SUV Height Can Be Deadly for Children in California Driveways

SUV blind zones can cause catastrophic and tragic accidents. We gathered data and read the investigations on why this happens, and why it’s also getting worse.

A federal crash investigation into a 2022 Chevrolet Tahoe found that the SUV’s driver never saw a 14-month-old boy near the family driveway until the vehicle’s right-side tires had already struck him. 

The driver had used a remote opener to enter the gated driveway of a private residence and told investigators he did not see anyone outside before moving forward. The child, who had been playing near a row of trash cans along the driveway’s edge, was pronounced dead at a trauma hospital about an hour later. His cause of death was listed as severe head trauma.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration documented the case through its Special Crash Investigations program, which conducts detailed investigations of serious crashes involving questions about vehicle safety technology. The case belongs to a broader pattern: taller hoods and wider blind zones on the SUVs that now dominate the American fleet.

How Wide the SUV Blind Zone Runs

Investigators who examined an exemplar Tahoe found that the driver’s sightline to the ground, measured over the hood, extended between 9.7 and 11.2 meters depending on the angle. The right A-pillar and mirror created additional obscured areas. The Tahoe carried a factory-installed front pedestrian braking system. Investigators found no evidence it activated, in part because of the vehicle’s low speed. The system’s own documentation also warns it may not detect a child who is not standing upright or fully visible near the vehicle. The vehicle had been purchased about a week before the crash.

A June 2025 study led by the Department of Transportation’s Volpe Center found a broader pattern behind cases like these: shrinking forward visibility across popular SUV models. Researchers tracked six vehicles built between 1997 and 2023 using a measurement technique developed by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. 

Drivers of a 1997 Honda CR-V could see 68% of the ground within 10 meters of the vehicle’s front; drivers of a 2022 CR-V could see only 28%. The Chevrolet Suburban showed a similar decline, from 56% visibility in the 2000 model year to 28% in 2023. Researchers attributed the drop mainly to higher hoods and larger side mirrors.

Collisions Caused by Large SUVs With Blind Zones

A comparable NHTSA investigation examined a 2022 Toyota Highlander in Nevada. A 3-year-old boy ran toward the SUV as his father pulled away from an apartment building and was struck by the front bumper and left front tire. He died less than an hour after arriving at a hospital.

Crashes of this type are sometimes called “frontovers” because they involve a vehicle moving forward rather than in reverse. Most occur off public roads, in driveways or parking lots not captured by standard traffic crash databases. Based on 2015 data, NHTSA’s Non-Traffic Surveillance system estimated that forward-moving vehicles kill about 366 nonoccupants and injure roughly 15,000 more each year nationwide. The child-safety nonprofit Kids and Car Safety independently tracks these crashes and found that larger vehicles were involved in about 75% of the cases it reviewed. Children age 6 and under made up roughly 93% of the victims.

Vehicle Design and Pedestrian Injury Risk

Separate research from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety examined nearly 18,000 crashes involving a single vehicle and a single pedestrian and measured the front-end shape of almost 3,000 vehicle models. 

Tall, blunt front ends were associated with a 43.6% higher risk of a fatal pedestrian injury compared with low, sloped front ends. Tall, sloped front ends carried a 45.4% higher risk. A 2025 National Transportation Safety Board report cites a similar finding: vehicles with hoods above 40 inches were about 45% more likely to cause a pedestrian fatality than lower, sloped-front vehicles.

Technology Has Not Resolved the SUV Blind Zone

NHTSA finalized a rule in 2024 requiring automatic emergency braking and pedestrian automatic emergency braking on all new light vehicles, with a compliance deadline of September 1, 2029. During the rulemaking, Consumer Reports urged the agency to address frontover-type crashes specifically, noting a rise in these incidents tied to the growing share of large vehicles with bigger blind zones. 

NHTSA agreed that further study was needed and said it had begun collecting more detailed non-traffic crash data in 2023. The agency has not yet finalized a formal definition of a frontover crash. Pedestrian braking systems remain calibrated primarily around adult-sized pedestrians moving at typical walking speeds, not toddlers who may be crawling or hidden near a vehicle’s front corner.

Liability Considerations Under California Law

Drivers owe a duty of reasonable care to visually clear the path ahead before moving a vehicle, particularly in residential driveways and other areas where young children are known to be present. A claim may also examine whether a vehicle’s design — including its front blind zone and any pedestrian-detection technology — contributed to the crash under California’s product liability framework. 

Fatal cases may give rise to a wrongful death claim under California Code of Civil Procedure sections 377.60 and 377.61. A survival action under section 377.30 may also be available on behalf of the child’s estate.