I'm definitely not a fan of them in metro areas. While there are some quite legal ones and even Ford have designed an integrated one for the Falcon which is better (still not good though) for pedestrians.
There are also so-called nudge bars fitted to some cars just in case they "nudge" another car. And there are quite a few people who fit tow-bars for similar reasons.
And they can also affect airbag deployment by adding a delay into when the sensors pick up a crash due to where the mounting of the bullbar is, which as Ray said, causes more damage too.
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