Car Bloat: “Huge Cars Are Terrible for Society”
kottke.org
kottke.org
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/11/paris-charge-s...
We should also ease a lot of regulation from states regarding minimum road width, minimum parking spot sizes, minimum height of parking garages, minimum number of parking spots for residential and commercial development. Much of this problem stems from bad regulation. (Developers generally don't want to have all this unproductive space in their buildings, but are forced to by local and state governments.)
This came up in another thread and while it's sort-of true, it's not really. Passenger vehicles of ANY size do almost no damage to a road in comparison to semi-trucks and delivery trucks. A 3/4-ton pickup vs your toyota camry is MAYBE a 2x increase in damage to the road. The average semi vs. that same 3/4-ton pickup is a 2500x increase in damage to the road on the low end (some studies claim as high as 10,000x).
Unless you're planning on eliminating the trucking industry, shrinking cars isn't reducing the wear on our roads in any meaningful way.
https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-...
Your source states that relative road damage between two vehicles is the forth power of the ratio of their weights.
The base curb weight of a Ford F-150 is in the vicinity of 4,600lbs. The base curbs weight of a Toyota Camry is in the vicinity of 3,500lbs. So the damage ratio is (46/35)^4 = ~3. The Toyota Camry used to be a small car, but it isn't anymore. The base curb weight of a Ford Fiesta is in the vicinity of 2,500lbs. So the damage ratio between a Toyota Camry and a Ford Fiesta is (35/25)^4 = ~3.8, and between a Ford F-150 and a Ford Fiesta is (46/25)^4 = ~11.5. So a Toyota Camry, being somewhat of a behemoth, should be paying on the order of 3.8x the amount of road tax as a Ford Fiesta.
I remember having a minor panic when registering my car at the DMV and hearing the person in front of me paying well over $1000 for the year. Turns out they were registering a brand-new, very large (and heavy) pickup truck.
If you want to disincentivize SUV bloat, make narrower Lanes and more traffic calming features.
It is in most states, the problem is the cost difference is negligible.
Example fee https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/registration-fees-use-taxes-...
I have never heard of car registration by value
https://www.gov.ie/en/publication/41c9cc-motor-tax-rates/#mo...
The person that drive 1000km on a big SUV emits more than if he had bought a small an efficient car to drive the same amount. So that should be incentived.
> I believe a better system is to include the CO2 tax in the fuel/food price
I agree with that.
Despite being a pretty big difference percentage-wise (the heaviest vehicles pay more than 5x the lightest vehicles!), not sure it’s enough of a difference in absolute dollars to really influence purchasing decisions though.
And as a general point, any tax that is intended to encourage a behaviour should be revenue-neutral i.e. if you raise taxes for large cars, lower than for small cars so that the total tax take to government is the same. Otherwise it just becomes one more way for the government to ratchet up the amount of money they take from their citizens.
It’s the snappily titled Vehicle Excise Duty, VED.
That was changed in 1937 to stop drivers assuming it gave them more right to use the road than anyone else.
The roads here were not built for cars, cars just use them.
Probably the only thing New York State 'gets right' from a regulatory perspective: register a Lotus Elise? It's cheaper than an F-250
I did read of one town in the UK that bought a Kei-class truck but it was an unusual situation.
The standard in the UK seems to be a 3.7m (12ft) wide road to access buildings over 11m high. https://www.ukfrs.com/guidance/search/vehicle-access
If the goal is to encourage usage, then just subsidize it, but eventually it all comes down to wear and taxes, you cannot ignore a car that weights 10x as much as a normal car.
There are ways to make the road stronger if the government really cares about such things. But they don't it ends up being yearly cost = total upfront cost / average life span which in there mind is cheaper than a bigger upfront cost that lasts longer.
And all that extra weight is in the battery. Over time, batteries will shrink to the point where EVs are lighter on average.
Nothing unfortunate about it at all. Why shouldn't an EV Hummer or Ford Lightning pay up for the weight on the road?
After all, my wife is being very selfish to want to get a terrible gigantic minivan so my four year old can visit with friends and so my wife can transport her without literally popping a hernia (has happened once already!) to move our daughter in and out of the wheelchair on a regular basis.
