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Comment by Steltek | Hacker News Reader

Certainly in the US these days, anything that isn't an SUV is unsafe (for the occupants) in traffic. It's a deadly arms race to get as big as you can. The little Fiat's don't even come up to the door handles on an F-150.

> they are quite similar to the packs of racing bikes that always appear in the summer

Yes! I have to point this out every time people complain about e-bikes on the local path. It's not the type of bike, it's the mindset and the behavior that is the real problem. Regardless, the police here would never bother doing any enforcement on the path anyway so debates about rules or proposed rules is moot.

I don't own an e-bike but I'd love to see more e-bikes around. It's more support for bike infrastructure, parking, etc.

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> It's a deadly arms race to get as big as you can

Every time I hear someone say they like their SUV or mondo pickup truck because it feels safer, I usually reply, "I know what you mean. That is why I stand up when watching movies in the theater -- the view is so much better."

Do you really say that? I take your point, but the metaphor is ridiculous because the view isn’t even better standing up, and it’s rare to find oneself in such a situation - let alone to find oneself in such a situation and choose to be confrontational.

Actually I have had such situations often, when the head of a person in front obscures a part of the view

Things changed very rapidly in the seventies with the oil shock, I believe. Cars suddenly shrank. Noone wanted big old bloated barges.

Maybe something similar will happen again, ie energy will become expensive.

Do you seriously say this? I cannot imagine how insufferable it would be to hear this from somebody.

I have kids and I don't care how my SUV makes you feel. Riding a bike is a cool hobby, and my family and I own tons of bikes that we take on the awesome bike paths they have all over our town. Bikes are also a great way to exercise.

But they don't really belong on roads. Taking a bike a place it isn't mean to go, then complaining about how unfit for the bike that place is, is absurd.

You aren't supposed to stand up in a movie theater. You are supposed to drive your car on the streets that we build specifically for driving cars.

> I have kids and I don't care how my SUV makes you feel.

Okay, but you should be aware that everyone with an SUV increases the danger to everyone else's kids.

> But they don't really belong on roads. Taking a bike a place it isn't mean to go, then complaining about how unfit for the bike that place is, is absurd.

Bikes have to share roads almost everywhere, and big cars are also bad at pedestrian safety.

> You aren't supposed to stand up in a movie theater. You are supposed to drive your car on the streets that we build specifically for driving cars.

You're supposed to have a car, you're not supposed to have an oversized one.

Oh, they know, but they don't care. Their kids are in the SUV and they're fine. If your kids are outside the SUV and get run over, that's not their problem.

> You are supposed to drive your car on the streets that we build specifically for driving cars.

These types of statements illustrate the lack of cognition the average person employees versus parroting words. This superficial and attempted tautological sounding argument just speaks about how we have not gotten critical thinking education right.

And roads built for cars just so happen to be the legally mandated place to ride bikes in many locals.

Of course roads build with only considering car travel and no secondary effects are optimized for cars over bikes. That’s exactly the problem, not a point in the favor of cars or for driving cars.

"Roads are for cars, not for bikes or people"

You realize how stupid you sound, right?

The thing is, purely out of context, I'd be inclined to agree. Roads are for cars, it's just that roads shouldn't be the only way to get to places. Add more walking and cycling paths and bikes/pedestrians won't have to use the roads.

> The thing is, purely out of context, I'd be inclined to agree. Roads are for cars, it's just that roads shouldn't be the only way to get to places.

If roads are for cars, then you will have no problems with abolishing people being inside of them while they drive on your sacred car only roads?

> Add more walking and cycling paths and bikes/pedestrians won't have to use the roads.

Add them where? Because in your scenario it's either cars or pedestrians and guess who have better lobbyists?

I don't know what you're trying to say here... As far as I care, we can just ban cars entirely, but until then, separating the multi-ton metal boxes traveling at over 100 km/h operated by barely qualified teenagers from the squishy cyclists and pedestrians seems like a pretty obvious solution.

Why Is that stupid? It’s like saying airports are for planes or ports are for boats. Yes there are other vehicles there but primarily the design criteria is cars

I 100% disagree with you about bikes on the road, and I do not own an SUV, but I have a twinge of sympathy for parents who do. I think people without young kids fail to understand just how difficult it is to fit multiple carseats into a sedan. If you have three kids, the only practical options are a minivan or an SUV. I am angry at the US government about the chicken tax and other incentives that have led to the rise of the SUV, but no individual parent is going to solve that problem.

However: If you’re buying the biggest SUV you can so as to win the arms race, none of my sympathy applies to you. Stop it already. How do you even park?

