Michael H. Keller, Eli Murray, Danielle Ivory, and Irineo Cabreros, New York Times (gift link):

The surge in pedestrian deaths has baffled researchers. Most other wealthy countries haven’t seen similar increases, suggesting that possible culprits like smartphones don’t tell the whole story.

Other likely causes of deadly crashes, such as drunken and distracted driving, have attracted immense attention from the public and policymakers. But the trend toward ever-larger vehicles has received much less scrutiny, even after federal researchers in 2022 cautioned regulators that it was endangering pedestrians.

After analyzing federal and industry records, including never-before-examined data on vehicle dimensions, we found that the rise of large pickups and S.U.V.s is an important factor.

I am fascinated by the Times’ repeated investigation into rising pedestrian deaths in the U.S. — here is another story, this one from 2023 — in which reporters notice how it differs from other countries, including Canada, but do not seem to interrogate that question further. The Canadian auto market is extremely similar to that of the U.S. and the sales of large trucks and SUVs has been booming here, too; yet, we have not seen a comparable rise in pedestrian injuries or fatalities. This is something I explored in response to that 2023 article because it is personally relevant: I am most frequently a pedestrian and cyclist, and I would prefer to not be hit by a vehicle.

Since I published that, researchers from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published an extensive comparison (PDF) of this divergent trend in general traffic fatalities. Though not specific to pedestrian deaths, they point to a variety of different factors, including greater adherence to speed limits in Canada, lower speed limits on average, greater transit use, stricter enforcement of impaired driving laws, and climate-related factors. But this data is only up to 2021 for the U.S. and 2020 for Canada — and those years had specific and unique differences.

Those researchers, in turn, cited a 2022 Bloomberg article by David Zipper, specifically comparing collision fatalities in the U.S. and Canada. I wish I had read that article first; it is very good. Zipper points to factors like growing average vehicle use in the U.S. compared to a flat trendline in Canada, no doubt influenced in part by much lower U.S. fuel prices. And, yes, Zipper also pointed to a trend toward larger and heavier vehicle purchases in the U.S., even more than in Canada. All of these things add up. If people are driving bigger and heavier cars over an already-higher speed limit for greater distances while being more likely to be impaired or distracted, that is likely to cause a much higher number of fatalities than can be explained by any one of these factors alone.

In his article, Zipper quoted Ian Jack, of the Canadian Automobile Association, saying “[it] worries me about the future here in Canada, because we often end up emulating the U.S. some years later”. This, unfortunately, appears to be true. Transport Canada’s motor vehicle casualties dashboard shows a modest increase in pedestrian deaths in 2023 compared to 2022, and a massive increase in all deaths in 2022 and 2023. Injuries are also on the rise, though the story there is more mixed: total injuries are climbing from a low point in 2020, though not to the pre-pandemic levels, but pedestrian injuries spiked in 2020 compared to preceding and subsequent years.

In Alberta, specifically, we seem disinterested in learning anything. Speed camera use has been sharply curtailed and the province has raised the speed limit of a busy stretch of highway. The result is a modest increase in collisions overall in the province and a significant increase in fatal and injurious collisions, including a record-breaking number of fatalities last year in Calgary. Some of that is, undoubtably, due to the factors in this Times article about big trucks and SUVs which, unfortunately, are still growing. Chevrolet just announced its newest Silverado pickup truck line “with a bolder stance [and] stronger face”, one trim level of which, according to Motor Trend, “include[s] a 2.0-inch lift that makes it one inch taller than 2026”.

Update/and another thing: I do not understand why my standard-class driver’s license, which can be granted to someone as young as 16 after a brief road test, permits someone to operate a Volkswagen Golf like mine, a Chevrolet Suburban, and a bus-sized recreational vehicle.

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Jonathan Slotkin, a surgeon and venture capital investor, wrote for the New York Times about data released by Waymo indicating impressive safety improvements over human drivers through June 2025:

If Waymo’s results are indicative of the broader future of autonomous vehicles, we may be on the path to eliminating traffic deaths as a leading cause of mortality in the United States. While many see this as a tech story, I view it as a public health breakthrough.

[…]

There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles. […]

We should be skeptical of all self-reported stats, but these figures look downright impressive.

Slotkin responsibly notes several caveats, though neglects to mention the specific cities in which Waymo operates: Austin, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco. These are warm cities with relatively low annual precipitation, almost none of which is ever snow. Slotkin’s enthusiasm for widespread adoption should be tempered somewhat by this narrow range of climate data. Still, its data is compelling. These cars seem to crash less often than those driven by people in the same cities and, in particular, avoid causing serious injuries at an impressive rate.

It is therefore baffling to me that Waymo appears to be treating this as a cushion for experimentation.

Katherine Bindley, in a Wall Street Journal article published the very same day as Slotkin’s Times piece:

The training wheels are off. Like the rule-following nice guy who’s tired of being taken advantage of, Waymos are putting their own needs first. They’re bending traffic laws, getting impatient with pedestrians and embracing the idea that when it comes to city driving, politeness doesn’t pay: It’s every car for itself.

[…]

Waymo has been trying to make its cars “confidently assertive,” says Chris Ludwick, a senior director of product management with Waymo, which is owned by Google parent Alphabet. “That was really necessary for us to actually scale this up in San Francisco, especially because of how busy it gets.”

