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
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?
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.
And when accidents do happen lower bumpers and hoods are less likely to cause harm.
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.)
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.
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.
This is the history of the US from its foundation.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s called antisocial behaviour.
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.