> I think people without young kids fail to understand just how difficult it is to fit multiple carseats into a sedan

You're right, I have no idea. But a lot of people in Europe have three young kids as well and seem to get by perfectly fine without SUVs.

> no individual parent is going to solve that problem

This is how social change dies. "I can't do change things on my own, so why inconvenience myself?" Having an SUV increases your chances of KILLING PEOPLE. How does not having one not change anything?? And cars are big, high-margin purchases, of course you putting +1 in the minivan instead of SUV purchases column at your local dealer is going to have some impact on what they stock and a push more of. And your neighbours will see how convenient your non-insane car is and that will slightly away them towards buying that instead.

When my kids were car seat age, one of the three-kid strategies I saw talked about was “buy European car seats because they’re smaller.” I think if you live in Europe, you have not seen this problem.

This just proves that it isn't an inherent problem, but one that americans created for themselves. Yes, you can just buy smaller car seats, just like you can buy a smaller car. They'll be a little harder to get at first and probably a bit more expensive, but next to the cost of a new car, it will be little more than a rounding error. And as more people start buying them, they'll get cheaper and easier to buy.

I drive a Tesla model Y. Probably the smallest SUV I can buy.

Why are people in this thread jumping to these absolutely absurd ideas about the motivations somebody would have for the car they drive? Do some of you seriously have this idea of a deranged murderous psychopath gassing up their giant child squishing machine and going out into the world looking for children to run over or something?

Maybe because you communicate like a prick. When your first sentence is "I don't care if my SUV makes you feel unsafe" and you go on to justify bullying other people not in cars off the road because you've decided they don't belong, you don't get the benefit of the doubt.

> I drive a Tesla model Y. Probably the smallest SUV I can buy.

> Why are people in this thread jumping to these absolutely absurd ideas about the motivations somebody would have for the car they drive? Do some of you seriously have this idea of a deranged murderous psychopath gassing up their giant child squishing machine and going out into the world looking for children to run over or something?

It doesn't matter what your justification is for owning SUV, statistically you are more likely to hit pedestrians because SUV have bad visibility. And when you hit pedestrian it's more likely that injuries they suffer will be fatal. SUVs are higher than normal cars so when hit by it pedestrian will more likely have head and torso injuries, with more often are fatal. Also SUVs have bigger clearance under it, so hit pedestrian will more likely be also squished by wheels and dragged under the car for no one knows how long. This is even more dangerous for kids(you might not know that but on average they are smaller than average adult).

SUVs are not safer than normal cars. Poor visibility, higher center of gravity, stiff undercarriage all contribute to higher possibility of rollover. They have worse crumple zone, car might be ok but driver not so much. Worse fuel efficiency (car exhausts are not healthy). And many other things.

In the end your motivation doesn't matter, you are a bigger danger to pedestrians(not to mention other drivers) than if you owned normal car or bicycle.

> But they don't really belong on roads.

You really should come and visit NL for a bit. I'll borrow you a bike so you can experience first hand what it's like when bikes are 'first class citizens'.

As a fellow Dutch-speaker, I know in Dutch both are “lenen”, but in English borrow and lend are separate.

You will lend them a bike, and they will borrow it from you.

(I still don’t know how English ended up with separate verbs for both actions whereas Germanic languages only have one.)

Thanks for the correction, you are right.

Interestingly, this usage in English is not unheard of, and it tracks. Whereas the opposite “thank you for letting me lend your bike” doesn’t work and in fact implies a different meaning involving an unstated third party.

If you want to build Dutch bike paths all over my city then go for it. Like I said, biking is one of my families favorite leisure activities and we would use them all the time.

Yay for bike paths! Especially if it keeps bikes out of the street.

Your attitude is pretty revealing. All those people on bikes need to be "kept off the street" when doing their "leisure activity." There's no more car-centric way to make that statement. It's as though the possibility of people going places they need to be while not in a car doesn't even cross your mind.

I don’t see how you could possibly share the road between bike and car safely without clear separation.

Biking is a means of transportation first and a leisure activity distant second.

> I have kids and I don't care how my SUV makes you feel.

This reflects more on you than the person you're replying to.

My SO lost thousands of dollars and was in pain for a month after her Honda Fit was totaled by a Big Truck that didn't see her over its huge hood.

Proposal: special compact car paths where people can safely drive smaller cars that don't belong on the road.

Counter-proposal: special truck and huge car lanes where these dangerous vehicles can't harm others, driving more reasonable cars (that absolutely do belong on the road because they're way more space and energy efficient).

Or what if instead we required trucks to meet the safety standards of other vehicles? There's no reason hoods that high should be allowed, it's purely for aggressive styling, not any practical purpose.

