Electric Vehicles Are Bringing Out the Worst in Us | Hacker News Reader

Electric Vehicles Are Bringing Out the Worst in Us

theatlantic.com

19 pointssamizdis11 comments

This is more of an industry problem than an EV problem - in general all car models have become bigger, faster and heavier over time

Compare the original mini vs the new ones, and today's 3 Series is easily the size of an old 5 Series, etc.

Consumers like toys and safety features, so now even smaller vehicles have climate control and multi way electrically adjustable seats along with all the bits to make that stuff work - before you got a sunroof if you were lucky, and a lever to move the seat back and forwards

> This is more of an industry problem than an EV problem

Look at the door on a classic Mini though: https://www.rwclassicminis.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/...

If you told the designers they had to make a car the size of the classic Mini but comply with all modern safety regulations I suspect it would become shockingly small on the inside (I mean, even more-so than a Mini already is).

So it's a governance problem - government's answer to road deaths has been bigger, stronger cars built to do well on safety tests (and hopefully in real-world crashes).

Which really is a people problem - many other safety measures like more stringent vehicle inspections, thorough driver's education, lower speed limits, limits on vehicle power, are big government overreach to many.

Very misleading headline. The entire article is about big electric SUVs like the Ford F-150 Lightning, and is barely applicable to electric coupes or sedans at all. TBH the "electric" part seems like little more than a hook for a piece that's really about vehicle weight/size/power - a legitimate concern, but not what the title suggests.

https://archive.ph/56q5D

What we need is zero subsidies and zero red tape for people to compete. All the proposed top down nudging regulations brought forward will just create even more loopholes people will exploit like the current heavy vehicle exception to emissions sedans face.

Zero red-tape on ICEs would allow them to be polluting even more though. Not sure why you believe that complete freedom would trigger some kind of competition making cars less polluting, they'd just need to be cheaper than the competition. Where do you price externalities in this ideology?

The cost of externalities are covered when litigants claim damages.

That is so obviously untrue that it's hard to accept the statement as good faith. Successful litigation requires that the plaintiff be able to prove not only that harm occurred but that it was directly and exclusively the fault of the defendant (which quite notably does not work for diffuse/delayed/complex environmental harms), against a corporate legal team that often has more information, experience, funding, and patience. Even then justice often comes too late. Such an approach would also result in a court system so large that it would be more burdensome (and subject to corruption) than even the worst regulators today.

Litigation has never been, and will never be, an adequate substitute for judicious regulation. Many harms are very real, and serious, and well recognized as both, without being litigable. To suggest otherwise is tantamount to saying externalities should just be ignored in the name of profit.

Then the justice system needs to be flooded with litigation to become some kind of regulatory body? Why introduce more layers into something already pretty complex such a regulation? Instead of an elected government it'd be another bureaucracy: the justice system, who takes action against bad actors?

That's a complete fantasy, litigation is expensive, it should be reserved to exceptional cases not to dictate basic rules for society...

Someone hasn't watched Fight Club, it seems. =)

Sometimes damage claims are just the cost of doing business.

We can fix the SUV visibility issue with cameras all around being required.

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