Outside of NYC, Chicago, and SF, there’s very little mass transit to speak of, even in urban areas. Texas and Florida have significant population centers where car ownership is required, and that’s where folks are moving to.
30k / year die in car accidents in the USA. This is a real problem with a huge human toll, akin to drunk driving or building codes.
Step 1 is slow the vehicles down. As soon as they slow down, one of the main drivers of size - fear of an accident with a bigger vehicle - will be greatly decreased and we can do step 2: shrink them.
I can't even imagine what that would do to traffic that is already pretty congested. Large swaths of suburban metros would just grind to a halt.
> 30k / year die in car accidents in the USA
Closer to 40K. Even then, that is compared with almost 3 million people who die for all reasons combined. It's actually sort of amazing how low the fatality rate is given just how much movement there is every day. One for every 100,000,000 miles driven. That's remarkable.
Crashes are common. Accidents are exceptionally rare. While "accident" is a statement of intent, and outside of extreme road rage scenarios, nobody intends to cause a crash, people do deliberately create dangerous situations that lead to crashes.
You might not have intended to rear-end somebody, but you did choose to text while driving.
You might not have intended to side-swipe somebody, but you did choose to not check your blind spot before changing lanes.
The word "accident" implies a mistake that you couldn't see coming. But when someone chooses to create the dangerous situation, it's no longer an accident, because the situation could have been avoided entirely.
Cars aren’t sized to our average use case, they they are sized to frequent use cases.
I’m getting tired of the “all I need is a tiny tin box thus so should you” crowd.
But if you live in the real world, why not drive a car that makes it easier to do all the things you want to do, if it’s easily affordable?
My smallish wagon does everything a typical family (2 adults, 2 kids, dog) has a regular need for (heck, I carry trees and 2x12s and gravel in it, which is more than most people need). On the rare occasion that I’m buying furniture and they don’t deliver or whatever, I rent a van. As a result, my day-to-day driving experience is infinitely more pleasant.
Then they suggest that the other use cases are valid but people like them don't need such a car despite those use cases.
How did you interpret that as "hectoring other people with different use cases"??
The average number of kids in the US is 1.9 and the median age interval is 2-3 years. That's not that many years of carrying around kids and their gear; one, maybe two cars in a lifetime.
On the other hand, so many Americans drive by themselves, long distances, every day, in giant cars. A lot of people like larger cars because it makes them "feel safe." Or people buy the largest vehicle they can "just in case." I was taken aback when I found out about 10 years when a friend had to run his credit card twice to fill up because it capped the sale at $50 and when gas prices went up he couldn't fill his tank for that.
I feel like I'm the weirdo in the US for preferring smaller cars. I couldn't stand poor pickup of fleet vehicles a decade ago, but as long as they have decent pickup I really love the maneuverability, the ease of parking in smaller spots, and the mileage of a smaller car.
Station wagon with a roof rack can do any two of those things at once. And I say this as someone who also owns a minivan and a couple trucks. I actually prefer station wagons for hauling sheet material that's too long or wide to fit flat in a pickup bed because it's less of a pain to deal with strapping it to a roof rack than any of the other options.
The problem with this approach is that despite the fact that modern vehicles can support thousands of pounds on (or in) the passenger cabin and that modern air suspension and dynamic shocks (as found on many higher trim SUVs these days) would be fine with the extra weight) it is not socially acceptable (and social norms are very much defined by vocal minorities) to use vehicle at 110% their capacity if you can reasonably avoid to. Imagine the "think of the children" themed hate you'd get if you posted a picture of a Mercedes wagon hauling 300lb of I-beam on the roof or a minivan hauling a ton of paver bricks or a bunch of people crammed into a Honda Fit for a road trip. That's why we can't made do with less.
Most roof racks have a capacity of 100-150lbs. You certainly aren't hauling plywood or furniture on your roof.
They are called “SUVs” today Mr Griswold.
A lot of the arguments here read like people want an SUV that will fit all the stuff you'd normally just use a trailer for, like moving furniture or a bunch of lumber. This seems very odd to me.
And it’s not big enough for me. If we take a trip, it’s the Cayenne, because it’s far more comfortable with 4 people plus dog plus luggage.
> I’m getting tired of the “all I need is a tiny tin box thus so should you” crowd.
I don't care to tell people what they need, but I do want my public space back. Car owner's aggregate decisions absolutely do effect personally and the commons so they have no right to hide behind that shield.
Also, of course, bad mass transit is fixable. And potentially fairly cheaply; for the lowish density cities common in the US BRT systems would likely largely be fine.
I've never been to a drivable wilderness area, or on a freeway where I'd be comfortable going all that fast. And if I was going there just to drive hard it would probably be rare enough that I'd rent a really nice fast car.
No they do not. Half of Americans live in the suburbs or equivalent, which are not urban environments and certainly nothing remotely compared to what qualifies as an urban environment in eg Europe. Having a Target, Costco, Home Depot, Whole Foods and Starbucks doesn't qualify a region as urban. 70%-75% of Americans don't live in urban environments:
"America Really Is a Nation of Suburbs"
"According to the newly released 2017 American Housing Survey (of nearly 76,000 households nationwide), about 52 percent of people in the United States describe their neighborhood as suburban, while about 27 percent describe their neighborhood as urban, and 21 percent as rural."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-ma...
It probably makes sense. Having yards and trees and driving 2 miles to Target is more similar to not having trees and driving 2 miles to Target than it is similar to driving 200 miles to Target.
Have sidewalks? Probably urban.
Given the choice, how would someone living there most often visit a grocery store?
In an urban area walking might be the common mode.
In a suburban area driving is OFTEN going to be the preferred mode, and even in small cities (particularly ones still small enough to have free parking at a nearby grocery store) driving there is still going to be preferred; at least in the US. In my experience Bellevue WA is a small, still suburban like city, while Seattle has crossed the anti-car (and expensive real-estate) line to 'big city'; but is neither old enough (pre-industrial grocery store layouts) nor big enough to be a healthy big urban city.
Offhand, I would define rural as any area where a drive to the third closest typical grocery store is at least a one hour round trip (by car, at legal speeds, including delays at any traffic device or from commute volume).
https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rur...
Large swaths of the US are what that page calls 'micropolitan', centered around small urban clusters, which are the areas I think cause the most confusion, built up areas that are treated as urban in statistics and conversely thought about as rural by lay audiences.
There’s a reason that suburban is distinct from urban.
Rural areas, and locations with severe winter weather, have special needs for which higher speeds and more robust vehicles are appropriate, but smaller, lighter, and slower vehicles are a viable option for most Americans.
It's laughably out of touch to believe the US is even half rural. That ship sailed a very long time ago.
[0] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/study-states-with-the-longes...
Suburban environment is not so dense so you could expect the nearest fast charger be pretty far away. Driving in a city traffic involves a lot of acceleration and slowing down, where the electric recuperative braking shines, unlike on a highway. OTOH in suburban setting you have a good chance to be able to put a fast charger into your garage (and you have a garage!), and maybe even charge the car from solar panels on your roof (and the roof is yours!). In a city, chances are you park in a multi-level parking or on a street, and charging your car from an electric outlet of your third-floor apartment is not realistic. The parking garage has a higher chance to provide charging, though.
