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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

Just one more evidence point for why crossovers, SUVs, and trucks are stupid passenger vehicles. There are way too many of these behemoths on our roadways, many lifted, making it worse for pedestrians, anyone driving a normal decent car, and the environment.

We have an arms race of stupidity with everyone trying to get a bigger vehicle than everybody else so they can drive more aggressively, see past the other stupidly large boxes, and feed their false egotistical ideas about safety in size.

When will we get regulations that get us back to actual cars on the road instead of a sea of “bimbo boxes” as predicted in Snow Crash?

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Is it really stupid to participate in this arms race? The data suggests that you are much safer in an SUV or truck when it comes to vehicle on vehicle accidents. In fact, the average deaths per 10 billion miles for cars and light vehicles is roughly 40, which is almost twice as many deaths as compared to trucks or SUVs. It's even worse for mini 4 door cars, at around 80 deaths per 10 billion miles. The only thing safer than a truck or SUV is a minivan. The correct choice for individuals is to participate in the arms race, unfortunately. You are correct that the only way around this is though regulations, but a lot of people aren't going to hold their breath. If you can't beat em, join em.

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

Good point. This can be trivially tackled to have ie vehicle tax based on some formula with horse power, weight, category of vehicle etc. Ie Switzerland has it, each canton their own rules. You wanna destroy roads and environment more with your poor car choices? Pay up and go ahead if you want. Use earned money to road repairs, cleanup of pollution etc.

There is a video of a pick up driver with a front camera which was the only way he could see the Miata in front of him.

Well this is my point. As long as vehicles like this continue to be on the road, it's in the best interest of the Miata driver to upgrade to a larger vehicle.

Which is an arms race in stupidity.

One solution I've heard mentioned is charging a tax per 1000 pounds of vehicle. There needs to be some incentive for using a lighter/smaller vehicle.

That sounds reasonable but I wonder how well it'll work. Gas here in SoCal is over 5$ a gallon and people still driving massive cars paying over 100$ per fill up. It's nuts!

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