Berlin crash prompts calls to ban SUVs from German cities
thelocal.de
thelocal.de
Boom, every single "cars in city" problems solved. I'm sure that even with 100% state subsidised taxi rides it would still be a net positive if you consider costs of health, pollution, accidents, insurances, &c.
Moving cars are the problem, since they are what causes congestion and accidents. Cars sitting in parking garages don't run over people or cause traffic jams.
I know, "that's insane!", right ?
Compared to dumping metric tons of toxic gases and particles right next to where we live/work/sleep as well as moving 2 tons vehicles to displace 1 person ? Using 50% of the streets to park cars that move 30 min per days ?
Just because we're used to something doesn't make it less insanely dumb. ICE / personal cars would never be allowed if created today.
What you've suggested is just shoehorning something in (centralized government-run personal transportation) apparently without any thought of how it would actually impact commute time traffic, or whether other infrastructure enhancements would be more ideal.
For public transit to work it has to scale to the number of people who actually need it. In most cities it does not. Adding electric taxis at a ratio of 1 to 5 commuters makes absolutely zero sense. Adding electric taxis at a ratio of 5 to 5 commuters still makes no sense. It's just a dumb idea.
It would also be a huge incentive for people to start looking into other types of transportation.
Your conclusion is not supported by facts presented. If you would be so kind as to justify your assertion it would be a lot more interesting to think through it and you might convince me. But as-is, what you've put forth is lazy and poorly thought out.
i can't say which number is realistic, but i think it is safe to say that the number of destinations is less than the number of people traveling.
- Introduce good bike lanes, narrowing down streets. Give bikes more priority in traffic rules (can't really be done in Berlin since they are federal rules).
- Introduce an inner city car toll. Offset losses to businesses that absolutely require it through tax breaks. (construction, delivery drivers, taxis etc.)
- Close down non-essential streets completely during most hours (4-6am free for deliveries etc.). Reduce parking/make drivers pay for parking.
At the same time, you need to make it easier for people to switch:
- Reduce prices of public transport for residents. In Berlin they want to introduce a yearly ticket for 365€, that is perfect.
- Increase availability of public transport, and make all busses electric.
- Introduce large parking spaces at key points in the far suburbs of the city. Parking there costs a fee that also works as a day ticket for public transport. Express busses take you to the city centre/other key infrastructure points.
Some of these are already being worked on in Berlin, otherwise I know are on the agenda and being discussed. In Berlin specifically though, some points might not be legal. Inner city toll for example might be prohibited by federal law.
E: One important point I forgot: Cars account for 25% of all emissions in Berlin. On the local level, getting rid of cars is the best thing we can do to combat climate change.
It's definitely a political suicide in most cities in the world, but it's probably the best way to get out of the madness we lowered ourselves into while retaining most of the mobility.
I agree with everything you listed.
I rented a Vespa while I was there, which was a great way to get around, but I was blown away by how many times cars sped by me in a hurry from behind. It’s rare to ever see a car get going >30mph (~50kph) in San Francisco, whereas some Berlin streets felt more like freeways. I wouldn’t have enjoyed being on a bicycle in some of those situations.
They did that. 2€ per hour. One of the reasons I don't have a car. But I would rather walk two hours to the office and two hours back before I go by tram / public transport. There are many reasons/problems but one is: it is overcrowded and I don't like people. I go by bike or ebike instead.
The cost of parking needs to be high enough such that you can remove a lot of spots and convert them to other uses (i.e. protected bike lanes, commercial loading zones), and still keep multiple free spots per block so that people willing to pay the high prices don't need to drive around to find spots.
Otherwise, the whole thing is just half measures that make it harder for poor people to get around.
This wouldn't help, as I mentioned in another comment here. Taxi drivers are one of the most dangerous, obnoxious and self-absorbed drivers in this town.
Also the city mulls over increasing the base rates for taxis which are already prohibitively expensive.
When they compete for fares in saturated markets, yeah sure. Not if they get proper salaries and are employed by the city/state.
That will massively increase the number of cars on the roads city center. Most cars in cities spend most of their time parked. Offer a free taxi service and those cars will be rolling 24/7. Plus since the service will be so popular that there will basically always be someone waiting for a ride, drivers will be incentivized to driver faster so that they can get more fares (and thus more money).
People don’t spend very long driving their cars in the center of cities.