[1] https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...
The census defines 3 population area groups, urban areas (+50k), urban clusters (2.5k-50k), and rural (-2.5k).
If you combine urban clusters and rural that’s still only 28% of the population, and you’ll be including a lot of people who don’t consider life very rural.
https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/104wPPSJ_4CzutRK5Ypp_...
I do know that much of Europe is something less than urban by this measure, and they seem to get by fine with a lot fewer cars, and the cars they have are almost always much smaller than ours.
Perhaps this is one of those self perpetuating problems.
And what you're referring to is not a problem, because it is objectively useful to have a large truck in the middle of nowhere. I enjoy being able to move lots of things at once without asking another person for help. Also, have you ever had a tract of land in a rural part of the USA? It's quite nice.
Europeans have a tendency to think they're superior to Americans, but that's just classist crap that needs to stop. The USA has cool things, and so do Germans and Austrians and Belgians and the French and so on. Why divide ourselves?
Everyone has cool stuff, but there are bad things to say about every country in addition to good things.
American exceptionalism in one phrase.
That said, I will prefer to live in places that give me more choice - more economic choice, more living choices, more everything choices. I am by any global metric a wealthy person and my US tax rate is very low compared to every other western nation except for tax shelter countries. And I prefer to have less government mandating where my wealth is spent and retain more control over my life.
What’s so wonderful is that apparently anyone (just like yourself!) can so easily uproot their entire lives to experiment living in two different countries! Although research tells me that Scandinavian countries, The Netherlands, and France have very difficult requirements for immigration. I need to learn Dutch? Huh? In the USA it’s so much easier!
Are you one of those Californians who are desperate to escape California but then try to change all the rules of your new home to match what you had in California? Just so you know, this is very irritating to your new neighbors.
I live in the USA. I like it here. But you say it is better because it has lower taxes and doesn't make you learn Dutch. Others point out that your taxes + your health insurance premiums + doctor fees are not less than Netherland's taxes that include healthcare.
When I lived outside the USA I made a significant effort to learn the language. I've never understood why one would not.
If these are your main reasons for preferring the USA they seem pretty weak. Your first paragraph is a much stronger position.
Anyway, it sounds like you deserve all of the problems of the US since you're not actually interested in making anything better. As a result, you'd be a net negative to anywhere you move with that mindset.
When you look into the metrics, you'd see what kind of vapid bullshit this is.
As for high growth, Europe doesn’t have the space to engage in pump & dump real estate and the same scale of military subsidies that made the fortunes of many US industries.
Relief does exist. I know two close people who each had around $70k of medical debt wiped clean by hospitals.
But yes, healthcare costs need to drop. See this graph for a symptom of why healthcare is so expensive: http://www.ibj.com/ext/resources/blog/The-Dose/Physicians-Ad...
While I agree that each has their advantages and disadvantages, transportation is something many places in Europe have something to show us IMHO.
A small village would typically have a train station where you can quickly travel to a populated area and urban cores are often nearly completely restricted from cars excepting deliveries making for walkable daily life.
It’s true that having a personal vehicle is more convenient, but in my opinion that is a bit of a tragedy of the commons. If everyone decides to have one then we all pay the price in needing one to get anywhere.
I’m really not sure where class figures into these two different models honestly.
Trains work well when you have enough people to care to use the infrastructure. But if not, you might try buses. I saw a rural village in Hungary (~80 people) which has a bus stop to the nearest town. That's very nice, but the village center is a mile walk from the bus stop on the highway. My point is that a train may not automatically work. (Some rural communities in the USA do have similar bus routes.)
I'm curious: what is your example of a small European village with a train line? I'm asking because I just picked a random American town on the map: Spencer, Iowa. ~11k people, and it's about a two hour drive (~100 miles) in all directions to a larger city. A two hour drive is a decent drive, but it's not much overall, especially if you're comfortable driving. It's quite hard to find a similar scenario in Europe: these vast, sparsely-populated tracts of land. And that's my primary point: Europe's population is distributed more uniformly and densely than the USA. A blanket claim about how x transportation mode must be used in the USA ignores the stark regional variations.
Sure, in certain large cities, widespread car ownership may lead to a tragedy of the commons scenario, but it's on a per-city basis. The vast majority of cities in the USA will never encounter this problem because their "commons" are just so big, all cows still find a spot to graze. The cities that do encounter large traffic jams eventually build public transportation infrastructure to reduce the burden on roadways.
Playing out the maximal scenarios, I'd much rather live in a world where everyone drives cars than everyone rides trains. A mix of both is even better.
Walkable downtowns are great, and cities of all sizes should have them.
Huh? We have lots and lots of train lines, also passing through very small villages. But sure, not at all to every village, so there are also enough villages, where only a bus goes. And in some only sometimes. Maybe only on the weekend, maybe only weekdays.
So you also need a car in rural germany.
Most people do have a car so the pressure is high to get one, it is also cheapin rural areas of Sweden. Parking is free, always available, most of the infrastructure is slowly being erroded by car centric design. So yes soon you will be required to have a car in some rural areas to be able to travel anywhare ot get food.
And you had those conditions, while having a family? I doubt that can work out, my wife is pregnant, for example. She cannot walk or cycle 10 km to get anywhere.
Anyway, we had the choice and we live in a village with a supermarket and trainstation. But if we had to live in a place you describe, it would not work without a car.
My understanding of rural Germany is that villages are usually are within 6 km of each other. Is this fairly accurate?
I remember seeing a video or article about how towns in rural USA are ~15 miles (24 km) away from each other because half this distance is what a person could walk in a day, handle in-town business, and be home by dark.
Density makes a big difference.
Pretty much. You have to search for places, where that distance is higher. But there is a increasingly number of ghost villages, where only some old people remain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File...
The largest H-bomb test ever carried out was in Europe!
While technically Severny Island is "in Europe" in the historical continental sense, Russian arctic islands aren't what anyone is referring to as a comparison point with the US in this discussion. Nor Russia in general for that matter.
"It's quite hard to find a similar scenario in Europe: these vast, sparsely-populated tracts of land."
Saying that a part of Europe should be excluded from debate about whether Europe has "sparsely-populated tracts of land" because it is remote and sparsely populated seems a bit circular.
A sizeable chunk of Russia is in Europe - not sure why that should be excluded?
Edit: If people mean the EU or Western Europe when they say "Europe" then that's fine - but it's arguably similar to people from Europe only regarding the US as the two coasts!
Yep, that's what I refer to. I imagine most Americans do as well. From my perspective, I don't expect Europeans to automatically include considerations of Alaska.
>it's arguably similar to people from Europe only regarding the US as the two coasts!
A well-known term in the USA is "fly-over country." That refers to all the land between the two coasts. Our own "coasties" already view the rest of the country as another world. We already do that to ourseleves!
Having been born and raised in a typical small village in The Netherlands (population then ± 12000) with a lot of smaller and slightly larger villages around, there were no train station in sight for at least 30km. I had to travel to the big city to get to the nearest train station, which took about an hour by bus. And this is the norm rather than the exception.
The problem with trains is that the tracks are put in relatively straight between large cities. If your village is on that line between these cities, you're in luck and probably have a station close-by. Otherwise, you're out of luck and have to hope there is a reasonable frequent bus line going to your closest station.
