With trucks growing exponentially in size over the years, more than one organization has highlighted the potential dangers of such vehicles – especially when it comes to a driver’s ability to see pedestrians. One of the biggest concerns in regards to larger pickups and SUVs is the fact that they feature greatly reduced front visibility due to their tall ride height and longer hoods, which can create massive blind spots. Thus, while today’s pickups – including the Ford F-150 – are far safer for occupants than they were just a couple of decades ago, they also present drivers with more blind spots than ever before as well, it seems.
According to a new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center, the forward blind zones of six top-selling passenger vehicles grew substantially over the past 25 years as pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities have also increased. Using a new method that IIHS developed for measuring a driver’s direct area of vision around a vehicle, the study found that between 1997 and 2023, forward visibility within a 10-meter radius fell as much as 58 percent for SUVs, as well as 17 percent for the Ford F-150, specifically – drivers of the 1997 model could see only 43 percent of the forward area within a 10-meter radius, and that dropped to a 36 percent by 2015, notably.
The new IIHS method relies on computational software and a portable camera rig that is positioned in the driver seat at various heights to represent different-sized drivers. The camera rotates to create a 360-degree image of the field of vision around the vehicle, after which software converts that image into a blind zone map that depicts an aerial view of the vehicle and the nearest points on the ground that the driver can see. The Volpe Center study focused on forward visibility within a 10-meter radius of the vehicle because that is the average stopping distance at 10 mph.
“The across-the-board decrease in visibility for this small group of models is concerning. We need to investigate whether this is a broader trend that may have contributed to the recent spike in pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities,” IIHS President David Harkey said. “This study also illustrates that the new method developed by IIHS gives researchers a straightforward, repeatable way to assess driver visibility.”
Comments
I suspect that the increase in pedestrian accidents is related more to the indiscriminate use of cell phones and headphones by pedestrians than reduced forward visibility on the part of vehicles. When I am a pedestrian I figure that it is my responsibility to watch out for vehicles and not vice-versa.
It is your responsibility and the driver’s responsibility. In my state, texting and driving will result in progressive fines, which will probably result in higher insurance premiums for the texting driver.
We could use all kinds of tech to find what’s in our blindspots. We do that already. Then again, we could just make the trucks smaller.