Justin Tyndall’s research findings about the link between pedestrian deaths and large vehicles is garnering attention in national media outlets. His premise: Larger Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) – which comprise an increased market share in the U.S. – pose a risk to pedestrians via more severe collisions.
“Fixing the pedestrian safety crisis will require both regulating vehicle size and making investments in safer pedestrian infrastructure,” said Tyndall, an assistant professor of Economics in the College of Social Sciences and a UHERO researcher. “A tax on large vehicles, with the revenue spent on street improvements, would help achieve both.”
Tyndall’s research was recently quoted on these news websites:
- Medium.com: “Policy tools exist to discourage the use of dangerously large vehicles on city streets and isolate pedestrians from their impacts: one efficient policy would be to tax large vehicles and use the revenue to build the infrastructure needed for safer streets.” – “The Case for Taxing Large Vehicles,” October 19, 2022.
- Streetsblog NYC: “Like conversations around road tolling, taxing large vehicles may cause concerns about the equity of raising revenue from drivers, when the design of cities forces most people to drive. However, the largest vehicles also tend to be the most expensive, suggesting that taxing large vehicles would be highly progressive, primarily impacting high-income households. Low-income people and people of color are also less likely to own a car and make up a disproportionate shareof the pedestrians and cyclists who are killed on our roads.” – “Vision Zero Cities: The Case for Taxing Large Vehicles,” October 20, 2022.
- Vox: There’s good reason for the government to act now, Tyndall says. If the current sales trends don’t change, larger vehicles will become an ever-increasing share of all vehicles on the road. “It’s already sort of baked in that it’s going to get way worse, depending on how long that trend is allowed to continue,” he says. – “A driver killed her daughter. She won’t let the world forget,” December 5, 2022.
Tyndall’s August 12, 2021 UHERO blog, “Improving Pedestrian Safety in Hawaiʻi,” cites a data dashboard displaying a history of local fatal vehicle crashes by location.
