harpsicalbiobug

[harpsicalbiobug]

Wish I could find any update on this, but everything is from 2024 https://www.nhtsa.gov/search?q=pedestrian+head+safety

The US finally takes aim at truck bloat - The Verge

This week, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stunned safety advocates by proposing new vehicle rules that it says will help reduce pedestrian deaths in America. The new rules appear aimed directly at the trend of increasingly massive SUVs and trucks, which have been shown to be more deadly to pedestrians than smaller and midsize vehicles.

Never in its 50-plus years in existence has the regulator issued new rules for automakers requiring them to change their vehicle designs to better prevent pedestrian fatalities. If enacted, the new rules could change how vehicles are designed in the US — permanently.

“It’s good to see NHTSA acknowledge that a myopic focus on pedestrian detection — which is imperfect — is no substitute for actually regulating car bloat,” said David Zipper, a senior fellow at the MIT Mobility Initiative and a Verge contributor. 

In recent years, NHTSA has issued a handful of new requirements aimed at reducing the number of pedestrian deaths. Earlier this year, the agency announced that automatic emergency braking would be required in all new vehicles. It also updated the New Car Assessment Program (NCAP), also known as the five-star safety rating, to account for technology that can help reduce pedestrian injuries and deaths. But it’s never before taken aim at vehicle design.

The rules announced this week would update the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS), the government’s bible for everything that’s required in a new vehicle before it’s sold — from steering wheels to rearview mirrors — to set testing procedures to simulate head-to-hood impact, with the aim of reducing head injuries. If enacted, automakers will have to test their vehicles using crash test dummies representing adult and child pedestrians for the first time. NHTSA says the changes could save up to 67 lives every year.

“The US has never used pedestrian crash test dummies officially,” said Angie Schmitt, author of Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America. “I thought they were going to continue to avoid doing that even though Congress had sort of told them to do this — but apparently not.”

The proposed rules come amid a deadly period for pedestrians in this country. Each year, cars kill roughly 40,000 Americans. But while automakers have become very good at protecting people inside of vehicles, they have essentially neglected the safety of people outside of them.

SUVs and trucks, two of the most popular segments in the US, have become larger and heavier than ever before. In 2023, 31 percent of new cars in America weighed over 5,000 pounds (2.27 tons), compared to 22 percent in 2018, according to a recent investigation by The Economist. And with the shift to electric vehicles, many of those vehicles have become even heavier. The Ford F-150 Lightning has a curb weight of around 6,500 pounds, roughly 60 percent heavier than its gas equivalent.

Meanwhile, pedestrian deaths have skyrocketed in recent years. Between 2013 and 2022, pedestrian fatalities increased 57 percent, from 4,779 to 7,522, NHTSA reports. In 2022, 88 percent of pedestrian deaths occurred in single-vehicle crashes.

“I think it will exert positive pressure,” Schmitt said of the new proposal, “and maybe rein in some of the industry’s worst excesses.”

The shape of a vehicle, especially the hood, also plays a critical role in determining whether a pedestrian can survive being struck. Vehicles with hood heights of more than 40 inches and blunt front ends angled at greater than 65 degrees were 44 percent more likely to cause fatalities, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

Automakers often point to the increasing use of technology in vehicles — cameras, blindspot detection, automatic braking — to help reduce pedestrian deaths. But rarely do they address the role that vehicle design plays in crash fatalities. That’s because big trucks and SUVs are not only popular but also better moneymakers than smaller vehicles. SUVs have a profit margin that’s 10–20 percent higher than smaller cars because they command a higher price while costing only slightly more to manufacture.

Safety advocates celebrated the news, while also noting that vehicle design is only one piece in a large, complex puzzle to make roads safer. That includes lower speed limits, infrastructure improvements, and increased enforcement of traffic laws. Many note that Europe has already gone much further to protect pedestrians, enacting rules that would prevent many of the largest vehicles produced by US manufacturers from being sold on the continent.

“Considering NHTSA estimates the new standard would save 67 lives a year, it is a step in the right direction, but it still falls behind what Europe has successfully done,” Cathy Chase, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, said. “Numerous proven solutions must be employed to improve the safety of all vulnerable road users.”

The new NHTSA proposal is an important step, but it’s just the first of many needed to turn this crisis around.

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Hey don't cry, okay? We just found Attenborough’s long-beaked echidna, a species thought to be extinct for the past 60 years.

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I have been thinking about opiliones a lot lately such an underrated arachnid.. They don't have venom or fangs so they don't do a lot of crazy hunting like spiders or scorpions they love plants and mushrooms and decaying matter.

