Probably no one single cause. Bigger vehicles. Wider roads. More driving centric. Less give a shit about other people.
this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
334 points (96.9% liked)
Technology
85719 readers
4298 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
People DO get killed because of phone usage in other countries. It is a huge issue. There's now even special cameras here for fining people that call. Unfortunately many people text and drive. I constantly see people look down their laps while driving.
Lots of good reasons here on laws and larger vehicles in the US. One thing that seems to be missing:
Wider streets & roads, prevalence of stroads => faster driving speeds => more pedestrian deaths.
A lot of cities in Europe are much safer by design because of narrow streets that force drivers to slow down. Europe also has more real roads as opposed to stroads which are pervasive in the U.S.
Ok so the thing is, when you get hit by small car you usually tend to roll over the top w some injuries. You can't really do that when its a giant truck/SUV the height of you and you end up rolling under their BIGASS SUSPENDED VEHICLE
There are very harsh fines for driving with a phone elsewhere. And smaller vehicles and better infra for pedestrians.
From what I'm seeing here in Europe, the fines for driving with a phone are seldom applied and outside a handful of countries aren't even that large.
Also infrastructure for pedestrians hasn't actually improved significativelly in Europe since 2009 - the big difference in the quality of pedestrian infrastructure between Europe and the US comes all the way back from the 60s or even earlier, so it doens't explain a change of trend on the US but not Europe in 2009.
I'm leaning more towards the "oversized light trucks are dangerous as fuck" theory since, well, they are and the trend to see more of those on the road hasn't happened in Europe but it has in the US.
Regarding pedestrian infrastructure. That is just outright false, at least for Austria. Pedestrian infrastructure in big cities has improved substantially and even in rural regions many communities have made improvements. Many of these projects happened also after 2009.
That said, the rise of oversized trucks is likely the bigger factor here. When I was visiting the US in 2010, it was not half as bad as it appears to be now.
I've lived in Britain, Germany and Portugal during the period since 2009 and saw no big improvements in pedestrian infrastructure beyond a few streets being closed to traffic and turned fully pedestrianised.
The biggest change I saw was improved infrastructure for cycling, rather than for pedestrians.
Paris and Vienna certainly had a lot going on in this regard since 2009. (Brussels too) I am not talking about the odd pedestrianisation.
A lot of streets have been redesigned, that has often benefitted both, pedestrians and cyclists and added more greenery and trees.
I thought big trucks and SUVs were doing it - at least that's what a different headline said.
SUVs don't kill people, but phones apparently do
So a good guy with an SUV can stop a bad guy with a phone? I think im getting it
Since it's a US-only phenomenon, looking at vehicle types popular in the US seems like a good starting place, but that assumes phone use affects people's awareness of their surroundings uniformly - I would want to confirm that by ruling out cultural differences between countries.
Big Trucks and SUVs are much deadlier than proper cars in case of accidents. Pedestrian infrastructure does not exist in most parts of the US or is very dangerous to use and those parts of the US that do are often unaffordable for regular people to live in. People also do not expect pedestrians even if there is infrastructure of that kind. Roads in the US are designed to maximise the danger to pedestrians even if there is pedestrian infrastructure because of car first regulations ...
We have pedestrian friendly infrastructure and we don't drive penis size compensating trucks. Cars close to pedestrians are forced to go slow and if they would swivel off the road, the curbs and other stuff like trees are there to stop cars before they hit anyone, or force the wheels away from the sidewalks to steer the car back on the road. So even when people are dumb enough to be on their phone, the risk of a fatal accident with a pedestrian is limited. Giant trucks just ram over and through everything, splashing any pedestrian in their path. Especially if there aren't any sidewalks and cars are allowed to drive really fast. Contrary to the US we actually value human lives so we built our cities to be safe for bikes and pedestrians.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Yeah I'm pretty sure this is why https://vger.to/lemmy.today/post/55397665
Maybe, but it's probably a lot more to do with infrastructure. European drivers are used to pedestrians being everywhere, North American's aren't.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between cities and rural locations.
Screenshot for compatibility reasons on fedi. So that it's loud and fucking clear
https://lemmy.today/post/55397665
I wonder why voyager does this?
