Even my wrx is a SUV now

It's true. The Ford mustang suv is an abomination

I am mostly in agreement with you but why would the area of the car matter? You can potentially have bigger crumple zones, but that'd exclude the space that is used for passengers. Other than that, the energy transferred in a collision is relative to the mass, where the lighter vehicle receives a larger proportion of the energy than the heavier one.

A crossover is the worst of both worlds

Its physically painful to look at.

When corporate commands all charts must be up and to the right

There is an option to rotate it on the site, but it doesn't work for me. Sorry about that.

Its German.

And the years are counting down.

Because any values can be on X or Y axis.

I believe you might be trying to apply logic to the dates assuming there's only one or two variables changing across all those decades. The truth is there are multiple strongly correlated reasons pedestrian deaths declined sharply in the US over the years.

In the 1980's and 90's it was largely the safety standards being improved in vehicles. ABS being standard helped with stopping before hitting people. Road safety standards and road designs improved to allow for more pedestrian walkways away from the streets. Automatic headlights at night turning on, better road conditions, better tires were introduced to handle different weather patterns more easily (e.g. in the rain or snow where traction loss could lead to pedestrian deaths) as well as standards to increase vehicle inspections and what safety standards were being checked during those inspections.

In the 2000's, while many safety standards were still being improved and tweaked, a lot of the impactful ones had already been instituted, so the changes were less and less dramatic over the last 20ish years.

The specific question the OP was asking for was around the 2010 drop, and that is strongly correlated with high gas prices leading to sell-offs of SUVs, and SUVs are the leading cause of pedestrian deaths by far with modern cars with modern safety standards. Largely for the reasons others in this post have mentioned (larger, heavier, hood height, etc.).

I was very much a car nut during those years, and the gas prices drove many, many people to trade in their SUVs, trucks, etc. that had poor gas mileage. Gas prices were nuts, and a huge shock to everyone's budget when it jumped up suddenly. This wasn't really an inflationary thing, this was caused by a multitude of factors, but it stayed high for a long time due to those conditions.

When those conditions reverted, gas prices started falling like a rock, and everyone went back to thinking: "well, maybe I can afford that SUV again". And they did. SUV sales rose sharply once gas prices fell. So pedestrian deaths have gone back up as a result.

Today, it's also multiple factors, with the vehicle type being one of the large ones (hood height has been linked as a giant increase in the liklihood a pedestrian dies in a collision), but the other factor that rose sharply was smartphone use while driving from about the mid 2010's to today. It's probably the leading cause of vehicular deaths in general (I haven't checked, but I'd throw $20 at it being distracted drivers).

We children of the 80s were out there in them streets, walking and biking to our friends' houses and dodging the cars. Over the years our skills grew, and the numbers were finally on our side. And while it was sad on the rare occasion that we lost a friend to the streets as if they were an Oregon Trail character, it did help the numbers even more!

I like texting well enough, but it’s also a way to leave a message without all the steps of voicemail. Agreed, face to face conversation is best.

Again, I don’t get it. For starters, driving is a great time to reset and decompress. More than simply walking through a doorway. It’s time to purge your brain of anything sordid in your day, like work. Distance happens, physically and mentally.

You leave work, there’s a good book, or good music, you, and the road. Why would you let calls or texts interrupt that?

Sex isn't as taboo in Europe so being able to see porn all the time didn't have an impact.

we all rode bikes and walked everywhere in 2010 then they released cars 2

60+ hour work week

You honestly believe that about America?

I haven't worked 60 hours a week for over 20 years, and I was a contractor then, my time, my money. I've never met anyone that works 60 hour weeks, and no employer is paying that overtime. Maybe if you're on salary at some insane tech startup? Maybe 2-3 people at my last gig (software dev) worked hours like that, but that was because they loved what they were doing. And HR frowned on that.

I think the general consensus is that bigger and more dangerous cars causes more pedestrian deaths.

It's good practice 👍🏼 but I probably go for the trucks explanation here

I'd assume that also cars having higher performance (power? What's even the correct expression here?), as in quicker accelerations even after a full stop plays a role. Someone walking over a red light for pedestrians probably wouldn't get hit fatally by most 2000s cars, but by a more modern car. EVs also have absurd accelerations.

because those countries have good transit systems and no trucks designed to kill people.

The headphones are not the problem, the phones are... 🤦‍♂️