Of course, because these bus lines tend to follow the more historical routes between cities, visiting each and every village in between, getting to the nearest big city by bus might take up to three times as long as just taking your own car.
Heck, if I'd not mind cycling fast (just over 20km/h) for an hour and a half I'd also be in the city. Just half an hour after the bus would get there. Actually, that was nice in summer as a poor high school student.
Good god the "cool stuff" that the US has in no way shape or form compensates for the poor lives that the majority of the country leads.
If a train is the best solution for a USA community, by all means, make it happen! However, trains are optimal in the USA in far fewer scenarios than either automobiles, buses, or airplanes.
This sounds like the rhetoric around gun rights, where any amount of regulation on guns becomes an absolute seizure of the right to have any gun. No one is talking about an absolute zero automobile society; even societies that deprioritize the car still have cars available, just not as the first choice. Cars don't have to be dominant to be available and usable.
No disrepsect, but did any country? Trains were used extensively, but the double-whammy of automobiles and airplanes did do a number on the attractiveness of trains.
>And most rural towns today even have dead or dying Main Streets caused by the huge shift towards automobile dependent big box stores.
Mmm. I feel that's a case of "correlation != causation."
- The decades-long export of jobs (avoidable or not) depleted available capital in the community. With little money and work, supporting businesses (mostly those in town centers) greatly struggled, and many folded.
- Big box stores use economies of scale to undercut Main Street prices, which further accelerates the collapse of small business. Dollar General is an interesting example, where they (in my view) have tried to fill the gaps these collapses left.
- Big box stores are inherently large, so good luck finding a tract of land big enough in a rural downtown. If a rural community has a bus line, I'd wager good money that the Walmart has a stop.
>This sounds like the rhetoric around gun rights, where any amount of regulation on guns becomes an absolute seizure of the right to have any gun.
Gun rights are constitutionally protected, whereas no law says "the right to own vehicles, being necessary for the operation of a free society, shall not be infringed." Some people really, really love the law if it makes them feel more secure (and that's okay). Also, bear (heh) in mind gun rhetoric in today's age is manufactured for political purposes.
>Cars don't have to be dominant to be available and usable.
Agreed. If cars are less optimal than other transportation modes, people will chose otherwise. But in the vast majority of the USA, except for commuting, cars enable more liberty than trains at lower levels of efficiency. Not the worst thing, in my opinion.
This seems to be the point missed. It’s almost as if many commentators assume everyone is trying to optimize for the same thing in all cases. Some are talking about optimal access and freedom of movement, some for cost, some for efficiency etc.
There are plenty of personal vehicles in rural southern Germany, SUVs and all, to the point I’d go so far as to call it the norm. Not the case in the Balkans, though.
Sometimes in those discussions I’m extremely confused. It’s as though the concept of an exception doesn’t exist and any counter example prevents some policy suggestion, no matter how minor.
You need exceptions for 90 million people? How does that get enforced, generally? Even though no one has mentioned a specific policy that we can have a concrete discussion about, I see the abstract problem.
1. We need a solution for actual urban populations 2. We also need a solution for the 90 million that don't fall under solution 1 3. and finally, we shouldn't be forcing people to buy specific cars. Not saying EV are bad, just that the market needs to start being more competetive, and automakers need to care more. People tend to follow the crowd, if lawmakers were serious about the environment, automakers would have a harder time continuing selling new cars every year(waste), and even more so non electric vehicles.
I think there will still be a niche market for ICE vehicles for a very long time, but people who are not "car people" would very easily be driving EVs if they were more popular. Most won't notice the difference.
This is an important pragmatic point that reminded me of a study that tried to change people's behavior as it related to environmental impact. As I remember it, they tried three approaches:
1) Communicating the benefits of the change (e.g., look how much money you'd save)
2) Shaming the current behavior (e.g., look how much damage you're creating in the environment)
3) Communicating that a large proportion of your neighbors have already changed their behavior
The only one that effectively made any difference in people's behavior was #3
Most NYC urbanites I know e.g. wouldn't describe Staten Island or most/all of New Jersey as densley populated. Yet, the workers/contractors that can't afford to live in the center or dumbo have to get their tools into the city somehow, if they are to fix my 150k+/year income earning friends condos.
So now I found your stats intriguing and looking into it: That alledged 72% urban area inhabitants include non-dense areas like staten island and NJ, so I guess the stats are a bit misleading?
Can you please show where this point was stated? It seems like you are reading between the lines too much and straw manning.
The point is that “urban” by the definition used to create the statistic in the argument is a very broad term and this makes it difficult to draw good generalizations.
I don’t think a claim for “needing personal transportation with a large range” should be equated to “must be using pickups as commuter vehicles”
Sure:
but smaller, lighter, and slower vehicles are a viable option for most American as a response to So much of what is toxic about cars and car culture could be fixed by downsizing and slowing them. […] I wish north america would fully get on board with these small EVs
Not much of a strawman to me, rather good old urbanite-intellectual disregard for the life-styles/social classes driving these big vehicles.
makes it difficult to draw good generalizations. Agreed, which is why I would refrain to claim that 80% of Americans live in areas with a density above 50k. As the census noted, this is clearly not the case if e.g. Staten Island has a density of 8k.
When I'm in the US, and get the chance to walk around some city's blocks, these things are nothing but intimidating to me. Being rather tall, I'm not used to cross a traffic light as pedestrian and not being able to see above the hood of the car I'm passing. It has a different vibe to it, if this towering above me isn't caused by the vehicle owner's commercial needs but because the driver fancies it.
Last year, I took a trip to Roswell NM. This is close to the population cut-off for “urban” at about 49k people. Would Roswell suddenly become NYC-like if 1500 people migrated there? The idea that Roswell and Manhattan can be in the same classification is not very useful in terms of defining policy. The lifestyle for each is widely divergent and I think they each have very different transportation needs.
Cars are made for people who buy cars, not want or use cars.
It could be 28%, or 60%, or whatever. But people who buy cars buy pickup trucks and not small EVs. What more is there to it? If you want to find out why, ask them, or convince people interested in small EVs to you know, actually buy some.
I don’t think saying “cars are made for people who buy cars” is helpful unless you are willing to elaborate on why they want those cars. If you don’t think the geography is a main driver, this forum is a good place to discuss counter-examples
A Smart Car or Yaris or whatever will do just fine for commuting from rural Floyd County into Atlanta. Been there, done that. It. Is. Fine.
Conversely, a fully-size sedan is the minimal useful car if you want to go the ~10 blocks or whatever from Michigan Ave to the beach in mid January. Again, been there and done that. It. Is. Not! Fine.
This is less of a urban/rural thing and more of a weather/climate thing.
I have an Opel Corsa (supermini/subcompact) rental car right now, and it's both roomy, quiet and comfortable. The little 1.4L engine gets to motorway speed a lot faster than you'd think, plus it's quiet and smooth, really very little vibration felt at all, not even at 50kph in 5th gear.
The front seat pulls back enough that I literally cannot reach the steering wheel or pedals, and I have plenty of headroom (178cm/5'10").
Modern cars in all segments are generally comfortable and quiet, because that's what people want.
Comfort and fuel efficiency are not necessarily conflicting.
