Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else | Hacker News Reader

Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else

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> Using three separate identification strategies we show that, controlling for own-vehicle weight, being hit by a vehicle that is 1000 pounds heavier generates a 40–50% increase in fatality risk. [...] We consider two policies for internalizing this external cost, a weight-varying mileage tax and a gas tax, and find that they are similar for most vehicles. The findings suggest that European gas taxes may be much closer to optimal levels than the US gas tax.

In an environment of wealth inequality, this seems like another way that the wealthy can benefit: easily afford to drive heavier vehicles that increase their personal safety while increasing the lethal threats against the poor.

How about instead: if larger vehicles are more dangerous for the population overall, then they should be banned for everyone, not only effectively off-limits to the poor.

Poor people drive pickup trucks too

And would be eventually priced out by something like this.

They'd drive them a lot less with European levels of gasoline tax.

Lots of poor people actually need those vehicles. They would just suffer from having to pay the taxes.

Do they really need a pickup truck? There are so many alternatives to carry around loads which are much lighter. What do you think construction workers and farmers use in Europe?

My farmer neighbour had one beatdown VW polo that he used for the field or the woods. Full motor swap for 500 €, a good car.

Mostly vans I believe. With roofrack or trailer if something longer is transported. Or just get it delivered by actual truck.

In Japan they mostly use Kei trucks, which weigh around 700 kg (1600 lbs).

I can count on one hand the time I have seen someone driving a pickup truck with something actually in the back of the truck -- and it doesn't even make sense to put anything in the back of the truck unless you bring a stepladder with you as well in case you need to retrieve it.

I work construction. at least half of the people on the same jobs as me drive their personal trucks 80km to work, park them until the end of the day, and drive home. Not a single tool in them.

The other half drive sedans.

Yeah my girlfriend works construction and drives a Honda Civic. It fits all her tools just fine. On the job she drives a company truck. Still 75% of her coworkers drive their own personal trucks to work. It is more of a cultural thing.

In my neck of the woods the foreman/boss often drive a nice pickup, but he never has anything on the flatbed. The guys actually building drive a Hiace or Sprinter or something like that (company vehicle).

You probably see a ton of trade vehicles with tools in them, you just don't associate them as personal vehicles. Or your project is only subbing out to commercial trade companies.

No, it's because I work in civil construction. "Tools" are brought to site on flatbed trailers or in panel vans. Foremen drive company branded pickups, they move smaller tools around site. Most crew drive their personal vehicles to site as described above, and the only gear they have is a safety vest, boots, and their lunch.

Not to mention that the IRS requires a vehicle to be at least 6000 pounds in order to deprecate for business purposes. Buying anything under 6000 pounds for business means paying more taxes.

Note that a 6000lb minimum rules out the f150, the best selling vehicle in North America. Tax considerations can't be too top of mind.

Not according to a google search for "6000 pounds vehicle list".

Doesn’t look like any of the 2021 F-150s are over 6000 pounds curb weight (1). It’s not particularly close, so I would expect most of the newer model would be under 6000 pounds too (I didn’t easily find the newer brochure)

(1) https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...

Curb weight is an irrelevant number, interesting only to calculate payload (which many ignore, albeit at their peril). The number of interest for regulators is Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR), as that's the manufacturer's specification of the heaviest the vehicle can be in as-sold configuration and still drive down the road safely.

Thanks for the clarification. The lowest GVWR among the f150s is about 6010 lbs which makes the IRS' apparently minimum weight make more sense.

> Curb weight is an irrelevant number, interesting only to calculate payload (which many ignore, albeit at their peril).

Not just their peril, also any road users or others nearby. If you've ever seen an overloaded pickup, they tend to drift around their lane as all the extra weight in the back reduces the steering authority on the front. Double so if it's pulling a badly loaded trailer that puts a lot of weight on the hitch

Lots of poor people work construction in Europe too, and they do fine without gigantic pickup trucks.

Sadly, pickups are becoming more and more common from what I've seen over the last couple years in London.

+1. Hardly ever have seen a pickup in germany. Most trade companies will use vans.

There's a tweet I read that says something along the lines, "as long as any change, despite how beneficial for most poor people will hurt some poor people, it is the progressive position such change is bad. From that the progressive position is keep everything the same."

The irony is of course that poor people disproportionately suffer from car fatalities, so "change" is already being wrought on them by the increasing size of cars and increasingly more expensive and difficult car culture. They just lack the voice (or awareness really) that middle class people who want to protect their position and privilege do, and the latter do not hesitate to use the poor as props whom they otherwise have contempt for the moment they need relief in other areas.

This is overly dismissive of a legitimate concern. Laborers, tradesmen, and people who can only afford a single vehicle that must meet all their needs predominately try to get trucks and SUVs.

Just because you can bike to work does not mean everyone else has the same luxury.

You can have vans with a front like regular cars, too. Where I live exactly zero carpenters have pickup trucks or SUVs.

There is never a need for SUVs in suburban settings.

Pickup trucks atleast has some theoretical utility.

The problem is there are some legitimate uses for a heavy vehicle.

99% of trips can be done in a 400kg LEV or even a 30kg single occupant vehicle, but some tasks legitimately require a 3 tonne truck.

Maybe add additional license classes with stricter requirements (like needing a per-trip permit for use in some areas) or move any new vehicle to existing heavy vehicle licenses?

> 99% of trips can be done in a 400kg LEV or even a 30kg single occupant vehicle, but some tasks legitimately require a 3 tonne truck.

If that's the case, it might be more economical to do the majority of work with a smaller vehicle, and rent the larger vehicle when necessary.

I more meant that the need effectively allows bad faith actors who want but do not need a large vehicle to leverage that legitimate need hold people who do not need or want a large vehicle hostage by filling the streets with them and constantly yelling about how small vehicles are dangerous.

The way out is difficult.

1% of 365 days is less than four days a year. So you say me you buy and drive an expensive, heavy and polluting vehicle that consumes a lot year long because you barely need it four days in the whole year.

Vs renting a generously sized truck when you really need it ?

It’s not worth it, either for you and for everyone else.

Buddy, my primary transport is a bicycle. If I need to go further I use a train. If I need to take stuff I usually use an industrial tricycle with a 250W motor. I only use an ICE vehicle if it's unsafe to go somewhere because LEVs are illegal and there are unavoidable which roads are built to kill me if I don't get in a protective metal box.

My point was the 1% of trips are used to make doing things the sane way unsafe and ban sensible vehicles from the road. Getting us out of this tarpit where you must join the murder brigade or be killed is the hard bit when you can't just ban them outright and any effective regulation would be an even worse mess of regulatory capture.

Ah yeah we definitly live in times where humanity can afford people who rationalize their behaviour like you.

I haven't had a car in 10 years now and guess what I do with the 1% of tasks I cannot do with the bicycle or public transport? I rent a transporter. Like any responsible inhabitant of a dying planet would.

Do you understand that what you do with a vehicle you can rent once or twice a year, some people do five days a week?

Do you understand that people wouldn't complain about people using their cars for their intended purpose?

Please read the comment I have reacted to which admits that "99% of the trips could be done in a smaller vehicle".

I challenge you to stand next to a crossing for 20 minutes during rush hour and count the number of SUVs with more than one person in it (or any visible load that warrants such a car). As someone who lived next to a big crossing I can tell you that you might have a hard time finding anybody that is not alone in their completely empty car. Big cars are mostly for the feelings of those sitting inside them, and very occasionally for transport.

Btw. I think every car has it's purpose. I mean trucks deliver nearly everything I eat and they are even bigger. But they aren ot driving around empty. But if every normal commuter would drive an empty 16 ton truck to work every day I would ask them if they are mad. And rightfully so.

Nitpick: the planet will be fine. The life currently inhabiting the planet will die or evolve (if trends continue). It's not the first time such a catastrophic event has occurred, and it won't be the last.

What behavior? I don't drive a car.

I worked in the trades for a little and primarily focused on tile and odd carpentry/framing jobs when someone called out.

Nearly all of my material got delivered in one day, but the job would continue for weeks afterwards. I would drive my Prius and catch flak from some guys until they realized I could do everything they could do in their light duty trucks and get 3-5x the MPG. I can carry a handful of sheet goods, bunch of studs, hardware, etc. If something needed more than that having it delivered made more sense as my time is more expensive than the delivery driver’s time. In the rare occasion I was slow we would rent a Home Depot flatbed truck for a couple of hours.

I think most people overestimate how often they need large trucks for work and could get away with something much much smaller.

Then hire a 3 tonne truck for those 1% of trips when they happen. People acting like "oh because I need it for 1% of trips I guess I should just drive it for all trips".

What if there was an additional tax on your income for driving a heavy vehicle?

In my country (Australia), we have an additional income tax if you don't have health insurance (point is to get more people to pay for private health insurance so the government's universal health care isn't as loaded). As a result, everyone earning over $xxx,xxx buys health insurance because it's literally cheaper than not getting it.

Imagine if the best income tax avoidance scheme was "don't own a big car"...

Isn't it relatively easy to bypass? The legal owner and the person that actually uses the car might be different people. E.g. a family might swap cars to lower their taxes.

That's why it's better to tax the energy itself directly. Instead of inventing a lot of complicated tax schemes and deductions and incentives, just increase the tax on gasoline/diesel. It steers people to fuel efficient cars, which steers the manufacturers to provide those cars.

The comment that started this thread though was about rich people being able to just pay the tax which is relatively smaller to them. Hence the idea to couple it to income.

Good point. Tie it to the registration cost.

You are right. And the simplest solution to this is to increase the cost of fuel /energy (typically by increasing taxes on it). This automatically directs us in the right direction. More fuel efficient cars. Or public transport and bicycles instead of cars.

Same with electricity. It also has to cost more. Right now electric cars are not very good for the environment either. They are bigger than necessary and consume too much electricity.

Unfortunately governments have never managed or dared to increase it. And unfortunately it often creates a lot of tension among the population.

The population likes to complain that it is the banks which are to blame (because the invest or lend to oil companies) or that the oil companies are to blame. But it is the people using the cars (unnecessarily big cars) which are to blame. And the politicians which do not enforce a higher cost on burning energy, by not increasing taxes on energy usage.

Due to the war in Ukraine we finally see some movement on this and it will become more important with energy efficiency and finally we see even governments send out flyers and inform of methods to save on energy. Why did they not do that before? There has been those COP meetings with presidents for over 20 years, but they have not been capable of doing the most basic things because they are afraid of affecting growth.

Unfortunately they don't understand that a fuel efficient car can transport as much as a non-fuel efficient car.

We had one of these, a carbon tax and cap-and-trade scheme, and it got dismantled after a few years :( forever unsure why "taxing externalities" isn't popular

If electricity is produced cleanly I don't think it should be more expensive though.

Is it only me or is there anyone else who believes that the price of gas or electricity should be set by supply/demand on the market and shouldn't be a political tool?

If there's a tax connected with it, this should be 100% used to just remove negative externalities (removing emissions, storage of nuclear waste...) and nothing else.

You and the parent aren't disagreeing. The problem is defining "negative externalities" which is inherently political.

> Right now electric cars are not very good for the environment either.

Relative to internal combustion engines, electric cars are better, even when you consider total lifecycle cost.

Yes, electric cars could be smaller. This is feasible technically with some range tradeoffs. The demand side is less clear.

While I generally agree with your sentiment, I think the health insurance example is not a good one. There are several factors that are wrong with it, for one people with insurance have advantages over people without, so you are creating a system where your access to healthcare depends on how much you earn. Secondly, it essentially creates an artifical market for insurances with pretty much guaranteed customers, the insurances don't even need to offer that much over the state system because it's cheaper anyway. If you want have the universal health care not be as loaded, simply raise income/wealth/other taxes and use that funding to prop up health care. That's a much fairer solution.

If you have insurance-based healthcare then you need some mechanism to prevent a death spiral.

I'm not sure I understand. The Australian system is weird that it isn't a insurance based system (like e.g. Germany), but they give tax insentives to high earners to get insurance. However those insurances don't pay for the basic stuff paid by the medicare system, but for extra things, for example you get faster treatment for elective surgery.

Doesn't it result in a similar scenario? Rich people can still opt to drive heavier cars and even fewer poorer people still cannot afford them.

I get that adding taxes is less fascist than straight bans, but it also raises inequality.

Instead of insurance deductibles, how about a third party accident claim payout strikeout limit? It could be quite high, say a million dollars or two, but this would still open the driver to unlimited liability for litigation in the event of reckless negligence litigation claims.

I would also set a mandatory minimum compensation level to unrepresented accident victims in a similar range, possibly paid in escrow for medical expenses and family care.

My thinking is partially in response to earlier comments about the wealthy just not being bothered by the cost of their own relative safety while driving the heaviest vehicles. That really ought to be tested imo.

Yeah but it's not as big of a problem. Sure, no one driving SUVs is a slightly better outcome than only rich people driving them but the main gain is in preventing majority from driving them.

Straight up ban is just very unlikely to happen for political reasons while making it more and more expensive and inconvenient might work.

You are correct. The same mistake is made with emissions, like London's LEZ/ULEZ.

The enforcement is a fixed fee and the criteria allows large new vehicles even if their emissions per passenger are much worse than many disallowed small older vehicles. The rich get to not care.

Yup, things like 8L Lambos are ULEZ compliant! Giant Rolls SUVs, also compliant.

What a fucking joke.

How about we stop attributing everything to an attack on the poor by the rich?

The paper actually does not show that larger vehicles are more dangerous for the population overall.

Yeah let's ban everything that's vaguely dangerous.

They even had to change a decade old standard crash test to account for increase in weight and count of current style SUVs. IMO they should be banned as the creeping normality will lead to all of us sitting in battle mechs eventually:

https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-...

https://youtu.be/3Lu-t5dJrxI

> creeping normality will lead to all of us sitting in battle mechs eventually

You say that like it is a bad thing? The future sounds awesome!

Being a cyclist in a crash will be like swatting a fly against a windshield.

But I guess that in the future, no one will drive themselves anyway. Whether due to automation or cost.

...until you have to exist outside of a car, then it is downright terrifying (and extra deadly).

Yeah i'd love to drive a battle mech that'd be amazing. And imagine how jealous the Moms down at soccer pickup would be!

-SUVs aside, do keep in mind EVs are quite heavy compared to their ICE counterparts, too. (On the upside, I guess they, being newer, involve more passive safety for whatever they run into).

For instance, my 20 year old Land Cruiser (Which I, perhaps engaging in a bit of semantic pedantry would call a 4x4, not a SUV) has a dry weight of pretty much 2 tons / 4,500lbs.

A Nissan Leaf? 1,600kg/3,500lbs. (Tiny compared to the LC)

Tesla Model S? 1,950-2,300kg / 4,300-5,000lbs (Still small compared to the LC)

Height above the ground matters too: high cars hit pedestrians more on the chest, lower cars hit the legs.

And high cars can roll over lower cars, making the deformation zone have no effect.

Interesting anyway about weight.

I'm thinking high cars should be forbidden ... Unless in terrain on the countryside.

EVs could be regulated (or incentivized) downards too, there exist much lighter EVs already.

In Europe there are some sub-500 kg cars (eg Renault Twitzy). Not that this should be the limit necessarily, but there's plenty of room downwards in the design space.

Not all of us.

I noticed more SUVs than ever last time I visited my parents-in-law. But where I live myself, the number of parking spots is shrinking and streets are being narrowed. A divide seems to be growing.

> streets are being narrowed

I hope this works, but I've noticed more wide vehicles in my neighborhood parking with two wheels up on the sidewalk, like this.

https://imgur.com/a/v0w3FMM

It depends on how many parking tickets you can afford.

I've seen that too. But all praise capitalism, the market provides. There's also a new towing company here that reflects the, shall we say, shifting dynamic between residents and motorists.

A neighbour called them when a so-and-so parked so closely to our entrance that I couldn't get the bike trailer out. The towing company took a few photos, towed, and sent the so-and-so an invoice for €600, which he eventually paid, but not without telling my neighbour what he thought.

€600 is steep. They must expect to pay for court cases fairly often. Makes sense, parking like that was very rare 20 years ago.

(I should perhaps note that I don't think my neighbour did it because of me or my bike trailer. He didn't tell me why, but I'd guess he had the car towed away because it bothered his 85yo father.)

Streets being narrowed doesn't help as I myself have experienced the rise in SUVs in London, which has some very narrow streets :p

In fact, my driving experience so far is that smaller cars are more likely to wait if it's too narrow, but people in larger cars barrel on thru bc they know that they'll intimidate drivers on the other side.

They should really be banned/controlled, but they won't be. :/

I feel like heavier cars being a separate license or an endorsement on your existing car license is a sensible idea. They have very different handling characteristics, and it's pretty noticeable a lot of their drivers lack the skill required to operate them safely.

I mean the idea that you can sit your license test in a subcompact and then go out and drive a 4 door high displacement ute/pickup truck is pretty absurd on the face of it.

Even for the smallest car the requirements go drive are too minimal. And once you meet those we never make you update your training.

Requirements to drive in a car dependent region have to be minimal. Lots of people shouldn’t be on the road, but there’s not exactly room for them in Manhattan, SF, or the handful of other areas where you can live without a car.

I don't know how to get there, but most people live in an area with enough density to support most people living without a car (leaving only those who need a car - plumbers for example). However it only takes a few to use a car anyway and there isn't enough demand to support the transit needed for everyone to live without a car. These areas mostly don't have traffic, so there is no real negative to using a car in those areas unless you are very poor (at which point the expense isn't choose which luxury to spend money on)

Agreed, there should be a 5 year refresher. There are similar refreshers for other life-affecting licenses (medical / first aid licenses for one).

All the time I’m on narrow, curvy 2-lane highways and these guys are flying by, inches from my car, in their monster pickup trucks that barely fit on the road with their tires right on the double yellow line.

LOL and then later on a professional driving a tractor-trailer unit who is able to hold the line perfectly. The skill gap is enormous.

I can first hand provide feedback on this and completely agree! I grew up in India, drove smaller sized vehicles and even in US until I found myself working for an automotive company in the lightduty/heavy duty truck team. Those things were difficult to maneuver and it took me sometime getting used to them. I find it very amusing that any random person is allowed to go buy a light duty truck without further skills upgrade(i would categorize the escalade/tahoe/navigator/wagoneer as trucks) im not surprised to see these folks not staying in their lane, can't get out of a grocery store parking lot without a near miss event.

Since the well to do are those who drive large cars, likely nothing will be done to them in the US essentially.

How about sub compact EVs? I can feel the extra heft compared to the ICE I was driving just last week.

agreed, and also for cars over XXX hp (not sure of specific limit but still)

This has been fixed in Europe by making any vehicle over 3500kg a heavy vehicle with a C/D-license (compared to normal B). Commercial usage or not does not matter. You can go over the 3500 a bit with an E license which is a towing license but that also requires training.

This is one of the reasons the original hummer didn't sell well in Europe as you needed a truck license instead of a standard car one. People loving impractical cars had to wait for the second version.

In the UK the limit for a car licence used to be 7.5 tonnes (like my licence) but in the mid-90s they changed that to 3.5 tonnes. This means that now you can drive all but the largest Ford Transit-type vans on a car licence. You also used to have to do a separate licence to pull a trailer, but I think they've rolled that back.

It's okay for me and my friends to drive 7.5 tonners on car licences, because until we got our car licences we ran around in tractors. Someone who grew up in a city and learned to drive in a Fiesta, not so much.

Perhaps an interesting, related anecdote to this is that the song "Red Barchetta" by Rush is based on a speculative short story related to this article's premise. In the story, Modern Safety Vehicles are by design massive and heavy, and through their design (and either carelessness or aggression by those who drive them), are a danger to older, smaller cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta

http://www.fiatbarchetta.com/links/nice.html

Wow thanks for posting that, did not know that!

Somewhat off topic, I was curious to read the lyrics, and Google confidently pointed me to the lyrics to Presto instead. I was so confused until I realized those weren’t lyrics to Red Barchetta.

https://www.google.com/search?q=rush+red+barchetta

The new Hummer EV is over 4 tons and does 0-100km/h in around 3 seconds.