Why bike when there's a free convenient taxi? Even those who drive might take more trips into town if they don't have to worry about driving in traffic and parking.
There is a cost vs. convenience trade off between public transport and cars, i. e. public transport is much cheaper, but you have to walk the last mile. Making cars as cheap as public transport would destroy the incentive to use public transport and most people would switch to car travel instead. Also, as others have pointed out, cars are parked most of the time (like 95% of the day), so replacing 5 cars with 1 taxi is unlikely to lead to a reduction, combined with the new incentive (see above) to use cars instead of bikes, buses, trains, etc., most of the problems involved would actually get worse.
Completely agree. The fact the you can drive a truck down a narrow pedestrian street to deliver a couple of 50x50x30 cm boxes is insane. But there does need to be an exception where people can apply for a permit on a case by case basis for deliveries that are necessary and cannot be brought in any other way.
There are way too many people living in the city right now.
Complete disagree as a matter of principle, and I don't see what one has to do with the other. Much of the traffic in city centers aren't caused by the people living in the city centers, but by people living outside the city wanting to get into the city. I fail to see how Forcing people to spread out into the suburbs will solve the problem. If the city infrastructure cannot handle the people living there, the focus should be on fixing the infrastructure.
The increase in trucks and SUVs is a major reason why pedestrian fatalities has increased so much over the past decade. (Though the auto industry has tried to shift the blame to cell phones.)
But I thought EU rules were pretty strict when it comes to what happens to pedestrians on impact and the Macan isn’t exactly a monstertruck.
Having low speed limits and protected sidewalks (trees, posts) seems like a much better idea.
> German politicians are demanding regulations to keep large SUVs (sport utility vehicles) out of inner cities
> "We need an upper limit for large SUVs in city centres,”
The article further elucidates:
> Following the incident, several politicians and traffic experts called into question the rising popularity of the vehicles - characterized by their broad shape and several off-road features
So it seems that SUVs are being particularly targeted, seemingly because of their features.
So, looking up the measurements [0], it seems that the Porche Macan is just under 4.7m long and 2m wide. By my standards (Oz) that's a pretty large vehicle!
[0] https://www.automobiledimension.com/models/porsche/macan-201...
That's actually slightly smaller than than, for example, an Audi A4, which most people don't consider a particularly big car.
By my standards (Oz) that's a pretty large vehicle!
When I was in Oz it felt every other car on the road was a huge pickup. You guys sure seem to love your HiLuxes.
We also need to grade vehicles on how well they protect pedestrians, cyclists, and occupants of other vehicles, and if they don't pass the tests they can't be sold.
In Europe they have had pedestrian crash testing since 2010. The US does not currently have a standard that I'm aware of. Though because a good amount of cars are global designs, this has influenced the American market. Definitely agree that it should be a consideration everywhere.
As usual, this us worded as "the car did it", also known as the "absent driver" style. More examples here https://twitter.com/absentdriver
SUV ban won't stop accidents like these. At best they will achieve less injuries because the cars being drove into pedestrians gonna get smaller.
Agreed, it's more likely that the driver lost control of their vehicle. The car has was not an autonomous vehicle, so it has no agency here: it did not do anything at all.
If the accident was really caused by an epileptic seizure (as the media speculate), a smaller car with a less powerful engine wouldn't have accelerated as quickly as that Porsche Macan.
I've seen numbers showing in pedestrian accidents, SUVs are twice as likely to kill the pedestrian than smaller cars. Nonetheless, I'd rather we just phase cars out of inner cities entirely.
With smaller cars the pedestrian often ends up rolling over the front.
Note that its the Chair of the Greens - bit tacky to be using a tragedy to argue for their anti car agenda.
In Berlin, given public transport it would seem feasible to live without a car for the majority of people
I don't think it's reasonable to expect to get rid of all ic vehicles in the short term, but we can certainly focus on the worst offenders.
SUV that is 25% heavier than a sedan, destroys the road much quicker than a sedan would.
studies by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) also blamed SUVs for the higher death rate, concluding that "pedestrians are two to three times more likely to suffer a fatality when struck by an SUV or pickup than … by a passenger car."
https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-pedest...
I’d like to see the study, the first question I have is whether they accounted for the proportion of SUVs on the roads increasing relative to cars.
It’s common for second- or third-hand accounts to gloss over details like that.