I suspect this is more related to the quality of the build rather than the size of the car
Society just doesn't go backwards in terms of living standards unless there's literally no other choice and forcing it backwards artificially is not something people will take kindly to.
Given a sufficiently strong government you might be able to get people to suck it up for awhile but that "awhile" is gonna end with a lot of people getting shot.
Associating smaller cars with « lower standards of living » isn't exactly universal.
A family with kids probably has more than one car, and probably only needs one big one.
Huh yes it does. Especially 4x4 and higher to the ground which are two qualities SUVs and trucks tend to have compared to "normal" cars.
> A family with kids probably has more than one car, and probably only needs one big one.
First of all that's not true, it's pretty much 50/50 if there's only one car or not and it mostly depends on budget, work location and schedule. Also, people with families tend to bring with them more stuff than what can be put inside the trunk.
Saying bigger vehicles "tend to" have 4x4 is not a counter to what I said.
I am comparing some of the cheapest all-seasons on earth to some of the cheapest snow tires on earth in a vehicle platform that was renown at the time for having one of the most effective AWD systems so if I were to compare high dollar all seasons to high dollar snow tires in a vehicle known for having particularly bad AWD the results may be different.
SUVs and pickup trucks sell. A lot. Yes even in the cheaper segments- you can buy a new SUV for under €25k. Clearly people like them.
Short of putting Greening on a wartime-footing - massive incentives for change, including gas-rationing - I don't see the end of the tunnel-vision. The home-heating elephant in the room gets no press.
This can be a game changer in urban set up especially in my part of the world where it can protect the occupants from the weather that is either rain or hot.
It can also solve the last mile problem and hopefully they can ride share them at the Park & Ride LRT/MRT train stations.
Edit: I'm being downvoted, but I live / have lived in these places. What gives? Do you have direct knowledge to the contrary?
The ideals of city living are rather myopic when you consider how large the continental US is and how much sprawl most metros have.
The truth is the lack of proper urban planning due to over reliance on the automobile is why European cities always feel so much nicer than cities in the states you mention.
If we continue to embrace sprawl then we will continue to have long commutes, worse health, and be isolated in our homes without anything to walk to.
I get it that you don't have a family or maybe you just don't have the money.
Here in Canada there was this provincial deputy from a very left leaning and pro public transport party that got elected. You know the first thing she did with her salary? She bought a SUV (https://www.tvanouvelles.ca/2018/11/19/la-deputee-catherine-...)
> The truth is the lack of proper urban planning due to over reliance on the automobile is why European cities always feel so much nicer than cities in the states you mention.
And we saw how that was great during the pandemic, and that's not even mentioning other calamities that could happen. And that's not even taking snow into account. Not everyone lives in California.
> If we continue to embrace sprawl then we will continue to have long commutes, worse health, and be isolated in our homes without anything to walk to.
Or organize planning so that everything is more distributed. There are no reasons for mega cities to exist in the Internet Age.
That is a nice sound bite and proves nothing. Someone campaigning on a pro public transit agenda may well not believe that transit is yet suitable, and running on that platform is hardly incompatible with car ownership. They are nowhere near mutually exclusive. If you live in Toronto, a train won’t take you to the cottage up in the Kawarthas, nor should it more than likely. Not sure where provincial politicians have their cottages —- the Laurentides?
Cars will have uses even if transit is beefed up, certainly in the winter. Good on the provincial deputy. Or at least, a big shrug.
> And we saw how that was great during the pandemic, and that's not even mentioning other calamities that could happen. And that's not even taking snow into account. Not everyone lives in California.
We did. European cities fared much better than American ones and continue to. That’s got little to do with how the city is laid out and everything to do with how those in it act in the face of shared danger.
> Or organize planning so that everything is more distributed. There are no reasons for mega cities to exist in the Internet Age.
Sure there is. It’s vastly, and I do mean, vastly, more efficient. In terms of water, in terms of energy, in terms of carbon footprint, in terms of space. Vastly. That alone makes not having cities a dealbreaker for some whole countries like Australia where these resources are at a premium.
Cities are efficiencies of scale incarnate.
brb just going to remove the two child seats from the back of our Fiat 500
Europe has done significantly better with the pandemic so your point doesn’t make sense. The walkability of their towns and cities is a benefit during coronavirus.
I’ll just add that your assumptions are wrong. I can easily afford a car and it’s this sort of car-centric attitude that people without them must be too broke to afford them that is emblematic of why North America has such poor planning.
Speak for yourself. It’s all about priorities and they only feel nicer if you don’t care about affordable houses with private yards and prioritize walkability.
Likely the same vice versa. Both are enormous and diverse places.
The city I just left, Boise ID, had 80% of people driving to work alone in these suburbitanks.
To me, this entire problem can be solved by having a market with varying options for varying situations in life. If you don't want to spend the extra money on a big SUV, you don't have to, and one can use their own reasoning to decide what's right for them. If some person in Russia is happy with driving a crappy little car, all the more power to them. If they want to spend more on a vehicle that more adequately handles the conditions, I would be happy to sell them a big SUV!
I've lived in both rural areas in secluded towns of less than 3000 people in the wintery north and in cities with 1 million+ metros that hardly get a few inches of rain, let alone snow. Different situations call for different tools and if one doesn't like their current mode of transport, they are always free to either move somewhere that fits with their lifestyle more adequately or simply change modes of transportation.
I'm all about the right tool for the job for your life. Personally, I hate snow and love walking so I choose a city that is both walkable has relatively short winter months (Ann Arbor, MI). I'm able to walk or bike to work for most of the year, but I choose to own a vehicle to handle snowy days and Costco visits. Could I get rid of my car? Absolutely. Uber, Lyft, and good neighbors to the rescue... but the cost of ownership is so low compared to the value I get in return. By keeping my car and paying a small amount for gas, maintenance, insurance, etc.., I get to travel anywhere in the continental united states whenever I damn well please without talking to another person, why would I want to get rid of that? If my neighbor hates to travel, hates driving, and is fine with walking a few blocks or waiting on the bus/train to get groceries every few days, all the more power to them. Been there, done that, I'll take my car.
Could you not have afforded skis? For 6 feet of snow, they're much better than any car.
> If some person in Russia is happy with driving a crappy little car, all the more power to them. If they want to spend more on a vehicle that more adequately handles the conditions, I would be happy to sell them a big SUV!
Many people in Russia driving crappy little cars often aren't doing that because they prefer it.
I’m not sure if this was intended as a joke, but when I spent time in northern MI using snowmobiles instead of commutes wasn’t uncommon
Snowmobiles were extremely common, absolutely! But as someone who doesn't like be cold and wet, they're not exactly the thing I want to ride before sitting down at my desk. As I mentioned in another comment, a lot of my fellow classmates would drive their snowmobiles to school because they either wouldn't get plowed out before noon or they would simply prefer it over the alternatives.
> Many people in Russia driving crappy little cars often aren't doing that because they prefer it.
Well yes, Russia has had it's own problems with creating opportunity and wealth in their country (I assume this is what you are getting at anyway). Policy aside, I disagree with you that they don't prefer it. If that were the case, those people would be walking or doing something else instead of driving those cars. If you are saying those people are not choosing their preferred option due to say, someone forcing them to do something else by gun point, well then I would say we are discussing very different things and I'll leave it at that.