Their mushroom ^

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Someone very kindly emailed me last week to tell me they enjoyed my earthquake paper and that they're doing similar work on communicating extreme heat events, and we had a nice exchange about it....but I'm not sure that's enough of a foundation to start sending her memes out of the blue, no matter how apropos, so I guess I'll just repost this here:

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Need to stop having vacations that are more stressful than a work week.

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thinking about that time my mom ordered a bottle of vitamins online and they arrived with the tamper seal broken and she was going to just take them anyway and in desperation i had to bust out the “you know they never solved the chicago tylenol murders” to get her to mail them back

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[oc] They need token money

(I painted this on the subway, worst mistake of my life. I was fighting for my life trying to keep the paint within the lines)

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Ew i opened my heart and something crawled inside

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for juneteenth the innocence project sent out a collection of reading material on their mailing list that i thought i should share with all of you-- a reminder of how the us prison system is a continuation of slavery, and how we must keep fighting for justice and equality. they also are accepting donations if you have a few bucks to send their way: every dollar counts!

How the 13th Amendment Kept Slavery Alive: Perspectives From the Prison Where Slavery Never Ended

On Juneteenth, Here Are 5 Ways to Be a Better Ally

Race and Wrongful Conviction

How a Wrongly Incarcerated Person Became the ‘Most Brilliant Legal Mind’ in ‘America’s Bloodiest Prison’

A Mistaken Identification Sent Him to Prison for 38 Years, But He Never Gave Up Fighting for Freedom

‘The Dungeon Was the Last Place I Wanted to Go’: An Exoneree’s Story of Survival at Angola Prison

Book an Innocence Project Speaker This Month

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Never let some invisibly wrinkled centuries old bloodsucker give you shit for being new bitch on the block. They think they’re sooo mighty and powerful bc they’ve survived for sooo long when like 90% of that timeframe there weren’t any guns or cameras or borders so they could kill some random defenseless lady, fuck off 1 village east, and nobody would blink an eye. Now you pop around the block for a lazy bite to eat and 8 electric eyeballs bear witness to your target pulling iron and filling your gut with 9mm rounds before activating an international manhunt on your ass. Camarilla execs haven’t ever dealt with this shit personally. Some of these dusty motherfuckers predate widespread literacy and have never budged from their Embrace city and it damn well shows. I’d like to see one of London’s mutant ass 5th gen’s go without a kine proxy for a week in the modern day. They’ll guaranteed fumble the hunt after centuries of Doordashing their drinks and get inquisitors with phosphor rounds driving them out of their safe space. Can’t drive, no ID, no credit card, no records, not a fucking drop of patience for interacting with mortals, good fucking luck starting up in a new city much less getting to it. Call me an insolent whelp again bitch i’ll run you over with my car and selfie your broke and steamrolled ass to the groupchat #GoGrampa

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springtail eating a slime mold

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Wolf skeleton dressed as a warrior, found with an atlatl, gold disk, and shell necklace. Found in an offering at the Templo Mayor, Mexico City. Aztec. Late 15th century.

https://twitter.com/friel/status/1199144334911791104/photo/1

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y'all it's about to get really fucking humid and hot

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From here.

More from the piece here but Read the Whole Entry and subscribe to the Substack.

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Black-crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax) observation by eleggua

happy pride

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Hey hey, what's this?

iNat users, express your opinions!!!

[harpsicalbiobug]

One of my favorite stories to tell about myself from when I was a kid is the story how my grandma’s “Catching Fairies” game was banned because of me

So when I was really little my grandma had this game she made up, she’d give me and all my cousins jars and containers and tell us that in her garden there were fairies but they were smart and tricky so they disguised themselves as caterpillars and butterflies and as grasshoppers and worms.

Whoever caught the most ‘Fairies’ won but we had to set them all free because they tended to the garden

One summer day my brothers were at the age they were dreading ‘girly’ stuff so I was playing alone

At this point I had met all the fairies in the garden and I was getting bored without any competition and with finding the same old fairies

But then just as I was begrudgingly heading back to my grandma with the same fairies as usual I found a new fairy!

I thought she was so beautiful! She was resting on the sparkly thread in the leaves and her black body gleamed in the sunlight, she had long legs and a cool red spot on her back

Excited I coaxed her onto my hand and was so giddy I found a new one! I rushed back to the farm house to show my Grandma and Dad, gently carrying my new friend.

But when my Dad and Grandma turned around to see what fairy I caught I saw the color drain from their faces and both of them freeze, I could tell something was wrong but didn’t understand

My dad congratulated me and asked me if he could see the pretty fairy, I let him but felt a little nervous seeing how terrified he looked as she moved into his hands from mine.

Slowly he walked back towards the door, my grandma clutching my shoulders then my dad LAUNCHED the fairy back into the garden which I thought was rather rude

Then we had a nice long talk about Black Widow spiders