https://twitter.com/lloydalter/status/1395326192908218371?s=...
Plus the added visibility is nice and certainly would increase safety, I would think.
People walk in rural areas, too; and those roads are often not designed for it and these accidents tend to happen at night. There's a significant percentage of pedestrian deaths that happen out of the city under these circumstances.
https://www.wthr.com/mobile/article/news/investigations/13-i...
Trucks and SUVs are on average newer than cars and at a higher price point, which means more newer safety features like object detection and driver warnings. I also suspect the feeling of mass in driving a larger vehicle makes you take driving more seriously.
I think it's the opposite. Also larger vehicles feel slower when you drive them even when you are doing 80.
Cities should start taxing the size of vehicles too if they're going to let people park on the street. Smart cars are a fantastic utility vehicle for example, but are not incentivised enough.
You can always find a subpopulation where some effect is large; that can't be good reason to make rules that constrain the entire population.
Regulation: cars should be safer
Impact: All vehicles continuously increase in size and weight year on year, decreasing the safety of older vehicles and non-vehicular road users
unless the form factor has some very significant upside that I'm not seeing, preventing deaths should be prioritized over people's aesthetic preferences.
>It's clear consumers in the US value the large truck format and are willing to pay for it.
no, it's clear that consumers in the US don't value the lives of pedestrians, and therefore we cannot trust the free market to determine what types of things get made.
Nope. "Deaths should always be prioritized over aesthetics" is a clearly bad rule because it is innumerate. You must always trade off how many deaths for the preferences of how many people. Otherwise all design of everything is dictated solely by safety.
> no, it's clear that consumers in the US don't value the lives of pedestrians, and therefore we cannot trust the free market to determine what types of things get made.
No, you need to read about externalities and Pigovian taxes. The entire point of the proposed tax is that it does not require the car buyer to care about pedestrians whatsoever.
Pedestrians are the ones who should be the first to reach zero deaths IMO, since they weren't the ones who decided to drive around in a deadly machine in the first place and are usually completely innocent in their own danger.
Commuting on a scooter I've seen more than my fair share of pedestrians on phones walking out into traffic and idiots on bikes blowing through red lights. Sometimes everyone involved can be at fault.
How is this acceptable??
My yelling at one driver who was staring at her phone while driving out of a parking ramp and across the sidewalk where she nearly hit me, probably woke her up enough to avoid driving into traffic and being hit by a bus!
No, it's not the vehicles, it's the people driving them.
They could also just add mirrors as has long been standard between concept and production motorcycles. (Example [0][1])
[0] https://2yrh403fk8vd1hz9ro2n46dd-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-... [1] https://i2.wp.com/www.asphaltandrubber.com/wp-content/upload...
[0]https://www.wthr.com/article/news/investigations/13-investig...
people being distracted isn't a new feature; people being given distractions in the cabin is.
I'm not sure exactly what your argument is, to be quite frank.
Are you insinuating that less visibility isn't hindering the ability to drive safely?
There are additional devices commonplace in vehicles to make up for the lack of visibility -- pedestrian detection/auto-braking/switching cameras for example -- but surely a car would be safer to both pedestrians and the passengers if it had those types of features along with increased visibility..
>No, it's not the vehicles, it's the people driving them.
As a former auto mechanic, maybe i'm over-exposed.. but :
1) car interior design changes yearly, and it's usually to sate consumer desires rather than for safety/usability/efficiency.
2) mechanical failures aren't rare. mechanical failures that may end in injury or loss-of-life aren't rare, either.
The DoD has done tons of usability studies with regards to UI/UX. If auto manufacturers wanted a safe/repeatable/efficient environment then the interiors would probably share a lot of features with fighter jets; tactile buttons, audio cues, correct information density, etc.
They don't look anything like this -- this is a clue to the consumer that there are different priorities in mind at the manufactures' HQ, namely lately ICE (in-car entertainment, not internal combustion engine; sorry for possible confusion) and technological glitz like RGB lighting.
Because of high crash incompatibility, more overall damage and death occurs because of SUVs (and other similar vehicles).
Write your representative and tell them to thank the EPA and NHTSA for doing their jobs. The death of the small pickup is squarely the fault of the confluence of fuel economy and crash safety regulations.
It did come back last year, probably after meeting new regulation requirements.
They put energy requirements on dishwashers, they're not going to give EVs a pass.
It seems like those regulations aren't working they way they ought to if the result is to encourage people to drive bigger cars than they need and to have more cars on the road that minimize the safety risk to the occupants while maximizing risk to everyone else...
> The death of the small pickup is squarely the fault of the confluence of fuel economy and crash safety regulations.
...and the chicken tax.
Regulations rarely end up with the outcomes the people pushing for the regulations publicly claim the desired outcome is.
You're not kidding! I was in the market for a small pickup and checked out the Tacoma and Frontier, which I previously understood to be "small" trucks. They're massive these days, just like the F-150! I guess it's perceived that there's no market for that size any more.