Between the obvious danger per the article, there’s also lots of extra wear on roads, particularly small residential ones.

Lots of external costs.

It can't legally drive on some small residential roads.

I'd like to see a source for that. It's wide, but it's still within federal limits.

Many residential neighborhoods have around a 3-ton vehicle weight limit (some go by axle count.) This was designed to stop semi-truck towing trailers from parking in neighborhoods. I lived in one and got chewed out when my OTR cousin stopped in for a night with his whole rig.

I would expect such a low limit to be relatively rare. It precludes a lot of regular vehicles -- everything from a basic UPS delivery truck to almost any regular pickup bigger than a Toyota Tacoma. A Hummer EV has a similar GVWR to an F250, and considerably lower than a typical F350, which are common residential vehicles (for better or worse).

I would assume that the enforcement is very selective. Noone wants to weigh your car but if you drive a semi to your driveway they can ticket it

Ford F-250 is 3 tons [1]. A one ton difference from the Hummer EV.

[1]https://www.ford.com/trucks/super-duty/models/f250-xlt/

An F250 generally has a GVWR of 9900, which is essentially 5T. It could be spec'd with a 12400 limit, but most are not. Far more common on an F350, though, to see 13000+.

I expect you're talking about curb weight. 6500 pounds for a gasser F250 is pretty typical, a bit north of 7000 for a diesel (which is 3.5T). But it's impractical to go by curb weight, the real number is GVWR. Can't tell what someone might be carrying and it all goes to the road.

> It precludes a lot of regular vehicles -- everything from a basic UPS delivery truck to almost any regular pickup bigger than a Toyota Tacoma

For someone from Europe this sentence is insane. Calling a truck heavier than 3 tones a regular vehicle is just mindboggling. In most (all?) of Europe you need a special license to drive a vehicle that is over 3.5 tonnes.

Marques Brownlee mentioned the car is illegal on some of his local roads because they have a 4 ton weight limit and the car weighs 9,046lbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFdX6zL5h8Q&t=95s

10 Tonnes for a consumer vehicle anyone can buy and drive? Wow!

9000 pounds is 4.5 tons.

cries in metric

9000 pounds is 4.018 British Tons.

I'm not worried about those as much as the midsize and up SUV's, there will be very few Hummer EV's on the road statistically but mid size SUV's have become almost the standard American car.

Well, I live in the burbs and have a kid in his carseat in the back, plus stroller and groceries. Not to mention I'm a rather large man and when we last looked for cars I literally couldn't fit into a lot of them, I need more space. Even more, great gas mileage and reliability, and very safe. "Compact SUVs" or whatever they call the Subaru Forester now and it's ilk are exactly perfect for my family, especially with another kid on the way.

At least in Europe, 10 years ago you would have bought a family van. Nothing in this list of requirements says you need truck like features of an SUV.

For two kids? Not even a van, just a station wagon.

I don’t know what kind of van you have in mind but there are plenty of vans in the US that are actually more powerful and heavy than a SUV. A Chrysler Voyager has 100 more hp and weighs about 900 lbs more than a Forester.

The vans don't pretend to be built for off-road, so they have better steering and lower gas mileage (both due to lower suspention and to lower weight).

Is this true? The van mentioned, the Chrysler Voyager, gets about 22mpg. The Subaru Forester (mentioned elsewhere as an example SUV) gets about 28mpg. The Forrester is about 3600 pounds, vs. 4300 pounds for the Voyager.

The vans made by US companies for US markets are gas guzzlers, but the ones made for other markets are better. For example, Ford S-Max sold in Poland gets 37 mpg, and is larger than the Forester.

Looked into this a bit. S-Max is a hybrid minivan, so gas mileage won't compare with Forester, but otherwise, they seem oddly identical.

S-Max vs. Forester Curb weight: 3626 lbs vs. 3620 Mileage: 44 mpg vs. 30 mpg Cargo: 77.69 cubic feet vs. 74.2 cubic feet

So about 6 pounds heavier and 4 cubic feet more space than the Forester. It would be interesting if we had a hybrid Forester to compare with, but that doesn't seem to exist (yet).

Also looked into U.S. vans being gas guzzlers. A comparable vehicle in the U.S. is the Toyota Sienna, since it's a hybrid minivan. It's 4700 pounds, gets 36 mpg (vs. 44 for S-Max), but has 101 cubic feet of cargo space, which is 1/3 more than the S-Max. Seems to correlate well with weight, which makes sense.

Based on this, my (current) take is that mid-size SUVs in the U.S. are equivalent to these smaller minivans elsewhere, and U.S. minivans are a bit larger and heavier than that.

> 10 years ago you would have bought a family van.

Fellow European here, we don't have kids but we were thinking at maybe getting a second dog, which made me look for a possible car replacement (we now have a 15+ year-old small hatchback). After some searching and calculating I found out that the "usefulness" of cars for my purported task (to transport two dogs in the back) can be summarized like this (in decreasing order): vans -> station wagons/estates -> SUVs/CUVs.

Unfortunately vans are on their out, I can't really understand the reason why (the VW Sharan will cease production this year, Ford C-Max ceased production back in 2019 etc), station wagons are also not feeling good, almost every car company is betting the house on SUVs/CUVs, which is a trend I don't like at all, because you get to pay more money for less utility.

They might come back, the VW id buzz is the first and cheaper options from other manufacturers will likely follow.

A quick review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51fyxgcVrKM

Agreed, where are all the MPVs going? We have a Cmax grande and it has more space than most SUVs. It even has better head and leg room.

My wife, kid in a car seat, and I recently went on a two weeks vacation in our VW Polo, baby stroller, disassembled om changing table and two weeks worth of luggage included. Granted, the car was jam-packed, but it makes me think you could get the things you listed to fit in a smaller car.

Never mind that even a larger european car like a citroën berlingo is wildly smaller than most american SUVs.

On the outside, cars like the berlingo offer so much more room on the inside than even large SUVs it's not even funny. Goes to show that many of the "I need a large car because I have a family" arguments, are really more about looking big from the outside, not so much about internal practicalities.

Do people actually buy berlingos to drive their family? I thought they were more intended to transport items / tools

The older Berlin OS were much more trade/transport cars, but the newer Berlingo comes in a family version which is pretty cool (and received reviews at least in the German press).

My mom got one mainly because it was convenient for transporting my grandma. Not many cars you can exit from sitting height. Of course it also fits a lot of crap when e.g. going on holiday. It's an odd in-between between a sedan and a van.

My family got a Toyota Granvia. It fit 2 parents, 4 kids, 2 dogs, any strollers backpacks etc that we needed just fine.

Hell, my whole family went around the South Island on holiday in it for a whole month and it was just fine.

Cultural differences I guess. If you're an American you _need_ an SUV, I get it.

I guess I'm confused. The Granvia is about 5700 lbs and gets about 20 mpg. The Forrester is about 3600 lbs and gets 28 mpg. Why choose the Granvia?

NZ has different vehicles available to other countries. This was about 15 years ago or so. And a family of 6 plus several dogs and luggage capability.

I'm sure they could have maybe picked a smaller vehicle as well but economics also come into it - it was a secondhand Japanese import (NZ gets a lot of those, in fact when I was a kid we found yen coins still hidden underneath the seats) so it was gotten on the cheap as well.

You can't legally drive the hummer EV in Switzerland on your standard license (B permit) . The max weight allowed is 3500 kg. I doubt we will see this vehicle Europe for sale.

Worse for stopping distances though, especially to the extent that SUVs (very popular in the US) have a higher CoG and therefore the ABS has to be calibrated differently. The car is "safer" in that you won't die, but not safer in terms of avoiding accidents.

also maneuverability. If another SUV from the opposite side of the road gets in your lane, good luck avoiding it with a fast reaction.

Why would the ABS need to be calibrated differently?

I thought the car was just monitoring if any wheel is about to stop rolling and then it would ease-up the brake on that specific wheel.

I believe you are correct. The parent post is probably referring to traction control, or something else more recent than the original ABS.

I recall learning this in a class on the automotive industry about 20 years ago. We learned about unintended consequences that caused the US automotive market to favor SUVs (see the Chicken tax [1]), and some of the downsides of SUVs.

My recollection is that SUVs have longer stopping distances because the ABS has to pause braking more frequently to avoid instability or rollover. It's possible, as another commenter suggested, that I'm recalling ESC, but that wasn't very common in the early 2000s. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the nose of a vehicle dives when braking, and a high CoG exacerbates this. But it's been 20 years, and I've scarcely thought about the course since then!

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

No discussion of the federal government pushing Americans to buy SUVs would be complete without mentioning the favorable depreciation schedule that can (could?) be applied to larger SUVs [1] and the lower standards that they face for fuel efficiency.[2]

[1] https://www.section179.org/section_179_vehicle_deductions/ [2] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1102305_will-tighter-ca... (Both links are admittedly lazy, but think of them as entering arguments for further research if you care.)

How exactly would a braking SUV rollover? It'd effectively have to do a front flip. The center of gravity might be high, but that would require circus car level of high to get a front flip from a vehicle like that.

Corners, particularly those with roads that are banked, make for some interesting side to side rollover fodder.

There's that famous Ford Explorer tire issue in 2001 or so that makes for some (dated) examples of SUV rollover accidents.

I don't think ABS is going to help much if someone puts inadequate tires on your vehicle.

Also you have it backwards. Banked corners actually reduce the chance of rollover. It's why NASCAR tracks have a large slope. It allows the drivers to brake farther out and longer into the turn before beginning to transition back onto the throttle.

That was true 20 years ago. The question is how much do you ease up the brake on that specific wheel, and then how much do you reapply it? You need to know the coefficient of friction of the road to know this. Modern controllers are doing a physics simulation of the entire vehicle, and part of this is the weight transfer as you go around a corner (which is partially influenced by the CoG). They then do a physics simulation of the hydraulic brake circuit so it knows how long to run the pump to build up the desired brake pressure.

Now of course this is combined with stability control (since that is required by law) and both of them are controlled by the same code.

(On a related note, I've spent way too much time reverse engineering the calibration for the ABS for a Silverado truck. Ridiculously huge program, ridiculously complicated, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the source code is a mess.)

Software for these controllers are usually codegen'd from a Simulink model (or equivalent dataflow language), which contributes to the difficulty in reverse engineering.

Ya most of the modern systems for "ABS" do way more than just ABS; usually they're also trying to keep steering authority as well, for example. With a higher COG car, you have to be more careful of rollovers, so maybe can't help someone get a super stupid steering angle.

Checkout: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_test

Braking distance isn't a function of mass. Turns out the momentum from higher mass and the increased friction from higher mass balance exactly.

I should say this is true for the physics of sliding friction forces, which aren't super precise.

I think you are looking at this wrong. It should be surface area of rotor/brakepad interface per lb of vehicle

Modern brakes can get a lot hotter before brake fade. Until the brakes get too hot it is just a matter of brake pressure. Modern cars universally have disk brakes which shed heat better. Larger vehicles also have bigger tires which leaves more room for brakes.

In short while you are not wrong, in practice even the worst numbers are still more than good enough that brake performance isn't an issue.

Just about any car can brake hard enough to lock up all 4 tires and enter a skid (or activate ABS to avoid this)- the limiting factor to braking distance is friction between the tires and the ground.

Scaling for static friction between rubber and asphalt does not follow the friction equation you are taught in high school physics class. Generally, for a given weight of vehicle, a larger tire surface area is able to produce more maximum braking friction. In other terms, minimizing the surface pressure and maximizing the surface area at the contact patch increases maximum braking friction.

That would be true if your wheels instantly stopped turning when you applied the brakes.

The limiting factor for braking isn't the friction between your wheels and the ground, which is weight-dependent, but the friction between your brake pads and rotors, which is not weight-dependent.

this isn't quite right either. most modern cars have brakes that far exceed the limits of grip for the tires. the brakes themselves should only be the limiting factor if you are riding them down a very long hill or performing multiple hard stops in quick succession (eg, racing).

Yeah, that's why it's as easy to come to a stop on well maintained tarmac as it is on ice, snow or gravel. As long as those brake pads work well that is.

I suggest taking your bike out and practice breaking on various surfaces. You will quickly get what the limiting factor is. It's the same with a car just the tires are much wider and brakes more powerful.

GP didn't claim that braking distance was larger because of higher mass. Rather, because of the higher centre of gravity the ABS has to be calibrated differently, leading to weaker braking, thus larger braking distance.

I have no expertise in this, but seems prima facie plausible.

I think simongr3dal’s remark isn’t about them taking longer to stop, but about the use of the term calibration.

ABS is a feedback loop: brake faster until just before the wheels start slipping. That doesn’t need calibration.

There may be additional logic in ABS systems for corner cases that requires calibration, though (for example, if your front left wheel has lots more grip than the other ones, can you brake full on it and keep the car going in a straight(ish) line?), but I don’t see how higher CoG would be a factor there.

Ah, fair enough, that makes sense. You're right, if we posit that ABS is purely to prevent slipping, that would imply that it always goes for maximum braking.

> I don’t see how higher CoG would be a factor there.

Could be that the "additional logic" (whether we call it ABS or something else) aims to keep certain values (such as longitudinal or lateral acceleration) within bounds (thus releasing brake pressure when approaching those bounds), and those bounds are tighter with higher CoG.

I remember the Mercedes A-Class (with pretty high CoG) rolled over in the Swedish Moose test initially, until that was fixed with Electronic Stability Control (how?).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose_test#1997_Mercedes_A-Cla...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control

“When ESC detects loss of steering control, it automatically applies the brakes to help steer the vehicle where the driver intends to go. Braking is automatically applied to wheels individually, such as the outer front wheel to counter oversteer, or the inner rear wheel to counter understeer”

So, ESC activates the brakes harder than the driver indicates through the controls, while ABS activates the brakes less hard than the driver indicates through the controls.

Both systems use the same sensors and have to agree on who’s in control when, though, so I can see people lumping them together. Wikipedia also says (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control#C...)

“ESC is built on top of an anti-lock brake system”

and (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_stability_control...):

“Just as ESC is founded on the anti-lock braking system (ABS), ESC is the foundation for new advances such as Roll Stability Control or active rollover protection that works in the vertical plane much like ESC works in the horizontal plane. When RSC detects impending rollover (usually on transport trucks or SUVs), RSC applies brakes, reduces throttle, induces understeer, and/or slows down the vehicle.”

In the end, there can be only one set of commands that get sent to the brakes, throttle, etc, so these systems must be interconnected, making the terms more marketing than indicators of specific systems in the car.

By the way, I was surprised to read how old ABS is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system#Early...:

“The concept for ABS predates the modern systems that were introduced in the 1950s. In 1908, for example, J.E. Francis introduced his 'Slip Prevention Regulator for Rail Vehicles'.

In 1920 the French automobile and aircraft pioneer Gabriel Voisin experimented with systems that modulated the hydraulic braking pressure on his aircraft brakes to reduce the risk of tire slippage”

The future is electric vehicles which while heavier have a lower center of gravity.

> Turns out the momentum from higher mass and the increased friction from higher mass balance exactly.

yes, in the spherical cow sense, but this isn't at all true for real life vehicles and tires. the weight of the vehicle does have a significant impact on traction, here's a quick video explaining tire load sensitivity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNa2gZNqmT8

related to the above issue (and as GP mentioned), the high CoG of an SUV also poses challenges for braking performance. you want all four wheels of the vehicle to have roughly similar braking force. obviously the front wheels are going to contribute more to braking than the rear, but you don't want a huge disparity. this doesn't matter so much for the abstract question of "how quickly can a vehicle stop?", but it matters a lot for the practical question of "which direction is the vehicle facing?" if the rear wheels are contributing much less of the total braking force, the car is likely to end up sideways. this is bad if you want to do something like "remain in control of the vehicle" while braking.

Where does vehicle mass come into play when cars have ABS and thus it's always the brake pads stopping the car, not the tires?

If the tires can hold traction better, then the ABS can brake harder without locking the wheel. So the mass would still come into play in that way.

(Just answering the question, I’m a firm believer in everyone switching into 90s-era-sized fiats and smaller)

> thus it's always the brake pads stopping the car, not the tires?

The tires are the only thing in contact with the ground. All deceleration force can only come from the grip between tires and the ground[1]. The brake pads in most installations can easily lock up the tires (which means now you only have sliding coefficient of friction instead of rolling friction). In other words, what matters is tire grip.

Buy the grippiest tires you can afford to run.

[1] Well, cars with aero downforce also get a lot of deceleration from that. A Formula 1 car will decelerate at more than 1G merely by lifting off the throttle, without touching the brakes. But none of this is relevant to street cars.

> The brake pads in most installations can easily lock up the tires

> In the United States, the NHTSA has mandated ABS in conjunction with Electronic Stability Control under the provisions of FMVSS 126 as of September 1, 2012.

Also:

> Buy the grippiest tires you can afford to run

Even race cars running on slicks and weighing 700 kg get better braking by avoiding lockups and using the pads instead. So unless your pads are trash, you better get a proper ABS instead of imagining some magical tire with grip comparable to brake pads.

The above comment seems to be making a distinction that braking force comes from the tires or the brakes. That is not how it works.

The brakes provide friction to resist the spinning of the wheel, but of course only to the point that the tire can provide grip (friction) against the road surface.

Picture trying to brake with slick tires on wet ice. Nearly zero tire grip equals nearly zero braking force. Doesn't matter what kind of brake components are on the car. No grip = no grip.

If you want to be able to stop quickly to avoid accidents you need to maximize grip a the tire-road contact patch and you need to have a braking system powerful enough to fully take advantage of that grip.

Every car sold for decades now already has the latter (unless something is broken, obviously), so the variable you need to control is tire grip.

Thus: Buy the grippiest tires you can afford to run (if you want optimal braking to avoid accidents, that is).

I hate that I will likely buy a larger car than my current Corolla just so I can feel slightly safer. I don't need it, I don't really want it, but given the adversarial nature of other drivers, I feel I would be putting myself unnecessarily at risk if I don't.

Funny thing is you can do this by buying a new Corolla, which is probably much larger than your current one. Car models have gotten so much bigger over the last several decades; current Corollas are bigger than older Camrys, Civics are bigger than old Accords, etc.

Even Mini Coopers are slightly larger every revision now.

One interesting question is how this trend will end. Possibilities:

- Cars get larger and larger forever until cars get abolished for some other reason.

- There's some natural limit on how large a car can get and all cars will eventually converge on that limit.

- Something happens (what?) that changes the trend and suddenly they become smaller again.

Another option is new smaller models get introduced and begin their own lifecycle of bloating. For example the Honda HRV is roughly the same size and price point as the CRV was originally.

Exactly. It's the automobile equivalent of the Shepard Tone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone

> There's some natural limit on how large a car can get and all cars will eventually converge on that limit.

When everyone is driving a Hummer H1, with a mounted .50 M60, we’ll finally solve road rage too.

First of all, dont threaten me with a good time.

Second, the M60 fires a 7.62x51 round, not .50 BMG. You're thinking of the M2 or "Ma Duece".

I’ll mount a ma deuce on mah deuce (and a half) and the H1s can go the long way around.

Ah you’re right! I was thinking of the M2. Though I’m sure the M60 could clear up dawdlers just as well.

In Europe you need an advance license to drive a car that exceeds a certain tonnage (3,500 kg I believe; or at least that is my license). So for certain markets there is a hard limits. I don’t think a Corolla will ever exceed that as that would kind of ruin its whole marketing.

In the US, at least in many states, you can drive a semi truck with a normal drivers license as long as it's not for commercial use.

You need a special license to drive anything with an airbrake which most semi trucks have. Also a special license for more than some weight (18000lbs IIRC). Of your semi avoids both of those I guess you are okay, but that is tricky.

Yeah this was terrifying for me when I had to move with a family. Smaller trucks were too small. Next move I'll pay people to drive those monsters or take two trips.

> Something happens

I think that something is electrification and the limits on energy that comes with that. Aerodynamics makes for smaller is better. However the weight of the car is up significantly.

Which definition of "bigger" are we concerned about?