Edit: I should also note, I loved to ski! It's roller-blades with snow and when I could, I would!
this is some very weird bullshit. i would (and always do) chose a smaller/lighter vehicle over the heavier one any time i need to go through the ice/snow.
the only explanation i can think of is that they tried it on summer tires? but itd be too stupid, wouldnt it?
Remember that your AWD car may put power to the ground through all four tires, but it has the same braking capabilities as any other car. Please don't over-speed your braking distance.
I told her it wasn’t a problem and just rocked my way out of the space and on we went. Snow tires are amazing, and it’s incredible to me how few people get them here.
That is not factually accurate given your prior statement.
In my personal case I have to sometimes wait 30-40 mins in traffic to get to the freeway about 5 miles away but once there the remaining 40 miles of commute takes about 30 minutes. This about average in the super giant US urban area where I live.
Another idea would be to build out bullet trains and infrastructure. Make a societal decision to reconnect all rural areas so living there and working in any of a number of cities is readily accessible.
Most people living in suburban areas do not drive for hours every day. In the time it takes me to cross Boston on public transit, I can drive between two suburban metropolitan areas and have access to a huge variety of people, places, and activites.
This forces people to live in bulldozed wildlands because it is cheaper, due to the fact that there isn't anyone to show up to zoning board meetings to block new construction there.
Having lived in a huge city for most of my life, moving out to the suburbs several years earlier was a nice change. I can never see myself moving back.
Sure, people congregate into large cities but that’s because of work and for the bustle.
The point is simply that if a fucking 60 kW transporter can scale the alps, people can do their so necessary drives with something a whole lot less powerful, a lot less hefty than they likely are doing.
The '80s 4x4 version was basically perfect.
This to say: you do not need a huge modern SUV for non-metropolitan area.
Edit: I just realized there's an underlying issue: you can have more than one vehicle in a family, one larger for specific needs like long trips, and one small for daily usage. This seems to be the default in Europe these days.
The city where I used to live in the US, which probably has small cars as US cities go, is very comparable (in this respect) to the city I currently live in across the pond, which probably has large cars as European cities go.
83% of US population is urban
But do you.
Oddly enough, that's a really good summary of our two-party political system in my opinion. 60m voters on the left, 60m voters on the right. Pretty evenly split down the middle, very little common middleground.
Whether you are commuting 40 miles each way to work, hauling large loads for work everyday, bringing your ATV to the trail, or your trash to the dump.
Being able to hit the road in your own private vehicle is a great joy of life, and an essential liberty in America. So much so it’s quintessential of the “American Dream”.
Some people look at these things, and then decide they personally don’t like them, and only see a massive opportunity to regulate or tax them out of existence. Or they see the negative first order effects (e.g. traffic fatalities or pollution) and don’t consider both the first order benefits, nor the second-order costs of eliminating the thing itself.
I doubt I’ll convince anyone, but at least here is my alternative thinking on this. It is extremely important to reduce traffic fatalities, and reduce pollution per mile. Likewise it is also extremely important to allow people to choose their preferred modes and means of transportation.
It is merely a lack of creativity to pit these two goals against each other.
We are on the cusp of a clean energy and clean vehicle revolution, as well as what will arguably be one of the greatest technological accomplishments of humanity; a self driving car.
Dreams of regulating away SUVs or the right of private car ownership are over. Preferences will not be shaped by excessive gasoline taxes much longer. And passenger vehicles will only continue to become safer and cleaner from here on out.
Ultimately the war against private passenger transport will be lost to the Robotaxi. The marginal cost per mile will be lower than public transit, so they will be left to compete on point-to-point speed, safety, and convenience. And by safety I mostly am referring to safe from crime and safe from viruses, not collisions which will be exceedingly rare. Some cities might have a public transport system that can compete, but most will not.
Exactly. Lightweight, low-speed electric vehicles still allow you to hit the open road, haul a load of trash to the dump, or commute in from the burbs. There is nothing about that freedom that is dependent on being able to go from 0-60 in a specific time, or having a specific top speed.
But no, you can’t haul your trash, or your ATV in that thing.
You certainly can’t fit a rear-facing child seat in the back with a passenger in front.
It’s a glorified golf cart. It’s illegal to sell in the US for good reason. You probably couldn’t even take it on the highway because it wouldn’t be safe at the minimum required speed.
Actual subcompact cars (that are relatively much bigger than this one) have been discontinued in the US because people generally won’t buy them.
People don’t generally choose a car primarily based on its acceleration, although it’s a factor. Decent acceleration can be a safety feature aside from being quite pleasant. And I would guess that most people have no clue what their car’s top speed is, let alone approach it. (Well, unless it’s the golf cart in question, then I supposed it’s highly relevant).
I was hesitant to reply from the onset because it seems to me that you’re making a caricature out of any opposing viewpoint and domineering the discussion.
> But no, you can’t haul your trash, or your ATV in that thing.
When I moved apartments last year, I did the move using an electric cargo trike. You don't need a large vehicle to move a lot of stuff. Smaller vehicles like the one in the article would necessitate cargo trailers for larger hauling tasks. But that's an easily solvable problem with a local community trailer-share.
> You certainly can’t fit a rear-facing child seat in the back with a passenger in front.
You're right, of course you can't. I was not ever suggesting this ONE vehicle would solve everyone's problem. I was, however, suggesting that vehicles LIKE this could. I.e. a small, low speed, lightweight electric minivan. Or a micro-pickup truck, if you were a regular ATV-er
> You probably couldn’t even take it on the highway because it wouldn’t be safe at the minimum required speed.
That's a matter of convention, not a natural law of the road. I'm suggesting that we transition away from fast + big + crush whatever we hit, as the optimization for cars - and instead optimize for small + light + low speed non-fatal collisions.
> you’re making a caricature out of any opposing viewpoint and domineering the discussion.
It is not my intent to caricature or domineer. I see a lot of people in this thread defending the status quo in a similar way to the way you are - I'm just trying to share that there are some simple ways we could dramatically rethink the core premises we've all taken for granted - ways that might end up creating a safer + greener world.
however, you make the very common mistake of focusing on speed as (inverse) proxy for safety, because that's what's been beaten into our heads by the confluence of politics, media complicity, and industrial lobby.
the biggest issue wrt car accidents is distracted driving. speed is only a contributor to severity, not the cause of accidents. reduce distracted driving and reduce accidents. reducing speed only reduces severity while increasing susceptibility to distraction. plus, you can reduce speed in populous areas (where overall danger is highest) through traffic calming measures like narrowing lanes and lining streets with trees (which heightens alertness too).
but the measures to reduce distraction are contrary to convenience, comfort and expression of "personal brand", which is why hardly anyone wants to tackle that real problem and instead blindly piling on the speed bandwagon as a palliative rather than a solution.
Just like vehicle mass this is purely relative. You get the safety from having the fastest car on the road, at the expense of everyone who is slower than you.
Your thesis is that people are throwing away on the order of $30-$50k every 8 years or so, in order to do something inefficiently and unsafely.
If that were true, these golf cart vehicles would sell like mad. As it is, “subcompacts” have failed to sell in the US.