Volvo created a “pedestrian air bag” years ago that inflated on the hood of the car when it detected what could be a pedestrian being struck.
They replaced that with systems that auto-brake at low speeds when they detect pedestrians or bicycles. Other manufacturers have this kind of tech too, but there are zero standards and no enforcement AFAICT.
I wonder how effective that would be - given that a pedestrian hitting the hood could be coming from a ton of different vectors compared to the collision of a driver with a steering wheel, I wonder if you'd just end up throwing more energy and chaos into the collision.
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/how-pedestrian-airbags-wo...
But note, they have moved on to trying to avoid striking pedestrians and/or reduce injury through reducing speed.
Seems like that's a better choice - moving to prevention rather than mitigation.
I wouldn't be surprised that cars in city centers become things of a past.
I was believer of the democracy, but this behavior of politicians is just ugly. Play with fears, go with the trend punishing riches and save the poor! That’s the recipe to win next elections. This is easy way! Providing laws for working from home and reducing traffic is beyond competency of these people.
Plus don’t forget aging population, I am always scared when I see these 75+ years olds driving big powerful cars. In fact I have friends in this age group and I would like to see them in a taxi instead with their own cars.
It doesn't actually work in practise?
That's not really a valid point - any child close enough to be invisible to a driver is far too close for the driver to avoid. A child more than a few feet away can easily be seen by the driver of an SUV, let alone a small oen like a Macan.
Don't know what changed in the last decade but they're a rare sight these days, everyone seems to only want SUVs of all sizes instead which are less practical and less economical than estates.
Heck, even Volvo's famous practical boxy estates are nearly vanished and replaced with its more expensive SUVs.
What happened to European drivers? Maybe it's the perceived "better safety".
On a bike I've learned to give minivans and SUVs a wide berth, they just seem way less predictable and less likely to see a bicyclist.
The fact that they can see more ahead in dense traffic gives them a feeling of more safety on emotional level. I would argue against this and nothing beats good driving skills, no matter what car is driven. Worst thing is, some guys also jump on SUV trend.
I don't know. That's crazy. In the last 5 years, the vehicle fleet has changed faster than it ever did before.
In my rural area, it's now SUV everywhere (not yet American-size SUV, but still... and I have no doubt it is coming) for the random people.
As far as farmers are concerned, it got even worse: after 60 years without using a single pick-up truck (despite their long-standing popularity in the USA, it absolutely never took off here), all of a sudden (it started sometime like 3-5 years ago) they all buy pick-up trucks (all double cabs of course). Yep, same farmers who like to whine and claim to barely survive on $400 a month, but agricultural subsidies do marvels apparently: no wonder they can afford $40k-50k useless cars when in my municipality a 1- or 2-people farm will get on average $40k-$60k subsidies each year; my neighbour got $80k subsidies last year, he bought a second pick-up truck.
What is left? Craftsmen/builders: either switched to pick-up too, or still use their big vans, and still drive like maniacs. 'Neo-rurals' (the contemporary version of hippies): they drive old smoking huge vans. Delivery men: vans, of course, but there are more and more of them, and well, they drive like delivery men...
So the large vehicles remained, but the small ones got replaced by larger ones.
And this is happening in a place where secondary roads are 2.5 to 3 meters wide! And it is a hill/mountain area, so those roads are very winding, the visibility rarely exceeds 50 meters. Just picture yourself the situations...
Add to this that with the generalisation of air-conditioning, cars are more and more airtight, and thus more and more soundproof (so drivers are more isolated from the environment); add also that car windows are more and more opaque, so that you cannot see through them what is coming on the other side.
I still ride a bicycle but only because I am fairly suicidal. I don't see families going for a Sunday bike ride with children any more.
Naturally, the officials' discourse are the opposite of what is going on and what they do about it. Same way that they always claim they want more train transportation but in fact shut down railroads, build bypass roads over the former tracks, and launch projects of new speedways.
Honestly there are no reasons to buy one other than being part of the trend. I wish there were taxes on the volume of cars here in Europe. We're already cluttered with cars, we really don't need bigger ones.
The solution that will really improve safety is advanced AEB (autonomous emergency braking) which can detect pedestrians and cyclists, lane departure, etc and automatically apply the brakes to prevent a collision or reduce its severity.