For a recent example, the previous gen Honda HR-V was 171” long, the new one is 180”. That brings it to about 2” shorter than last year’s 182” Honda CR-V, but the new model of that grows to 185” long. Every time a car gets redesigned it gets bigger.

Recently disappointed with the Chevy Equinox EV announcement, it takes the name of their small SUV but makes it 11” longer. Still at least impressed by the target price, but wish it were smaller.

And you’d say “Oh well they have to put the batteries somewhere,” meanwhile on the same day Jeep announced their Avenger EV. It’s a proper subcompact with 250 mile range, but it won’t come to the US because apparently no one here wants small cars.

Also waiting for more info on Mazda’s plug-in hybrid models. The CX-60 was announced for Europe, but we have to wait for a special fat version (CX-70) for the USA.

Overall disappointed with the car manufacturers lately, and with the consumer spending habits that have pushed things this way. Would greatly increased taxes on large vehicles reduce it? Maybe, but then you’re basically saying “it’s OK to kill pedestrians as long as you’re rich.”

Correction, Equinox EV is only 7" longer than the previous one, not 11". Not great, but not as bad as I thought.

Interestingly, the Equinox has previously been an exception to the "Cars always get bigger" rule. First gen was 188.8", second gen shaved off an inch to 187.8", third gen moved it from midsize to compact at 183.1.

EV version will put that back up around 190, back into the midsize segment and larger than the original gas version.

Well I have a 2013 Hatch. 1.4t GVM. Up a few hundred kg from the 2003 Sedan I had prior at 1.1t GVM. The vehicles I'm regularly driving with/around/near SUVs that are almost an entire ton heavier at approx 2200kg. Driven by people that have the observational skills of an ex-parrot.

Terrifying.

Saw my first Hummer EV this week. 9000 lbs and 0-60 in 3 seconds. My best hope for not dying is that they drive carefully because they don’t want to dent their $100,000 mall crawler. Yikes.

It would be interesting to know how car insurance companies treat such vehicles. The likelihood that the occupant dies (or even sustains any injuries) is probably quite low. But the likelihood that it does damage to people, structures, or other vehicles would seem to be quite high (including the risk that there are issues with the enormous battery, which have yet to be discovered because it is a new, low-volume vehicle).

The average American is also growing larger with each new revision.

"Large" American people probably won't be comfortable crammed into a 90s Chevy Geo. I think such people deserve to be comfortable, is it not a basic human right / dignity?

https://cdn.carbuzz.com/gallery-images/840x560/80000/200/802...

http://data:image/jpeg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2w...

There's a disconnect here: why does a bigger human need a radically larger car frame? There's plenty of internal space for a larger seat. You'll note that we haven't made airframes correspondingly larger over the last 30 years.

I’m not sure that’s a great example since airline seats have become so small many obese people simply are effectively prohibited from flying. Even business seating has contracted over the years so paying a kings ransom still isn’t enough for such people to gain freedom of mobility. (Cue the Ayn Randian self control HN argument every time someone says something marginally accommodating of the obese).

I'm not going to make that Ayn Rand-style argument. I think it's disgusting that people stoop to that.

My point with the plane example was that we could fit larger seats in planes, without any particular trouble. The reason airlines don't is because it cuts into their profitability: requiring an obese person to purchase higher-classed tickets to accommodate themselves is much better for business than actually having to accommodate them with a wider seat.

Once upon a time (before some significant weight loss) I was an obese weekly business traveler. I used to fly southwest as a preference if I could because their policy was to charge for two seats if you needed a belt extender. You would get priority seating and a little card to place on the second seat that designated the seat as unavailable (no assigned seats on SWA). If the flight wasn’t full, they would refund the second seat.

I always felt that was a reasonable accommodation.

Having to accommodate them with wider seats means fewer seats in the plane, which means much lower profitability, or higher seat prices for normal-size people. There's only so much room on an airplane. Customers consistently choose flights based on seat price, so of course airlines are going to optimize to keep prices as low as possible to get customers. For people who prefer comfort over price, there's higher-class seats.

If Americans don't like this, maybe they should try losing weight so they aren't so much larger than everyone else in the world.

I don't think we could fit wider seats into airplanes unless you mean fewer wider seats than current seats. In such case it's not just about profitability (airlines aren't known to have huge profit margins anyway) but about travel getting more expensive for everyone.

I might not go full Ayn Rand but making things more expensive for everyone to accommodate fat people is a line I am comfortable defending.

What is Ayn Randian about the necessity of self-moderation?

There it is. Stop.

> people to gain freedom of mobility.

Being not/being able to fly commercial airlines is certainly not "freedom of mobility". If that were the case, then no one had freedom of mobility before the Wright brothers, which is absurd.

I'm not big but I've had injuries which have hindered my mobility. Ever tried to get into a low subcompact when you can't bend as easily? The height of the seat, the height of the A-pillar/roof, the width of the door, and how far the door open, all massively affect getting into and out of a vehicle.

These are all reasonable cases to expect accommodation for! The part that I'm not convinced on is that said accommodation needs to take the form of an absurdly large SUV or pickup truck.

Yes, but traveling by air as an obese person is invariably uncomfortable, not only physically but mentally too.

It’s not the Corolla “American Edition”, look around the world, obesity is an international issue.

I'm sure it is an international issue. At the same time, I was recently visiting Switzerland, didn't see any particularly obese and definitely no morbidly obese folks. Ymmv.

Switzerland is a wealthy blip of a country.

France, Germany……..England

Also, the Swiss diet is interesting. Pretty carb heavy with morning pastries, and bread, and cheese throughout the day.

They also bike and spend time outside a lot, when the weather is amenable.

Maybe part of our problem in the USA comes down to availability of cost effective, convenient, semi-healthy options on average- Way too much preservative-heavy calorie festivals day in and day out?

I'm not a dietician, but the state of affairs stateside is without a doubted tragic and sad.

> Also, the Swiss diet is interesting. Pretty carb heavy with morning pastries, and bread, and cheese throughout the day.

That's their culinary culture, not their daily diet lol.

Growing up American, we have a looser food regulations, but also our education system probably doesn't help. I ate a lot of weird rectangle pizzas in elementary school. In High School Health class, we learned about healthy eating, watched Food Inc and Supersize Me, but I don't think we were consistently introduced to healthy eating habits. They made it look really uncool, fuck that, I want gushers and gatorade.

American cities are pedestrian and bike-unfriendly.

You don't lose weight by always sitting in a car drinking giant soft drinks, eating drive-thru and never walking anywhere.

I'm Australian though so feel free to correct me. Also when I was there I found the portion sizes pretty ridiculous.

In defense of portion sizes, in the US it is a cultural thing to not finish your portion at restaurant and get the rest packed up for the next day. That explains the double portions

Interesting, I never knew that was common.

A 90s American wasn’t comfortable in a 90s Geo.

Can confirm, this is definitely a problem and it's getting worse.

It's actually a problem for those of us that actually use their garage for parking, as opposed to storing more junk. Most 2-car garages are around 20x20 or usable parking space or less. Even newer houses skimp on garages, because it doesn't count for square footage, and you don't really notice when it's empty.

2 modern cars, especially a mid-sized SUV or minivan, aren't going to work well with 20' of width. Even the length is problematic for clearance and being able to open the back liftgate with the garage door(s) down. A large SUV or pickup, forget it.

Heh, I bought a 2004 Subaru Forester XT. Nice size, easy to park, easy to travel with dog and kid, etc. Went to buy a newer one and it was MUCH larger, felt like a boat, much taller, much longer, etc. Turns out the crosstrek (their smallest crossover) is now nearly the exact size of my Forester XT. I'd have bought one, but it was depressingly slow.

Sadly Subaru seems to have abandoned the practical small/sport SUV. The WRX wagon ... killed off. The crosstrek, nowhere close to sporty. The Forester nowhere close to small.

The CrossTrek is depressingly slow, and when we looked at it the interior cubic footage was no larger than the Impreza. The mileage was worse though.

There is a hybrid version, but it has even less storage space. Wanted to like it, but we couldn’t do it.

That is because it is literally the same car as the Impreza, only lifted and with some body cladding.

And fine-looking cladding indeed! We ended up getting a used Impreza that had the older rounded body style.

Indeed, I used to drive a 2001 Forester, and the new ones look insanely large. (I haven't owned a car in the last 12 years, and whenever I rent a car I try to get an "economy"-sized car but usually end up with something much bigger).

There's always the Nissan Rogue Sport, the smaller Rogue version.

Hmm. This sounds oddly similar to how phones have progressed over the years.

And me, sadly.

There is also safety in a more maneuverable car. I went from a pickup truck to a Fusion (hybrid), and I've been able to steer clear of situations easier in it than the bigger truck. Also since I can't see past the SUV in front of me, I tend to back off and give more following space. If that causes other cars to try to cut in the open spot in front of me, then that causes me to back off further where I end up in a pocket behind the pack.

Also there is the concept of "safe enough". If you are on an expressway, what are the chances of a head-on accident? And although getting t-boned at an intersection may often be the other driver's fault, being hyper-vigilant can help there too (although it gets exhausting constantly looking out for the other driver).

What I'm really hoping for is that some minimal level of driver automation features become standard -- things like emergency braking, lane assist that yells at you when your driving deteriorates (so drivers realize they are getting to sleepy to drive), etc. The automatic braking alone would have prevented the last three accidents I witnessed in this past year (the most recent was a 5-car chain reaction that was most likely caused by a driver staring at a cell phone instead of the long line of stopped traffic in front of them).

Yeah I'm thinking about getting rid of my Charger and getting a large pickup truck (probably EV hear in a few years, if it's even possible). I drove a corolla at one point as well and traded up to the Charger (power/feature wise)

My last car was a sedan. I loved it.

But when the stock truck next to you at a light has a higher hood that your roof it makes an impression on you.

A quick google shows a stock F150 at ~51” and it’s hardly the tallest. A RAM seems to be 58”. I know they’re adding pedestrian cams to the front of some trucks just so drivers can see if they’re about to hit someone at a light.

Sedans seem to be in the 55-57” range. They feel flat out unsafe at times.

Stupid trucks.

Don’t feel bad. The most important person to you on the road should be you

If its any consolation, you are chasing a marginal gain

A few weeks ago I was nearly killed by a Jeep Grand Cherokee turning left across an intersection I was crossing (as a pedestrian). It was going faster than 25 MPH and I only had two seconds of leeway to scramble back onto the sidewalk. If I hadn't been vigilant in paying attention I would not be alive today. And I only had that vigilance because I already believed that if I was going to die suddenly, it was probably going to be because of a vehicle.

It still gives me anxiety nearly every day, knowing that there's nothing more I can do to address the situation except to keep being vigilant when crossing roads. People are not going to give up their SUVs or stop buying them.

If you look at the top-notch SUVs from Mercedes and other European manufacturers, there's actually a lot done to improve the safety. Like automatic recognition of pedestrians, obstacles, rough road and so on. Give it another decade or so and such technology will be as ubiquitous as airbags or backup cameras.

Not saying it’s not a good thing, but this tries to address the symptom and not the cause. It might actually lead to drivers being even less careful since they will just blindly trust the car (as we’ve seen in many Autopilot accidents)

I'm not making light of the situation but any car in that situation - heck probably any motorcycle - would have killed you just a surely as an SUV. Arguably because an SUV driver sits higher up they should have been more likely to see you.

That sitting higher up is what really annoys me as a car driver. It's fine when you're the one in the SUV but I've got a car and when I'm on the the road with one of those things in front of me it's impossible to figure out what's going on ahead. If traffic slows or stops is the accident or whatever on the right or the left? Which way should I get over? An invariably the jerk in the car ahead wants to wait until the absolute last moment before merging.

I hate driving.

This is basic and obvious physics. I always was frustrated any time I heard someone say they liked their massive vehicle because it made them feel safer. It is such a selfish way of thinking. Sure you're safe, but think what you're going to do to the other car and people inside. Might as well add missiles that preemptively fire and blast the other car off the road in a detected collision. That would even be safer for you.

If I'm a responsible driver myself, then making myself and my family safe against the actions of other irresponsible drivers is totally rational and moral.

If someone is drunk driving in a Toyota Yaris and runs a red light and smashes into me, I'm not going to shed any tears that my big heavy SUV made it unsafe for them.

You may be safe most of the time. No one is perfect. Buying increasingly large vehicles is an kinetic energy arms race.

Even being a responsible driver you are still open to the edge case that you are going 45mph on a road that has a 45mph speed limit, doing nothing wrong, and a child steps out into your lane. Larger, heavier vehicles basically guarantee a fatality at that speed. The event was entirely out of your hands, well within the random risks of these events while driving, but your choice of vehicle has now made it a much more dangerous situation when it didn't have to be so dangerous. Pedestrians are involved in a minority of auto accidents but a majority of fatal ones, so if your goals are to decrease the risk of death in the general sense every time you go out on the road, you'd do well to choose the lightest and most sloping faced vehicle available to you.

Their goal is to decrease the risk to their family.

And by optimizing for the direct risk they are increasing the indirect risk by signalling to automakers and their government representatives that these are the vehicles they want to spend money on

Yeah, such is life. Solving this is the role government is supposed to play in a society.

It's basically a guaranteed fatality at 45mph in any weight of car - lots of towns/cities are even reducing their 30mph speed limits to 20mph for that reason.

If anything, I'd suggest doing 45mph on a road where there's the possibility of a child walking into the road faster than you could respond is irresponsible. If you're going that fast in a built-up area, you should either have a good enough view of the sides of the road that you can see the hazard developing in good time to react/break (ie, you're tracking the pedestrians alongside the road a hundred metres ahead of you), or you should be slowing down to a more appropriate speed for when you're lacking situational awareness.

I suspect this is a large part of the reasons that some countries (eg, the UK) have a hazard perception element to the driving test.

Odds are the drunk driver is going to be driving a pick-up truck themselves [1].

This is a perfect example of prisoner's dilemma - everyone would be safer if everyone else was driving smaller cars. But because people are optimizing for their own safety everybody ends up buying large cars.

In the end, nobody is actually safer, and there are tons of negative externalities caused by everyone driving large cars (increased fuel consumption, road wear, significantly higher risks for pedestrians and other road users, etc).

[1] https://insurify.com/insights/car-models-most-duis-2020/#1.-...

> This is a perfect example of prisoner's dilemma - everyone would be safer if everyone else was driving smaller cars.

This claim needs a source, and the article does not provide that.

Yep, when I bought my Hilux I was told that it had an ANCAP Safety Rating of "5" (which is the highest in Australia). If I chose to get a bullbar installed, it would reduce to "4" even though I would be safer as pedestrian safety is significantly reduced and that factors into the rating.

It may not be safer if the bull bar messes with the other safety systems (crumple zones, airbag deployment timings etc). No idea if this was a factor in the rating reduction by ANCAP.

Also be aware that many ANCAP ratings are cut and pasted from overseas tests and many are outdated, referring to previous models.

Also a bullbar absolutely throws the vehicle off balance if you don’t put in new springs up front. Not sure if they consider that in the ratings.

I think people are letting their personal biases (e.g. SUV=bad) get the better of them. With the rise of EVs, even small vehicles will weigh a lot. For instance, the curb weight of a Tesla Model 3 is between 3,648 and 4,250 lbs, which is about the same as a Toyota Highlander.

rationally the speed limits should be lowered accordingly

I agree that momentum should be the prime consideration. Especially as it relates to heavy trucks. Those guys shouldn’t be allowed to go over 55.

Is momentum what actually matters?

A Ford F-150 at 45 MPH has less momentum than a typical locomotive has at 1 MPH, but I'd sure rather be hit by the latter.

Velocity is squared so yes that part matters more. Your extreme example is an edge case, sure, but not realistic. But overall, momentum is the force applied.

That doesn’t sound right. A 1mph train hitting you won’t kill you, it’ll just push you along. The sudden acceleration of all or parts of your body is important.

Stand there for a few seconds or minutes. It’s what glaciers did. They travelled far slower than 1mph and took out mountains.

I don’t make the physics, I just live with them.

Right but you assume the person would be stupid enough to plant their feet and get slowly dragged under the train. Reaction time drops sharply as MPH increases.

Unlike mountains, people are not nailed to the ground waiting to be carved out, they move when they get pushed by a slow but massive object. Only a tiny amount of the train's momentum will get transferred to the person, roughly 1mph x mass of the person worth.

p = mv, so in momentum velocity is simply linear. It's in KE = 1/2 * m * v^2 that has the square (kinetic energy).

Why momentum and not energy? I'd say the latter. It is energy that deforms your body. So, reduce the speed by 15%, reduce energy by 28% (2*15% to first order, or 1-(1-15%)^2 exactly).

Or, to put it differently, if the vehicle has twice the mass, speed should be reduced by 30%.

Part of the reason I like driving on the Autostrada in Italy is that trucks are speed-restricted. Their speed limit is posted on the back of the truck itself so it's easy for anybody to see if the truck is speeding, and I'm led to believe that the penalty for speeding trucks is pretty severe. This may also be true in other countries; I don't know. It's not the case in the US and I wish it were.

Seattle changed a bunch of speed limits to 25MPH but the problem is that the roads were designed for faster speeds so now instead of everyone predictably going similar faster speeds, you get an unpredictable mix of some people going the speed limit and some people going closer to the old speed limits.

In reality I think you need to redesign roads for lower speeds if you truly want a large percentage of drivers to follow the limits.

I guess you're referring to traffic calming? I'm not sure what Seattle has done but you don't necessarily need to totally redesign streets for that. Things like speed bumps or islands can be added so reduce the speed that drivers can travel on the road. Have they done anything like that?

I was always wondering if speed bumps significantly reduce the lifespan of cars.

It'll never happen because speed limits aren't. Nobody actually follows the speed limit, people on average drive at speeds that match the safety conditions of the roads. It's not a coincidence that that speed roughly matches the speed limit. If the speed people actually drive differs from the limit and cops start actually start enforcing it the signs will eventually be set to that speed - 5 after people complain to their city council (or if they cant because fed money the cops will just be directed to not enforce it).

The only real instance where speed limits differ form "the speed drivers feel safe driving" is school zones. But outside these situations speed limits are a waste of time because the roads are designed for specific speeds and people are naturally really good at feeling that speed. They exist because cops need some objective justification for pulling over people who drive faster than the norm.

This is true, and the reason why most roads should be heavily narrowed to have their design speed match their speed limit.

Speed limits get automatically complied with when it feels unsafe for the driver to exceed them, and all places where automobiles are permitted should be adapted to that reality.

To be fair, the model 3 is middle of the road in weight compared to all of the cars in its class, i.e. high performance sports sedan. This is quite commendable given the extra weight for a 75kwh battery pack and has lots of room for improvement as the battery tech gets better.

Bizarre that a Tesla Model 3 is called a small vehicle

Ok... a Chevy Bolt has a curb weight of 3,600 pounds as well. That's comparable in size to a Honda Fit at 163", but the Fit weighs 1,000 pounds less.

The Toyota Camry and entry-level model 3 are both about 3500lbs these days. Electric cars look likely to keep dropping in weight as the designs improve (ie. battery pack becomes more structural and less of just an additional load)

SUV=bad isn’t just a personal bias. They’re more likely to kill a pedestrian because of their height. Weight isn’t the whole story.

That is also terrible and we shouldn't let it happen.

In contrast, your Highlander has a higher centre of gravity, and kids can be standing next to it without you being able to see them.

We have had big cars for a really long time. Look back to the 70s, the cars then were called "boats" because they were huge and they had a lot more steel than current cars. Yes, I agree, more people are favoring SUVs and trucks than prior generations, but huge cars have been around for decades.

I recently purchased a 79 Lincoln Continental Mark V and it is that same length as my 2020 F150 - 40 year spread, same size vehicle.

People need to drive safe and not be stupid behind the wheel. I would guess that cell phone use while driving kills way more people than "big vehicles" do (most of us are guilty of this). I feel it is a technology+cultural issue.

We've had large cars for a long time, but the macro trend is still there: cars are getting larger over time.

