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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this is a big one. You have to buy specialty car seats now if you want to go three across in a sedan. Admittedly, the seats are much safer (just like the wider cars), but it certainly is a problem.

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> just like the wider cars

Safer for the people in the car, not outside it. But I guess that is the point.

From the article in the first paragraph: "To comply with today’s stringent crash regulations – by passing offset, side and roof impact tests, as well as those evaluating pedestrian protection performance – cars require considerable cubic metres of controllably crushable bodywork."

I’m pretty sure the reason an SUV is bigger than a compact has little to do with the differences in the width of the walls.

The article is addressing the size increases in car models between generations. Popularity of SUVs over other types of car is a different issue.

If you mean other people not in cars then picking a lighter car wont matter for the people outside. Airbags on the outside of the car are the only real solution.

0.5mv^2 scales too fast for m1 to matter if m1 >> m2.

It's selfish safety. It is safer for the occupants but it is not safer for the other car in the collision.

"I'm going to buy a car that's safer for pedestrians / other cars in a collision, but less safe for my family" said one person ever.

And that is why we need laws banning these. Someone should care about the non-drivers of cars.

Or will we slowly move to tanks.

Aaaand bring in the Tesla Cybertruck

Some day, there will be a Back To The Future remake, with a Cybertruck.

“You made a time machine... out of a Tesla?”

> And that is why we need laws banning these

You need those laws, because current situation doesn't fit you. I've heard the tank argument for last 20 years over and over. There are tons of use cases when bigger is required, say bigger family, lots of goods being transported etc. I don't have a big car myself, but such statements are pretty ignorant of reality. and what about all the cargo vehicles, trucks etc?

If you want to punish those evil rich capitalists in good ol' communist class envy way, then I have few ideas - we should ban people changing phones in less than 7 years, have only 1 computer per family, every 10 years, only 2 pairs of trousers, no meat for anybody ever, in fact no car and of course only 1 kid max. Its for the greater good, right?

What Switzerland does is, with its car tax is, at least in some cantons, the tax is calculated in equation which considers HP of the car and its weight.

I made this choice. Also not just for pedestrians but for all future people as emissions are lower.

How is maximizing personal gain on the individual level working out? Not well.

I made that choice, too. Crash tests don't give the full picture. Since "downgrading" to a smaller vehicle I've found it much easier to avoid incidents completely. It seems like the right trade off for the kind of driving I do, which is mostly on urban streets.

Ditto. If I crash my bicycle into any car, I'm guaranteed to be the worst off. And a pedestrian would likely be far better off than if I was in a car. (Ps peds get off your bloody phones when crossing the road, especially when emerging from behind a SUV).

Not necessarily. Much of the extra size is to increase the crumple volume. Those crumple volumes absorb energy in a crash, which benefits all involved in the crash. Raw weight on the other hand is an entirely different matter.

Is it physically possible for the energy absorbed by crumple-bits to be greater than the additional energy required to decelerate all the extra mass which the crumple-bits provide?

Yes, the energy required to make permanent deformations in a material is unrelated to it's kinetic energy.

I'd rather get hit in the head by a ten pound blob of clay than a five pound iron ball. (Preferably neither, though.)

I think I'd pick the iron ball? I'd have to feel the clay first.

Would you rather be hit by a moving concrete wall or a moving concrete wall at the same speed but with 5 layers of cardboard boxes taped to it.

This reminds me of one of my favorite philosophy papers:

Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked? by Douglas Husak

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447?seq=1

Rough summary: there is a high crash incompatibility between SUVs and other cars, imposing unreasonable levels of risks upon the smaller cars.

Simple example (not form the paper): a tank crashes into a car: everyone in the car dies. Had the tank been a regular car, no one would die.

Wider cars are often taller which isn't so safe for pedestrians or bicyclists.

"If you want to fit three across" Why is this limited to child seats? Not like Americans are getting thinner...

It’s not. But 3 across is obviously important because your vehicle selection goes down significantly once you need to expand to a third row to grow your capacity.

I can say from experience that vehicle selection goes down much more once you need to expand to a fifth row. There were just two choices, one from Ford and one from GM.

Fitting three car seats across is still difficult, despite enough car width to have a 4-wide bench in the rear. Putting car seats in the back rows makes them hard to get to, so they should go in the second row or in the third row seat nearest the door. That gives reasonably easy room for 3, but some states would have had me needing 5.

Fifth row? That sounds closer to a bus than a car.

Not sure if serious.

The title/registration stuff does in fact say "bus", but I wouldn't call it that. It's just an extended body van. I get mildly accusatory questions when registering it for non-commercial use and when I go places that have per car or per family payment.

I got the E350. It holds 15 people including the driver, which leaves me just one empty seat when I drive my whole family. Seating is 2-3-3-3-4 from front to back, with an aisle along the right side.

Mine looks just like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_E-Series_wagon.jpg

You have a 14 person family? Good lord my man.

Fun fact, my mom was the 15th child of 16. My only sister and I worked it out, our grandma was basically pregnant 12 years of her life if it would have been back to back and exactly 9 months each child.

So far nobody has been able to beat my late grandma for children count. Also soup, she made the best soup around.

Just thought I’d throw that one out there. They were spaced out a fair amount though so not like she needed to bus all 16 around at the same time. By the time 16 was not in the oven the first few were already out of the house.

I will add that these things do wicked powerslides on gravel roads. It's awesome, especially when all the seats are full.

In Europe you would in fact have to have a bus driving license (D or D1) for that kind of vehicle since it can transport more than 8+1 [passengers+driver] (and it most likely also goes beyond the maximum authorized mass of 3500 kg for the B license).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence#Categ...

I meant that's cool, but I'd argue that's the nichest of niche uses I've ever seen. And as someone else already said, in Europe you would actually need a full D class licence to drive this in the first place, so you might as well get something like a modified Mercedes Sprinter with 12-15 seats.

Sounds like somebody should have used some condoms a long time ago....

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

A few years back we got (with a bit of squeezing) three broad-shouldered adults into the back of a friend's Skoda Fabia hatchback [0]. Bit uncomfortable but we fit.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Fabia#Second_genera...

You're not wrong, but it's a non sequitur.

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