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Comment by havblue | Hacker News Reader

I might as well repeat the overprotective parent perspective. Fatalities are higher if you're in a sedan in an accident with a pickup or semi. There are a lot of trucks on the road as well. Finally, road accidents are the one of the biggest risks young people face.

So ignoring the fact that this makes it into an arms race of weight and size, a parents desire for child safety wins against someone's desire to lower carbon emissions.

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The conflict here is that while bigger vehicles are often safer for the occupants, they are way more dangerous for anyone not inside a vehicle that big, especially pedestrians. Namely, if you get hit by a larger vehicle, you're less likely to tumble over the roof like what would happen with a sedan and instead you get knocked over and crushed.

And of course, "the fact that this makes it into an arms race of weight and size" is absolutely not something that we can ignore. This is a perfect example of a situation where everyone acting in their own rational self interest is way worse for everyone, and is why the government should be regulating the size of cars.

You break the arms race by limiting the size.

Now limit the size of pickups and semis. They're the other side of that arms race.

And in fact, you're never going to succeed at limiting the size of either one. Not even pickups. Pickups need to be the size they are to be able to haul the things that people buy pickups to be able to haul.

So don't hold your breath at being able to limit the arms race. And that means that, to the degree that people buy SUVs defensively, to that degree limiting the size of SUVs is a really tough sell.

But are the people who are buying the big SUVs in an arms race against Semis/Big Pick ups? Everybody knows their cars can't compete in size compared to Semis/Big pick ups. I believe their arm races are against other consumers who are driving big SUVs. They're looking to have the biggest SUVs on regular roads (outside the highway).

No, you break the arms race by making people understand that size is not the only game in town.

GT cars have steel cages built around the driver, also carbon fiber reinforcements.

That's not really a helpful comparison. The safety considerations on a track are very different than on the road.

Safety devices on modern vehicles aren't independent variables -- they are designed to work together, and they're designed for particular risk cases.

Street cars have some design criteria that isn't the case for some of the safety systems on track cars: for example, the safety systems in a passenger vehicle are designed to work without a helmet or a HANS, which is often not the case with track cars.

If you are not wearing a helmet and a HANS, you are safer wrecking a car with an airbag and a 3 point belt than a cage and a harness, where you'll end up with a concussion and a basel fracture.

Also, crashes on a racetrack are overwhelmingly with barriers or with vehicles with similar vectors of motion. On the road, impacts at 90 or 180 degrees with vehicles of varying masses are much more common, and then, mass becomes a significant factor in the forces imparted upon occupants.

You are forgetting a crucial aspect. When all cars increase in size and weight the total risk only increases!

This is not a zero-sum game, it's a net negative.

Edit: no, saying that it's an arms race does not implies it's a negative for everybody.

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