There are plenty of other things we can do to increase driver safety, as you've said. But large cars simply do kill and maim people more frequently, and there are many more of them now.

Sedans and coupes have gotten larger as SUV’s and 18 wheelers have become more and more common on the roads. They get bigger in part to fit safety features into the areas you can’t see. These cars get heavier because of government required (in the US and EU, anyways) safety systems like airbags, backup cameras and all of the wiring and other parts such systems require.

I don't believe for one moment that the HUD on a modern SUV requires all that space for its wires. It's a commodity computer connected to a commodity touchscreen. The airbag hasn't meaningfully changed in the last 25 years, either.

Cars have gotten larger for two primary reasons: larger crumple zones (a legitimate safety change!), and to circumvent emissions regulations. Of those, the latter has been a much stronger pressure.

Side air bags have increased in popularity in the last 25 years. Although it looks like they reached 100% in 2012, so presence of side air bags doesn't explain changes in the last 10 years.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/688636/penetration-rate-...

Commodity computers and touchscreens weren’t in many cars 15-20 years ago. Cars with features like seat cooling and heating were premium trim level versions, now those are more widespread. Wiring for cameras? Wiring for lidar, radar, and all sorts of other sensors? The sensors (and presumably their required computer system) themselves? All add weight. Also, using steel as opposed to advanced, lighter and more expensive materials, the larger crumple zones (safety features) weigh more.

"Boat" was a derogatory term. There was significant social pressure not to buy a large car. I wish such social pressure existed today.

My Dad owned a "boat" without any shame. I don't think it was entirely derogatory. Or even if it were, that social pressure obviously wasn't very effective.

Among young people there does seem to be such pressure - I hear plenty of folks around my age (late teens, early 20s) talking about a car being a boat as a downside.

Not growing up in the US and only seeing cars like that on TV, I always assumed "boat" was referring to the handling more than the size.

It was called boat because they didn't handle very well, and were tricky in tight situations. It was derogatory, though it was said in that tone of voice for sarcastic reasons.

Those old boats might be big, but they're not exactly safe or even that heavy. Here's an interesting crash test comparing one to a modern vehicle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck

Both of those cars weigh about 3,500lbs. Now swap in a 5,000lbs Tesla, or that new 9,000lbs Hummer EV. That big old car will be nothing but a pile of twisted metal. In short, I don't think you can compare large cars of the past to ones that exist today.

>People just need to drive safe and not be stupid behind the wheel.

Hmm, let's see how that's going

>2 million people are killed on roads yearly, and many more are injured

Not so well.

Jokes aside, we need to move to safer and more efficient forms of transportation, rather than wishing that everybody operates their 2 ton death machine in a safe way.

I used to live in NZ where big Utes and whatnot were relatively common. But in the cities people still generally drove city cars. You'd see Utes more often when you were close to the border between populated/rural. Sometimes in city/town if someone had come in to do some shopping.

Now that I live in London I see huge SUVs CONSTANTLY. And the pandemic made it worse! I started driving myself during the pandemic and picked up a little (BMW) Mini. When I first started, every car in our parking was your average kind of car. Now they're all SUVs, it's kind of funny to see the Mini nestled in between them; you can't even see it until you walk along the row of apartments on wheels and see if squeezed in between them.

If the mayor of London was smarter, they'd have banned new registrations for SUVs in London 10 years ago. But of course that would never happen, because £££. Nobody _needs_ an SUV in London. Nobody.

Hell, even the styling of these huge cars has changed from being rugged/practical to be used on a farm like the kind I grew up with, to being rounded/soft/comfortable designed and expected to be driven to the supermarket when instead they should be using a Fiat 500/Mini/Micra etc for that.

What if there was a speed governor proportional to the weight of the vehicle, so as to cap the possible level of kinetic force? People driving monster SUVs and pickups would still be safe from collisions, but would have to travel much slower and/or be confined to specific lanes.

A dream of small car owners. The majority of the public likes SUVs and would just vote that nonsense out.

Limiting tractor trailers like that would destroy the economy.

I don't recall including tractor trailers in my suggestion - the reason being that commercial drivers tend to be more safety minded, and in some cases are already routed to dedicated infrastructure.

Why would taxes be needed to internalize the increased risk to others? It seems to me that liability insurance is the appropriate place to factor those risks in.

Drastically higher minimums for liability insurance would be better, but politically unpopular for the same reason that higher taxes would be unpopular.

Higher liability minimums would be very regressive making support tepid among the demographics who usually want really high taxes.

The higher liabilitie minimums would be specifically for those who have larger vehicles. How is that regressive?

That’s the cool thing about insurance, it doesn’t have to be popular - you have a risk you’d like to cover, here’s what it costs you

Except they operate in a competitive and fairly transparent market, so it’s actually not like that at all. Insurance rates are very tuned for a variety of risk profiles to capture the specific risk segments the insurer wants to take on and they compete for price in that space. If you don’t like what it costs from A you might be able to find it cheaper with B, and B has incentive to do that.

But if it costs a lot, people would rather just take the risk and then be on the hook for way more money than they can pay. Which is why paying for insurance is legally mandated in some cases.

How does liability insurance cover the risk of an uninsured under-insured driver hitting me?

(I live in Michigan and continue to carry unlimited PIP FWIW)

I do not buy any PIP because I have health insurance with an out of pocket maximum.

Although, I think states should require quite a bit of PIP as well so that non drivers are not subsidizing drivers.

Michigan's unlimited PIP is lifetime (so no out of pocket maximum to cover in year 2 of your catastrophe). There's rules about what is covered of course, but the financial side of it is a bit simpler.

My premium for the year is less than 1 month of health insurance, it's pretty cheap.

The problem is we have that - and even the cost of obliterating however many pedestrians and cyclists divided over all drivers is mere pennies.

Insurance rates should be set with actuarial data and not with political agendas. It's not insurance companies duties to set our action for societal purposes. You really do not want to give them any more power than they already have in our lives. See healthcare in the USA. That's why we have governments.

The government requiring people to purchase higher liability coverage does not mean the government is setting the prices for the liability insurance. Actuaries would still be doing the same job.

Increased liability insurance, if mandatory, is effectively just a tax collected by an independent entity. At least on first blush, it makes sense (to me) to just cut out that middleman and levy it directly.

It’s not a tax. It’s literally insurance for liability.

Sometimes, a tax can effectively be insurance for liability.

Sin taxes, e.g. alcohol or tobacco tax, in part help pay for the social cost of those activities.

No, that's just how they're sold.

As the name implies, sin taxes are taxes to discourage use. Tobacco smoking, for instance, likely saves tax payers money because:

1) Smokers pay more in taxes through tobacco purchases.

2) Smokers die way earlier, so there are less social security payments and fewer medical expenses.

We're talking about an incentive structure. Whether that's liability insurance or a direct tax, the goal is the same: to disincentivize unnecessarily dangerous road vehicles.

In a competitive market for insurance the goal is to optimize the actuarial outcomes such that you make a margin after losses are paid out on average. Making the tables optimal and margins small bring you volume of business. Taxes have no such incentive structure at all.

They don't apply the same technique, but they absolutely do establish the same incentive structure: taxing "vices" leads to decreased consumption[1], especially when the target isn't something you can easily sell on the black market (like cigarettes can be).

If Car B costs $X,XXX more than Car A for the sole reason that it's more deadly to everyone else outside of the car, then the purchasing envelope shifts for a large number of people.

[1]: https://www.tobaccofreekids.org/press-releases/2012_09_20_ny

But when you talk about incentive structures you have to consider both sides to understand the final price. Taking a one sided view doesn’t explain the final price at all.

Which side am I missing? When people buy cigarettes at the store, it's generally understood that the tax they're paying is used, in part, to offset the social ills of smoking. I would expect a similar understanding when purchasing large cars.

The insurance company doesn’t care about your safety, just how risky you are and the expected payout for insurance over your lifetime subtracted from the income produced from the policy. They don’t increase it to change behavior as you imply. This is different than the government taxation which is less about revenue and costs than about public health incentive creation.

Okay. In that case, I think I strongly prefer the tax!

> Okay. In that case, I think I strongly prefer the tax!

I'm reading this as you preferring a moral solution rather than a technical one? You must feel pretty confident that the folks in charge of governing will always have priorities that align with your own.

These are both moral solutions, in my book; the GP has convinced me that one is more effective than the other.

I don't think any such law will ever come into effect. So I don't feel the need to be confident (or the opposite) with respect to my elected officials. It's all wishing.

One thing to note is that, not only can taxes be made progressive, liability insurance is likely regressive considering higher paying jobs are more likely to be remote.

If you are too poor to afford compensation for the damage you might cause while driving then you ought not be driving.

I'd agree with this in a vacuum, but unfortunately the state of infrastructure in the United States[1] is such that most people--especially lower-income folks--need to drive to work, the grocery store, to ferry kids to/from school, &c. This isn't a good situation, but it's the reality at the moment. Moral "oughts" like you're providing really only hold weight if a person has a realistic alternative, imo.

[1] I'm not sure the situation in other countries.

The infrastructure problem would get figured out more quickly if people were jailed for driving without sufficient funds to compensate people in case of an accident.

The status quo is to require all other road users to take the losses from impoverished drivers which is as equally “unfair” as your sob story.

> Increased liability insurance, if mandatory, is effectively just a tax collected by an independent entity.

No regulatory agency will be as effective for accurately pricing risky behavior as an insurance market.

> At least on first blush, it makes sense (to me) to just cut out that middleman and levy it directly.

The whole point of liability insurance is restitution in the case where the insured caused harm.

Adding a government tax would be adding a middleman.

Drivers are often not found liable for hitting pedestrians in the US even when it is clear that an error on the part of the driver caused the accident, so liability insurance is not actually capturing those externalities.

However, laws automatically holding drivers liable by default for accidents with pedestrians unless there were clear extenuating circumstances, as some other countries, might be another way to change this situation so that this risk could be better captured by liability insurance.

I remember there was a talk at Defcon that hypothesized: if you want to murder someone and get away with it, hit them with your car.

> Drivers are often not found liable for hitting pedestrians in the US even when it is clear that an error on the part of the driver caused the accident, so liability insurance is not actually capturing those externalities.

Do you have a source for this?

> However, laws automatically holding drivers liable by default for accidents with pedestrians unless there were clear extenuating circumstances, as some other countries, might be another way to change this situation so that this risk could be better captured by liability insurance.

What countries have those laws, and how have they worked out? Why not just do something sane like treating it like any other civil case where people who cause damage to others are liable for it?

the problem with this is the same as the problem when police shoot people. when there's only one side left, justice tends not to occur.

justice tends not to occur

I think you're being a little disingenuous. Most police are shooting people in self-defense (https://www.statista.com/statistics/585140/people-shot-to-de...). A minority of victims are actually innocent, and justice still does tend to occur in those specific situations. For instance, George Floyd's killer received a (presumably) just punishment.

there are several problems with these figures. first of all, the unknown category. this data comes from police departments. if they "don't know", it means the person was unarmed. otherwise they would have said. secondly, the vehicle category includes anyone who was in a car. while a car theoretically can be used as a weapon, that also is a category the police can put anyone they shoot after pulling over because "I was afraid they were doing to drive at me". thirdly, caring a weapon isn't illegal. this chart doesn't break down by whether the person with the weapon was actually threatening the officers with it, just whether there was a weapon on them when they were killed. in the most egregious cases like George Floyd, the police sometimes get charged but it's rare. Floyd's case was exceptional because it room place over 9 minutes in broad daylight with dozens of witnesses and multiple camera angles. there are hundreds of unarmed people killed by the police every year, and the vast majority see no charges.

I think non-fatal in injuries are significantly higher than fatal injuries. I don't have a source for that for USA at hand but it's certainly true globally by a factor of 15-40 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/road-traffi...

Also, anecdotally, I hear quite a lot about family of deceased in wrongful police shootings suing police. Although I don't think the difficulty that a private citizen has getting justice after being wronged by a police department is really at all the same as most road accident situations.

My guess is most insurances settle and it never goes to court, at least criminally.

Well the OP was indicating that it didn't even go to insurance.

Japan has percentage-based liability, and generally speaking there is a large onus on the driver of cars to do the safe thing when close to smaller groups.

For example, you have to slow down to under 10km/h in theory if there are small children on the sidewalk next to you. Up until recently, a bike collision with a driver was considered 100% the driver's fault even if the bike was riding against traffic (That was changed so that the liability is 100% if the bike is riding on the right side of the road).

The point of all this is that there is such a thing as mixed liability, and the idea that it's either one or the other person's fault is just completely unworkable. And because there's this percentage-based system, you can ratchet up the liability based on who is more likely to cause major damage, without having binary results for really tough things.

I know there is such a thing as mixed liability, that's pretty common in civil court systems isn't it? I don't see what point you're trying to make with it.

You didn't really answer the questions I was asking OP for either. Japan puts a large onus on drivers but appears to have backed off from some of it? That is actually interesting though, why did they change?

Well my point is that there's a lot of mixed liability things baked in, so there are many many many many things that can make a driver liable, because there's not this fear of "what about in this extenuating circumstance X???"

The change is mostly around making rules more strict for cyclists, as cyclists... well, they also pose a danger to pedestrians! There is a pretty famous case of a cyclist hitting an old lady and killing her.

Some people moving here get annoyed because a lot of times the liability split ends up being 90% driver/10% victim, because there are technicalities, but generally speaking even for pretty "egregious" behavior from pedestrians the driver is ultimately expected to be doing their best. Things like "but there was a blind corner, how could I know somebody was going to ride from that corner" hold no water because drivers are supposed to slow down in those cases, for example. I don't know the state of liability in the US but I imagine it's a bit less victim-friendly.

> What countries have those laws, and how have they worked out?

Here in Norway the driver is assumed to be at fault, mainly due to the following paragraph:

§ 3. Basic rules for traffic.

Everyone must travel with consideration and be alert and careful so that no danger can arise or damage be caused and so that other traffic is not unnecessarily obstructed or disturbed.

In case there's a major accident, the driver at presumed fault will have their license temporarily revoked right away. However if the investigation showed the driver drove with reasonable care and caution, the driver will usually be exonerated (and thus get their license back).

There's been a few notable cases regarding this, for example one case where a pedestrian crossed the road at night during winter in a poorly lit area, got hit by a a car and died. The driver was found not guilty as the pedestrian had not worn a retroreflectors or similar, thus the driver had no chance to see the pedestrian until it was too late.

However, due to the above, the driver will often get some blame. There's been cases where the driver does not get an involuntary manslaughter charge, but does get punished due to paragraph 3 above. A recent one I recall is this one[2].

[1]: https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1965-06-18-4/KAPITTEL_2#%...

[2]: https://www.nrk.no/osloogviken/broytesjafor-frikjent-for-uak...

That's criminal liability, but we were talking about civil.

Still, that seems even crazier. A pedestrian can step out right in front of you even deliberately and if it happens to be broad daylight when they do, you have to somehow prove you were not negligent otherwise you can be convicted of manslaughter.

Is that really so crazy? Driving a vehicle means constantly putting others' life at risk. Being a pedestrian does not. Holding people driving vehicles up to (significantly) higher standards seems like the sane thing to do, considering the immense damage they can cause to others.

Having to prove yourself innocent of criminal accusation? Yes I think that is a pretty bad system. That has nothing to do with the standards you have for negligence or competence of operation, it is about a private citizen being compelled by the state to provide proof of their innocence of a criminal accusation.

Having to prove yourself innocent of criminal accusation after killing someone else seems like a pretty reasonable system. The idea that killing other human beings using a car is "expected" and "the norm" seems to me like the bad system.

> Having to prove yourself innocent of criminal accusation after killing someone else seems like a pretty reasonable system.

I think you have it backward. You are being asked to prove yourself innocent after being accused of being the guilty party in an incident in which somebody died.

> The idea that killing other human beings using a car is "expected" and "the norm" seems to me like the bad system.

I don't know where you got that idea from. Seems pretty deluded.

It's a variant of "with great power comes great responsibility". The driver has taken non-trivial training to get their drives license[1], as they're in command of a vehicle which can inflict great damage to others easily. Thus there is a significant asymmetry between the driver and the pedestrian.

If a pedestrian suddenly steps out right in front of your car in broad daylight, in an area where it's not reasonable to expect them to (ie no crosswalk, not next to a school etc), then, as long as you weren't speeding or using your mobile phone, you'd most likely be fine. However if the pedestrian had for example been acting erratically just before, then the police might argue you should have taken more care.

Note that the paragraph I quoted applies to anyone venturing in traffic, including pedestrians. However, given the mentioned asymmetry, it usually falls down to the driver to be the more responsible party.

[1]: https://www.vegvesen.no/en/driving-licences/driver-training/...

> It's a variant of "with great power comes great responsibility".

It's not. The idea that being innocent until proven guilty frees you of responsibility is wrong. They are on separate axis. People get tried and convicted of criminal negligence causing damage, injury, death / manslaughter etc and for that matter all sorts of other criminal acts quite regularly.

Would you say somewhere like the USA where people are usually quite strongly innocent until proven guilty has a problem incarcerating enough people?

> They are on separate axis.

Maybe I explained myself poorly. Of course the driver is innocent until proven/found[1] guilty. That's separate from the potential charges and punishment. It's the latter where the greater responsibility of the driver comes in.

[1]: If you're "just" fined, you can accept or take it to court to get the police to prove it there.

> In case there's a major accident, the driver at presumed fault will have their license temporarily revoked right away.

> Of course the driver is innocent until proven/found[1] guilty.

those two statements read as incompatible to me, possibly that's where the confusion in this thread is coming from. having your license revoked is itself a serious penalty in the US.

> having your license revoked is itself a serious penalty in the US.

Unless you're relying on the license for work, I'd agree it's probably a more severe action in the US than here in Norway, where most people live in areas with well-functioning public transport.

There's one important detail that I had forgotten, as I have never been exposed to this thankfully. If the police wants to temporarily revoke your license, you have to agree. If you do not agree, it will go to the courts within three weeks[1]. The police, and courts, should weigh the impact of revoking your license against the severity of the incident.

[1]: https://nye.naf.no/trafikksikkerhet/lover-regler/tap-av-fore...

Perhaps because this is just one of the external costs, and these costs are absorbed through taxes (for instance, road wear is higher for heavier vehicles, so lighter car effectively pay for the SUVs and trucks)

There's many instances of direct subsidy going through SUV [0]. I don't remember the exact framing, but basically tariffs and other rules carve out a SUV shaped bubble for US makers to operate with extra low competition, and subsidies will often go there too when they don't want to make it explicit it's only for US makers.

The recent EV plan would be one exception to this, where it's worded straight as a middle finger towards foreign makers.

[0] https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Hybrid/story?id=97505&page...

> instance, road wear is higher for heavier vehicles, so lighter car effectively pay for the SUVs and trucks

The correct answer in that case is to quit wasting time & effort creating taxes for personal vehicles, and just make commercial truckers pay it all. It spreads the cost of the roads around to everyone who benefits (even if you don't have a car, you benefit from the roads existing). And since the damage to roads scales to the fourth power of the axle weight, the difference between a car and SUV isn't too dramatic, compared to the difference between an SUV and a big rig.

Good reasoning. But take it one step further…who pays when shipping costs go up?

> even if you don't have a car, you benefit from the roads existing

That's the most interesting part to me. Trucks using the road is really important to our society, and if everyone benefits from it I'm not sure it makes much sense either to make commercial entities pay in full for it.

The same way railroads where heavily subsidized and water ways are also usually state/government projects, road maintenance could be (and probably is up to a point?) handled at the same level.

My ideal would be to get rid of SUV preferential policies so there is no need to counterbalance their use on other aspects. In a balanced setting, SUVs are rarely a rational choice (cf. the cars that get chosen everywhere else in the world).

> Perhaps because this is just one of the external costs, and these costs are absorbed through taxes (for instance, road wear is higher for heavier vehicles, so lighter car effectively pay for the SUVs and trucks)

The externality we are specifically talking about is the safety risk to others that comes from having a larger vehicle. Other externalities can be solved different ways, but doe this specific one this seems like precisely the scenario addressed by liability insurance.

