And why is that. Small cars should be as practical in the USA as in rest of the world, and it seems it is only the mentality of the American consumer that seems to avoid them, perhaps?
So in a world where there are SUVs driving around, buying an SUV for yourself instead of a car is a safer move.
Just think about getting t-boned in an intersection. Would you rather be in a light, low vehicle or in a heavy, tall vehicle? I'd pick the latter, especially if the vehicle t-boning me is tall and its bumper at the height of my head if I were in a small car.
[0]: https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/suvs-are-sa...
That sounds like the same kind of circular reasoning that's often cited to oppose any gun regulation: "When everybody has a gun, you also need a gun to stay safe!".
No one having a big car is an unstable equilibrium.
If you lived somewhere where all the cars were small, both vehicles would be better off, because there would be much less energy in the collision.
SUV's aren't safer, they're more dangerous to other people. and that shouldn't be OK.
The only local roads are littered with stop signs or red lights at every goddamn intersection and then some speed bumps. It's either the highway or the obstacle course.
I do have a electric scooter (max 40 km/h, so can only stick to local roads) which I use for <5km trips and and I can definitely say those stop signs cut my battery range by a factor of 2 or 3.
Europeans don't seem anymore excited about taking what I'd call "city cars" on the highway than Americans are. That being said: I think far more Europeans can spend almost all their time in their local city and don't NEED to get on a highway with large trucks and vehicles. In the US that's basically unheard of unless you're in a large city. I'm sure during holiday the roads look quite different than a regular workday.
I'm guessing if you compared New York to most of Europe you'd see similar numbers, public transit and city layout in the rest of the US basically makes that impossible.
Small cars became very popular in the late 70’s and early 80’s in the US due to gas shortages. They gradually died out as gas prices came back down.
Go look at car sizes in the 1950’s and 1960’s in the US. Compare that to car sizes in Europe as it recovered from WW2. Think Cadillac boat like cars vs the Mini.
Also, cars are essential transportation in parts of the US and raising gas prices would/have result(ed) in a lot of protesting. In fact, high gas prices would be seen as regressive.
I've wondered what it would be like if there were cities with tight, maybe even exclusionary urban areas. "you must be less than this big to enter downtown"
There are some cities in Florida where retired people can drive golf carts, and it has become very popular.
For example, a subcompact Ford in the US might get 35mpg, vs 33mpg for the next size class up. The two cars cost about the same.
In Europe, Ford will sell the same subcompact body style with a smaller engine, and maybe a diesel, and it’ll get 50+ mpg.
No one buys the tiny gas guzzler, in the US and then Ford execs claim there’s no market for fuel efficient cars in the US.
It was this way 5-10 years ago; maybe it changed since then.
Volkswagen and the Japanese auto companies filled this role in the 60s, 70s and 80s. In the 90s foreign vehicles started on the same obesity trajectory, 2nd born generation regresses to the mean.