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Nancy Solomon: It's the Brian Lehrer Show. I'm WNYC reporter Nancy Solomon filling in for Brian who's out today. Now, let's talk about SUVs and pickup trucks. You may have been attracted by the safety features, but exactly who are these vehicles safer for? JD Power, the consumer research data and analytics firm revealed that in October 2021, more than four in five estimated new vehicle sales in the United States were SUVs and pickup trucks and those numbers remain consistent through the end of 2021.

In so much of this car-centric country, SUVs and pickup trucks have become ubiquitous but as more Americans choose larger vehicles, pedestrian deaths and traffic fatalities soar.

Last year, a report from the Governor's Highway Safety Association found that pedestrian deaths hit a 40-year high and in early 2022, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that traffic deaths in the US hit a 20-year high. One more report we'll throw into the mix comes from the IIHS, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

This past March, it found that SUVs and pickups were more likely than cars to strike Pedestrians. We'll get insight on all these trends with Alissa Walker, senior reporter at Curbed, the urban design and real estate news blog. She has a story on the site about how cop cars have increasingly become SUVs, and we'll ask her about that too. Alissa Walker, welcome to WNYC. Thanks for coming on.

Alissa Walker: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Nancy Solomon: Listeners, of course, we want to hear from you. Do you drive an SUV or a pickup truck? Why? If you bought an SUV or pickup truck in the last year when gas prices was coming up and getting high? What made you get that Chevy Tahoe or GMC Sierra, rather than a Corolla or a Tesla sedan? Call us at 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692 or you can tweet @BrianLehrer. Alissa, you're joining us from LA, a city very much built around the cars. I live in New Jersey, I can't cast any shade there. Do you drive and over time, what have you come to see out there on the roads?

Alissa Walker: I do drive. For a long time, I did not have a car here in Los Angeles. It was surprising always to people but I always mentioned that a lot of people don't drive and a lot of people can't afford to drive here. It's not as unusual as people think. I drive a sedan. Now I have two kids. We got our parents' old hand-me-down, Volkswagen Passat. It's on its very last legs and wheels.

I have noticed over the last 20 years that I've lived here that I am the smallest vehicle on the road. You navigate through the city and you're driving through these canyons of these sheet metal, always black SUVs and trucks coming up on the side of you and it does make you think that maybe if I was in a bigger car, I'd be safer and that's true for the people that are in those cars but for the people who are outside of those cars, who are the most vulnerable people on our streets, you're actually putting them in more danger.

Nancy Solomon: Tell us a little bit more about that. What is the threat to pedestrians, cyclists, or people in smaller cars?

Alissa Walker: I'll just focus on the pedestrians and cyclists because it's really notable. Think about when you are walking in front of these giant vehicles and I always like to take a picture of the profile when you're walking up to one of these giant vehicles like the Tahoe that you're talking about. My shoulders, I'm about 5'7", are at two at the top of the hood. The grill, this like giant silver metal part of the car, and the front of it kind of nose has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger as these profiles have grown over the last two decades.

If you're facing that car, you're looking at it and that car hits you. It's going to hit you right in your vital organs and I've been hit by a car as a cyclist before. I was one-time hit by a sedan. I bounced up and over the sedan and rolled out the hood. That's how cars are supposed to work. Now what happens if you get hit by one of these higher-profile vehicles, you will go under the car.

It will strike you and it will drag you underneath. This is what safety advocates have been trying to raise the alarm about for years. There's no regulation as to how these vehicles are being designed and produced and they're allowed to get bigger and bigger and bigger. People pay more money for them and car companies make more money off of them. There's really this unchecked growth that's happening and every city is more dangerous now because of this.

Nancy Solomon: I know that New Yorkers face menacing behavior by drivers in crosswalks every day in the city. We'd like to hear from you. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We do have a call. Eric in Westchester, you're on the air.