Maybe I’ll encourage her to get a basket to transport our kid on our backs to get around in a convenient world where we don’t have parking spaces, or perhaps we can have a top unloading vehicle to get her out since the minimum width has been reduced when a handicap spot isn’t available (which considering how many elderly people there are is quite often when we go shopping).
I’m glad developers are forced to make the USA handicap accessible, and would encourage you to consider the knock on effects of the less advantaged when heavy handed legislation is passed to ban “wasteful” vehicles. Minivans and SUVs being mass produced and thus relatively affordable (although still quite expensive) are a ticket for people like my daughter to be able to even leave their houses on a regular basis.
(This was the case for a relative of mine in the UK who got a car paid for by her local council because of her husband's disabilities; organised by the same department/funding as pays for caters for him.)
Reduce the number of parking spaces by half for every store and make 10% disabled parking only, 2 disabled parkings minimum and you would be fine. Give a 50% rebate on car tax for cars for disabled people and you should be fine overall.
Which argues that because larger cars are more likely to injure/kill someone in the event of a crash, buying a larger car makes you morally culpable for all such harms.
Discussed more here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35082315
Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. The real moral culpability is in the people that created and support the policies enabling the SUV Arma race.
A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things. They prefer the more upright seating (higher h-point). They prefer the higher entry/exit point. They feel they need all the cargo space. Lots of people which I agree would probably be just as well served by a sedan or a hatchback just don't care for those car styles these days. Even if the sedan was a few grand less than the SUV (they often were when they were still sold), these people probably still go for the SUV if they could afford it. People didn't generally like them in the past because 1) modern SUVs are kind of a new-ish concept which only really started in the 90s where they absolutely exploded in popularity 2) those 90s body-on-frame SUVs drove like trucks while modern unibody crossovers drive more like cars and 3) it wasn't until about the 2000s that car makers started actually trying to make these vehicles appealing to average drivers as opposed to just work vehicles.
These kinds of people are incredibly common from my experiences.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree things like the chicken tax and CAFE requirements drove sedans and "light trucks" closer to the same price points, but generally speaking a ton of consumers want it this way.
> A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things.
Classic.
City-dwelling non-car owners projecting their understanding of the world onto the rest of the country. (Or in the case of Europeans, onto Americans.)
American suburbia and rural life is car-centric, and that's not going to change. People are not going to want to move to densify or live in the city because that's what "everyone should want". They enjoy their private cabins, their tall all-wheel drive vehicles, not shared transit and subway.
If you try to force these people to move to cities through taxation or a lack of support for their infrastructure, they'll vote out your political candidates.
There are a lot of people from SF and NYC here. As is the case with /r/fuckcars and their advocating for bikes and "strong cities", these are not the views shared by the rest of the country. If they were, you'd see policies changing overnight.
No demand for SUVs? That's possible, but hard. Most auto makers have killed most (if not all) of their cars, meaning if you have a family, you're in a sardine can, a muscle car, or an SUV.
I own a Prius, because I don't have a kid. I loaned it out to family who had a kid, and it was a veritable clown car routine anywhere they wanted to go.
I knew a family growing up that had six kids, so 8 person household, they had a minivan (Toyota Tarago).
A modern SUV would likely be a) heavier b) have worse blind spots, and c) has a higher front bumper, so worse impact if you hit a pedestrian.
The "I didn't have a choice" argument is almost always a logical fallacy.
The idea that SUVs have good storage space is a marketing myth.
This might be morally defensible for players making equal trades between protection for themselves and protection for others, but at some point this is clearly no longer the case. For example, most people would agree that killing 1000 people to save your own life is bad. If players aren't even bothering with this calculating the tradeoff between more protection for themselves and less protection for others -- and I think most people who protect themselves with large cars have not done this calculation -- then yes, it's fine to cast aspersions.
According to this post from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety [1] (which I think is reliable?), going from a 2023 Prius (~88 square feet) to a 2023 Toyota Sequoia (~116 square feet) reduces car driver deaths from 47 per million vehicle years to 26. This seems, uh, fairly low down on the list of interventions your median SUV-driver could take to reduce their mortality, and it's made at a cost to other people, since "light trucks" (like SUVs, trucks, and vans) increase pedestrian fatalities by somewhere north of 50% [2, third page].
