Blind spots on American cars are expanding
11 comments
·June 27, 2025bob1029
sottol
I don't know that I 100% agree. I bet the A-pillar is for safety but hoods and grills are also getting so tall that some reports indicate the front blindspot can be as large as 16 feet! These grills are also more adept at killing pedestrians. I think it's partially because US safety is focused on occupants and ignores anyone outside the car afaict.
What I'm seeing in the suburban example graph in the article, is that the vehicle and hood have gotten way taller... I don't know how hoods/grills this high improve safety - I assume it's mostly the opposite. But they do "look rugged/beefy" - like all trucks and SUVs have to in order to sell - just look at the difference! [1]
"Millions of SUVs, trucks have dangerous front blind zone" [2]
[1] https://static1.hotcarsimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploa...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/americas-cars-trucks-ar... (or all the other writeups of this report)
modeless
Not mentioned in the article is that increasing regulations for safety and efficiency are the cause of worse visibility, because they encourage or require more airbags, more strength, more crumple zones, higher hoods, and more shallowly sloped windows.
btmiller
That’s an important point to remember. Do you think all the car safety regulations were the most effective and achievable solution in the US? Or are there alternatives to achieving safety without resorting to mass transit? Don’t get me wrong, I live in a city and good mass transit would be AWESOME (for safety too). I don’t think that environment is shared by a majority of Americans, and so I’m still skeptical whether extensive mass transit networks across America would ever be economically and technically realistic (i.e. the suburb i grew up in will certainly never have city walkability).
_wire_
Yes a serious problem that's getting worse.
The large size of the A-pillar to hold side airbag, the long slope of the windshield requiring an arch for the A-pillar to meet the door, the distance of the seat from the A-pillar, standardization of street block and geometry, the relative size/distance/speeds of vehicles, and recent public works for crossings is creating a serious hazard.
Basically, the from the drivers perspective the pedestrian's crossing remains hidden behind the A-pillar for the entire duration of the vehicle's approach while the pedestrian sees a clear line of sight and asserts a new sense of entitlement to cross via urban design campaigns to create boldly marked crossings.
There's a couple of another related crossing design patterns which I will term "the forest for the trees hazard":
One forest-for-trees-hazard is traffic calming pylons placed in the middle of intersections next to elementary schools that are planted with shrubberies and grasses that grow higher than people and completely obscure the crossings.
Another forest-for-trees-hazard is crosswalks so festooned with a clutter of multicolored stripes, barrier poles, signs and warning flags that pedestrians get lost visual chatter.
Finally islands being erected on broad streets and medians including trees and plastic pylons which at night create a coruscation of vertical moving shadows from exceptionally bright and tightly focused headlights of oncoming traffic put the driver of blind faith that the movement is not a pedestrian. In other words, drivers are being conditioned to ignore pedestrians because their movement is indistinguishable from other patterns of light across the roadway.
Meanwhile, after 75 years of American urban planning around the automobile, the pedestrian and cyclist are obviously total afterthoughts, facing daunting environments that can never be property retro-fit to accommodate them without upending the entire civic plan, which design itself is nothing more than sprawl checked by artifacts of case law for previous liabilities.
xnx
> Coruscation
a gleam, flash, or sparkle of light
(Had to look that one up)
neuroelectron
I hit a pedestrian because of this and with combination of blinding LED headlights someone left on while parked. Luckily I was going slow and the pedestrian admitted to walking out in front of me, assuming I would stop for them. I didn't see them at all. They didn't see me looking either since the led headlights were blinding him as well. I complained to the kid whose car was dazzling everyone and he said "they're just headlights."
r0ckarong
Just make it shoot the person you're running over. Problem solved.
xnx
For this and a thousand other reasons, self-driving cars (Waymo being the only realistic candidate right now) can't come soon enough.
allears
Blind spots on regulators seem to be expanding also
null
> and regulators aren't stepping in.
Regulators are the reason for this.
This article conveniently omits the reason for the gigantic A-pillars - Other safety regulations that enforce a certain coverage of airbags for the passengers. We can't magically regulate this one away. These kinds of higher order consequences tend to be a really painful, gradual realization.
I would gladly purchase a new vehicle with zero airbags in it if I were allowed to. Especially if the tradeoff is a 50% buff to visibility in the corners. I would also happily sign a form that locks up my vehicle's title for all eternity and prohibits any form of resale to satisfy the safety-at-all-costs extremists who caused this mess in the first place.