Here’s a dumb question; we’re worried about visibility for really big trucks (you know the sort of pickups I fucking hate, but we’re stuck with) and you’d figure a cab forward would resolve that. Do we need the crumple zone from a hood more on a smaller truck, or can we simply not stick the engine lower in a smaller vehicle? I’d have figured engine design is compact enough we *might* be able to do the second part.
@Leucrotta Unfortunately, the problem with those trucks is not just the safety engineering, but the social engineering too. There's too many people out there primed to believe that smaller trucks are less effective trucks, and too many people that see Owning An Truck as being The Manly Thing To Do With One's Life.
@Leucrotta Ahhhh, okay. Then yeah you're fighting consumer perceptions all the way, cab-over-engine designs persist in the commercial and industrial sectors to this day for a variety of reasons - primarily related to driver visibility. Unfortunately, there's a non-trivial segment of the population that thinks having the engine in front of them will "protect" them in a crash somehow.