Comment by efields | Hacker News Reader

Comment by efields | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

The article is a bad summary of this Bloomberg piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-10-04/why-ameri...

The main reason is we don't have a regulatory classification for a car that doesn't go to highway speeds but isn't a Low-Speed Vehicle (LSV), and there are safety concerns biased toward those things being on highways when they ought not be on a highway anyway (just like, for example, a bicycle).

Also from the Bloomberg article:

> The absurdity of deeming minicars unsafe while ignoring the danger of gigantic SUVs and trucks reflects a tragic blind spot of US car regulations, which have for decades conflated “car safety” with “car occupant safety.” The result has been an arms race of vehicle size, as well as a refusal to allow Americans to enjoy the myriad advantages that minicars bring to urban residents across Europe and Asia.

So they would fail high speed crash tests, but also wouldn't likely be in high-speed crashes because of the lack of high speeds………

Until one is transiting an intersection and is then T-boned by a vehicle exiting the highway.

It's unfortunate that the Smart-for-Two didn't do better in the marketplace, but this can pretty much be explained by the high price which was a result of the expense of having a very good crash rating.

Until one is transiting an intersection and is then T-boned by a vehicle exiting the highway.

That strikes me as an engineering/design problem that is "easily" solved. We shouldn't have highway traffic intersecting slow suburban streets. At least not without a lot of slow-down/calming measures and likely a traffic signal.

IMO, most of our suburban roads are over-designed - we've made a naive attempt to maximize throughput with raw speed. Instead, we should be looking at maximizing throughput across modes of transportation, maximizing safety by road design (so we don't all "need" 8000lb SUVs to feel safe), etc.

Most suburban streets should probably be 15-20mph, not 25-35mph. Suburban arteries 25-30 instead of 35+. Narrower lanes instead of wide-open sight-lines (which encourage speeding) and other calming measures. And for gods sake, separate infrastructure for bicycles and mobility devices, and more pedestrian-focused infrastructure (not sidewalks as an afterthought, as seems to be the norm).

As a cyclist, that would be great.

I still think the most forward-thinking solution is to just standardize on putting buried infrastructure underneath cycling pathways --- that way, when maintenance is being done cyclists can be diverted to (their choice) of either a short stretch of road, or a similar length of sidewalk.

It's unfortunate that the Smart-for-Two didn't do better...

Was it just the price? Or a combination of price, inefficient motor (vs the diesel sold in the EU), and lack of practicality?

In the US you ended up with a car that was slower, more expensive to buy, less useful (2-seats, tiny trunk), and barely more fuel efficient than a Honda Civic. It was doomed from the get-go as spec'ed in the US.

Price, but certainly the less than spectacular gas mileage didn't help.

Rather a shame that there hasn't been a real replacement for the Geo Metro/Suzuki Swift yet (and I really regret that I didn't arrange my life so that the one I bought was a vehicle I chose to keep).

Yeah, it's a real problem.

Personal example: I work just over a mile from home, most days I walk, but when the weather is crap, I drive. But, despite being wholly within a suburban area, the speed limits are 15mph (neighborhood), 35mph (suburban parkway), 55mph (suburban artery), and 20mph (office park).

Likewise, my wife works about 8 miles from home, and cycles some of the time. But driving, the speed limits vary from 25 to 45mph, again with nothing but 2-lane suburban streets.

I'd happily trade one of our full-size cars for an LSV or Kei equivalent, but it wouldn't be able to keep up on the short stretches where we need to go 45+mph (realistically, traffic is flowing at 50mph on many of these roads despite posted limits).

Actually, we saw a Kei truck (Honda Acty) driving up the road the other day. This was a 50mph dual-carriage way in the suburbs (stroad-ish). Pulling away from a traffic light, it could barely keep up. But, for weekend Home Depot runs it's probably perfect otherwise.

Acty's and other 660cc can go up to 60mph given a long enough stretch.

Yeah, I was commenting on the speed from a stop. It was massively outpaced by everything else. If the speed limit had been 35 or so, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but on a 55mph road, it was noticeable. Probably no slower than a vintage VW but you'd notice one of those as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com