At some point, you're just being lazy, which you have a right to do, but I don't think it's particularly defensible.
Hate the player. You can hate the game too but if nobody played it there would be no problems.
You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.
If you want to ban vehicles above a certain weight or a certain displacement, fine let's talk about that. But until that happens I'm not going to intentionally make my kids less safe to reduce some wishy-washy definition of my "moral culpability" for accidents and deaths I've played no part in.
It's The Onion, so you don't need to read the article to get the point. Its title is "Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident."
Also, large SUVs are waaay more likely to roll in the event of a "dodge to not die" scenario.
You certainly can what the hell. Nowhere is it guaranteed that moral necessities align with comfort or safety.
I don't mean to be snarky, but most moral dilemmas boil down to some trade off between what is best for yourself and whats best for society. In an evolutionary sense, our monkey brains see our children as an extension of our self. It seems to fit well.
You might decide that trade off is well worth it, which is a fair conclusion, but you can't deny that moral calculus is there to some degree.
This can all be priced in. If bigger vehicles are more dangerous, we could make auto insurance premiums a function of weight (and other criteria).
picking up and moving to a location on earth which doesn't require you to own a car to live is the safest bet
it's possible; i'm one (of many many millions around me)
We all take on culpability for certain harms to others. It’s just a question of what as a society we are willing to accept.
I don’t think this is an issue of society “overlooking” the morality of this specifically. It’s just that people have a lot of problems to worry about, and the crash safety of large vehicles isn’t high on the list.
If you ranked the harms you are likely to cause, driving a car would be very near the top of the list.
You are exhibiting an aspect of the myopia the article is highlighting.
This particularly stings when a person thinks they are doing something normal like buying a car large enough to meet their family’s needs.
Determining the moral culpability of actions and complaining about it is one thing. And it’s by far the easy part. The harder and more important part is to craft a message that doesn’t sound like an attack on a person’s morality.
"If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose" https://slate.com/business/2023/01/electric-cars-hummer-ev-t...
You're taking an action that means you're more likely to harm someone else, but that same action also means the people in your car are less likely to be harmed.
Its also subconscious bias of legislators on display, because they typically knock around in said big vehicles. Just look at presidential vehicles or ministerial vehicles, or royal vehicles.
I'd love to see a big wig, knocking around in a Peugeot 106, or mini with a cavalcade. Even better if they can drive it themselves!
Do you think car manufacturers would spend more time making smaller lightweight bullet proof crash proof cars, like you see in Formula 1? Something less likely to kill but bounce its occupants around when it crashes and do less harm, like zorbing.
Nothing against cars per se, I love them, but it would be nice to see more Toyota Yaris GRX's or Polo GTI's which are pocket rockets but with better crash protection. Problem is people now haul around so much guff in their vehicles, they need these bigger vehicles.
Blame it on the complicated consumer based form of capitalism we live in today.
Consumption, consumption, consumption.
Not sure what is the best way to bring some sense to this trend. Regulation could put some boundaries I guess. Clearly there is little incentives for car manufacturers to go small & light.
If that trend keeps going, I could see some cities banning cars in some streets (e.g. only bikes or pedestrians) as having foot traffic close to car traffic would become too dangerous.
Anecdotally I can say that every street turned pedestrian has been wildly popular, massively revitalizing the area.
You can also check out Barcelona Superblocks [1]
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=barcelona+superblocks&rlz=1C...
American blocks are by and large, boring, stupid and hugely oversized. Making them pedestrian only would solve nothing when most towns in america are covered it "Stroads"
I want a fast, light car that isn't 20+ years old and falling apart.
My ‘05 Mustang weighs less, and if it wasn’t for the handling changes I made to it (sway bars, coil-overs, control arms, and more), the BMW would still handle better.
Long-Range/Performance AWD: 4,072 lb
For American EV trucks, you can go ahead and double that weight. The 2022 EV Hummer has a 9,063 lbs curb weight. Just imagine the toll that takes on our roads. Absolutely disgusting, and now imagine what happens when one of those T-bones a Corolla. Instant death becomes the best outcome for the person driving the Corolla.
Ford F-150 Lightning 6,015 to 6,893 lbs
Rivian R1T 7,148 lbs
Silverado EV 8,532 lbs
None of these things seems to matter. I'm in my 40s and can't remember seeing a single car like this in my entire life until about 5 years ago. Now I very regularly see them, they're on the rise.
