this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2024
442 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
59466 readers
3141 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Less mass means less momentum, so less force is required to slow it down, which means it can slow down faster in the time between noticing the pedestrian and colliding.
Higher hood means less visibility directly in front of the vehicle. It also means it's more likely to hit the centre of mass so the body takes the full force and falls on the ground the vehicle is moving towards, rather than lower so that the legs get pushed out and the body ends up falling on the hood.
On the flip side, they are more visible and generally louder, so pedestrians might be making fewer mistakes on their end.
The differences aren't about when they hit someone at a high enough speed any vehicle will likely kill them, it's about the thresholds between a harmless bump and a fatal injury.
And even if the driver is the main factor, that's all the more reason to increase the burden involved in driving them.