this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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This needs to be updated.
Getting hit by a pickup truck at 30 MPH is similar to getting hit by a Honda Civic at 120 MPH for kinetic energy.
That's besides the fact that pickups have a much taller hood vs sedans so there are significantly higher rates of head/internal injury.
Taller cars and trucks are more dangerous for pedestrians, according to crash data
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/complete-streets-chicago/home/traffic-safety/vehicle-size-and-speed.html
So my curved front sports car is totally safe to ram into pedestrians with?
/S
I'd rather be hit by that at 20 MPH instead of a full duty lifted pickup with a fresh shiny paint job on chrome wheels (mall crawlers)
I don't think pickup trucks should be banned. They should be commercial use only. It's not a family car or a daily driver.
Fuck mall crawlers
And then there is the SUV class. Aka the non-passenger work vehicle family passenger vehicle.
So they passed laws for emissions and fuel efficiency of passenger vehicles to help with pollution.
These laws force MPG ratings on sedans and SUVs. But they're looser for trucks. Car manufacturers realized its also looser since its calculated by weight.
So these fuckers decide to build SUVs on pickup truck frames and make pickups even bigger so they don't have to tighten up the fuel efficiency...
This is one of the main reasons there are so many bigger class vehicles being made now.
Add in all the new LED headlights. Which are too bright because the regulations are outdated based on wattage instead of lumens.
So you have taller vehicles with brighter headlights blinding everyone.
I'm at the point where I'm aiming for a SUV instead of a sedan for my next car...
I am not sure why the difference in energy related to vehicle mass is relevant here as humans have an insignificant amount of mass compared to either vehicle, so transferred energy should be roughly the same. However, the difference in how the collision plays out (pulled under Vs thrown above) should be a huge impact
The higher mass and force transmitted by a truck means the human will be thrown further and possible impact other objects at a higher speed
Not all of that energy is transferred. The car doesn't stop as if it hit a wall. Usually it barely slows down. The human on the other hand gains at most the kinetic energy corresponding to their body mass and the speed of a human bouncing forward off the car at around the same speed as the car was going, so a tiny fraction. Of course impact geometry will determine the specifics and pickups suck there too. The important thing about kinetic energy is that it's dependant on the square of the velocity. That's why speed kills. The mass is just a linear relation.
The issue is energy transfer doesn't care about weight of the human, more kinetic energy will impart more speed to the human during the impact impulse. Imagine a solid bowling ball hitting a beach ball vs a plastic hollow bowling ball hitting a beach ball
Partially correct, the speed (technically acceleration) of the human after a collision is limited by the decceleration of the moving object caused by thr human. Since a car and a truck decellerate about the same amount when receiving the counter-acceleration of the human, the force transfer remains similar.
The bowling ball will not slow down in the slightest when is hits the beach ball, accelerating the beach ball up to it's speed.
The plastic ball will lose significant speed hitting the beach ball, decelerating itself significantly as it accelerates the beach ball.
I'm going to pick some easy math speeds/masses for demonstration. 2,000 kg sedan, 4,000 kg pickup and 100 kg human. Starting velocities of 20m/s and 0m/s. An impact/acceleration time of 1s.
The sedan hits a pedestrian with (f=ma) of 40kN. It takes 2kN to bring the human up to 20 m/s. So the sedan will be somewhere around 38kN, or 19m/s at the end of it and the human absorbing 1.8-2kN.
The truck has f=80kN. Same 2kN for the human. So the truck will be somewhere around 78kN or 19.5m/s at the end. With the human absorbing 1.9-2kN
In either case the we talking a difference of 1.8-2kN for the human. Regardless the mass (and total force) of the vehicle, the relatively small human as a maximum force they can absorb. And that maximum force is heavily related to the speed of the larger object.
Not to say trucks/SUVs aren't deadly for other reasons (like where and how the force os transferred)