Some people just want to have a huge fucking truck for no apparent rational or adult reason. And it seems that as they make an appearance, it inspires others.
It fits in a generic pattern I'm seeing around me. People with disposable wealth will spent it on ridiculous life "upgrades" that make no rational sense. I'm seeing giant houses being built whilst there's 1-2 people living in it, and most of the day nobody at all. I'm talking about homes with so much space that you don't know what to do with it. Just because you can.
In these times of energy transition and ultra high energy prices, I see neighbors investing in an outdoor sauna.
It's not that I want to police what people can or cannot spent their money on, I'm just saying it's way out of bounds. Beyond the reasonable. Excessive resource usage with no immediate purpose by any stretch of the imagination.
But I'll also come to terms with the idea that perhaps I'm not that much better. My guilty pleasure is annual very remote travel, which as we know is a massive contributor to CO2 output.
If taxation or discouragement does not have the desired effect and banning is difficult if not unwanted, my conclusion is that behavioral change is not to be expected much from.
I would love to see more cities design for people/pedestrians first, with denser multi-zone areas. I wish more people could walk to a neighborhood grocery, bar, library, etc.
It's no surprise that subsidized burning of fossil fuels "generates growth".
The growth of cancerous structures that make the average life worse.
I don't blame the government for not seeing a need to regulate this decades ago. Really, who in their right mind would want such a difficult to park, more expensive, less economic vehicle if they didn't need it, right?
This is actually the struggle I'm going through right now. I rarely need to cart around something large, but when I do it's something large. Like a few full sheets of plywood over 40 miles. I really don't want a pickup for the other 98% of the time, but there isn't really a viable option for renting a pickup for a few hours.
I've used renorun and paid for delivery, but they aren't available in all markets, that would be the #1 choice.
#2 would be a roof rack. renorun stopped serving my area (boston) so I use my tiny hr-v (the old one based on the fit frame.) and I throw plywood and drywall sheets on the roof rack all the time. Only 6 sheets at a time, and you need to have a 3/8 plywood sheet on the bottom so the drywall doesn't snap, but it's been pretty adequate.
I never used the home depot truck rental because you have to drive it back -- not a great option I think.
Really? I did exactly that this weekend and it was easy and didn't cost that much. I figure with how rarely I need one, renting a truck when needed is much cheaper than owning one. Added benefit is that I'm not constantly being asked to have my truck borrowed by friends and family.
It is a shame that registration and insurance doesn't operate on miles driven, and disincentives this.
On a more serious note, I wonder how much of this is related to regulatory capture in the automotive industry. I could be wrong but I would think the profit margin on something like a Land Cruiser is quite a bit more than something like a Corolla. There are a lot of sunk costs in just getting any one vehicle of any size to the sales lot, so is there an incentive to be able to make bigger cars and therefore a larger profit (either percentage or absolute) per vehicle?
That is a HUGE difference. In one everyone is playing equally and if recognized can be de-escalated. In the other, there is a major monied player with power attempting to enshrine the tragedy into society.
It would fare worse in a collision, but maybe I'm also less likely to get caught in one because my car isn't so enormous.
If there was a choice for a smaller truck, maybe some of us would choose it. Right now I'm driving a small (heavy) jeep.
Not saying I couldn't make due with a smaller car but it would definitely make things more complicated.
But they're dying because people ain't buying, because the costs are so high and those with the money to buy new vehicles don't like them.
There is NOTHING preventing small SUVs that hold 5 people and cargo, get really good mileage, and are cheap(ish) - but they don't exist used because they don't exist new.
(It's sad, because I'm buying a new minivan, and I could not make the PHEV Pacifica make sense no matter how I finagled the financial numbers, the Sienna is simply unavailable at reasonable trim levels, and nobody makes an EV minivan.)
Like the RAV-4 Hybrid, Ford Escape Hybrid & Plug-in Hybrid, etc., yes.
> but they don't exist used because they don't exist new.
Except they do exist, both new and used.
Besides the "cool factor" it's really the perfect vehicle.