We legislate safety standards that require cars to get heavier to meet them.

The best course of action would be to correct our standards to make lightness and damage to other vehicles part of the safety requirements as well.

Yep, classic fallacy of judging actions on intentions rather than results (i.e. ignoring unintended consequences).

A. Cars get bigger because of safety standards.

B. Bigger cars cause safety issues.

C. Rather than unrolling A to adjust the original incentives, we stick a punishment (taxes) to offset some of the incentive we are placing in other areas

Do five star crash test ratings therefore overstate the COMPARATIVE safety of small cars? Or do they account for the risk reduction of larger cars? Eg https://www.ancap.com.au/safety-ratings?is_current_model=tru...

They revised the tests recently to use a bigger car going faster, so they are taking this into account.

Crash test ratings are generally scoped to within the "vehicle class." So a 5-star sedan is safer than a 3-star sedan, but there's no way to directly compare to the star-rating of a vehicle in a different class. (For example, the rating tells you nothing about how it compares to a 4-star SUV... though we can speculate the 5-star sedan is probably less safe because of the massive size difference.)

The only way to have a global metric would be via underlying objective data. The only data I've found for that is "vehicle death rates per 10 billion miles," which is here. [1]

The data is a few years old (and was a bit difficult to find!), but I relied on it a lot when I was car-shopping recently.

[1]: https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...

This makes sense yet I never really thought about it to be honest. Here's the same things with a filter-able table version

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

A higher gas tax is an obvious approach for both safety and climate change. We could lower income tax a little to make up for it and add a supplement for those who can least afford it.

Or just to keep up with road maintenance and construction costs. The Federal gasoline tax was last increased in 1993 and should have doubled by now to keep up with inflation. The end result is that Americans have revealed through their elected representatives that they prefer to keep fuel tax low and let general taxes pick up the slack.

Big numbers on signs have undue influence on voter opinions.

these internet anti car and urban planning discussions are like bubbles of alien culture. I would not be able to walk around town, well one of the largest cities in the US, and find ANYONE that thinks like this. maybe if I camped out in one or two particular locations over a few days like the most hipster bike shops I know.

Before I was able to WFH I even rode my bike to work 60% of the time. I'm the outlier..

The ‘fuckcars’ subreddit is popular lately, often pops up on the r/all ‘front page’. It vaguely seems that US people have a suspicion that the need for cars and the revulsion to public transport are in large part due to the existing state of things, and aren't an absolute requirement.

Still, it's fun to see that USians' current ideal of public coexistence is to be separated from each other as much as possible.

Public transportation is inferior in almost every way to private cars.

The only real advantages are cost, emissions, and the ability to read a book instead of focusing on the road.

The US, being overall a very wealthy country, is going to go straight to self-driving Teslas which address the second and third consideration, and not indulge in every other irritating and suboptimal aspect of public transportation while pretending it is better.

Ah yes, infamous US buses getting people injured and killed every day, and mowing down pedestrians, bikers and cyclists. Jamming up roads with thousands of buses, making driving actually slower than... proper public transportation. With endless unsafe driving and road rage from the droves of inexperienced bus drives. All the road maintenance from uncountable buses everywhere, oh wow. The infamous US subway taking just as long as a car, instead of a direct route at 80 kmh. I'm so glad I'm not living in the US.

If for some reason you're gonna engage in the same tired internet arguments in which everyone else have already been, should at least come prepared.

P.S. Forgot to mention that cities full of cars are unpleasant to see and hear, and to navigate for pedestrians. Replacing human-driven cars with self-driving cars does nothing for this, just like it doesn't address the emissions problem. Self-driving cars are worse even than taxis in a number of ways.

These absolutist arguments are not helpful. If one lives in a dense urban area, a car is just a nuisance most of the time. Avoiding car ownership and using a rental for an occasional trip likely makes more sense. If one can afford keeping it parked and insured most of the time, having a car available on short notice is convenient but not essential. On the other hand, I live in a sparsely populated region and I couldn't even go to the grocery without a car.

Any arguments relating to transportation are kind of pointless if not put within the right framework.

"in the US", where a tiny minority of people live.

Which city?

Rare in places like Dallas/Houston/Phoenix, but most people don't commute by car in NYC/Chicago/DC/Philly/Boston/SF/Seattle, and most people I know in those places without kids love not having to drive everywhere

Experiencing decent transit fuels that culture imo

Outdated numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_high_...

When picking a car I wanted as much safety as possible for myself but also especially my kid and the obvious choice was a SUV (Qashqai in my case). I am aware of the dangers of a big car to others and try to drive responsible, but self-preservation (and that of my family) is top priority. Whether that warrants discussion (Maybe it's better dying myself than killing a family of 5 driving the other car) I don't know, but we're touching absolute basic instincts here if we want to change that.

On a side note: Newer cars also really do a lot to avoid dangers to the outside world (e.g. emergency braking for bikes and pedestrians), so I would rather throw a lot at improving here than discussing the safety of heavier-build cars.

This is essentially a short-term over long-term rewards type thinking. By choosing the larger car you are effectively creating a world that is unsafer for your child, both in terms of if they are not in a car on the road, but also in terms of increased global warming.

I would also like to see statistics if kids in families with large SUVs are actually safer. There were enough cases of parents accidentally driving over the kids because they didn't see them that it might very well change the statistics.

Interesting prisoner's dilemma example.

That's basically a desired property exposed by covid past few years.

"So, what's good for me but who cares about everyone else?"

Go ask retirement/nursing-home workers how many times they went to work sick and then count how many residents died there.

Good luck undo-ing SUVs (and massive 4x4s) I distinctly remember the year they started becoming popular and you could no longer see down the road anymore.

Disempowered low wage healthcare workers don't really have much of a choice. Line managers push them to cover shifts. These facilities are chronically understaffed because labor intensive work is inherently expensive. Another level up often the funding source is Medicaid which is also low rent. The result is problems such as no paid sick leave, no sick leave period, and workers being capped at part time schedules so they have to string together two jobs and become infection vectors between facilities.

Yes, everyone has taken the "no choice but to murder you" option past few years.

Everyone has their excuses because there's no penalty for killing someone like that.

Your coworkers are doing it do, they won't tell you they tested positive last night or this morning, frack it they are going into work, your problem, not theirs "no choice". Every hourly wage person is doing it to you, every delivery, restaurant, cashier, pharmacist, everyone. Their comfort is their priority, not yours.

When the SUV rolls over a pedestrian or cyclist, or punts a car down the road like a soccer ball, that's exactly what they are saying "Sorry, no choice".

At least the behavior is predictable now, was hidden before 2020, now obvious.

The thing is, people don't just die quick from covid. They die slow and painful. Then there is the millions who will have long-covid maybe for the rest of their lives until they kill themselves from the chronic suffering.

So many excuses, so many murderers. Society is just bizarre.

Doesn't have to be this way but it's what everyone keeps doing.

I totally understand your point. Have you ever worked a bad job? And relied on it for yourself or even your entire household? Quitting a job when you can click on one of multiple recruiter emails and start next week, or because it's a casual job you picked up for spending money is entirely different from being one paycheck away from being late on rent.

>delivery, restaurant, cashier, pharmacist, everyone

One of these is not like the others. Pharmacists did the majority of COVID-19 shots.

'mass * velocity' means it's a truism that heavier cars are more dangerous if they hit you. All factors being equal the question of car mass is indeed a significant issue. But if you compare road deaths in (for instance) Britain (about 21 per million) and Romania (about 93 per million) it's clear that priorities in this case at least, should be a focus on driver behaviour unless someone wants to suggest there's some other factor I've missed. That's my experience having driven extensively in both countries. I gather EU average is around 44 deaths per million.

Heavier cars are not only deadlier — the formula for road wear is a ratio of weights raised to the power of 4 — that means heavier cars are also worse for our roads by magnitudes.

Sure they still don't compare to trucks, but hey, sure.

Here's an odd idea. Imagine being able to limit the overall momentum of a vehicle based on its expected mass. That is, a governor would cause the top speed to max out sooner for heavier vehicles, so owners would have to tolerate being just a bit slower than their more nimble road-mates.

Sure, people could fudge with them, just like some do with scooters, but could be tied to penalties in the event of a collision or other traffic enforcement that detects the excess speed. Defaults matter, so the net effect would still be improved safety.

Prisoners dilemma very much at play here

Only if your frame of reference is the driver in the car. However, you are not always a car driver. Sometimes you are crossing the street on foot to get to your car. Then the very thing you optimized for comes back to hurt you, literally.

The reality is that we are a meta organism. The vehicle fleet itself has some optimal weight that balances survival for all individuals in the system to its most optimal level, but this paper shows that heavier vehicles are not that and in fact do more harm than good for the system overall.

> but this paper shows that heavier vehicles are not that and in fact do more harm than good for the system overall

How did you derive that from the paper? If anything, this paper + the data from https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-... actually sound like everyone should switch to SUVs, cause switching to SUV reduces the death rate by up to 6 times, and everyone else doing the same (according to the paper) only adds up to 50%, so the total is a reduction of up to 4x.

I mean it is kinda obvious, that the bigger - the safer. Cause in a collision of to ginormous mechs chances to keeps a small capsule with the driver intact are basically 100%.

I am impressed so many people here read the report and took it as a confirmation of their existing bias towards small cars with 0 thinking.

Also kinda the same reason why buses don't need seatbelts.

My understanding was that buses don't have seatbelts for two reasons:

* Per capita and per mile, buses are far safer than personal automobiles.

* When buses do get in accidents, seatbelts are more of a hazard than a safety feature (e.g. by preventing impaired riders from fleeing the vehicle on their own).

The latter doesn't apply to personal vehicles to the same degree, since they're preventing fatalities in different types of crashes for the latter (e.g. being flung out of the front window).

To the parent's point. Buses are safer for the occupants because they are heavier. But they are more dangerous to the smaller vehicles occupants.

I suppose they don't tend to go into high speed highways.

There are also fewer buses needed to carry the same number of people, and they are operated by professional (and hopefully less distracted!) drivers.

I'm not sure a good data source, but I'd expect that the serious injury rate per person-mile of buses is much lower than that of private cars.

I don't have serious injury, but deaths per 100m passenger miles is 1/10th to 1/20th the rate for private passenger vehicles.

Rail is 1/2 the bus fatality rate.

<https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...>

It is funny how our bubbles shape our views. I've never been on a bus that didn't have highway speeds as part of its regular route.

Most vehicle accidents are between vehicles. Most vehicles weigh far less than busses. And most busses spend most time travelling at lower speeds on surface streets (though long-distance road coaches are exceptions).

I've been in a bus-automobile accident, at low speed (< 25 kph). The experience from within the bus was an abrupt stop, I've experienced similar from normal braking.

The auto involved suffered major rear-end damage. The bus's front bumper was somewhat scuffed.

High-speed rollover accidents, collisions with fixed structures adjacent to a high-speed roadway, or plunging from a bridge or cliff might benefit from additional restraints. Those circumstances are seldom encountered.

There's another factor here and it's large animal collisions. You're safer in a high driving position with a heavier vehicle. Here in Australia SUVs with "roo bars" are popular with people who do a lot of bush driving. There are a lot of collisions with kangaroos and other animals unfortunately and they can more easily come over the bonnet and through the windscreen of small cars.

https://www.nber.org/papers/w17170 (11 year old paper)

PDF -> https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w17170/w171...

This is exactly what taxation, regulation, laws, and the like are designed to solve (and what Nash spent a lot of effort studying [0]).

Buying and using a car is a great example of a "finite non-cooperative game". Everyone's self-interest in not dying drives them to make decisions that increase the chance of dying for everyone else. Everyone against everyone. Individual gains result in an aggregate loss for the whole population (everyone drives increasingly larger cars, dangerous to more and more people, i.e. cyclists, pedestrians, other cars, etc.)

The fact that the US government simply just allowed a cave-man-esque non-coop game to take hold is the most shocking aspect of all this, particularly when there is an entire field dedicated to studying this kind of phenomenon.

As someone who doesn't live in the US, how did it get like this? In my own country, higher taxes for larger vehicles and smaller roads luckily exist.

I disagree with the other comments that mention taxation as a solution, as that's just, obviously, egregiously, an awful tragedy of the commons.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Examples

Ahh, time to shit on drivers of larger vehicles and pontificate on all the ways we can tax or regulate owners into submission.

I will say one thing we can benefit from is raising the bar to getting your license. It’s extremely easy to get in the US, and it should be much harder. Regardless of what you drive.

It's so easy because not having a license functionally cuts you out of any sort of economic or social activity except for a very small sliver of people who live in transit-rich cities like New York and Boston. America's car culture is too ingrained to insist on higher standards, or the people would revolt.

Raising the bar to get your license doesn't do anything to solve the problem because people will still drive just as badly once they get their license. Especially the richer, wealthier people that are driving the largest cars on the road already.

The actual solution is to either tax larger vehicles into oblivion and force the downsizing of cars so that the vehicle size arms race stops or redesign our road infrastructure further so that pedestrians and vehicles are completely separate.

whats the safest weight we can have that is the least deadliest of them all?

Something like a honda fit or a similar subcompact car. Lightweight, around 2500 lbs for these cars give or take between makes, plus they all generally have a sloping front end that will just shed pedestrians off of it like a cow catcher on a train. Many SUV and truck front ends are pretty flat otoh.

We’ve known that the heaviest cars are the safest for a long time. It’s the reason why, in the 1970’s and 80’s, parents bought big heavy cars for their college-bound children.

deadly for pedestrians and bikers too.higher gas prices not enough

So basically tanks are at the pinnacle of driver safety

This headline contradicts the linked article.

The HN headline (Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else) includes the non-driving passengers with "everyone else," implying that heavier cars are deadlier for them.

The first sentence of the abstract in the link states "Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for other vehicles."

Number one reason I ride the bus.

Ah yes, a bus. The obvious solution to large, heavy vehicles on the road.

one bus means 30 fewer heavy vehicles on the road

Actually yes. Buses are driven by professional drivers who have to pass through a much more aggressive filter than your average SUV drive does.

When I'm out driving, walking or biking in Seattle I worry much much less about bus drivers doing something unpredictable than I do about light vehicle drivers.

To add irony, part of the added weight of cars is the ton of safety equipment that legislators mandate more and more of every year.

Maybe the last stage will be airbags on the OUTSIDE of the car.

It's a thing https://www.automoblog.net/volvo-v40-offers-world-first-exte... https://www.motor1.com/news/520551/subaru-levorg-external-ai...

It's a red herring though. The 2020 toyota yaris weighed 2400 lbs like something out of the 90s.

What is?

Once again, some Redditard modded FACTS down.

https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/why-are-modern-...

Inertia arms race

About ten years ago, when the idea that we might soon be buying self-driving cars was itself rather new and the speculations on ‘robot ethics’ popular in the media, one dude wrote: “This will be easily decided by capitalism—why would anyone buy a car that kills its driver and not others?”.

Though for Tesla the prediction was afterwards adjusted by current obvious cyberpunk tendencies, in that publicity points for the corporation turned out to override the driver's wishes—still, evidently traditional manufactures don't have the same compunctious, as they need little advertisement in the US.

It's an arms race basically.

The HN title is inaccurate. Based on the abstract, it should say "occupants" instead of "drivers".

This is exactly the type of problem that taxes and regulations are good at solving

Or encouraging

Well so far a lack of regulation has led to a tragedy of the commons like situation.

As a road cyclist commuter, I find that the most aggressive motorists tend to also be in larger vehicles. Whenever I'm taking the lane to attempt to prevent an unsafe pass, it's almost always the driver of a large truck that will still execute an unsafe pass anyway (forcing oncoming traffic to take evasive action) or will tailgate, rev their engine, yell out their window, and/or wiggle back and forth in apparent frustration and intent to intimidate me.

I too have noticed that the more impervious the motorist feels, the more sociopathic the driving behavior.

So basically (some) people only drive carefully when threatened with personal harm...

Yeah I think it's largely a psychological issue.

I'm a slightly larger than average man - imagine how much of a nut job people would see me as if I did that all that because a little old lady was slowing me down in a narrow supermarket aisle.

But somehow this behaviour is acceptable from inside a giant vehicle.

It's also not an "I'm being slowed down" issue - roads here all single lane and often used by farm tractors, I've never heard a single person go into a rage fantasy about that.

I'm realizing I may just be an impatient SOB. I get annoyed at slow people in all sorts of circumstances - grocery stores, airports, etc. but in those cases it is usually easy to just step around them and it doesn't last long enough to get actually frustrating.

On the other hand, if I were in a grocery store and I found the aisle I wanted blocked for 60 seconds by a middle-aged man wearing a spandex uniform who had decided to barricade the entire aisle while he does a calisthenics routine - I would get quite frustrated. Especially if I eventually got past him only to find another such person doing the same thing in the next aisle over. I feel this is more analogous to the situation I regularly encounter with bicyclists.

My frustration would be oriented around the thought "Can't you do this at home instead of selfishly inconveniencing everyone else?"

Have you thought that perhaps your need to barrel through the streets at high speed in a 1-3 ton metal box might be an inconvenience to others?

You’re contributing to global heating, local air pollution, and streets that are unsafe for anyone not in a big metal box.

The cyclist is not.

I’d reconsider who is really “selfishly inconveniencing everyone else” in this scenario.

Just so no one gets the wrong idea: the vast majority of competitive and enthusiast cyclists and mountain bikers within the US own and use vehicles. Nearly every group affiliated cyclist I know routinely transports bikes to trails, meetups, and events. Our average carbon footprint is likely higher. Cyclists without cars are rarely met and usually the butt of jokes.

I think in this thread we are not discussing people who ride bikes on trails, but people who use them on public roads to get from point A to B, e.g. home to work and back again. I don't care how many cars you have parked in your garage. If you take the bike one day a year, then you're doing better in terms of the environment than someone who does it zero times a year.

Also bicycles are vehicles, by any definition.

> If you take the bike one day a year, then you're doing better in terms of the environment than someone who does it zero times a year.

This isn’t true. I think it would shock many HN nerds just how much flight and driving many athletes do. Nobody is cycling 100-3000 miles to attend a tour or enduro event. That’s not even counting the emissions from our eight-cylinder 4WDs, trucks, SUVs, vans, RVs, etc.

Take the bike instead of plane/car/train/etc, not in addition to. Wasn't that obvious from context?

I understand the prescription, but it’s descriptively untrue that American cyclists are climate neutral, or always better for the environment.

If you see a road cyclist athlete, chances are high that the person travels around the state/country/world, and you aren’t seeing their sport- and lifestyle- related emissions. It’s like observing someone behind a desk and claiming, “Wow! You are so climate-friendly!” even though they drove to work.

You can try to restrict the subject to the minuscule echelon of car-opposed cyclists, who nobody in our cycling communities takes seriously, but it’s a misleading look at our actual cycling culture.

No athlete is going to forgo the conveniences of flight/driving and wear themselves out before a distant meetup or race. It’s not even logistically possible. Our vehicles also carry our supplies, tools, components, and backup bikes.

Nobody is going to bikepack up 13,000 feet of elevation for 12 hours, to begin a brutal 100-mile race through the mountain passes, when they can chill in an air-conditioned SUV instead.

Is cycling instead of driving better when you can? Yes, obviously. But it’s not a complete picture.

The smug superiority that comes from message board commuter cyclists is clueless. The disdain toward drivers is a self-blow. It is hypocritical naïveté.

It just makes the reputation of cyclists unjustifiably worse.

Whenever i get into 'a discussion' with an angry car driver, at some point "you cyclists" - as if we're a cohesive group (in your case - "Especially if I eventually got past him only to find another such person doing the same thing in the next aisle over.") I just casually mention that as peadophiles drive cars, the angry person must be a paedophile, and i refer to car drivers as such: you paedophiles. And i do not stop. If the conversation gets heated i just accuse louder. And louder. Seems people in big cars that dont have time to wait, but do have time to stop and discuss traffic with me don't like being accused, and publicly embarrassed. No, i cant do it at home, unlike yourself, you fucking paedophile. What are you in such a hurry for? School closing soon?