I posit that there is very significant utility in larger vehicles that your personal experience is simply failing to account for. Humbly consider that for millions of Americans they decide to spend their hard earned money on a large vehicle because in fact it provides massive utility to them and their family.
Besides, our transportation system is a modern marvel, and the safest way to achieve mobility per mile ever in human history. So to call it incredibly inefficient and unsafe is not merely hyperbolic it’s just untrue.
I suspect we can and will continue to make transportation safer per mile into the future. I see no evidence whatsoever that miniaturizing vehicles is the way to do that, certainly not without outlawing or somehow segregating the bigger ones, which is neither practical nor economically or socially viable.
There is no such thing as "the market". There are innumerable markets on Earth. Some do a good job at accounting for externalities, while some do a terrible job of it. No market is perfect!
>for millions of Americans they decide to spend their hard earned money on a large vehicle because in fact it provides massive utility to them and their family
Nobody is disputing that large cars are useful for people who drive them. The claim is that the utility they provide to the driver is massively offset by unaccounted for negative externalities.
Road wear, brake dust, and fuel consumption is all higher with heavier vehicles. If those costs were paid by the drivers and owners of heavy vehicles, those people would be more likely to purchase smaller and lighter vehicles.
>somehow segregating the bigger ones
Why is that not practical? Why should passenger vehicles drive on the same roads that are constantly torn up by heavy trucks? I imagine most people would be pleased to drive on smooth roads with less air pollution.
Outside of fuel consumption, which indeed is directly paid for by the person who owns the car, It's all paid for by taxpayers, and like any public service some people don't use it as much as others (or at all). Everyone in NYC pays for the subway yet some people own a car and drive it exclusivity.
> I imagine most people would be pleased to drive on smooth roads with less air pollution.
This largely doesn't matter to most people since cars have very good air filters[0,1]. I also question how much a regular consumer truck actually contributes to road wear compared to the millions of 18 wheelers that weigh over 50,000 pounds.
0: https://www.tesmanian.com/blogs/tesmanian-blog/tesla-hospita...
1: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/will-my-cars-filter-system-help...
You ignored the topic of brake dust.
I mentioned heavy trucks in my comment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_classification#Table_of_...
Light and medium trucks can still contribute to road wear. How much depends on their load level.
The market is good at finding local minimums/maximums, but even there it fails when there’s weird trends and perceived benefits.
Like the SUV trend that stubbornly won’t go away. Bad drivers behind these 5000 lbs death-on-wheels is the primary reason I would never own a sub compact, even as a second car!
This is where government comes in, to gently but firmly guide the market through taxes and rules.
I really wish crash test scores would factor in the effect of the car they hit.
People have this idea that "bigger = safer", and all it's done is create an arms race. My previous car was a Subaru BRZ, a 2-door coupe not much bigger than a Miata. In crash tests, it scored great! If I hit a wall, pole, tree, or another Subaru BRZ, it was a very safe car.
But if I got hit by a 5,500 Chevy Suburban, my small car would be obliterated.
Of course, the "bigger = safer" mentality also ignores the fact that a smaller, lighter car is going to be more agile and will do a much better job at avoiding crashes altogether.
It'd be interesting to see if purchasing patterns changed if testing driving a car included having to take it through a course where you had to practice emergency maneuvers.
SUVs are inefficient, sure. Just compare the gas consumption with a Yaris.
SUVs are unsafe - not for the people in the car, but for the ones outside: pedestrians, cyclists, people in tiny cars.
How do you know?
[0]: https://lirp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/08d31351/dms3rep/multi/...
[1]: https://steelhorsemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/sheikh2...
The market necessarily only optimizes internalized costs. The market will happily sell you things that burden the lives of people who have no say in the transaction.
the cost of infrastructure is a huge part of the cost of personal vehicle transport. if the cost of using it was relative to the strain your chosen transportation type put on that infrastructure, i have no doubt that we'd see a swing to smaller vehicles.
Passenger vehicles currently pay more than their fare share in road maintenance costs.
Overall, roads and infrastructure are a profit center for governments, returning $1.5 to $3 for every dollar spent.
http://www.frbsf.org/economic-research/publications/economic...
The problem that makes vehicles incompatible with other modes of transportation (mostly cycling, but increasingly walking) is that cars are increasingly made "safer" at a social cost -- namely, visibility of pedestrians/cyclists and vehicle mass (and therefore momentum). Cars are much heavier today than before, and they have worse visibility of the road than before. This is to make the driver safer, and it comes at the cost of the safety of non-car drivers around.
Cyclists and pedestrians have (almost) no voice when it comes to regulation of automotive safety. There isn't even a notion of "whole community safety" when automotive safety is discussed. The only thing that seems to matter is whether the driver is protected, and this has created a safety imbalance. In the rare moments that something is done, we focus mostly on driving speed.
I think we can do more.
We should be asking ourselves: Is there an engineering solution to ensure that foot traffic, bike traffic, and car traffic can peacefully coexist to move people around as effectively and harmlessly (environment, other people, etc) as possible?
https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/new-ratings-address-pedestr...
EVs have noise makers installed to make fake engine noise because it also has shown to cut down on pedestrian impacts.
Why is everything a government conspiracy to decide things against the better judgment of the people?
Have you considered that people in America just really love cars?
The conclusion is the intuitive one: more accidents and more likelihood of fatalities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_limits_in_Germany#Accide...
Maybe joke driver licenses, no vehicle inspections and joke technical requirements are to blame? You can get a license after self declaring doing the "course" with your dad and taking 10 minute round around School parking lot, and them go ahead and legally register LS engine strapped to a shopping cart. Mah freeeedums etc.
Just to make a more concrete example, washing out salvage title in Oklahoma comes down to showing up at the DMV and getting a stamp.
>Change of classification. Vehicles over 10 model years old may go in to, or come out of, salvage at any time. _No inspection is required to bring such vehicles out of salvage_.
>Out-of-state salvage titles. Vehicles over 10 model years old entering Oklahoma with an out-of-state salvage title may receive either a salvage title or standard (green) title with a salvage date listed.
For comparison in Germany you can lose registration title for mounting non TÜV certified spoiler/bumper/hood.
> You can get a license after self declaring doing the "course" with your dad and taking 10 minute round around School parking lot
I don't think it's that easy anywhere.
Is there a state licensed drivers ed training course required? How long is it (hours) and what is the division between theory
traffic law
best practices
basic physics
basic car knowledge
basic vehicle roadworthy check - fluids, lights
pre drive preparation - setting up mirrors/seat/headrest, fastening seatbelts
parking lot maneuvers - parallel parking, reversing, stopping and starting on a slope
city driving
For the people that aren't car people, the "LS" engine is Chevy's V8 that goes into a Corvette.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/1/8/new-20-mph-stre...
At any rate the US has already tried this with a national maximum speed limit of 55 and it was incredibly unpopular like prohibition.
I wanted to dismiss this saying how my suv is packed for a day at the beach. But surely they do stuff too.
Also, of course, few families actually _have_ three kids: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
Larger cars, SUVs and people carriers do exist in Europe, but the average family won't need one.
And you can take kids on the bus/train.
But... my own youngest and oldest are almost exactly three years apart, so I can tell you that even a Toyota Camry was incapable of handling three American-standard carseats side-by-side.