Eric: Yes, thank you for taking my call. We should be discussing the blinding headlights that these SUVs are sporting even the smaller cars. I don't know how this got passed through the National Transportation Safety Board, that they are allowed to drive these blinding headlights that once you get in their tractor beam you can't see. You're blinded. You can't judge distance or speed of the oncoming traffic, that is a serious and dangerous flaw that they didn't think of.

Nancy Solomon: Just clarify for me is this about the brightness of the lights or the way that they're positioned, like the height of the trajectory?

Eric: Well, there's the brightness and then some of these cars are sporting three on each side and they're driving with their fog lights on when there's no fog. It's unnecessary to be driving with fog lights at night when there's no fog. It's just another annoyance to the oncoming traffic. The three headlights on each side is six headlights total, and the blinding LEDs wipe out your vision, not just blind you, you are stunned.

It's just spikes coming out of these lights and the oncoming driver can't judge the distance or the speed of the oncoming traffic, and even the rearview mirror when you're looking at a car coming from behind, you can't judge their distance or speed either with this new lights.

Nancy Solomon: That can often be very blinding I experience is the light beaming from your rearview mirror into your eyes. Let's get an answer for you. Alissa, you want to weigh in on this one?

Alissa Walker: Yes. I don't know as much about any efforts to try to dim those lights, I definitely have experienced them. I definitely think that the higher profile vehicle and the angle at which those lights are being shown into other vehicles, that is probably definitely a real concern because if you're designing an SUV to be seen by another SUV since they're now the majority on the road, what does that mean about how you're able to interact with it when you're in a smaller vehicle.

The other thing I would just mention is if you're talking about not being able to see and visibility, the problem for the SUV driver and the truck driver is very significant because you used to be able to have an awareness and maybe this is the reason they have to add three or four more lights to the outside of your car. You used to be able to see over the steering wheel and over the edge of your vehicle.

Now there's been all these studies done that have shown a driver sitting in one of these large SUVs, I believe it was a Tahoe or an Escalade, something like that could not see 13 children sitting on the ground in front of their vehicle, they can only see the head of the 13th kid. If you think about the way that you are able to even have this kind of situational awareness of when you're on the road and what you're able to see around you, I have no doubt that you'd have to add a bunch more blazing lamps around your vehicle just to be able to see in the dark.

Nancy Solomon: It's interesting because I have to say and probably I'm going to get some angry responses but when I'm out on the road, I always thought it was like the personality of the SUV driver that was causing so much problems, that they just seem to drive more aggressively than people in smaller cars but maybe it's because it's actually the body of the vehicle that's causing that as opposed to feeling all-powerful behind that wheel. I don't know.

Alissa Walker: Well, also, there's more power in these vehicles. When you press and I don't drive a whole bunch of these larger vehicles but I have. When you hit the accelerator and you are in this giant, one of these, something like the new F-150, lightning and that's Electric Hummer, people are making videos of themselves, which they really shouldn't be doing. Driving and saying, I can't control this vehicle. It has so much horsepower. It has so much acceleration when I hit the accelerator that I can't control it. I think you have to think about we're making these bigger vehicles but we're also making more powerful vehicles.

Nancy Solomon: Let's take another call. Hugh in Manhattan. You're on the air.

Hugh: Yes. Hi. I'm pulled over in a full-size black Toyota Sequoia right now. That's an eight-passenger SUV with three rows of seats. I can honestly say that everything your callers are talking about is valid, but I think one thing that's going on with SUVs and SUV drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, and so on, is that people really demonize each other and I'm not trying to discount what motorists like me go through, but I'm also a cyclist.

I've been riding bicycles in the city my whole life. Because of the education I've gotten as a motorist that has the responsibility of driving a vehicle that's multiple tons, that is a huge black box and I also have the responsibility as a cyclist to be aware of my surroundings, especially pedestrians. I think it's kept me from every accident imaginable. I've never been in an auto accident.