If i had to be hit by a vehicle i would rather get hit by mini than hit by a bin truck, i don't know about you?
There was a similar tragic incident in Glasgow in 2014 involving a bin truck, where the driver suffered a seizure. Several pedestrians killed and many injured.
You're twice a likely to die when hit by an SUV than average, according to the statistics being quoted here in Germany. Cutting pedestrian casualties in half is about 30 years worth' of other technological progress we've made. And unlike pie-in-the-sky technology, it is an actual, current, option.
So let's ban them until such a silver-bullet (plus electric propulsion) are available. If the technology is so obvious, it's just a short hiatus and won't even inconvenience anybody for too long.
Yes, indeed. Berlin taxis are in no way big SUVs but are probably the most dangerous vehicles I deal with every day.
Some of the drivers seem to have a particular beef with cyclists and scooter drivers (sub-50cc scooters are very popular in here). I had multiple situations where I needed to run away because a taxi driver tried to ram me.
It's not yet clear completely what happened but knowing the street and local situation, I can make an educated guess that this guy was looking to make it past the green/orange light for the pedestrian crossing, swerved left to avoid some traffic/obstacles near the construction site on his side of the road before the crossing and then lost control before plowing over the traffic light (destroyed completely) into four people waiting to cross. One possible reason for him having to swerve left may have been some traffic emerging from the side road (no traffic light there). This would be hard to see if you are driving way too fast. Also there's a construction site with some scaffolding right before that crossing; which further reduces visibility. They had an temporary traffic light there for a few weeks recently but it was removed again.
The problem is not SUVs as such but a culture of unsafe driving being OK and the police looking the other way as a matter of policy (because car lobbies).
The accident happened 150m from a police station on the same street. If the driver knew that; he apparently did not care and in all likelihood was speeding anyway. Cars in Berlin jump red lights, double park, and speed throughout the city with a very low chance of getting caught. So, this is not unusual. On an average bike ride through the city you'll see all of that happening multiple times. Most crossings with traffic lights don't have cameras. I've never seen a speed camera in Berlin; I'm not even sure there are any at all. The local culture is "it's all fine". Drivers behave accordingly. Also, the fines are pretty low if you do get caught compared to other countries.
Another issue is that Berlin does not seem to have safety very high on the agenda when doing construction work. The road in question went through a lengthy and expensive reconstruction project that took something like five years that was only finished a few years ago. This was a great and missed opportunity to make the road safer. This crossing definitely was poorly designed. You have two roads crossing each other there without traffic lights and then a traffic light right after the crossing just for the pedestrian crossing.
You get a van.
If I read the article correctly, the measure would be targeted at SUVs only. I doubt the mayor of Berlin-Mitte was thinking about vans when talking about banning "tank-like cars".
One study [1] found this has resulted in a significant (56 percent) decrease in collisions resulting in deaths or serious injuries.
[1] http://foi.tfl.gov.uk/FOI-2274-1718/Pedestrian%20railings%20...
Apparently post-9/11 security theatre pushed so many people out of planes and into long distance driving that the additional road deaths overtook the 9/11 death toll in a few months.
How about those idiots who take selfies close to cliff edges?
If that is how you feel why not fence of high mountains to prevent mountaineers from falling to their death?
Why not fix child locks to vehicles driving in safari parks so the passengers cannot jump out and be eaten by lions? That wouldn't protect them from charging elephants though.
In Europe, AEB is mandatory on all new vehicles receiving type approval from 2020. In the US, it will be implemented on all new private vehicles from 2022.
"You can't just say: SUV is basically more dangerous than [other types of vehicles]," accident researcher Siegfried Brockmann from the Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft (Association of the German Insurance Industry) told DPA.
Speed and the type of collision would have more influence than weight, he added. In the Berlin incident, however, the traffic light mast might have stopped a smaller car."
I’m not a fan of those monstrosities but I think banning them is a psychological overreaction to this incident.
Am I the only one seeing a problem with someone driving on the sidewalk? Did this somehow become acceptable?
I've driven large trucks and not been forced onto a sidewalk. Maybe I'm missing something.
You're not the only one agreeing that driving on the sidewalk is/was unacceptable. But the article mentions the following which may indicate that this was not deliberate:
>>It is thought that the driver could have had a medical emergency, such as an epileptic seizure according to the latest police findings, causing him to accelerate at a fast speed.