However, in countries with lower speed limits, less bulky carseats are required to keep kids safe even in the unusual case of three closely-spaced kids.
The age limit recommendation are a rear-facing seat until 2, then a front-facing seat until they reach something like 65 pounds, then a booster seat.
From experience, three car seats cannot fit side-by-side in really any car, whether front-facing or rear-facing. But booster seats are fine, even in my tiny Fiat 500e. Back in the day, I leased a minivan for a while and then the kids started to outgrow bulky carseats.
But living standards are higher in the US, and our trips are longer. To drive my family across Texas is nearly as far as driving across France and Germany, and I have three other states to cross.
If I can afford to pay more to get a bigger, faster, safer vehicle for the trip, it’s my money.
I doubt there is any conventional metric for "standard of living" (which basically means per capita wealth/income) where the UK would be higher than the US, at almost any point on the income scale (even adjusted for the imputed value of the more extensive public health system in the UK).
That doesn't mean the UK is "worse" than the US, or that it has a lower quality of life, just that it has (and has had) a lower standard of living for decades. Few countries car match the standard of living of the US.
EDIT: Yesterday I had to run to the store to pick up a vat of queso. I'd like to see you Europeans do that in your Mr. Bean cars.
That said, I find it notable that the average price of new cars in the US has typically been rising faster than income over the last decade or so. This would indicate, bluntly, effective advertising, rather than resources, being a big driver of the huge car thing. Average new car price in the US is creeping up on average annual income. This isn’t just an American problem, incidentally; it’s happening in a good few countries.
I live in an urban area and they are prevalent. Dumb@sses trying to do a three point turn in an urban area with their tank-people-carrier.
People are just stup!d. Let's be honest.
You don’t even need a car. In countries with decent cycling infrastructure, it is possible to go on a weekend with young kids on a bicycle. Kids go in the trailer, or if over ≈4, on the trail-a-bike or, if over ≈7, on their own bicycle.
Children aged 7 can drive on the sidewalk in many countries. You can transport bikes on public transit to get to something that resembles nature, then ride there (with no cars in sight).
but while driving a car you are exposing others to that risk.
> They don't even have the coordinaton to land properly
yes they do
Other regions have discovered cycling tourists as income source. I’ve made the entire stretch from the Baltic Sea to Berlin by cargo bike with our 18 month toddler without major stretches on any public road. A large chunk is on the service roads for the oder river flood dam works. A similar path exists on long stretches of the Rhine river - my parents and I made the treck up the Rhine to the Bodensee when I was like 14 or so. And that was like 30 years ago, things have considerably improved since then.
Sure, it does take some planning and consulting maps, but it’s not impossible. Especially since mapping applications have started to support bike-friendly routing. There’s also companies offering per-planned trecks where they transport your luggage and you just take the ride.
And then there’s the Netherlands where they probably wouldn’t even be able to parse your statement. I sometimes have the feeling they get born on wheels.
It may be worth saying that everything in America is bigger than its European counterpart, to a first approximation. You can tell that Tesla's are designed for an American market by just how fat the back is compared to (say) a Mercedes S-class - it still fits on the road but it's very voluptuous
The four year old is towed using a follow-me, all the gear goes in a couple of panniers.
We have spent a small part of our car-money on some very high quality gear, through. Small and light equipment is much easier to pack than Walmart camping gear.
Going home, we added a cat, its transport box and toys/accessories/food. Not a problem.
In the Peugeot 406 (midsize sedan) I had after that, we were 5 adults going to weight lifting competitions, so you can probably guess that none of us were exactly tiny. Also not a problem.
Jam one thing like through like Healthcare or Federal Rerserve accounts for all, and the feedback loop might find a markedly different equilibrium.
Maybe the majority just prefer SUVs instead. There is a lot more comfort in larger cars. I personally prefer an SUV to a mini van which turns funny in my experience.
But in the city, there are many more people who may not even have a car, or be bothered by reduced speedlimits.
In these cities, we can outvote you.
Speed limits, and the like, are controlled locally.
Just because Marx was in favour of something doesn’t necessarily make it inherently socialist.
Remote villages have lived in communistic systems but have no idea about the concept of communism.
That said, I was asking for an example of the concept of free schooling from before socialism, and I got it :)
America was founded on breaking from traditions to try new ideas (a government for the people by the people), but somewhere along the way y'all stopped innovating and started resisting all change. Redistribution of wealth fits perfectly into "gov for the people by the people". The many benefiting from the work of the many.
Any kind of redistribution would need to be at the full discretion of local governments instead of a federal body. The amount of power our federal government has amassed itself would make the founding fathers roll over in their graves, or pick up their musquets and revolt.
Yeah don’t mention slavery. Everything else was a big second.
And cherry pick some extreme examples.
The idea that simply slowing cars down is best for society at large is a big claim. It might help in some ways, but it will hurt in others.
In an unachievable ideal world instead of a speedometer and speed limits we would have an "energy meter" and energy limits, which would also take into account the mass of your car.
People simply move further out for cheaper bigger houses and drive further.
Is climate change not a thing?
Also, ebikes are awesome alternatives to motor scooters. I've built one for a very low price not too long ago, it was very fun.
All cars were loud and belching unburned hydrocarbons 40 years ago. Comparing motorcycles to modern cars is missing the gains in street life impact that have actually been made.
I really wish the standard penalty for that would be "you lose your motorcycle license for 5+ years and the motorcycle is crushed into a cube before your eyes". Not "here's a 100 EUR fine and you have to undo the modifications, show us that you did it, and then put them back on".
It's completely unnecessary, hard to do accidentally, and a great way for one single person to affect thousands of others in a single day.
Motorcycles are probably the main offenders but some cars, trucks, and even 2-stroke gas scooters can be ridiculously loud. The law should not discriminate.
Slithering around at 40 mph means almost doubling many trip lengths. That's a lot of lifetimes unnecessarily spent on roads.
It might make short trips a few minutes longer, but long trips shorter.
Or travelling to see my sick mother once a month (1200+ mile round trip) or my daughter as often as possible (1600+ mile round trip). Add to that I am on the large side of the equation at over 6'3" tall and near 300 pounds, and getting my v8 powered truck (20+ mpg) away from me will be a challenge.
most of the objections people have to giving up their car (my suburb was designed for cars...) would be perfectly solved by something like this. but the rabid defense of cars is out in force anyways.
Before I had a car, I once bought a dumbbell set. Had to carry it 5 minutes to the bus stop. Box fell apart on the way. Bus driver wasn’t particularly patient with me needing multiple trips to get all pieces into and out of bus either.
Since I own a car and pay insurance, why would I bother with other forms of transit when they are slower and bring their own set of problems?
Nothing like seeing a police car pass you by without a second glance while you are doing 92 MPH in the right lane.
I’ve never understood the drive to go so fast.
I knew a guy in the UK who, when I asked him why he was doing 98 mph (speed limit was 70, we were one of two cars going to a stag do, the other car was obeying the speed limit and therefore arrived 25 minutes later), gave me the answer of “If I was going faster and was caught, I would have to waste time going to court to prove I wasn’t driving dangerously” rather than slowing down.