I've had the good fortune of never being severely hit on my bicycle. Although I've been in multiple accidents on my bicycle, I've been able to walk away from all of them. I think that really comes from personal responsibility as well as empathy.

Nancy Solomon: Thanks, Hugh. Let me ask you a question. Here you are in New York driving a large SUV, what went into that choice? These are not the mountain roads of Montana here.

Hugh: That's an excellent question, and I'll tell you what went into that choice. The fact that the infrastructure in America, especially New York City, whether it's mass transit or highway transit is terrible. I used to own a compact vehicle. I used to own a compact Honda, a four-door sedan, no big deal and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the fuel economy.

I enjoyed the ability to get around the city in a motor vehicle without being an overwhelming nuisance but then I started taking on the highways. Actually, I was on route 87 going upstate New York and there was a huge sinkhole on the highway. It destroyed my vehicle. Just from being in a sinkhole, a truck would've survived that.

Nancy Solomon: Oh, even potholes will do it.

Hugh: Yes, exactly but I go through potholes all day. I hit all kinds of debris and dents and dings in the road. My truck is not worse for it to wear because it is a truck. It is a full-size high off-the-ground SUV and that's the only reason I got it. Frankly, I got it because the roads were so bad that my vehicle was getting destroyed, so I had to get a larger vehicle that was more robust.

Nancy Solomon: Okay, Hugh, thanks so much for your call. Alissa, when it comes to these record pedestrian and traffic deaths, how much culpability do you think should be placed on auto manufacturers and to Hugh's point, not to demonize SUV drivers, but to hold the companies accountable?

Alissa Walker: Right, of course. This is a perfect example of somebody who wanted a bigger vehicle for whatever reason and I do hear the pothole reasoning-

Nancy Solomon: Yes, I've been there.

Alissa Walker: -quite a bit I hear in LA especially. You don't have a choice as a consumer anymore because a lot of car companies have stopped making sedans entirely. If I wanted to go buy a Ford vehicle to drive my kids around, replace my old Passat, the Passat doesn't exist anymore or is being phased out. Ford doesn't make sedans anymore. A lot of these car companies don't make sedans anymore.

If you wanted to get something even a little bit bigger, you'd have to jump all the way up to the eight-passenger SUV so I don't blame a lot of people who are able to afford to buy a new car and don't have any options and opt for the one that seems like is the best fit for them, and just happens to be even more dangerous. The automakers are 100% responsible for just designing these monstrous vehicles that are completely not appropriate for our streets, but I'll put the most blame on the federal government which regulates these vehicles and tries to every year put out these statistics about pedestrian fatalities going up.

What could we possibly do to stop this? Nobody understands. Let's throw out some grants to make streets safer. We could never possibly keep up with this arms race that's going on between automakers. The most important blame needs to be attributed to the federal government.

Nancy Solomon: We're almost out of time so if you could boil it down here, I did want to get to the article you wrote about police cars increasingly are SUVs. Data from a sales tracking firm shows that more than half of all cars sold to the police departments around the country are SUVs. The NYPD announced its transitioning to an all-SUV fleet, so what's the appeal, and what are the problems with that?

Alissa Walker: Well, this is a perfect example of what I just mentioned. We used to have this fleet of sedans patrolling our cities, and now they're not made anymore and you see these automakers scared, worried about that they're not going to be able to serve these police forces anymore, which are big customers. Ford, for example, they have contracts with so many police departments including NYPD. They are now marketing these extra-large vehicles, including some of the ones I was talking about before, like the giant F-150, these Escalades, Expedition Explorer, they're all E words and they're marketing them as these powerful vehicles that can [crosstalk].

Nancy Solomon: I'm going to have to leave it there. Alissa, I'm so sorry to interrupt you. Alissa Walker, senior reporter at Curbed, thanks so much for joining us from LA this morning.

Alissa Walker: Thank you so much for having me.

Nancy Solomon: I'm Nancy Solomon. This is the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

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