It's also an arms race where everyone buys bigger cars to see over all the other giant cars on the road. SUVs have been shown many times to be less safe, even for their drivers, but they give a feeling of safety which matters more than actual safety to buyers.

And for every comment screeching about pedestrians and rollover safety there's another one screeching about occupant safety. You can't really fault people for picking the one that benefits them when confronted with roughly equal screeching in both directions.

You absolutely can fault people for taking the choice that makes them safer at the expense of others' safety. I don't know how it became such a popular idea that a moral imperative is only valid if it carries no personal cost.

It may be small in the grand scheme of things but it is wrong to do this, in exactly the same way, but a much smaller degree, it is wrong to shove a child out of your way to escape a burning building.

Exactly what I was getting at.

There are several ways to view the story.

Another commenter mentioned failing to design cars for women (totally fair! Volvo famously had a botched attempt at this)

What I have come to appreciate is how vulnerable women feel in the world. It is hard to appreciate how that plays into car choice if you are a man. Most men will never be able to understand, imo.

Only 20 years ago used to be the "hairdresser car" meant a tiny little sporty coupe or convertible like a miata. I guess the marketing changed and cultivated a new generation with a new mindset.

20yr ago was 2005 and the "hairdresser and nurse" demographic were all driving Jeep Libertys.

Why does designing cars for women mean we need to turn them into main battle tanks? That's a false dichotomy. Women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, just as female pedestrians are just as vulnerable as male pedestrians.

For a while, women in cars were more vulnerable than men in cars, in part because crash test dummies were sized to typical male proportions, and cars are built to pass crash tests rather than be as safe as possible for all occupants while still passing crash tests. This sometimes led to things like airbags being placed in locations that worked great for average height men but not as well for average height women.

I don't know if it's fair to say that women in cars are just as vulnerable as men in cars, the same goes for the pedestrian argument.

It seems like you're using "women" as a proxy for "smaller people". Children and small-statured men are just vulnerable as women in crashes. Regardless, we now do crash tests with a variety of body types.

A 5-foot man is just as vulnerable when being hit by a car as a 5-foot woman, and obviously children are much more vulnerable than grown women when being hit by giant vehicles.

Some people are selfish. It's not illegal to be selfish.

It can be morally wrong, however.

That's a problem of the legislators: identifying which immoral activities should be made illegal.

You don't think that we as individuals have any moral choices to make, and we should defer to legislation? That's certainly a view, but I don't think it's the majority view.