A small electric pickup would be a super handy thing to have around, potentially appealing to urbanites too since they can toss their groceries in the frunk. There's really no reason the frunk needs to be so big on the F-150 Lightning - that part of the design is really a head scratcher.
The only thing the same is the name.
That said, I really wish they would have started there. I want an electric truck. I don't want one anywhere near as large as an F150. I understand F150s sell better so know why they went that route, but an electric Ranger/Colorado could really dominate the fleet market.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_econo...
I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Ford did a lot of internal research, and focus groups, on the marketability of differently designed electric trucks to their primary customers and came to the conclusion that their consumers like the way the trucks look and are more likely to adopt electric trucks if they look the same and offer tangible benefits. Consider the massive frunk, that can hold 400 pounds of gear, or the 2k hauling capacity, or the on board outlets, including a 240v plug, or all the fancy new towing features (that are hopefully not useless vapor ware). If I was in charge of a large truck work truck fleet that averages less than 200 miles/day I'd be replacing at least a few of my oldest trucks with these and give them to the senior guys to break in and see how they do. This truck could be a serious game changer. Ford's not my favorite vehicle manufacturer but they've got my respect for building a serious electric truck at a reasonable price.
Next: Cold fusion jet pack!
[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36125131/2022-hyundai-san...
Just call it a pickup.
We seem to think because we have the freedom to drive a V8 half ton dually less than a block to the mailbox with the aircon blasting, that it somehow makes it any less of a stupid thing to do.
Most North Americans translate whatever freedoms we've been granted into one: the freedom to thoughtlessly consume and squander without restraint. I guess it remains to be seen whether your freedom is a good thing or not, but the way things been going I suspect it aint gonna go your way forever.
Even a 5-year-old knows: if you keep using your transformer as a projectile aimed at your brother, it's gonna be taken away.
How lucky that we're all grown up adults and the government is not our mommy!
I grow vegetables. Because I grow vegetables, I occasionally need to pick up a yard of compost. I need a bed to bring that back to the farm. A pickup can do this, too.
I own a tractor. Because I own a tractor, I need to be able to tow said tractor to the nearest dealer or machine shop to get it serviced and repaired. I need a vehicle that can tow a trailer carrying multi-thousand-pound many-foot-long tractor + loader + three-point implement setup. A pickup can do this, too.
I cook using ingredients I don't grow myself. Because I cook, I need to be able to buy groceries. I need a vehicle to bring as many groceries as I buy at once back to my house. Would you really suggest that if I already have a pickup for the above three needs, I should keep a second non-pickup vehicle around just to run to the supermarket, the doctor, or local watering hole?
That's a lot of expense when I could just have a general-purpose vehicle that does it all. HN seems to be all about general-purpose computers that can do more than you might need day-to-day. The same can apply to vehicles.
If you're using the pickup to haul to and from the jobsite 99% of the time, sure it doesn't make sense to buy something else to do errands around town on the weekends.
You'd be in the minority though.
Most household pickup owners in North America use them as a car. Here in Alberta there are more pickups sold every year than any other vehicle category. They are simply using the wrong tool for the job, and defend their 'fashion' choice by the once a year they throw in a bag of compost from home depot.
Furthermore, most North American households have 2+ vehicles, they do in fact have a choice as to which tool to use for groceries.
Example: https://truckvault.com/vehicles/pickup but there are others.
Registration is much cheaper if you have a camper shell because the vehicle ceases being 'commercial'.
> Adding a camper shell to a pickup truck does not necessarily constitute a change from commercial to auto registration. The addition must meet the definitions for human habitation or camping purposes. Otherwise, the vehicle may be subject to citation from law enforcement for not meeting the definition of an auto. Human habitation is defined as living space which includes, but is not limited to: closets, cabinets, kitchen units or fixtures, and bath or toilet rooms.
. The police never check.
You'd be surprised how expensive an old pickup's registration can be in CA.
The main problem isn't the cheating by low-end tradesmen but that the average schlub's truck is considered a 'commercial' vehicle including registration cost by gross vehicle weight. (at least that's how I understand all of this).
They never make it easy here to do anything, but people will put up with a lot of rules and taxes if it mostly happens to others.
The long-bed was popular back when people owned a truck as an extra vehicle/work vehicle only, now many use their truck as their main vehicle and have need of carrying others.
If you look at the creature comforts of older bench seat trucks (bare-bones) and the trucks sold today, a truck today will have everything an SUV will have in terms of comfort and maybe more.
The backseat is passable with my dog and kids, but barely. If they were able to take some room from the front where there is no engine and give me both a reasonable bed and a crew cab I would be happy.
A lockable frunk is pretty attractive though so that you don't have to worry about leaving tools in the bed.
My favorite configuration is:
- 8 foot bed
- extended (not full) cab
- rear doors are "suicide" doors
Our ranch truck is a Silverado 1500 in that configuration and it is nice to have optional seats but not lose the 8 foot bed. Suicide doors allow you to open the entire vehicle up with no pillar in the way and I love that.
Chevy no longer offers this but I think Ford does, currently ...
The frunk makes a big difference for those kinds of things.