How much cargo you want? I think the mid-size sector favorites (CR-V, RAV4, etc.) come pretty close to this, especially if you are willing to use a cargo box.
I'm thinking of something more akin to the old hatchbacks, but that may be getting close.
(Comparing the RAV4 to the Camry really shows the Camry's weaknesses, it's a bigger car with less room).
I have a chevy silverado with a crew cab. I put my 6 family members in it regularly. I get 20-25mpg on the highway because the engine shuts down 4 cylinders when I'm cruising. I have had hondas, toyotas, BMWs and I have to say in my opinion, american full-size trucks are the greatest cars on the road today in terms of trading-off size, efficiency, reliability, range, price (maybe not now) etc. I never thought of myself as a "truck guy" until I got one. Its a hard pill for many to swallow.
It has nothing to do with this. The US was settled, and most cities were developed before the introduction of the automobile. It's just that after WWII we bulldozed most of the country for highways and decided that cars were the only way to move around.
I invite you to visit N. Montana or either of the Dakotas, or that stretch of highway in Nebraska that seems to go in a straight line for several hundred miles.
- Few tradespeople are moving large loads of loose material or goods around e.g. debris or lawnmowers. If you do move dirt or lawnmowers around regularly, you're not buying a consumer Ford F150 for the purpose, you're going to buy something like an F250 with what's called a "work body" or "landscape body" (hilariously, strongly implying an off-the-shelf F250 is not equipped for work): https://cmtruckbeds.com/truck-beds/lb-landscape-body/
- A fully enclosed van means less risk of casual stealing, and less concern for tying down every little thing during transport
- Vans are generally a bit narrower than the big trucks so you can squeeze them into the strange city job sites much easier.
- They don't have to worry about protecting their cargo from the elements
- If you get the right van, you can stand up inside that van
- A van is going to have a pretty low floor that you can generally step into and out of. A large pickup you may need to literally climb into. A tradesperson is going to have to do that like 10+ times a day
It always seems like the foreman or project manager is the one you see driving the pickup truck, all the other working stiffs choose vans though.
There are trucks in Greece, just not that many twin cabs, mostly you will see them outside the city in the country.
Construction workers use mostly vans, and flatbed versions of vans (Like the ford transit) also called cab-over pick-up trucks. There are lots of small light cab-over trucks in the islands by Piaggio and Daihatsu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck#/media/File:PiaggioTruck... which are pretty hand and often provide a pretty big flatbed for stuff. There are some construction workers like electricians, plumbers etc that love to use panel vans or their passenger versions using folded seats like the Fiat Doblo (Similar to the Ram Promaster City).
We are actually thinking of buying a mild-hybrid version of the passenger version of a panel-van to cover our family needs.
Seems like these weigh 1.8-2.0 tons
Truck rentals,
At-home delivery of building materials and hardware,
Actual trucks with drivers licensed for trucking,
Using a car with fold-down back seatsI chuckle at the weird and ridiculous things people do with their trucks. The lift kits, and the widening, and the heee-yuge tires. I cannot imagine what kind of mileage they make.
SUVs are purely about status and, for many people I've asked, a feeling of greater security at high speed on secondary roads from being higher off the ground. It's pretty problematic that people seek out a vehicle specifically so they can falsely feel more secure driving in a less-safe manner.
Emissions standards changed in a way that benefits larger vehicles, and the size of cars exploded.
You have a practical vehicle for your situation and location. We would all be better off if a lot of urban/suburban SUV purchases were minivan purchases instead - like they were 20 years ago, and like your more recent purchase was.
Any solution that requires people to live like it's the 1500s is probably a nonstarter.
I don't want future generations role-playing Fallout. So I try my best to reduce the emissions. Bike, have less and smaller cars.
Its not the middle ages and you still can have a quality life.
The occasional family road trip shouldn't be a cause for disdain, families with children shouldn't be shunned for wanting to travel and enjoy the various things their region has to offer.
Cities could combat this by setting up a rent a big f off truck for 24hrs program I suspect. For that one time in the year when you have to haul some lumber.
The male ego part is a little harder to solve.
Of course, this makes things worse for the other party in the collision and leads right back to the same arms race in car size, or worse since a hollow shell can win an ego display but only a wrecking ball can win a collision. We should probably tax this, but I expect that people with big cars will kill the tax before the tax kills big cars. The eventual answer will probably lie in city centers or neighborhoods that ban or heavily disincentivize big cars within their borders.