I’m on Voyager, for me the both links open properly
Settings > General > Other > Share Links
I'm not sure what you mean. I don't use voyager, and find it to be off putting that voyager would share a link in such a way that is essentially an ad for itself.
I shared the direct link for the rest of us 🙂 it doesn't seem that ! is needed anymore.
They are telling Voyager users how to modify that setting. We have options, but apparently the default is a Voyager specific link.
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
Sorry to be like this, but what is this link?
I get redircted outside of my Lemmy App (because it is a 3rd party URL) and then get advertised a Lemmy client, which I don't even like, only for its page to only show a preview and in order to actually view the linked post I have to open the original WebUI of the Lemmy instance linked on the advertising page of voyager?
And it got the balls to tell me that its the best experience?
What the fuck Voyager??
seems to be an issue on your end:
also on voyager and it's working as expected!
click link > opens post within voyager
maybe a settings issue or a bug?
Voyager made this website and probably added these URLs as supported links.
I am not on voyager, but on thunder and it does not work, since there links are not the standard share link. I tested using normal links in a comment and it works there.
So while in theory Thunder could add support for these Links, I really just whished that Voyager would stop advertising themselves whenever somebody shares a link with their client.
The actions of Voyager seem malicious; no other Lemmy (or mastodon client) that I know of does not directly link to the post in question and rather just advertises itself like an adfly page.
oh, sry, i read that wrong!
yes, that's a voyager link, although that should probably open in the browser version by default, since voyager, afaik, does have a web version...
fyi: it's not malice, there's actually a good reason for generating these links!
it's so different instances can be shared through the same home instance, i.e.: so i can share a link from feddit.org with someone on lemmy.world, and they can still access it within the same client, through their own home instance without requiring a new login, etc.
it's a limitation of lemmy and voyager offers a workaround ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Kind of?
It's not just that the outside of the vehicles are big.
The inside is too, so a lot of people can barely see over the dash on the best of days, so glancing down at a phone means taking their eyes fully off the road. In a sedan they'd at least maintain a periphery view of the road, which allows for unconscious sight and reactions.
Like how "daredevil blindness" is real and some people are blind but will duck if you throw a wrench at their head.
load more comments
(14 replies)
load more comments
(6 replies)
My hypothesis is that the rise in distracted driving was just as bad in European countries but they have safer infrastructure that limits cars' speed and otherwise protects pedestrians, and I think that could be tested by looking at the rates of car crashes overall in Europe (if those went up at the same time as the US without a corresponding rise in dead pedestrians I think that'd suggest their infrastructure is the difference)
Speed isn't really a factor here, as many European speed limits are higher than US ones, but there is at leaat some separation between vehicles and pedestrians. It's not rocket science - vehicles and fleshy water bags don't mix well
Doesn't mention anything about infrastructure and I'd guess that has a lot to do with it in the US. Very, very few cities are setup with any type of pedestrian traffic or public transport in mind.
True. I remember visiting El Paso a decade ago.
There was a starbucks in viewing distance from the hotel but the only way to get there was by car. The fact that taking a short walk to get my morning coffee was not possible seemed absurd.
And this kept happening. Walking anywhere was just not a thing there.
Since the article clearly states that even Canada—where we drive the same vehicles and have some similar infrastructure issues—isn't showing the same uptick, the most likely reasons are legal/regulatory or cultural rather than physical. In other words, there's more going on here than just oversized SUVs with bad collision outcomes for pedestrians (although they certainly don't help).
load more comments
(9 replies)
In Australia, it’s illegal to use a phone while driving. (Although police aren’t hesitant to hand out fines and penalties, people do still use their phones while driving). There is also a cultural recognition and discouragement towards phone use while driving which is slowly changing accepted behaviour, similar to the slow change away from tolerating and encouraging drunk driving over the past few decades.
In Australia, it’s illegal to use a phone while driving.
Well, duh, obviously it's illegal to use a phone while driving.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Because we basically drive tanks everywhere on roads designed for incredible speed.
So basically our cars are the main culprit making the side issues worse.
view more: next ›