Fun? How dare a cyclist use a road for fun! Or exercise, deity forbid.

But it is no problem when drivers go out on the road purely for a fun and/or unnecessary drive.

UPDATE: My point is that many drivers go out for 'wasteful' reasons, such as recreation or e.g. because they forgot to combine trips. Such drivers cannot easily be spotted, so they don't attract ire. But they slow us down. Such situations lead to much more inconvenience when you add it up.

This is a cartoonishly bad take on cyclists. They aren't doing calisthenics in a spandex uniform in a fucking supermarket. They're commuting, same as you, only they take up much less space and emit no pollution. If more people were cycling then your drive would be much better, since you wouldn't be sitting around in traffic all day. Share the goddamn road.

I am a cyclist. We shouldn't pretend like all ire against cyclists is just about commuting. Some do ride purely for fun. On back roads, the impatience probably has something to do with "they don't need to be here". I don't endorse that, but, well, people can be less than great.

And yes, many cyclists rock the spandex. And they should be, because no one wants an angry nether region.

For the reason stated in your last paragraph I think it's a shame that the default shape of a bicycle is what it is.

Recumbent bikes are just so much better in every aspect, yet the market for them is so small that they often cost as much as a used car.

I'd rather zip around in a Milan(velomobile) than something that gives as much seating space as two palms of my hands put together.

> On back roads, the impatience probably has something to do with "they don't need to be here"

The classic country lanes in the UK are 1.5 cars wide at most. Far too narrow to overtake a cyclist without their help and good visibility (which you typically do not have). I am trying to go from a village to a town to buy some groceries, and instead of doing a comfortable 40 up the hill, I'm doing 5. Because three cyclists are in the way and have no interest in allowing anyone to get past. These will not be the last set I encounter. Turns out the Saturday I have off to go food shopping etc is when all the cyclists like to go out and enjoy themselves.

Side note: Horses have a similar impact, but always ensure people are blocked for the minimal amount of time possible. Similar with walkers. Cyclists rarely do anything at all to allow people past in my experience.

Anyway, I don't get angry or aggressive. But it is frustrating especially when the cyclists using these roads are not local and act like the cars who have to use them to get around in their local area are the baddies.

FWIW, the pattern in our village (technically a very small town) on a Saturday morning is that the recreational cyclists are the ones supporting the village businesses like the cafe/deli, while the locals drive off to an enormo-supermarket. I have a hard time casting the cyclists as the bad guys in this scenario.

Drivers use the roads for purposes other than commuting as well; it's not selfish to cycle for transportation even if you're not going to work.

The real issue is the complete lack of infrastructure available.

> I'm realizing I may ... be ... impatient

Yes, but you aren't alone, and most people have their limits.

It is really interesting when/why people have feelings of entitlement. What about getting in a car should create the expectation that a drive will go smoothly? That one day a year when the all the green lights align and you arrive to your destination 5 minutes faster? (And then many of us proceed to fritter away that 'saved' 5 minutes on our internationally interconnected web of decentralized tubes running a bewildering array of unnecessary computation to fuel what companies put in front of our eyeballs.)

I don't own a car and cycle everyday (in a country/city where I'm faster than any car rather than slowing them down), and I thought this was a hilarious analogy for the relationship between motorists and cyclist in the US at least.

Honestly, it’s the city’s fault for not providing dedicated bike lanes. There is enough space for everyone if your local urban planners don’t suck. When I moved from Dortmund, a city were the cycling experience is great, back to my dad I realized just how bad it is to let cyclers use the main road without a dedicated lane.

The answer is a simple "no".

You can't bike for transit "at home".

You can't bike for enjoyment "at home".

And biking to exercise is a different form of exercise than riding an exercise bike. Raising resistance is not the same as going uphill. Maintaining your bike in balance and steering/controlling it is not the same as sitting on a static frame. Not to mention, the overall experience is completely different, and that can also matters for reasons related to quality of exercise.

It's not analogous because a middle aged man doing a workout in a supermarket is using the space in a way it's not supposed to be used. Riding a bicycle on a road is how you're supposed to use the road. This is where your analogy fails.

Your problem seems to be entitlement, not impatience btw. You feel entitled to feel people should use the road your way. That realization might help you fixing the issue.

Wait, what? How did the calisthenics come into the picture? Are you aware that a lot of people – even spandex-wearing ones – are just using their bike to get to work and back home to their family again, preferably in one piece? Does this change your reaction?

I don't engage in road rage, but I do get properly irritated by farm vehicles that choose to drive their max speed 10mph straight through town in the middle of rush hour. I honestly think there should be regulations about when you're allowed to drive slow vehicles like this on most roads. There is probably an environmental impact just from causing this mass of cars to slow down.

The farmers are working. They don‘t choose to do that, they have places to be and need their machines to get there. Do you honestly believe they‘re doing that for the lulz? What should they be doing?

I don't really fault the farmers individually but I wouldn't mind rules to stop them.

So you want to find rules to inconvenience the people working long hours, so you can save a couple of minutes. How about realizing that you just need to plan a few minutes more for your commute and chill out. You‘re sitting comfortably in your car, likely with aircon running.

It's not saving a couple of minutes, it's saving literally days of people's time if you add it all together.

I don't know about common city/village planning in the USA, but where I am from, farm machines can almost always go around the village using secondary and tertiary roads. They don't need to go through the center or use the ring road. In this situation using these primary roads during traffic and driving way under the speed limit isn't the best choice from a communal point of view. Besides, given the width of their machines, driving through heavy traffic is more unsafe than going by a back road.

Of course, using the back roads often also means taking the "long road", albeit just by a couple of kilometers. I understand the urge to take the shortest route, but I think people should think of others on the road too.

Why don't you take the long road to avoid the farmers, then? You can't control other people's behaviour, but you can make your own life easier.

Especially farmers during harvest time work from sunrise to sunset because crops ripen when they do, not according to some nice schedule. Asking the farmes to take the long road when everyone else could is inappropriate. Especially since if you‘re on a slow vehicle, 5km of detour cost significant amounts of time as opposed to driving a car.

Outright threats of harm — I’m sorry to hear you are subjected to this.

On my eBike commute there are a lot of bike lanes which mount the curb and share space with pedestrians. At 15mph and 250lbs of loaded vehicle — me + the bike — I feel that it’s just too much risk for me to ride there so I ride on the road instead. It’s definitely the safer option for the pedestrians. This brings a lot of abuse on me but thankfully only in terms of shouting and honking. It’s certainly been an exercise in building patience.

Would cross town journey times really be that awful if we dropped everyone down to 15mph? I’m talking urban Europe. When you take traffic and stoplights into consideration, what’s the lowest maximum speed possible before the speed limit is the decisive factor in journey times?

> Outright threats of harm — I’m sorry to hear you are subjected to this.

No worries. I've been out on the roads for a couple of decades, and so these days it's not the occasional person who throws a hissy fit that concerns me. I'm a lot more wary of the motorists who aren't at all aware of what's happening right in front of them. This includes those who literally can't see me because the front of their vehicle is so high up that it completely obscures me from their vision as they turn across my lane.

Brussels has implemented a 30km/h default speed limit and it works. Our car journeys don’t take more time and it feels way safer to ride our bikes on mixed bike/car lanes

hey if they "tailgate, rev their engine, yell out their window, and/or wiggle back and forth in apparent frustration", it means they can see you which is the most important thing.

Imo the likelihood of an unhinged motorist killing you on purpose out of rage is vanishingly small compared to likelihood of one killing you without even noticing.

Motorists beeping at me is the joyous song of angels, they can see me!

There's been some studies over the years that point to the price of a vehicle being an factor in how aggressive & entitled motorists are. I wonder if the causation here might be both ways, with those drivers more likely to buy an expensive & larger cars.

E.g. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/expensive-car-drive...

I had a colleague years ago who used to say “no matter how pointless your job seems, at least you’re not putting turn signals on BMWs”.

Such a stupid stereotype. Maybe it is true where you live, but no where I am at all.

It's Seat Cupras here.

I’m glad Swedes are placid drivers. Americans generally are not.

I ride a motorcycle and can confirm that BWM drivers really-really want me to smash into them as they have seemingly forgotten how to use something as basic as turn signals. They also don't know who has the right of way, and will just cut in front of anyone, making me think they have also forgotten how to use mirrors. Suffice it to say, BWM drivers are quite hated here (Estonia) and often joked about as low-IQ wifebeater wearing low-budget Vin Diesel ripoffs.

Hah, so you can be sure that me and my 250 quid Range Rover are pretty considerate then.

That makes sense, it tends to be the Audis, VW Amaroks and Ford Rangers that drive in a rather aggressive manner in my country.

Oh, and owners of new Mazda 3s, for some reason.

But yeah, Audi is a prestige brand, and the Ford Ranger (lifted, with expensive mags and tints) is the prestige brand for cashed up / ticked up tradies, and the VW Amarok is the prestige brand for that tradie's boss.

Beemer drivers used to have a bad reputation along similar lines, but since a large second-hand market established itself, the BMW isn't as prestigious here as it used to be.

No clue what's going on with those Mazda 3 owners though.

> Beemer drivers used to have a bad reputation along similar lines, but since a large second-hand market established itself, the BMW isn't as prestigious here as it used to be.

Around here, BMW is an ultimate wannabe brand, usually bought (very) used by some young guys, full of testosterone and not very smart. If there's a tragic accident where a car full of people steers off an empty road, hits a tree and kills everyone in it, during the middle of a weekend night, it's usually a BMW too (the scenario is usually such that a group of young people are coming back home from some disco and the owner, young, stupid and possibly drunk, is trying to impress them with his driving).

Same here in Romania when it comes to those accidents, really, really saddening. Especially when you see girls as young as 15 or 16 who had been on the back seats and who have lost their lives (the driver is usually 20 or 21).

Hopefully the SH value of decent enough E46s going all the way up will price those people out of that market, so that they'll turn back to front-wheel rides that are not as easy to throw into a tree.

Mazda wanted to be like BMW, congrats.

It's not price itself. It's relative income spent. Anecdata: I cannot remember ever being tailgated by a Rolls Royce, Maybach, or even Ferrari. These kind of cars are sufficiently expensive that they are not within reach for people reduducing food consumption and living in a smaller spaces to afford them, but by people with sufficient disposable income.

The most dangerous ones are those that pay an arm and leg to get a big car. Given a typical distribution of income an analysis will of course still find a correlation to price. Especially as not many people being able to buy a RR are taking part in such studies.

The bigger reason you've never been tailgated by a Rolls-Royce, Maybach, or Ferrari is that there are vanishingly few of those cars on the road in the first place.

Not RR nor Maybach, but around where I live (capital city in Eastern Europe) the most obnoxious drivers are not those behind the wheel of expensive vehicles (that would be the German trio + Lexus and some others like that), but those that drive cars which are a little higher than average when it comes to price, I'm thinking mostly about Skoda Octavia and VW Passat sedan.

If I see a Skoda Octavia (especially white or grey-colored) in my rear-view mirror somewhere on a curvy road I know for sure that that person will try to surpass me no matter the incoming traffic and the visibility.

So I see it more like it a curve when it comes to the obnoxiousness of the drivers vs the price of the cars, those that have the cheapest and most expensive cars are relatively ok, those that are approaching the average price are so and so, with those that are just above that average being the most obnoxious.

And, of course, the Rolls-Royce and Maybach is likely driven by an employee of the owner rather than the owner, and will not get aggressive in his boss' car.

Bad drivers know they will crash so want the safety for them, fuck everyone else.

I drive a big old 1997 Range Rover. I pass cyclists way wider than I pass cars - I'm not averse to getting the driver's side tyres on the grass on really narrow roads. One reason for this is it has the aerodynamics of a garden shed and I'm terrified that I'll pass the cyclist safely only to knock them off with the wake turbulence once I'm well in front :-D

What I've noticed is that if I pass really wide, everyone behind me - actually everyone - passes just about as wide as I do.

One thing that does my nut in is cyclists not taking the lane when there's nowhere to pass. Just stay in the middle, stay consistent, don't try to let me past if you're not happy to move over. I can wait because I need a lot more room than you think, I can see much further up the road can you, and I'll decide when it's safe. Literally yesterday I was behind a cyclist who was waving me to pass on a quiet country road, but he couldn't see the other cyclist coming towards me just about 150m further up the road. If I'd gone because the guy in front of me was waving me past, I'd have splatted the other guy who he couldn't see.

I ride my bike the same way I drive - as slow as possible and as fast as necessary, right up the middle of my lane, and with really stupid fuel consumption.

You sir, are a good driver.

I appreciate you're driving considerate for cyclist (being a cyclist myself). I also concur with your observation, that the first driver behind a cyclist will often "set the scene" of how other cars will pass (or yell/honk at the cyclist).

I also agree that taking the lane is often the safer option for cyclist, however I also understand the motivation of cyclist trying to move to the right and getting the following car to move through. I also have one too many times being essentially tailgated (not really the right term for a bike), by a completely nutcase motorist who then overtakes very aggressively and purposefully close. Better to get them in front of you as fast as possible.

I don't know the US law, but in Poland the law says everyone (motorists, cyclists) is supposed to ride as close to the right edge of the road as possible. So, if you ride your bike in the center of the lane instead, you're breaking the law, and the motorist has the right to be angry (at least in Poland).

As close to the right as possible is around 75cm as confirmed by courts. It's more if there are parked cars on the curb. On many small roads it means taking the lane to ride safely. Additionally you can take the lane close to a juncture and if you're turning left. It's also common sense to take the lane if you want to prevent a dangerous pass. It's a message to a driver: "it's not safe to pass now". You're in front so you see more than them.

Anyway, I am yet to see a cyclist in the middle of the lane without good reason here but I keep seeing a lot of entitled angry drivers.

Same in Germany, but „as close as safely possible“ is around 80-100 centimeters from the right end of the handlebar - more if there are parked cars to avoid being hit by an opening door. The handlebar is usually around 60-70 centimeter wide, that places the center of the bike at around 1,20 - 1,35 meters from the right edge of the lane. A lane is about 3,00 - 3,50 meters wide - the center of the lane would be at around 1,50 - 1,75m. That‘s pretty close to the 1,20 which is the minimum safe distance. Cars that want to pass with the recommended distance of 1,50 - 2,00 meters from the left end of the handlebar need to go into a second lane in any case.

Middle of the lane is a perfectly good spot to aim for.

Not to mention that if you're planning a left turn in the next intersection, close to the right edge of the road is not "as close as safely possible" anymore. Depending on traffic volume, "as close as safely possible" may be to take the left lane an intersection or two before the anticipated turn – just like you would in a car.

The UK has more sensible rules (because the edge of the road is inherently unsafe with things like drains). A cyclist is perfectly entitled to take the centre of the lane, and cyclists may ride two abreast. It's up to the car to effect a pass only when safe to do so, at a minimum distance of 5 feet.

'Taking the lane to prevent an unsafe pass' ... ?

There might be a reason people are angry, and it might be that some people are simply more likely to let you know.

If you try to "take the lane" you are essentially positioning yourself in a way that tries to police other drivers behaviour, or block them. This behaviour in a car would annoy people, and it is more annoying on a bike because bikes are slower. I understand sometimes this may make it safer for you, but this is why people are getting annoyed if it's confusing to you.

I also can't know what you consider to be an 'unsafe pass' but these days I think cyclists and road rules seem to expect cyclists to need a totally impractical amount of extra room. I think a few feet is often comfortable, depending on context, when I'm cycling, but official guidance in the UK is 'a car width'. How then should cars pass people cycling side by side? Not at all? I personally think these rules have created a more toxic situation on UK roads. They need to be more practical if they want better conformance. They do also need to be policed. But I strongly advise members of the public to not try and enforce them themselves.

The road works because it is governed by written rules. The written rules allow the cyclist to take the lane. If you don't want to obey the written rules don't operate a motor vehicle.

I didn't say it's not the rule or people are entitled to disobey them. I just explained why people get annoyed.

You didn’t. You gave “strong advise” and an opinion on passing cyclists with a “few feet” of room, which is dangerous and contrary to the highway code, which states a minimum of 1.5m.

It's not dangerous at all depending on context, a word I was careful to use. You don't have a magic bubble around you that makes you safe with a 1.5m radius.

Think of it like this - if you’re driving your car within 50cm of me on my bike, and I swerve to avoid something, or fall off sideways, you’re more likely to hit me than if you’re passing at 1.5m.

Context has nothing to do with it. Just obey the law and let cyclists ride the roads without someone in a metal box deciding what level risk they should be exposed to.

Most roads in the UK have two lanes, both of which are wider than a standard cars width, so if there’s no oncoming traffic it’s perfectly safe for a cyclist positioned in the middle of their lane to be overtaken by the driver using most/all of the opposite lane.

I don’t know what you’re expecting a cyclist to do when legally using a road ? cram themselves into the leftmost 50cm of carriageway so the truck can skim past through oncoming traffic, leaving no room for error ?

Your “strong advice” against cycling defensively, as the GP was describing, is harmful. Positioning yourself to allow maximum room for error and unforeseen circumstances is literally the first thing that you’re taught on any cycling proficiency course.

> Most roads in the UK have two lanes

I don't know where you got this statistic from but it's not true where I live.

>Your “strong advice” against cycling defensively

I didn't advise that, I said don't try to enforce rules. I think you should "take the lane" sometimes.

These cycling proficiency courses that tell people to cycle in the middle for no reason sound harmful.

>I don’t know what you’re expect a cyclist to do when legally using a road ? cram themselves into the leftmost 50cm of carriageway so the truck can skim past through oncoming traffic, leaving no room for error ?

As I said, depends on context. This is safe depending on vehicles involved, road, speed, conditions. I'm going to cycle like this, you don't have to.

> I'm going to cycle like this, you don't have to.

Exactly. The law allows a cyclist to “take the lane”, so many of us do. This isn’t “policing” other drivers, it’s simply following the rules of the road and staying safe.

If it's staying safe it's staying safe.

But sometimes it's not necessary, then you're just blocking people unnecessarily. Which is not very sociable in my opinion, but I won't freak out and be aggressive/dangerous. But insane people will. And I don't get why someone would choose this confrontation when they can just share the road.

>If you try to "take the lane" you are essentially positioning yourself in a way that tries to police other drivers behaviour, or block them.

If a driver gets so annoyed at another road user that they'll honk at them or become agressive, then the driver is by this definiton trying to police the other's behaviour.

But really this should not be a battle between 'drivers' and 'cyclists'. Most people can be both, and certainly most cyclists are also at least occasionally drivers.

When a cyclist 'takes the lane' they are trying to signal to the drivers behind them that a narrow pass is unsafe, if they need to pass then they need to wait for a clear road from the opposite lane, just as if the cycle was a large slow motor vehicle. Except the cycle gives the passing driver excellent visibility and an easy pass.

Another reason can be if the cyclist has an upcoming left turn, they obviously need to position themselves towards the left of the lane (s/left/right/[UK,AUS,NZ,IN,etc]).

I'm not justifying it, just explaining why people are getting angry. These people are likely all sociopaths, but nevertheless this is why.

Ok, but then the more appropriate recommendation would be a periodic pshycological evaluation for drivers, not to tell vulnerable road users to stay away.

> This behaviour in a car would annoy people

Every car takes a lane, all the time.

A car shouldn't pass a cyclist in the same lane, it's dangerous to the cyclist.

Just pass like you would a slow car, by using a different lane. I do it all the time, I promise you it won't make much if any difference to your arrival time.

Also why parents buying their teenaged children large vehicles is a tragedy of the commons type situation. They're more likely to get in accidents because they're young and and inexperienced, but hey a big car will save them..

Edit: Wow a whole reply chain spawned from this comment got nuked! Stay safe out there Americans, you've got some wild divisions amongst yourselves and its only getting worse. For the record, I love trains, subways, buses and biking but I also own a crossover sized vehicle and recognize that everyone has their own personal preferences and requirements and that no one transit solution will meet everyone's needs, I hope you all can see that too without violence.

