If you're one of the 86,500 pedestrians who get smashed by motor vehicles each year in the US, better hope it's not a “light truck” — an SUV, pickup truck, or van — that knocks you flying. These vehicles are 3.4 times as likely to kill you as a car.
In a study published in the journal Injury Prevention, researchers from the Universities of Washington and Virginia crunched fatality stats from six US cities, including Chicago and Seattle, which had been collected by the National Highway Safety Administration.
When they broke down the numbers by type of vehicle, sure enough, the goliaths of the road are more likely to leave corpses in their wake. They're not just twice as lethal, or even three times as lethal. They're almost three-and-a-half times as deadly. And when it comes to serious injuries that don't result in a funeral, the “light truck” rate is three times that of cars.
The numbers for the study were collected from 1994 to 1998. In the years since, SUVs and pickups have become much bigger and more powerful as consumers compete for higher status and intimidation factor. It stands to reason, then, that the lethality of these quasi-tanks has only increased.