It sounds like car companies have successfully sold that idea to parents. So maybe the answer is to advertise how much easier it is for someone to accidentally kill your kid in an SUV.
Doesn't uhaul already fill this niche?
WFH is my secret. The only time my truck comes out of the garage is when something needs hauled. The utility benefits my whole immediate family as well, whenever they need something transported.
I find it to be the best of both worlds.
Motoring is absolutely subsidised - by motorists, who pay 90% of the cost before a single wheel is turned.
And Jesus, with a apologies to one Jeremy Clarkson, I have twice, debatably thrice, in my life needed to make a journey where the stakes were "this might be the last time you see them" (good news, it wasn't). No other transport option was vaguely credible. What the hell am I going to think of someone telling me "no, you can't do that"?
The average full use of a large vehicle is low, but peak usage is quite high.
Nearly every Home Depot has rentable trucks, very affordable too.
But you have to travel to the location and go through all the paperwork hassle every time you do the rental, which means either going there with another adult or leaving your car unattended in a parking lot until you do what you need to do.
Sounds more like a(n intentional) lack of government regulations to me
The layout also has obvious advantages for EVs, although Tesla does manage a sedan form factor. They are meaningfully different from "Jesus Christ I may have just killed a child whilst parking, because I am driving something doing a decent impersonation of the industrial equipment normally associated with an open-cast quarry".
Previously I owned a proper hatchback, and the dimensions are extremely similar. The hatchback was even a little longer.
Moved to the US last fall. One can't live here without a car anywhere outside NYC (and maybe Boston/Chicago?).
The reason is not just the car-centric cities design. It's the individualism culture, the severe income inequality, and the crime levels. I'm not advocating for or against the US culture to be clear, just pointing out the slightly less obvious causes of the car use.
If Europe is so great, why do you suppose Americans are not emigrating there en masse?
One still needs to know the local language to get a job in most European countries.
https://electrek.co/2021/05/04/citroen-ami-small-electric-ca...
There is a video floating around of a pickup truck who needs to use his front camera to see a Miata in front of him
You can't find small trucks anymore due to CAFE standards as automakers upsize trucks in order to lower MPG requirements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy There is alot of small light duty that the US is missing compared to the rest of the world due to how the standards work.
For example a small pick up truck like an S10 would need 50+mpg but add 20 ft2 to increase it to the size of the standard american trucks you see it mpg requirement becomes 32mpg. Hence why trucks like the S10 has completely vanished. Mind you the automakers lobby for this becuase it prevent affordable truck from being sold forcing only the high profit large gas guzzler trucks as the only option.
[1] https://sfstandard.com/2023/01/11/sf-police-watchdogs-set-to....
[2] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/person-shot-while-drivin...
There are not Audi A4s or Honda Civics.
Ford stopped their Focus, which seemed to be one of the last 'us-based' sedans. My next car will probably be some Toyota or Honda camry/civic/accord/etc.
Source: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm#:~:t....
Some midsized cars of today have grown to the size a full-sized car from 25 years ago. For example, a BMW 3 series is roughly the size of a 5 series from 1998 (185.9" vs 188"). A 5 series from today is the size of the 7 series from 1998 (195.8" vs 196.2").
In London we still have streets and river crossings that were built for horse drawn carriages, but every other car is a giant. Almost no parking seems suitable either.
The Ford Ranger is the most comically out of place, love the colours and looks but the fact you could fit in a few sheets of 8x4 plywood whilst doing the school run can't possibly be applicable to many.
Fun fact: An M1 Abrams battle tank has better sight lines than a Chevy Silverado!
An analysis by Twitter user @FreckleEars: https://twitter.com/FreckleEars/status/1624137853872574475/p...
It's striking looking at the "commercial" vehicles—all of which have better sightlines-per-scale than their consumer relatives.
I'm going to guess that commercial use / insurers are very worried about liability in a way that Jimmy is not … so when he mows down a neighborhood toddler in his SuperDuty, it's a local "tragedy," and not seen as macro-level negligence.
> Tall vehicles have bigger blind spots and are more likely to strike a person’s torso or head.
