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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

> We have the same problem in the EU.

Then how does that explain why increased road deaths are exceptional to the USA?

I was totally shocked by the shape of truck grills last time I visited Canada. The standard F150-esque chassis used for all sorts of commercial vehicles is fronted by a huge slab of steel. And those things are everywhere - it's not just the obvious "manly truck lovers", but all sorts of commercial vehicles where it's totally unnecessary. In Toronto the parks service are all driving around in those trucks. As the parent of a 2 year old, they are SCARY - the blind spot in front must be massive.

In Europe we mostly use van derived chassis for commercial vehicles. Ford Transits or Fiat Ducato (Dodge Ram Promaster in NA). They seem to be able to serve the same purpose without having terrifying blind spots.

I've been in front collisions with European cars a couple of times, they are designed to fold in and down, first protecting the pedestrian and then the legs of the driver/passenger.

It's amazing how they fold at the slightest hit.

> I've been in front collisions with European cars a couple of times

I hope you doing some sort of crash rally?

The U.S. heavily subsidizes those vehicles and the wide roads & parking they require so we have tons of them. Europeans also buy them for the same reasons but you have to be especially committed to intimidating your neighbors to pay that much more for fuel, parking, etc. and deal with narrower streets.

The US doesn't subsidize those vehicles. In 2008, the Obama government passed the CAFE emissions standards which carved out an exception for vehicles used for commercial purposes. Most pickups and large vehicles fall under this exception and can be profitable due to lower emissions standards.

The rest is true but a bit complicated. The US Federal government subsidizes arterials which gives local governments an incentive to build more arterials so they can receive more federal funding.

parent's point was that the infrastructure we build acts as subsidy. A pickup truck is a lot more desirable if your country increases pays a bunch of money to increase road widths. European roads are typically 8 or 9 feet per lane while US roads are often 10-12 ft per lane.

Right, I was adding more detail as to why US roads are wider, they're arterials. That and signal spacing and lane width is based solely around throughput in most of the US.

Too much online literature throws around "subsidizes" blindly without going deeper.

These vehicles are not directly subsidized in the form of a cash rebate or tax refund, but they are heavily subsidized by the general public through regulations for minimum parking mandates, free highways everywhere, excess road capacity, wide lanes, perverse incentives to build further apart, and a whole host of other measures that prop up car dependency in the US.

The subsidy is in the infrastructure but the car lets you increase your exposure to the subsidy.

The lower emissions standards are a form of subsidy, as are not requiring them to be as safe is required by many of our peer countries, but my larger point was that the U.S. has had a century of car-centric, bordering on car-only, infrastructure. That has shaped every part of our country from pushing highways through cities to having the design code used by most cities and states hyper-focused on wide roads optimized for vehicle speeds over safety. There are some cases where following that is linked to federal funding but most DOTs follow the federal guidelines closely even on projects they’re funding entirely locally.

The other big one is gas: we put huge political efforts into keeping prices low, which disproportionately benefits people buying new vehicles which get 1970s-era mileage.

Right I'm just trying to add more detail here so that folks in the US who want to deconstruct this car dependency can work with the system. That these subsidies and carve outs are so varied is what makes it so hard to pushback against American car dependency.

They’re also largely invisible - things like parking minimums or lower density requirements to reduce traffic don’t show up as a line on a bill or budget anywhere, they just make everything we do more expensive.

There's been a 25% tariff on imported light trucks circa 60s, which one could view as subsidizing domestic production https://www.economist.com/free-exchange/2009/05/05/americans...

Because, while the same problem exists, it doesn't exist to the same extent. The average size of the vehicles is smaller, even bigger European SUVs are far smaller than what americans call trucks. And there are less of the really big and deadly ones, almost none with a neck-breaking-bar, etc.

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