- Thanks to trends in car design, drivers see less of the road now than they did 25 years ago
Car design trends of the past 25 years have made it harder for drivers to see the road, according to a new study.
Researchers used a new technique to measure the proportion of the road a driver can see from the driver’s seat of a vehicle. They then used it to study six of the most popular cars in America, testing how each had changed between 1997 and 2023.
The result? Even the best cars of today let drivers see less of the road than a generation ago. The worst? A 1997 Honda CR-V let drivers see 68% of the road, while the 2023 CR-V showed just 28%.
Joint Government, Industry Effort
- The insurance industry developed the tool used in the study
- Government researchers used it
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) is a car safety research lab funded by a group of insurance companies. It’s known for tough crash tests and innovative studies that push automakers to build safer cars (which saves insurance companies money).
The IIHS developed a new tool for this study. It “relies on computational software and a portable camera rig that can be positioned in the driver seat at various heights to represent different-sized drivers,” IIHS explains.
The camera takes a 360-degree image of the driver’s vision. It then “converts that image into a blind zone map that depicts an aerial view of the vehicle and the nearest points on the ground that the driver can see.”
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Transportation used the tool to test 1997 and 2023 editions of the Chevrolet Suburban, Ford F-150, Honda Accord, Honda CR-V, Jeep Grand Cherokee, and Toyota Camry.
Higher Rides, Higher Hoods
- The worst performers in the study grew taller and had higher hoods in the new designs
The biggest culprit, the study found, was vehicle height. Pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities rose 37% and 42%, respectively, during the years the researchers studied.
Past studies have shown that, as vehicles grow taller, accident rates go up. The IIHS explains, “the height of a vehicle’s front end amplifies the effect of higher crash speeds on fatality risk.” It also notes that “vehicles with blunt front ends are more deadly than those with sloping profiles.”
A sloped front end can throw an impacted pedestrian onto the hood. A blunt front end tends to send them under the wheels, where they can get run over.
Related: Safety Experts – Tall, Blocky Vehicles More Dangerous
High hoods also interfere with visibility. The two worst performers in the study, the CR-V and the Chevrolet Suburban, each have “a higher hood that blocks more of the frontal plane and larger side mirrors that obscure the views at their front corners” in their newest versions.
But even the best performers saw decreases.
“The smallest decrease came for the Accord, which permitted the driver to see 65% of the area 10 meters in front of the vehicle in 2003 and 60% in 2023,” the researchers explain.