They love the "might" that a huge vehicle gives them.
She couldn’t care any less about “ruggedness” or that “tough guy” image. Her only argument ever is “safety.”
I am not in it to change her mind. But whenever she brings this topic up and I show her the actual safety ratings for different vehicles, it’s almost as if her brain shuts down. She would say something along the lines “uh oh idk, maybe, who knows, it doesn’t feel as safe,” and the whole thing gets forgotten. Right until she decides to bring it up again from scratch at some point later, as if our previous conversations about it never happened.
Lowkey, I think it would be an interesting idea to mandate displaying brightly colored safety ratings for every car on display at a dealership. No need to overcomplicate it by showing the entire stat sheet with a bajillion different numbers. Just one giant number for the overall rating, and about 4-5 subcategory numbers (e.g., driver safety score, passenger safety score, etc.). I think 1-2 of those metrics should be “the safety sub-category on which our car scored the worst.”
My only worry about this is that the metrics themselves become the target goal, leading to either car manufacturers influencing safety rating boards or them maliciously complying by gaming the metrics just for those measured categories at the expense of everything else. Though the latter isn’t as much of a concern, given that it is pretty difficult to accomplish, and it would still have a large negative effect on the overall score.
So yeah, "safety".
I like sports cars, so I tried test driving a Camaro about 5 years ago. You would think that visibility on a rather small and fast 2-seater would be at least better than on an average SUV.
It was singularly the worst car I’ve ever driven in terms of visibility, compared to even most SUVs. Not even joking, it feels like driving a military tank, but just faster and smaller, with the field of view being extremely reminiscent of seeing the road through a thin horizontal slit. It’s not like it got worse over time either, because I remember the 2013 version was at least just as awful. Way to ruin a fine car with that tank-slit visibility.
This specific case didn’t even have anything inherently to do with the type or size of the car (unlike with some giant trucks), so it made me extremely mad. It was quite literally for nothing.
Apparently not, considering the topic of TFA
For a specific example, I am pretty sure that backup cameras have been mandatory on all new cars since at least 2018.
It only stopped being sold in 2019 in EU+UK, only the SS version, and not due to the front visibility. Sadly, seems like Chevy announced last year the end of production of Camaros in 2024 in general.
It is small, in the context of a conversation about SUVs and pickup trucks. Yes, I am aware that it is not “small” in the context of 2 seaters, where you can go for miatas/brzs/911s/etc.
> Many sports car have bad visibility due to the mid engine blocking the rearview.
Sure, and that I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is the frontview having that same awful tank-slit visibility, which I’ve only encountered on a Camaro so far.
The NHTSA safety ratings come with the following notation:
"Note: A vehicle’s rating, or Overall Vehicle Score, can be compared with other vehicles of similar size and weight"
She may be, whether knowingly or not, interpreting the data offered more in-line with the guidance provided with the data.
I wouldn’t want it to be replacing the per-category one, as that one is way more precise and accurate. But there should be a way to roughly compare the safety of two different cars of different classes.
Given the NHTSA rating notation you posted mentioning normalization by size and weight, I wonder if there is a rough function of weight and size that would allow for “denormalizing” scores into raw approximates.
_everybody_ drives huge SUVs. A few rugged men(TM) driving a large truck isn't the problem, they're couleur locale. It'd be adorable, like people wearing cowboy hats in Texas.
The web of interwoven incentive structures - reptile brains, cafe standards, cheap gas, safety arms race, ... - pushing _everybody_ towards larger vehicles is the problem. System and id are completely misaligned, killing thousands in the process.
Roughly 18% of the light vehicles sold in the US in 2023 were pickup trucks. The top 3 selling models in the US were pickup trucks. Yes there were about 3x as many SUVs sold[1] as pickups, but pickups aren't nothing.
1: I partitioned the "light truck" class into just pickups and SUVs; 78% of cars sold in 2023 were classified as "light trucks" per [2]; I got the 18% figure for pickups by totaling the sales of the 8 most popular pickup models by hand and dividing by 14.9M
With tiny dogs. Maybe they're the preferred vehicle of tiny dogs.
9lIe a large vehicle more suited to offload conditions being driven short distances round highly affluent areas by people who wouldn't know the countryside if it bit them on the arsenal.
This sounds like hyperbole but is actually not hyperbole - https://youtu.be/NDH3FDfVQl0?t=180
I'm a short woman and drive a sedan.
Such as being able to see over parked traffic when making a turn.
And I've found driving taller vehicles more comfortable for my back coincidentally.
Just stating things that make these larger vehicles more easier to drive, especially for women whom on average are generally shorter so, even with pumping the seat up it's still considerably harder to see around traffic.
I find it important to continually bring up the fact that it can be different. More public transit and bike paths. If I we could take bikes around the city without worrying about being killed or having them stolen it would be a dream.
Large SUVs meet CAFE regulations by being large enough to be regulated as a different class of vehicle. Want smaller trucks? Complain to your Congresscritter to reign in the EPA and force them to write better regulation that does not have these unintended effects.
I don't know if that's just EPA policy or part of the legislation that allows them to regulate auto emissions.
But, it's also Congress's fault for leaving the chicken tax in place (25% tariff on imported trucks/vans). This essentially allowed domestic brands to price gouge on trucks/suvs (as VW at the time, and then the Japanese brands as well) couldn't compete.
The old mini-truck and T100 were made in Japan (except maybe a year or two at the end of T100 production).
The tax was implemented in the 60s or 70s, as VW was trying to get into the van and truck market in the US.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "wagons don't meet emissions requirements" - wagons would meet the same regulations as sedans.
Note that I used the Mercedes because it's the only non-compact wagon I'm aware of for sale in the US.
What I don't know is where the line is between car-based cross-over and actual truck (as it related to emissions and safety standards).
* Wunibald Kamm has entered the chat.
Most aren’t even using the 3rd row for seating.
Now a wagon or SUV is good for carpooling, but a minivan obv would be best.