New vehicles have a billion sensors and cameras that eliminate blind spots and warn you aggressively if you're about to do something stupid, so it's a moot point.
> US automakers offer no alternative, and car bloat pushes buyers to upsize – if only to avoid being at a disadvantage on the road b/c others have big cars.
This is a reason why it's _better_ to have a bigger car. If you're in an accident and you're the smaller car you're going to be worse off, and since so many people are driving tanks these days you're putting yourself at a much higher risk if you don't also drive one.
And while it's true that the roads and planet are worse off, until _everyone_ around you also starts downsizing their cars, it's a matter of balancing the minuscule amount of environmental good that you as an individual driving a slightly smaller car might achieve versus the additional risk that you're putting yourself in by driving a smaller car.
None of this is any good for us, but I don't know what needs to happen to reverse this trend.
Also we talk about lack of parking places at cities and again... We produce bigger cars.
Obviously its just a game for some.
Problem 1: endangers others on the street
Problem 2: worsens climate change
Problem 3: shreds tires
Problem 4: destroys roadways
Problem 5: makes cars expensive
Not much to do about it unless the government is willing to get involved (and it doesn't seem like they will, at least in the US).
I'm not a huge car apologist, but I believe (especially on HN) there is a bias towards seeing the problem only through the lens of urban or suburban life. Meaningful solutions won't occur by leaving rural America behind or minimizing their issues.
Modern SUVs have become oversized and even look like the oversized basketball shoes.
The driver (heh) is the way the federal car mileage legislation formulas work.
Simply, the large the vehicle, the worse the gas mileage can be. This is a reason why pickup trucks are large (not just F-150s, but "small" trucks like Toyota and Nissan). The overall area that the vehicle covers is part of the equation about what the minimum gas mileage can be.
Smaller cars have to be very efficient compared to larger ones. So, cars and trucks have been drifting larger, longer, and wider in order for the automakers to cope with the demands of the CAFE standards and the market.
My partner has an Opel Combo which is comfy but it's a family car, personally I'd not buy anything like that.
Nothing really prevents a "taller car" besides some worry about tip-over, but they don't really exist.
By lay down I mean if your legs are NOT bent at the knee, you're gonna have a hard time.
Cheap flights, high volume international shipping, social media, alcohol and other addictive substances, high sugar food.
For those of you with comfortable, white collar, first world jobs with strong opinions about large cars--you could reduce your personal carbon footprint by 10-20x by moving to India or Vietnam, etc. Are you going to do that?
The solution is collective action through government at all levels. Governments should be promoting Neighborhood electric vehicles and e-bikes. Modify regulations that promote 5000lb behemoth vehicles through knock-on effects. Tax heavy vehicles more. Tax tires more. Require safety inspections to ensure tires replacement is not neglected.
What makes you think it is up to every individual with a six months savings cushion to move across the planet to a foreign land so they can marginally impact their consumption?
Government intervention is great when it works.
There are two issues.
This gives the government too much power to make unilateral decisions.
These decisions are not always going to be the right one.
And the government is not always going to be ideologically aligned with what you believe.
>What makes you think it is up to every individual with a six months savings cushion to move across the planet to a foreign land so they can marginally impact their consumption?
You have just advocated for government action at all levels.
What makes you think the 'government' is not going to relocate people at a whim given enough power?
History is full of examples where this has happened, sometimes because of direct government action, sometimes indirect.
I cant drive even a small trip without someone on the road causing extra traffic because their IG or whatever is too important to ignore, but big cars are the problem... OK...
Treat the disease, not the symptoms. Large cars are a symptom of overcrowded cities and unsafe, unclean transportation. Replacing them the 3x small cars isn’t going to fix anything.
People with no real problems, have to make up problems. Last week it was Canadian Wildfires and the summer heat. It's cooling down now, since it is becoming fall. So let's complain about something else. :/
Large cars suck, but the USA and CA do not have a market for small cars. Unless the government forces the market down that road.
Bad public transport may drive up car usage in general, but not specifically large cars.
City density is much higher in cities outside the US but they don't have car obesity like you do.
No. Large cars are the consequence of questionable tax regimes, marketing, and Americans' psychological insecurities.
Replacing them will solve the problems listed in TFA. They are not contentious points.