A couple years ago, Tesla’s erroneously named “Full Self-Driving” feature began cruising through crosswalks if it judged it could pass a crossing pedestrian in time, and I wrote:

Advocates of autonomous vehicles often say increased safety is one of its biggest advantages over human drivers. Compliance with the law may not be the most accurate proxy for what constitutes safe driving, but not to a disqualifying extent. Right now, it is the best framework we have, and autonomous vehicles should follow the law. That should not be a controversial statement.

I stand by that. A likely reason for Waymo’s impressive data is that its cars behave with caution and deference. Substituting that with “confidently assertive” driving is a move in entirely the wrong direction. It should not roll through stop signs, even if its systems understand nobody is around. It should not mess up the order of an all-way stop intersection. I have problems with the way traffic laws are written, but it is not up to one company in California to develop a proprietary interpretation. Just follow the law.

Slotkin:

This is not a call to replace every vehicle tomorrow. For one thing, self-driving technology is still expensive. Each car’s equipment costs $100,000 beyond the base price, and Waymo doesn’t yet sell cars for personal use. Even once that changes, many Americans love driving; some will resist any change that seems to alter that freedom.

[…]

There is likely to be some initial public trepidation. We do not need everyone to use self-driving cars to realize profound safety gains, however. If 30 percent of cars were fully automated, it might prevent 40 percent of crashes, as autonomous vehicles both avoid causing crashes and respond better when human drivers err. Insurance markets will accelerate this transition, as premiums start to favor autonomous vehicles.

Slotkin is entirely correct in writing that “Americans love driving” — the U.S. National Household Travel Survey, last conducted in 2022, found 90.5% of commuters said they primarily used a car of some kind (table 7-2, page 50). 4.1% said they used public transit, 2.9% said they walked, and just 2.5% said they chose another mode of transportation in which taxicabs are grouped along with bikes and motorcycles. Those figures are about the same in 2017, though with an unfortunate decline in the number of transit commuters. Commuting is not the only reason for travelling, of course, but this suggests to me that even if every taxicab ride was in an autonomous Waymo, there would still be a massive gap to achieve that 30% adoption rate Slotkin wants. And, if insurance companies begin incentivizing autonomous vehicles, it really means rich people will reap the reward of being able to buy a new car.

Any argument about road safety has to be more comprehensive than what Slotkin is presenting in this article. Regardless of how impressive Waymo’s stats are, it is a vision of the future that is an individualized solution to a systemic problem. I have no specialized knowledge in this area, but I am fascinated by it. I read about this stuff obsessively. The things I want to see are things everyone can benefit from: improvements to street design that encourage drivers to travel at lower speeds, wider sidewalks making walking more comfortable, and generous wheeling infrastructure for bicycles, wheelchairs, and scooters. We can encourage the adoption of technological solutions, too; if this data holds up, it would seem welcome. But we can do so much better for everyone, and on a more predictable timeline.

This is, as Slotkin writes, a public health matter. Where I live, record numbers of people are dying, in part because more people than ever are driving bigger and heavier vehicles with taller fronts while they are distracted. Many of those vehicles will still be on the road in twenty years’ time, even if we accelerate the adoption pace of more autonomous vehicles. We do not need to wait for a headline-friendly technological upgrade. There are boring things cities can start doing tomorrow that would save lives.

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Mary Cunningham, CBS News:

Tesla was found partly liable in a wrongful death case involving the electric vehicle company’s Autopilot system, with a jury awarding the plaintiffs $200 million in punitive damages plus additional money in compensatory damages.

[…]

“What we ultimately learned from that augmented video is that the vehicle 100% knew that it was about to run off the roadway, through a stop sign, through a blinking red light, through a parked car and through a pedestrian, yet did nothing other than shut itself off when the crash was unavoidable,” said Adam Boumel, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.

I continue to believe holding manufacturers legally responsible is the correct outcome for failures of autonomous driving technology. Corporations, unlike people, cannot go to jail; the closest thing we have to accountability is punitive damages.

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Joseph Cox, 404 Media:

A man holds an orange and white device in his hand, about the size of his palm, with an antenna sticking out. He enters some commands with the built-in buttons, then walks over to a nearby car. At first, its doors are locked, and the man tugs on one of them unsuccessfully. He then pushes a button on the gadget in his hand, and the door now unlocks.

The tech used here is the popular Flipper Zero, an ethical hacker’s swiss army knife, capable of all sorts of things such as WiFi attacks or emulating NFC tags. Now, 404 Media has found an underground trade where much shadier hackers sell extra software and patches for the Flipper Zero to unlock all manner of cars, including models popular in the U.S. The hackers say the tool can be used against Ford, Audi, Volkswagen, Subaru, Hyundai, Kia, and several other brands, including sometimes dozens of specific vehicle models, with no easy fix from car manufacturers.

The Canadian government made headlines last year when it banned the Flipper Zero, only to roll it back in favour of a narrowed approach a month later. That was probably the right call. However, too many — including Hackaday and Flipper itself — were too confident in saying the device was not able to, or could not, be used to steal cars. This is demonstrably untrue.

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