(He got a lot of speeding tickets and penalty points before this; penalty points are a UK road law thing, get enough and you lose you licence).
As is the extra fuel cost to driving 10 over.
And when it’s 500 miles to the next national park, that’s another hour of hiking. Let me know when you have to drive from London to the northern tip of Scotland for an event, that’s just an average day on our summer vacation trips.
It also does not really deal with you being one change of enforcement policy from having a problem: if you go 10 mph over the limit continually for 3 hours, is that one speeding offence total, one offence per road you are on, one offence per state (city?) you pass through, or something else?
What you have is the capacity and the habit of doing something. That’s different from it being good that we live in a world where it is normal for most people. I have the capacity to take ten international flights in one year, and I visited the UK from Germany 8 times last year to make sure I didn’t lose contact with any friends when Brexit happened, but everyone doing that every year would be bad for the environment, and I have no internetion of repeating that year of travel.
> Let me know when you have to drive from London to the northern tip of Scotland for an event
I don’t own a car; I’d either fly or take the train. That trip would be CO2 intensive no matter what option I take, but the rest of the year I still don’t have a car.
(Right now I’m spending an hour each way walking to the office rather than taking public transport on the few occasions I can’t work from home, but normally I prefer trains. That said, I have done a 1080 km cycle holiday once).
The car is the extension of the penis. People want it big and shiny. Sure it was the US that invented SUVs and pickup trucks but they were embraced just as much in European towns as in rural Kentucky.
One is high speed death machine which needs to be isolated from humans - e.g. the average highway.
The other is a mechanical horse that you can out run if you try - e.g. how a forklift is normally used.
The problem is where those two modes meet, e.g. anywhere where people and cars share the road and cars move faster than 30km/h, which is unfortunately every city in the last 80 years.
I like trains more than most people do, but I'm really glad I also own a car, and I'm not going to get back on a train, or any other form of public transit, until the pandemic is over.
I could see myself, my wife, two kids and the mother inlaw in something that small going to Costco. Yeah, that would be awesome....
This is with the assumption that a single delivery truck can hit multiple customers on their route, and in the context of more rural\suburban areas.
I was hit while cycling, by a car which pulled out of a minor junction as I was turning into it. As it was an extremely low speed collision, there was no real harm to me, although the (cheap) bike was not worth repairing. The worst I can say about my injury was not having any memory between being in contact with the bonnet at 45 degrees while thinking “oh no”, and finding myself horizontal looking up to a bunch of strangers insisting I didn’t get up. I didn’t even have any grazing.
If a pedestrian is struck by a car at 40 mph, there is an 85% chance of death. This percentage drops to 45% at 30 mph and 5% at 20 mph. - https://mdot.ms.gov/safetyeducation/parents/facts-and-stats/
I was probably hit at 5-10 mph.
Live in a pod, eat insects, drive the Hongguang MINI EV.
what you don't realize is that it's not about the car.
Game-theoretically, each individual does save time, but soon everyone has a car and the equilibrium shifts. It's like two income households, college degrees, or access to machine guns: Great when only you have it, bad when everyone does.
Or like commute times: It doesn't matter where you are or what the distances are; people are willing to commute about 40 minutes. Increase speeds and they just move further out.
The centralization brought by high speeds then destroys Main Street and shifts power to big box stores. Yes, the overall economy does get "more efficient", but in a way that the gains are captured by the Walton family.
If infrastructure were changed to make higher speeds more difficult -- if we could blow up the damned highways -- then the equilibrium would shift again, and, within a few years, people would be spending no more time going back and forth to the grocery store, because smaller local stores, bodegas, would have popped up.
If you go to "developing" countries you see more of this. There are villages and little shops. The roads are dirt, and you travel by moped/scooter at low speed. Sometimes cows wander on the road. The whole economy and transportation network fits together. And it's totally fine.
This is closer to how we should live in America. Yes, outright poverty is bad -- you need food to eat. But once you reach the "middle income" bracket? Once you have a moped, a (not "smart") cellphone, two molded plastic chairs, a pair of flip flops, and a t-shirt? At that point, so long as the weather is warm, you're basically fine. You can't live like that in America. But if we all did, then (in many of our climates) you could.
Now, you don't need to turn the US into Cuba to accomplish this. There are ritzy high end places that have made this trade too. There are a few suburbs built with networks of low speed paths, where everyone just drives golf carts (except to go outside the community). There are retirement communities in Florida that are basically Disney World. There are resort-town beach islands where cars are banned. People love these places.
Something like 60% (remembered stat) of Americans now live in places administered by an HoA or condo association. We're turning into a weird feudal sprawl of gated communities. Which sucks. But it may also offer an opportunity: Those communities, being more self-contained, might be able to experiment more.
And the experiment they should do is to look to the pre-industrial past, and the lower-income present. Money, cars, highways, McMansions, Whole Foods, corporations, "leaning in" -- they are a curse. They rob you of your happiness and of your grandchildren. Build villages. Grow food. Keep shops. Have families. Find better gods to worship. A civilization, a culture, a built environment -- they all fit together. They need to be conducive to life.
I’m also unsure if they’re that much lighter once you make them safe in crashes. I’m not sure they’re better for pedestrians, either.
You save parking space, which is nice, but at the expense of a lot of utility and without any benefit of efficiency that I can tell.
Slowing them might help, but that directly impacts their utility. The utility of cars is making housing cheaper (by expanding the distance one can live from one’s job or school) and by expanding someone’s job opportunities both by expanding the area they can cover on a reasonable commute time but also as a resource for the job itself, ie as a courier or ride share driver or pizza delivery or just to haul stuff around for one’s own small business. And it’s also a sort of safety net in the case of housing insecurity in the US. Many homeless don’t sleep literally on the street but sleep in their cars. Also, flexibility in family size or ability to share the car with household members in a carpool if only one vehicle is available. You can save at least 20% on groceries by being able to buy in bulk and not have to buy at a nearby convenience store or order food delivered (and, the delivery person’s livelihood is enabled by their vehicle).
Also, while flying has become cheaper in the last few decades (if traveling alone, not needing a car at your destination, planning months ahead of time, and traveling long distance), driving still allows optionality and greater flexibility for long distance travel and is cheaper with more than one occupant (Or if you need transport at the destination) plus allows vastly more cargo. If you need to evacuate or go to a nearby city for whatever reason, a regular sized and speed car gives you that flexibility.
Cars offer a lot of agency to an individual. If you live in an area that isn’t so dense that parking is always a hassle, it’s an easy net win for almost everyone. I love the idea of more pedestrian and bike friendliness, but we shouldn’t underestimate the vast value and agency And flexibility that a car provides.
I can, at any time of the day or night, travel to another state without checking anyone’s schedule and without breaking the bank. I can bring as much stuff as I’d need. If I can’t find a place to stay, I can just sleep in the vehicle. Even if there’s a terrorist attack, a strike, or a global pandemic. Rain or shine, cold or heat wave. I don’t have to be particularly fit or able (either than being sighted), either. The agency that even a really cheap car (a couple thousand used) gives almost anyone in the US is vast.
Chinese cities may be much denser than in the US, limiting parking options, so I can see how smaller cars might be better there than here, but other than that, I don’t see why someone would voluntarily buy a much smaller & slower car.