New vehicle safety standards have been a blessing, for the most part. Traffic fatalities have been trending downward in the past 30 years, due in part to the increasingly demanding crash testing by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS). But in addition to the taxing small-overlap front offset test and other collision safety evaluations, the IIHS also measures a car’s ability to prevent accidents, both via advanced driver aids and just plain good design – headlights that don’t blind oncoming drivers, for example. The agency’s latest research, however, suggests that vehicle safety may be going in the wrong direction in one metric: outward visibility. Thanks in part to wider pillars required by tough rollover safety standards, it’s harder than ever to see out the front of a Ford F-150 or Honda CR-V.
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