper describes as “car bloat.”
The impact that cars have on other people is a factor that federal bodies like the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) utterly ignore when determining the safety of any given car instead prioritizing how the car protects its own occupants. This oversight thus sends the signal for carmakers to blindly increase the size and weight of their vehicle at the expense of overall safety.
There is also a litany of federal legislation that creates an environment conducive to the production of larger cars. For example, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) require minimum fuel economy (mpg) levels for cars. However, instead of applying a uniform standard for all cars, CAFE distinguished between passenger cars and light trucks, requiring 24 mpg and 17.5 mpg respectively.
President George W. Bush further lightened the standards for cars with higher physical footprints — the shadow cast by the vehicle under direct sunlight. The relatively lax standards for light trucks compared to sedans incentivized automakers to produce more SUVs and pickup trucks. Preferential status towards large vehicles finds its way into other laws as well: the so-called “gas guzzler tax” fines automakers for making cars with a 22.5 mpg or lower.
But once again, SUVs and pickups are exempt from the rule since their weight lowers their gas mileage relative to smaller vehicles. In both of these instances, the laws that exist today were created decades ago in an era when sizable automobiles were exceedingly rare. However, due to immense pressure from car manufacturers, these antiquated laws are still alive today, meaning today’s cars will only grow further.
Not only is there legislation that incentivizes the production of larger SUVs and pickup trucks, there simultaneously exist regulations that bar the importation of smaller, cheaper, and more efficient cars from abroad. For example, the so-called “chicken tax” arose over a trade dispute six decades ago when Europe decided to enact a tariff on chicken exported from the United States, prompting the US to place a tariff on smaller vehicles exported from abroad.
Beyond the fact that the original counter-tariff targeted goods not relevant to poultry products, the law oddly still exists today though the dispute dissipated decades ago, and it applies to imported cars from any country, not just Europe. In essence, cars imported from burgeoning car manufacturing centers in countries like China and Japan, for example, cannot reach American markets.
One instance includes the Japanese kei truck: a compact truck of 1,800 pounds that meets farmers’ and contractors’ needs better than the bulky pickup trucks that dominate the American market. Indeed, despite their smaller size, Kei trucks also often have larger bed sizes than their Ford, Ram, and Chevy counterparts, allowing for more critically-needed storage space. To circumvent the importation ban, American consumers must rely on a loophole that allows kei trucks of over 25 years of age to be imported as a “vintage car,” a costly and unnecessary hassle.
All these laws thus help car manufacturers to have unfettered licenses to roll out larger cars for profit and consumers to continue buying them. A further implication is that as cars on American roadways grow, consumers who have not yet bought into this trend will do so out of self interest and familial protection. This cycle unfortunately creates a tragedy of the commons scenario: everyone is pursuing their individual self-interest, leading to a suboptimal outcome in the aggregate. Without sensible reforms of these outdated laws that unfairly advantage production of larger cars, this pernicious cycle will never end, and the lives of Americans will continue to be put at risk.
Written By: Kevin Chen Edited By: Aaryan Chopra