I wonder what the right "if everybody drove this.." is? It is probably not a lotus 7 clone. What is the smallest vehicle with superb crash test ratings?

it's probably a train

Trains are the last word when pedestrians gang together and say “hit this”.

It resembles something like a public bus or subway.

More realistically, it's smaller cars on slower city streets.

Not even pedestrians die at 30kmph.

Edit: you are right it's about 3% die at 30kpmh, vs ~35% at 50kpmh. My bad. Still lower speeds dramatically improve the safety of cars.

https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2011PedestrianR...

"Die" is a bad target. I don't want to be a quadriplegic if I don't have to be, and a car going 30 MPH (realistically 40, if the limit is 30) on a residential street is more than capable of doing that to me.

They absolutely can. People can and do die from falling over and hitting their head. A 30km/h impact is not trivial, it can be expected to break bones and cause internal bleeding that can be deadly. An impact to the spine or head can be very easily be life changing.

Also, residential roads in the US are usually 40km/h

I personally know someone who was hit at about 10-15hm/h and they were hospitalized and broke their spine.

My college girlfriend was hit by a car right next to me going those speeds during a turn. It seems slow, but meat on steel is pretty brutal at any travel speed. It was a four or five month recovery. Remember that the velocity of the vehicle is only a part of the picture — mass is the damage dealer here.

Mass is what contributes to inertia which allows the speed to be carried for longer... The acceleration, which is the difference in speeds, is the real damage dealer.

People regularly die by hitting their head on a hard surface when falling from a standstill.

kpmh ?= kilometers per millihour?

Probably, high-speed trains that carry you from one slow car into another.

A bus is an even bigger and heavier vehicle that will obliterate pedestrians, smaller vehicles, and goats.

The distinction is professional drivers and safety standards.

Right: buses, despite their size, kill far fewer pedestrians and passengers. Size is a factor for personal automobiles because individuals lack the training (and restraint) that's key to bus driving. It's hard to see a world in which the US accepts that and increases the restrictions on obtaining a license, however.

> buses, despite their size, kill far fewer pedestrians and passengers.

Is that still true after you adjust for the number of buses on the road vs. the number of cars? If not, then this is like saying driving drunk is less dangerous than driving sober since only 30% of car crash fatalities involve drunk drivers.

Yes because of the driver itself is behaviorally different between the bus and the car. The bus drivers are profesionals who drive no higher than the speed limit, they heed all traffic laws, they generally keep to the right or otherwise drive predictably, and some times they even have dedicated bus lanes. Your average car driver is not all of those things at once, if they were there would be a lot fewer people going 5 or 15 over the speed limit and driving drunk.

Those are a lot of reasons to think it's plausible that it might still be true after the adjustment. Is there actual data that shows it is true, though? Also, I've seen buses break traffic laws before, so don't pretend they never do.

The data does show this, look at figure 1 here at the top of the article:

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/12/19/heres-how-much-safer-...

According to that figure, while transit buses are safer for "Users (passengers and employees in a vehicle)" than passenger cars and light trucks are, they're more dangerous for "Others (e.g., pedestrians and passengers in other vehicles)". And isn't that exactly the same thing going on with big vs. small cars? Buses are bigger than cars and SUVs, so they're safer for their own occupants at the expense of everyone else. (Note that the figure measures fatalities per passenger-mile, not per mile, so the advantage that fewer buses would be needed than cars to move the same number of people has already been factored in.)

The USA has very pedestrian hostile laws/infrastructure and buses definitionally stop and start where there are a lot of pedestrians (and many of them will be crossing the road in a rush because they saw a bus).

That data could be representitive of buses being big and heavy or it could be representitive of them sharing space with pedestrians.

Compare the same dataset for busses on a grade separated RBT with well paid/trained drivers and platform doors and you get a very different story.

> or it could be representitive of them sharing space with pedestrians.

But there's nowhere that buses share space with pedestrians and cars don't, so that can't account for why buses are more dangerous than cars.

Unlike large personal vehicles, modern buses/coaches are also designed with sight-lines that makes it easy to see pedestrians.

I'm highly disappointed that electric vehicles haven't taken advantage of the "no need for a engine in the front" and make vehicles that are different. Many trucks have the driver in FRONT of the front wheels, but very few passenger vehicles do that, even though without an engine there's really no reason not to.

Something similar to a Tuk Tuk but with internal and external air bags for crashes.

They spent a lot of time marketing how safe the SMART car was for a small vehicle. I believe they even showed putting a semi tractor on top of the SMART car to show how rigid its safety shell was.

Which is misleading. Which would you rather do: gently set a 50lb rock on your toes, or drop a 5lb rock on your toes from 4 feet in the air (equivalent to an 11mph collision)?

A bike. If everyone just rode a bike, not only accidents would be less lethal, there would be a lot less congestion and pollution. Also we might get fitter too.

And barring that, an electric scooter.

And maybe an electric motorcycle or trike for when you have to carry more stuff. And an electric car for big families, and an electric van for vacations…

The right answer is the tool for the job. Chances are you don't need a huge pickup truck when you buy $200 of groceries. I can do it in a bike with some panniers so that means everyone can do it with an ebike. Need more than $200? Just take multiple trips a week and cancel your gym membership. Need to haul a few hundred pounds of manure? By all means take the truck. It's just when you look around at the modern world today, a lot of people are sitting in traffic by themselves in a vehicle on their way to work less than 10 miles away, or buying a few things from the store less than 2 miles away as soon as the need arises. Its a lot of wasted vehicular capacity. If you were a business buying a machine that you only used a fraction of its capabilities, you'd consider getting away with a leaner machine for most use cases.

For a lot of people I talk to about getting around when it comes up, the major stopping point with biking is just the lack of infrastructure and feeling afraid of cars. Most people aren't comfortable taking the lane while biking so it becomes a dangerous experience when they don't. As the saying goes, though, if you build it, they will come. Any city I've been in that has built out a gridlike network of bike lanes seems to have a lot of people riding around. Once you build them that network you enable a lot of trips for those people uncomfortable with the existing road network.

Are there any good examples of how to do this infrastructure? In my neighborhood they took the major street in the neighborhood and took one of the lanes and painted it to be a bike lane mext to the sidewalk, and parking spots further out. No physical median, just white paint on light concrete. No one parks in those spots, they would get demolished by cars. And no one bikes there, they bike on less busy streets one block in either direction. Also, at every intersection the parking spots disappear for a right turn lane. The bike lane doesn't, but it is hard to see so the cars go over the whole way.

A nearby neighborhood did something similar but with physical medians. Much better, but still people just use less busy streets mostly.

My main issue getting to work is not those streets, but post ww2 neighborhoods that have one entance and exit forcing me on to highways with glass covered shoulders and speedlimits over 55. That is what I want them to fix. But that would actually involve earth moving and eminent domain, not just a bit of paint or concrete.

I think Irvine California has done a good job adding bike lanes to that sort of suburban design

What about trucking and shipping? The US - where this study took place- is huge, and most of it is very far from ports. 18 wheelers/semis are the biggest users of the American highway system and are necessary to get goods to/from production and consumption sites

These trucks also contribute to the rise in vehicle size. I did not like driving when I was in a sedan sized car sharing the high speed highways hours from cities on those highways

Well put the trucks moving stuff in places where the people koving themselves aren't.

If they're going extremely long distances you could even have some kind of dedicated hard wearing road surface. And if lots of them are going to the same place you could get them to move in a convoy. And once they're in a convoy you could hook them together...

So build an entire second interstate system? That’s not really realistic, which tends to be the problem with most ideas to move away from cars.

They're alluding to trains.

What about the last mile issue? Like getting products to grocery stores and outlets?

Last mile distribution does not require extremely large trucks to be feasible.

I'd think that that depends on the density of the rail network and sparsity of the destinations.

That’s extremely realistic. The Netherlands has a separate system for bikes. The truck system would just be what the motorized traffic system is now, be it a bit scaled down.

Even in the Netherlands cars are not dead. A few years back (pre pandemic, maybe wfh will last, maybe it won't), I was staying with a friend. They all had cars, but one had just sold their car and committed to public transportation and bicycle. Even there he was really regretting his choice. In the US it isn't even a question. The vast majority of people need a car. We can make a goal of changing that, but it will be a while. So for now, what is the least bad car?

I think you and I have different concepts of realistic, ha. How do you propose people travel from rural place A to rural place B? Public transportation? That would be extremely expensive to implement, and would operate at a massive loss to service the entire US.

The interstate system and truck delivery seems to be pretty fantastic at servicing the continental US when paired with freight trains, cargo planes, etc. And it is similarly effective for delivery of all other kinds of things including people.

These systems would be good to implement in many cities, but interstate shipping and travel is another thing altogether.

Come on. The USA has one of the best freight railroad systems in the world. A large percentage of our cargo moves on rails. But rails can't extend everywhere, and it will seldom be practical to carry perishable, time-sensitive cargo in trains. That stuff pretty much has to go by truck.

Trains can be far faster than trucks. There are various serious deficiencies in the US train system that mean that transit speeds are far, far lower than they could be. There is no real technical reason why trains can't be faster than trucks with a similar marginal cost as to today. The infrastructure and systems are simply deficient.

Unfortunately not all goods are going to the same places. Nor are all goods moving at the same pace. Freight trains are a great piece of logistics infrastructure, but they can't just be US logistics infrastructure.

The US rail system is very well established and has been well built out since before the rise of the automobile. But goods need to get from the rail depot to the end destination and right now the best we have is enormous 18-wheelers and as long as those are on the road, it's too dangerous for me to want to take a smaller car

I'll just bike all around Montana.

We might also get heatstrokes. Source: Florida resident

I wonder how the climate got so hot...

“Collectively, cars and trucks account for nearly one-fifth of all US emissions, emitting around 24 pounds of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases for every gallon of gas.” (Source: epa.gov)

So to answer your snarky question with snark in kind, mostly from the other 4/5 of emissions.

Do that with two toddlers and let us know how it goes when you get back from the grocery store.

I see parents bring toddlers in trailers to grocery stores and farmers markets routinely these days. They make these big ebikes that can even haul kids directly without the trailer now and millennial parents have been buying them.

That’s cute, but not practical for most people.

I mean it could be. Life existed before the car. Your grandparents might have even experienced that as a toddler.

Lots of things could be, but removing cars from the average American's life will limit job opportunities, limit economic choices, and consume a lot more of our time.

It's not about removing cars, its about limiting them and choosing a more appropriate tool for the job. Sometimes you can get away with a hand trowel instead of an excavator.

Yes, but if you own a car, then you're already paying for something that can save you time and personal energy so you can do things you enjoy, like playing with your kids, or tending your garden. Often times the quickest and easiest tool to use is what you're going to reach for, and that's a car most of the time.

And the whole thing is that the personal convenience you get comes with great costs to every other facet of life when you account for the negative externalities that a car centric lifestyle brings. Now you have a bunch of black particulate on your window sills because everyone in your neighborhood has a heavy car that produces tire dust. Maybe you live a few years less on the whole because you a literally hardly moving around all day when all the walking you do is in your home or on the way to the car, when you could have been working in at least some time cardio wise riding a bike or merely being a pedestrian for all those decades. Often times for short trips on surface streets, like what would be a 10 minute car ride turns into a 12 minute bike ride or so, because stop lights eliminate all the advantages of a powerful car on city roads and perhaps effectively set the speed limit for everyone to like 15mph regardless of the signed speed. Four minutes a two way trip on the whole is not much time wasted away from your children or your crops.

For my commute to work, its something like my choice of a 35 minute drive (not counting the circling I will have to do finding a parking spot at the other end) or a 45 minute bike ride. I probably save time on the whole even without counting the parking fiasco, considering now I don't need to find time in my schedule to work in my cardio.

I see this every single day here in Tokyo. It's totally normal to have 1 or 2 toddlers on a bicycle.

That is actually extremely common in the Netherlands. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA

If everyone rode a bicycle, there would be a lot more bicycle deaths. According to table 6 of this study, https://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/21/1/47, 71.4% of the fatalities involved motor vehicles. If we apply that percentage to todays number of bicyclist deaths (900) in the USA, we get 257 deaths that do not involve motor vehicles.

If we add congestion into the mix since everyone is bicycling, I imagine a higher number of accidents would occur. Right now an estimated 67 million people in the USA ride a bicycle for an estimated 15 billion hours combined per year. 228 million licensed drivers times 290 average hours on the road equals 66 billion hours per year. Let us assume the bicyclists will have to spend three times more travel time due to lower speed of bicycles. That equals roughly 200 billion hours of bicycling per year. 200 billion hours divided by 15 billion equals 13.3. 900 257 deaths per 15 billion hours equals 3,341 deaths per year. The average number of deaths per year from automobile crashes for the last few years is about 36,000.

Even if this is a conservative estimate. I think it is safe to say you are essentially correct.

Netherlands has ~200-250ish cycling deaths a year with a ~30% modeshare.

Half are elderly.

About a third are on ebikes

87% involve a car.

That's around 0.8 deaths per hundred thousand people worth of bike modeshare not invovling a car. 1/15th of the USA and a quarter of netherlands road deaths.

This is with drunk cycling penalties being almost completely unenforced (although not sure how it compares to US drunk driving prevalence).

Granted cars are used for the longer trips so it's not completely sound, but bikes are used for congested trips. Small vehicle modeshare also shortens all trips.

My guess is the safest vehicle would look like a train followed by lightweight velo no heavier than a dutch bike (and not optimized for aero) or a recumbent trike with a roll cage and a lap belt. Also we can conclude that either current ebikes are too fast and heavy, or they result in people cycling who would be too frail otherwise.

Then your child gets to live the rest of their life knowing they killed someone.

Unless the people in the other car are in a big car as well.

Where does that leave pedestrians and cyclists?

As a fine paste, and a footnote in the newspaper "he should have been wearing a helmet" or "he was found with a phone". You want victim blaming in the US? Be a pedestrian or cyclist.

This can be fixed easily... divide the safety rating by the number of (thousand) pounds a vehicle has.

No more juicing your safety rating by adding more mass.

I mean, we could just do what Europe does and also include a pedestrian safety test in the safety rating.

The issue is that the US still hasn’t done it.

The US is of the opinion that the safest place for pedestrians is in cars.

Well, Obama mandated pedestrian safety be included, then Trump blocked the change. Finally (hopefully) congress forced it through as part of the infrastructure spending bill:

https://www.fatherly.com/news/vehicle-safety-ratings-will-so...

I'm not sure people care what the result of the test is, if it costs them money or a feature they want more. That's just how Americans are.

I will say that people seem to put up with emissions standards, so it wouldn't be unthinkable to add some standards that improve the safety of other road users. But as the other comments mention, it's a hard sell; most Americans think the people on the sidewalk or on bikes should be driving instead.

I mean, if people didn’t care, car commercials wouldn’t tout “5-star safety ratings” as a feature.

Well, the safety features are for the purchaser in that case. If you let your cat drive and he goes off a cliff, you survive. That's worth an extra $1000! We're talking about a new thing; safety for people other than the people in the car.

That's what the original article is about; people buy heavy cars so that they are more likely to survive the accident than whoever they hit.

Probably the idea is to somewhat sneak that in through the back door, i.e. hope that car manufacturers would be too embarrassed to advertise with a bad crash test result, even if the bad result was "only" due to lack of pedestrian safety.

Right.

If even one car model gets changed as a result of this, that would already represent a possible decrease in deaths. It doesn't have to be a total, dominating success to be a net positive.

I wouldn’t even really call it a backdoor. The equivalent European and Australian tests already have this, and they have not seen our recent uptick in deaths.

A lot of danger to pedestrians and cyclists actually comes from the design of the car. It's currently cool to have like some sort of livestock-rammer over your front bumper that just crushes pedestrians instead of sending them up over the hood. People don't have those for safety, they just think it looks cool. We should really make those illegal on city streets. (If you drive a pickup truck out on your farm, this doesn't apply, I can see the legitimacy of that sort of vehicle choice and that sort of mod. It's for actual productivity, not style.)

Basically, the industry puts 0 thought into protecting other road users, and it's a really big problem. We should start mandating safety features for those outside of the car.

The big problem is that driving isn't just for rich people. It's a lifeline for the poorest Americans that have no choice but to trade free time for commuting time to be able to afford to live. So if we mandate expensive safety features, it's just a tax on the poor. People might be willing to pay the tax to save their own bacon, but they certainly aren't going to do it to save some random person riding their bike to work. That's why we have to dramatically rethink how we build our cities and suburbs. Things like electric cars to combat climate change are a distraction from the real issues. Fossil fuels aren't smashing pedestrians, dividing our cities into unliveable neighborhoods with 20 lane freeways, or mandating 1 parking space for every person in a 10,000 person office building. That's just cars, and electric cars fix none of it.

The good news is, it looks like all the suburbs built in the 50s are due for things like water main replacement, street replacement, sewer replacement, etc. and nobody can afford it. So we'll have a chance to densify and cut cars out of our culture for good. Until then, hide your children and hide your wives, so that people can freely rampage through your neighborhood on their way to a meeting they're already 20 minutes late for. In a carbon-sensitive way, of course.

> Basically, the industry puts 0 thought into protecting other road users, and it's a really big problem. We should start mandating safety features for those outside of the car

The Euro NCAP rating has been evaluating pedestrian safety for some 20 years now. That’s why all modern cars have tall fat noses – it distributes load across more of a person’s body and reduces injury rates. Fifth Gear did a great segment about this in the early 2000’s where they found it’s better to be hit by a 4x4 (term SUV didnt’ exist yet) than by a sedan.

https://www.euroncap.com/en/for-engineers/protocols/vulnerab...

The American NHTSA is starting to add pedestrian safety ratings as well.

https://www.fatherly.com/news/vehicle-safety-ratings-will-so...

There comes a point where all those safety features increase the cost of the vehicle, putting them further out of reach for those poorest Americans. Technology does not solve ALL problems. Safety improvements must come from more driver responsibility just as much as technical improvements.

Other fun fixes: tax by the weight of a car. Disallow individual purchases of vehicles where the dashboard is over 6 feet off the ground (yes, some people would make an LLC just to buy the giant car. It would stop a lot of it). Place a price cap on cars!

My favorite pie-in-the-sky-impossible-in-practice thing: force cars to be ugly as sin. Would help with the huge cars, but also has a nice side effect of getting rid of sports car drivers as well.

Comments like this make me think we should have a “speech tax”, online comment licensing requirements, and a real-name mandate.

My favorite “pie-in-the-sky-impossible-in-practice thing”: force anyone advocating for this kind of petty authoritarianism (my sardonic comment included) to wear a neon pink t-shirt in public, labeled, front and back, with “I tried to be a little dictator on the internet and all I got was this stupid t-shirt”

Yeah, clearly my comment about making all cars ugly is a serious policy proposal that I have any power to enact, instead of me just venting about driving skills and safety. Sports car driver isn't a protected class

Everyone can act like piloting a multi-ton machine through city centers is their god given right, but I like thinking about the alternate universe (and hell, the _actually existing universe_ in many places in the world) where people can feel safe, even if it means that city driving is a slog.

They already effectively do this by having laxer standards for passenger safety ratings for smaller cars.

Depends on if you’d rather death over disfunctionally maimed or comatose. Even a without a vehicle, human bodies interacting with a velocity difference of 35 or so is not pleasant.

Yup, and approximately 0 people would die if we made the speed limit on city streets 15mph. Give the bikes going 18mph a speeding ticket too, that doesn't even make me mad.

Remember that the average speed in Manhattan is less than 5 mph. There is little to be gained in travel time by careening down neighborhood streets.

I'd be less sanguine about the potential reduction in death. It'd be interesting to see the stats in terms of distance from home to freeway, and freeway to destination and get the change in commute time compared to deaths occurring between those segments.

If you live 10m from a freeway, then at 35mph just over 15m is ok. At 5mph 2 hours seems less than acceptable. I can be math-dumb, so it wouldn't be surprising if I'm way off.

  (10/35)*60 = 17
  (10/5)*60 = 120

Even at just 2m away the difference in commute is substantial.

