Perhaps you didn’t notice, but there is a pedestrian fatality crisis happening right now in the United States. This phrase, “pedestrian fatality crisis,” sprouted up two years ago and has spread, weedlike, everywhere from New York magazine to the New York Review Of Books, with several other major media outlets in between. These outlets have a preferred solution to the crisis, of course: place additional restrictions on new cars, SUVs, and trucks, especially ones that would reduce the size, power, and capability of the vehicles available to the consumer. 

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been exceptionally active in addressing this “crisis.” In April, it mandated manufacturers to make automatic emergency braking a standard in all vehicles by 2029. The new standard requires all cars to be able to stop at up to 62 mph and avoid contact with a vehicle in front of them, and the systems must detect pedestrians in both daylight and darkness. The system must apply the brakes automatically at up to 90 mph when a collision with a lead vehicle is imminent and at up to 45 mph when a pedestrian is detected. These systems are difficult to implement and notoriously uneven in operation. They are already present in some luxury cars, where they are both unpredictable and dangerous. A few years ago, I had a new Aston Martin DBX become confused by a large pavement wave on I-94 near Detroit, at which point it forcibly brought me to a dead halt on a freeway where I was surrounded by tractor-trailers doing 80 mph. Exciting stuff. Really made me want to keep in better touch with the people I love.