IIHS study on all-round visibility in cars: Blind spots to the front are getting bigger

The front blind spots of five highly successful car models in the United States have increased significantly over the past 25 years. This is the result of a new study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) and the Volpe Center of the U.S. Department of Transportation. According to the study, all-around forward visibility has deteriorated – in some cases drastically – in all popular North American models: the Chevrolet Suburban, Ford F-150, Honda Accord, Honda CR-V, and Toyota Camry.

This confirms what drivers in Europe also perceive, especially since four of the models – the Japanese and the Jeep – are or were also offered in our latitudes: Modern cars are becoming increasingly difficult to see from the front. To substantiate this often perceived truth with objective data, the IIHS, an independent and non-profit scientific and educational organization, and researchers at the U.S. Department of Transportation have applied a new measurement method.

The test setup consists of a portable 360-degree camera that can be adjusted in height to simulate drivers of different heights. The images it captures are then converted by software into a map image that visualizes the blind spot by showing an aerial view of the vehicle and the nearest points on the ground that can—or cannot—be seen from the driver's seat. It also provides a numerical value for the percentage of the area visible around the vehicle.

For this test, the IIHS and Volpe researchers focused on the 180-degree forward visibility within a ten-meter radius of the vehicle and sat in the five aforementioned vehicles. They did so not only in the current generations, but also in significantly older models built around the turn of the millennium, in order to understand how forward visibility had deteriorated over this period. The Honda CR-V performed particularly poorly. In the current model, only 28 percent of the ten-meter area in front of the car is visible; in the forerunner from the end of the last millennium, it was a whopping 68 percent.

The 2023 Chevrolet Suburban performs just as poorly. Since the old 2000 model only had 56 percent visibility, the loss isn't quite as severe as the Honda. The Ford F-150, by far the best-selling pickup truck in the US, has a visibility loss of only seven percent. Today, it's a truly underwhelming 36 percent, while the 1997 F-150 had a poor 43 percent for that time.

The tested sedans performed significantly better. Take the Honda Accord, for example: While 65 percent of the ten-meter area in front of the car was visible in a 2003 model, the 2023 counterpart achieved 60 percent. For the Toyota Camry, the figure decreased from 61 to 57 percent between the 2007 and 2023 model years.

"If further research confirms that these changes reflect a general shift, it would suggest that the declining visibility of SUVs has exacerbated the effects of larger vehicles with higher front ends already documented by the IIHS," says Becky Mueller, test engineer at the IIHS. Interestingly, it's not primarily the ever-wider A-pillars that limit forward visibility. Rather, it's higher frontal areas, combined with the height and angle of the hood, and the size of the exterior mirrors, that exacerbate the problem.

Accident statistics from the United States demonstrate the relevance of the issue of all-round visibility in cars. Pedestrian fatalities there have been trending upwards for several decades. In 2022, 7,522 pedestrian fatalities were reached, a new record since 1981, while the previous low of 4,109 pedestrian fatalities was recorded in 2009. In other words: in 2022, a pedestrian died in traffic in the United States every 70 minutes.

Although the number of pedestrian fatalities in US traffic fell slightly to 7,318 in 2023, the number is still alarmingly high, and the overall negative trend continues. There are, of course, several reasons for this, including excessive speed, cell phone use by drivers and pedestrians, and other misconduct. However, traffic experts see increasingly larger and less visible cars as a clear risk factor, which has now been confirmed by the IIHS study. Consequently, the institute now plans to examine 150 car models using the new methodology. This will provide an even more comprehensive picture of how much forward visibility has deteriorated overall.