  (2/35)*60 = 3.4
  (2/5)*60 = 24.0

Just as a sample, I used to have a 3.5 mile commute in NYC. It's about 45 minutes by walking, 25 minutes by bike (google maps says 15 minutes, I never did it that fast), 12 minutes by subway, or 19 minutes by driving. That's with current speed limits. New York City is so clogged with traffic that walking is actually competitive with driving, and biking would be faster than driving currently if the traffic lights weren't timed for an imaginary 25-35mph speed limit (that is never achieved).

Out in the suburbs, the distances are long and speed does matter. That makes the situation very tough; 15mph speed limits are going to severely devalue your real estate investment. I really have no answer for a sane transition here, and that's a big problem American society faces.

(On the other hand, the ocean consuming New York City is going to severely devalue real estate investments, too.)

Is it any better for a pedestrian or cyclist to get hit by a Ford 150 or a volkswagon? The outcome is bad either way. Collision avoidance would be better than the lesser of two outcomes.

> Collision avoidance would be better than the lesser of two outcomes.

We could ensure collision avoidance by banning cars from cities! But that's presumably not what you meant.

Yes, it is much better (although certainly not good) to be hit by a small VW than it is to be hit by a pickup truck. European safety standards reflect this fact; the US's standards should as well.

In that case we’ll have to get an even bigger car to be safe.

And now we all live in monster truck land.

On the other hand, most obstacles struck in 1-car accidents are heavier than even these cars.

Yeah I actually bought my nephew a fairly well kept up 20 year old crown victoria for his birthday because his single mom couldn't afford a car. So I'm guessing you wouldn't like my purchase, but I was thinking selfishly I suppose about his personal well being.

I don't think that's an especially heavy car. I don't think it's a bad choice, but I suspect a modern unibody sedan will behave a bit better in a crash. And it seems like side protection came a long way in that time too - my 2016 sedan's doors felt like like opening a bank vault after I was used to the thin doors of my 2001 car.

Don't be too confident in your nephew's well being. The Ford Crown Victoria (and similar Panther platform vehicles) has terrible ratings for side impact crashes.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/ford/crown-victoria-4-d...

Or get rid of human drivers. All data points to the fact that we are terrible at driving.

Does this apply to hitting trees/poles? That's a lot of extra force you need to stop.

For whom? Heavier cars are safer because they slow down less when you hit something. If you hit something sturdy enough to stop you dead anyway you’ll probably cop a similar amount of damage as a smaller car.

The extra force is mostly a problem for the tree, not for you. You get injured either because something squishes you (modern cars are good at avoiding that), or because you are decelerated too quickly, which is a function of speed and stopping distance.

With movable/deformable obstacles, heavier car = obstacle gets moved/deformed more = higher stopping distance.

A heavier car doesn't reduce stopping distance with heavier obstacles (a bigger car increases it though).

Your own weight has to decelerate to a stop, and the force it takes for your head to go 60 to 0 doesn't change based on what's around you. What does change its that a heavy car may resist the obstacle more -> longer distance until stop -> longer time to stop -> your head has more time to stop -> lower deceleration force on your head.

No. In single vehicle crashes heavier weight is deadlier. Increased weight means longer stopping distance and higher rollover risk,

This is

More anti-car rhetoric from the globalist academics... No thanks, I'd rather live a life I enjoy than what they think, even if it's more dangerous. Large-scale personal autonomy is precisely what they are most afraid of.

I can't mind-read the motivations of the academics here, but I do think the concept of the plebs having great personal mobility has been strangely under disfavor in recent years. As just one example, we saw during the biggest hysteria periods during Covid that people weren't allowed to leave too far from their homes.

The personal mobility and freedom for all you claim to love looks like a Renault Twizy or a 5kW electric motorbike or a velomobile with a 500W motor as well as walking, bikes and a functional transit system.

SUVs and 'Trucks' are just a danger and direct harm to your neighbors and subsidizing them imposes a massive burden on the people paying for the vast swathes of asphalt, inflation of infrastructure costs and medical care they entail. They limit mobility rather than enabling it because they require any spaces which they dominate to be made impassible without a giant protective metal shell They're so destructive and awful to be near that entire neighborhoods need to be redesigned to get them away from the residents as quickly as possible when in use. This results in requiring any worthwhile destination to be removed so that cars do not come towards residences.

Try going across the country that way...

Are you going across the country every day? You can always rent a van.

A cross country trip in a velo with 500W for the hills and no cars to run me over would be great. There are some rather indirect trails around me that are really nice out to about 300km, but they stop just short of the most interesting destinations.

If the extra 40% or so vs a velo or 25% vs a LEV of time on a very long trip matters then it sounds like a high speed train would save significantly more. Either option sounds better than a car which might travel slower than a velo's average unassisted speed due to traffic so you have to budget the time anyway and then be stressed the whole way.

I'd invite clarification, if you care to respond. I'm not sure if you're making an argument against the concept of car ownership in general, or instead advocating to deemphasize their importance in peoples' lives and redesigning transit and neighborhoods to be better and more pleasant without cars (a general goal which I think most people would aspire towards).

The end goal should be allowing people to not have cars if they wish to live that lifestyle, and not taxing (either directly or via things like parking minimums and other externalities) non car owners for cars that make their lives worse.

It is impossible for everyone in an urban environment to drive (you wind up with the katy freeway if you try and it still doesn't work), so just make the bare minimum concessions of space and priority to allow those people who don't want to be in a car to get out of your way, and pay the whole costs of your driving (which are presently on the order of a dollar a mile, but would also go down with more equal use).

Just my 2 cents, but with some of the posts in this thread you're actually advocating a position that I think many/most people would largely agree with you on and then snatching defeat from the jaws of victory by making it sound awful with your overall tone and persuasion.

For instance, you might not love them, but there's good roles that SUVs and trucks can fulfill to enrich peoples' lives. They're tools that can help you do good things like build a garden or deck, move or pull the supplies needed to enjoy an extended camping trip, or many other nice things that cannot be done on a scooter or moped.

To your last paragraph, you can actually rent a substantial work truck from Home Depot.

I think a lot of the argument comes down to the idea of using the right tool for the job. Look around at the people sitting in traffic with you. Some are filling their truck beds with stuff, sure, but plenty of others are not, and are driving with one occupant. Suddently you don't need all those seats or that towing capacity to pick up a bag of coffee, like you don't need an octocore processor to run your hello world script. Maybe you can get away with an ebike and a cargo rack, and orders of magnitude less energy spent to do the same work of you getting that bag of coffee.

You'd put even less wear on your other vehicles, like that work truck you really need once or twice a month by not using them every day for all other tasks you do in life. Maybe that work truck you own can now last 10x as long in your hands with the lightened use it now sees. That means you can now own a work truck while consuming 1/10th the resources it takes to keep up a steady supply of work trucks for yourself from the environment. That's huge.

The response is the same no matter how polite you are, so I'd rather normalise ridiculing ridiculous positions like the apparent absolute necessity of being able to move a piece of plywood no matter when and no matter where you are at any cost including trillions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives each year.

I'm sorry, I can't hear your peasant concerns over the sound of my private jet.

Personal autonomy? The car is your ball and chain. It's pretty common to hear about people wholly avoiding parts of town because the parking is annoying for example. Now everywhere you go in live you have to find a spot to legally keep this huge hunk of metal. Meanwhile, with a bike, I'm finding its often the fastest vehicle in town when there's any surface street gridlocking going on. I can filter past all the traffic to the front of the intersection, I'm always going the same speed no matter traffic and don't have to plan for it at all. I can park wherever for free and sometimes can even just bring the bike inside.

Meanwhile, being hit by a bus or train is far more deadly than being hit by the largest SUV on the market. And yet will anyone here say that moving away from cars and adopting public transit is a bad thing? Perhaps focusing on one variable isn't the best way to reason about the world. Just maybe...

I don't get drunk train drivers speeding down my street at 3 am and I've never seen a bus suddenly back out of a parking lot or driveway without looking.

Correctly designed transit and trucking has very few conflict points (ie. none on a grade separated metro or proper RBT) and many many fewer vehicles.

Cars represent unique dangers which are made significantly worse by size, speed, and mass. It is very difficult to kill someone in a 20-30mph LEV which weighs 100-400kg

You're still just accounting for one or two variables. Which is pretty much how all discussions online go, so I'm not sure why I'm wasting my time.

Well by which variables does manipulating markets to make small vehicles uncompetitive (or outright ban them) and having public policy designed to make non-car travel as difficult as possible make anyone's life better?

No idea, but that's changing the subject.

We humans like to get mad at things, especially things we have no power to control.

Which externalities do we tax? Which behavior of others should we control? What corporate and economic policies are bad? What should we do to stop the country from melting?

I do it too. It's a tale as old as time.

This is why I drive a Toyota Tacoma. Being high up is also safer, your vitals will be less impacted. I'm always surprised people don't know this. Driving a small car is almost irresponsible, especially with children

I legitimately cannot tell if you are serious or joking.

Dead serious. Why would I take on more risk

I wasn't judging, I just couldn't tell if it was satire or reality. Thanks!

I'm more confused why people are outraged at me wanting to protect my own life, or that I would need to feel judged for driving a bigger car. I'm a responsible driver and a regular citizen.

As has been explained to you before, you're just dumping the risk onto others. There's nothing especially praiseworthy about this.

Because part of being a responsible driver is minimizing harm dealt to those around you. In the same way that that requires driving at the speed limit, stopping at cross walks, and signaling before turning, it also requires having a bumper that would minimize fatalities when hitting a pedestrian. (Internal bleeding from a chest-height bumper is much harder to survive than a broken leg from a leg-height bumper.) The difference is that the former are required by both law and morality, while the latter is only required by morality.

You make assumptions that he’ll actually cause harm. I’ve never hit a pedestrian in my car. I’ve never hit someone on a bike. No one close to me that I know of has either. I know quite a few people that have had their cars hit by drunk drivers or reckless drivers.

I don't think that assumption is required here. Whenever predicting the future, it must be dealt in probabilities, not certainties. So if you're playing poker, you must evaluate the strength of your hand based on the cards dealt so far. Retroactively saying that a decision was made correctly because the cards drawn favored it isn't a useful analysis.

In the same way, it isn't necessary to assume that he will cause harm, only that it increases the likelihood of causing harm. With a larger car, a driver is less able to see pedestrians, and children/shorter adults may be blocked from view entirely. Pedestrian injuries and deaths are on the rise in the US, opposite the general trend elsewhere. The primary difference is the prevalence of unnecessarily large cars in the US.

The probability of dying from a car as a pedestrian in 2020 is 0.2% and that includes people committing suicide by car. Dying in a traffic accident with another car is 1.1%. If you're playing the odds in poker, you worry about the latter more than the former.

Do you consider that decision as contributing to an arms race?

What's the alternative? Should he choose to risk dying in a crash for the nebulous greater good of lowering the average size of vehicles on the road? This problem will not be solved by individual drivers acting against their own self-interest. It needs to be solved at a societal level, probably with regulations on maximum vehicle size (which already exist, but are being worked around by mfrs)

Signed, A Miata driver. If I ever get in a wreck, I'm guaranteed to lose, but at least I'll go out in style.

Yes, people should absolutely feel a social obligation to make at least some concessions to the greater good.

While this isn't a complete substitute for regulations that systematically fix issues causes by negative externalities, I'd rather live in a society where a lot of problems are avoided because my fellow citizens generally care about my well being, rather than one in which the government needs to intervene left and right.

What do they do when the society around them doesn't care and is reckless? For example, because drinking is so ingrained in many societies today, you have to do what you can to protect yourself from drunk drives.

Sure, it is. I have an SUV, because everyone else here has pickup trucks, and almost nobody can drive to save their own goddamn lives let alone mine. If raised trucks were not allowed, I would drive a sedan.

because you would have some consideration for other people. But hey, there's no law that says you have to care so you can keep thinking the way you're thinking.

Honestly it seems like a weird take to say people should care more about strangers than their own family.

As long as SUVs exist on the road I feel like it’s a safety benefit for my family to have a similarly sized vehicle to protect my wife and child. I can’t control what others do but I can control what I do to keep my family safe.

You _are_ taking on more risk — to the other drivers on the road. That's the crux of the post.

And this is the exact reason why additional regulation is necessary. Because each individual would pick the option that minimizes their own risk, while maximizing the total risk, the choice cannot be left to individual choices.

Well, there are individuals with at least a tiny shred of ethics, but you don't tend tofind them in a tacoma with a pristine bed

Sadly we’re in a phase of rampant individualism, regardless of any detriment to others.

Larger cars also make roads more dangerous for all users, because the lost visibility means attentive drivers cannot see and plan further down the road with a huge suv in front of them.

Reading the road is a key skill for safe driving, large cars hamper everyone’s ability to do this.

> we’re in a phase of rampant individualism

This is the history of the US from its foundation.

Individualism is a core feature of capitalism and the enlightenment. Group identities are cancer and although not a requirement of, parliamentary (democracy) emerged precisely with capitalism and the individualism it requires.

Ancient Athens, the Romans, and the Phoenicians would seem to disagree.

It’s why I said it’s not a requirement of. But Feudal society was toppled by capitalism which was powered mainly by democracy.

If you think individualism isn't rampant elsewhere, you need to travel more.

Sadly probably serious. Taxing bigger cars to the point it's noticeable to average driver is probably only realistic solution, even if that's unfair for people that just happen to have a bunch of kids

You do realize if everyone drove giant vehicles, we'd be back to square 1 right? Then what, put children in semis?

Yeah I realize that, but its optimal for me right now, and thats how capitalism works

That's how capitalism fails us all.

It's also how selfishness works.

It’s selfish to want to protect yourself? I guess it literally is selfish. But I’m not increasing my actual risk for some hypothetical reduction of everyone else’s risk. Semis, buses, industrial vehicles all share the same road I’m on, so why would I shrink my vehicle?

And isn’t it selfish for people to insist on riding their bicycles on the roads? Why is their willingness to increase their own risk my problem? I’m not asking them to ride bikes. They make that choice.

By the way, there is about 12k drunk driving deaths each year about about 850 cycling-auto deaths each year. Let ban alcohol if we really cared about safety.

Drinking and driving is banned.

Wow, as others said I can’t tell if you are serious or not. By this line of reasoning there is also the following. It’s optimal for me right now to : - answer that phone call in the subway. - Steal that item. - Play loud music at 2am. - fart in the elevator. And so on

It’s called antisocial behaviour.

A Suburban vs Suburban is still safer than Kia vs Kia.

And what about Kia vs Semi? Or Kia vs delivery truck? Or Kia vs city bus?

If we really cared about fatalities, then banning alcohol should be on the table, statistically speaking. 30% of all traffic deaths involve alcohol.

Alternatively we also all drive at 40km/h or less in cities and urban areas, accidents much less likely to be fatal.

I haven't been able to find any data by Google or Wikipedia - what portion of traffic deaths were caused by someone else drinking and driving?

Banning alcohol may be a good idea, but it seems infeasible. Last time the US tried it, it didn't go well.

The way the US went about it is just one data point. In Islam, we have successfully minimized drinking to an extremely large extent.

That is true. Islam has had many more centuries of practice (and quite a few Muslims drink depending on how strict they are ).

Yes, but you can also read about how when the prohibition was revealed, people obeyed without delay. It has been documented that people immediately broke their wine containers and poured them in the streets of Madinah, such that it flowed through them.

The way US goes about banning alcohol on the road is simply not working. There are really hard punishments for driving while drunk, but it is really loosely enforced. So you are very unlikely to be caught, but if you are, your life is gonna suck.

There is also hardly any accommodations for people to go out drinking outside of walking distance from you home (especially in rural areas; it might actually be safer for you to drive in a protected vehicle then risk being hit by a drunk driver on your bicycle). And to top it off, the police it self is really dangerous, so it is hard for friends or bartenders to justify calling the police on a drunk driver.

All this makes a perfect environment for people to rather “risk” drunk driving, which as we know is a disaster. I think banning alcohol is a terrible idea, providing accommodations, better enforcement, friendlier law environment, etc. will go a long way.

Irresponsible for which children, exactly?

I wouldn't be surprised if the change in risk to you versus to others is grossly asymmetric. Taller front ends are far likelier to kill people (pedestrians) in a collision.

Caring for children by driving a vehicle whose hood is taller than some adults. I suppose it makes sense if one believes they're far more likely to encounter children only in other tall vehicles. And that increased pollution and waste won't impact everyone's future negatively.

Taken to the extreme would my family be safest in a motorized siege tower? What about all the moments near home when the kids are playing on the driveway or near the street? Or those pesky unrelated kids who can only afford a bicycle or small car?

Modern civilization, its wonders, and high life expectancy were built on market forces and individualism

Are you sure there weren't other factors building the good things; like say publicly funded research, unions, anti-trust, etc.? Or maybe you prefer the good ol' 12x7x365 work days, child labor, company towns, and rampant illiteracy.

Or perhaps you prefer the return of rugged individualized health systems where you can choose between death or family bankruptcy. (Not if just when, more money just means later.)

The bottom line is still the same, large advances in society and modern comforts are derived from human self interest. You might do well to educate yourself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Selfish_Gene

This line of argumentation is just a cope to fend off discussion of negative externalities which spring from the same root. It's like showing up at the funeral of a pedestrian to extol the virtues of the motorized hearse.

I've read the book. You may be extrapolating a bit too far if you think self interest is the foundation for modern civilization, its affordances, and the high life expectancy.

EDIT: Said another way, your analysis appears reductive to the point of absurdity. Modern societal advances require a lot of collective action and self sacrifice.

Read the book, it doesn't say genes make you selfish. No support for your point whatsoever.

Your claim is unfounded. It is just as likely that “modern civilization, its wonders, and high life expectancy were built despite market forces and individualism”.

Cars today have to have rear cameras so sone of those issues with driveways are moot now. I’m terms of bikes, because you’re riding higher you can see them from further away.

In the end, speed and alertness are the most important things. Drive responsibly and pay attention and your vehicle size isn’t causing nearly as much harm as a person in a small car that’s speeding whine texting.

Cameras and object detectors can help, yet they aren't always going to be better than glass in a smaller vehicle, especially around the corners of the vehicle. Fancy tech is also more likely to fail.

And when accidents do happen lower bumpers and hoods are less likely to cause harm.

You paid half ton truck money to wind up with a midsize truck (or you got the deal of the century). Vehicle size was clearly not a priority when you made the purchase. Or at least that's what your actions say.

Yeah its not the biggest one out there, but good enough, affordable, easy to sell etc. I would drive a sport civic if it was safe

People know this they just have more common sense than a wet rock

buy a cherry picker. those are as high up as possible.

great visibility too. just don't get into a rollover

How do you feel about your children walking to places and other parents having your mentality? What I'm getting at is that it in your ideal world here, your children may actually wind up less safe.

This seems to be a widely disliked comment here, but I'll back you up. I drove a sedan most of my adult life, then had kids, and am now looking into buying a large truck or SUV to carry the kids around in. I can't control the cars that others are driving around me or their driving skills or sobriety level, but I can control the car I drive. It's an arms race, I admit. But I will optimize for the safety of my children above all else, so large vehicle it is.

By doing that, you are also signalling demand to the market for heavier cars, which makes it more dangerous for your children when they cross the street as this article points out.

That signaling will most assuredly occur from the rest of society regardless of the choice he makes. Since the trend will continue regardless of his personal choice, one option is clearly safer for him than the other.

I mean the odds you hit your own kid with your car one day are slim but non zero as well

And so have the other commenters that agree with you. Prisoner's dilemna, all your kids are now more unsafe. I have been alive for three people I know to get killed by cars as pedestrians. Fools

What happens if your kids decide to start walking around to places? To school, with friends, or to do stuff? In that time you've signaled to the market that you want larger vehicles on the road, which makes it progressively less safe for your children to walk anywhere while slightly more safe in your vehicle.

John Neighbor follows the market and has bought an even larger car. Now you are in the position of needing to buy a larger car as well in order to maintain your relative safety standards.

How long before we see tanks on the roads ?

Ok but a Tacoma is excessive in the extreme. Driving a truck that size means you're compensating for something.

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