Sure, but I imagine (not an automotive engineer) some vehicles simply can't be designed to be crash-compatible with regular cars. Think buses, real trucks (like for cargo, not the big cars that americans like to call trucks), specialized vehicles...

And either way, the intent of my "counter-proposal" is to point out that the normal size cars shouldn't be considered not suitable for road use just because there are bigger badder cars out there and that, if anything, the big and dangerous cars are the ones that should be segregated to protect everyone else, not the other way around.

But my proposal was satirical. :)

I'm very glad to hear that! I figured it might be, but also, I have heard similarly backwards proposals from city council members, so you never know...

> the streets that we build specifically for driving cars

If you want to participate in these kinds of discussions and have them turn into anything but shouting matches, you might want to consider that "specifically for driving cars" is very much the problem for many people. They don't share your axiom that it should be that way, or even that it's OK. Think for a moment. In an ideal world, how much space would you devote to cars and parking vs. bikes and pedestrians? Now go see how much is devoted to that. A lot of people don't even realize how big those numbers are, and you might find that the percentage is greater than even you just determined it should be. Cyclists drive in the road because they feel they're already being denied their fair share of that space, and what space is nominally given them is unfit for purpose (especially with regard to safety and freedom from obstruction). You might agree with them and you might not, but simply stating your (probably unexamined) axiom as fact isn't going to get anyone anywhere.

BTW it feels weird to me, taking the side of the cyclists. More often I'm at odds with them; I even recognize some of the names here from past encounters. As a "high speed pedestrian" (i.e. runner) I am absolutely sick and tired of cyclists trying to push me aside where I have every right to be and in fact 100% have right of way when there's contention. Especially when I know 99% of them are not commuters whose riding does anything whatsoever for the environment. The parking lot between the local bike path and where my daughter used to do karate is always full of cyclists unloading their bikes from their cars for what is clearly a recreational ride. They drove there (and back) to indulge in their hobby. I won't accept any self-righteous bullshit from them, but I do recognize that the actual bike commuters have every right to use paths and roads, and they're helping the (natural and human) environment by doing so.

Do you care about the climate that your children will have to survive in when they grow older?

> But they don't really belong on roads.

Roads belonged to bikes before they belonged to cars.

This a real case of 'check your privilege'.

> Roads belonged to bikes before they belonged to cars.

This is IMHO not true. In majority of the western world, roads belonged to horses and carts before the automobile.

Bicycles were not very popular in most cities and towns in the 1800s, even in Europe. Cobblestone, brick, dirt and gravel roads of the 1800s were often impassible on the bicycles of that time.

Asia likely had a historically different bicycle:car ratio though.

No roads were shared between people walking, playing, horses, carts, children and many other things.

You’re talking about streets, not roads.

Yes, I really did say that. Calling me insufferable isn't a great way to generate productive dialog.

I know what you mean, yet another tragedy of the commons.

In the UK at least they are less common, I think it's partly a cultural thing, but I suspect road size and layout is also a significant factor, which negatively affects the practicality of actually driving and parking a big SUV over here. I'm pretty sure that's why they will always remain uncommon, and haven't kicked off a chain reaction like in the US.

I think that's the only way you can prevent this kind of arms race in a society, by designing aspects into the system that reduce socially undesirable properties by making those same properties less desirable to the individual, intrinsically - i.e I don't want an SUV, because it's going to be so damn annoying to drive and park in so many places (note how that affects all individuals regardless of wealth). The same works with speed, using intrinsic speed limitations due to road size and layout instead of extrinsic punishment which doesn't effectively prevent injury or death. If the appropriate speed is 30mph, don't build a 6 lane style highway and be surprised when people find it hard to stay under 80. I think so many of the societal issues caused by cars can be all but eliminated through road design.

Yup. The problem in the US as a recent study pointed out is that the private benefit of owning an SUV is greater than the public benefit - basically, it's shifting cost and the risk from the person to society at large.

I'm not sure how you fix it, considering that pretty much every proposal to narrow a road, add a bike lane, add a bus lane, increase registration fees etc around here is treated like you're trying to bring back Hitler. It's so frustrating.

Yeah, it's a strange thing for so many people in the right positions to have such a high degree of confidence in the problem and solution, have studies to back it up, and yet be essentially powerless in the face of cultural inertia and the weight of pre-existing infrastructure... I've no idea how anyone can make progress in that scenario. I guess some things can only change extremely slowly.

It's slowly getting to Europe though. Every second car being sold in Germany nowadays is an SUV, there is barely anything affordable below the 15k EUR mark - most of them are probably on a lease. I'm just wondering, what's going to be next... Tanks again?

Best example I guess is Ford who discontinued its Ford Ka and Fiesta because "they wanted to focus on EVs" - on the other hand they introduced the F150 to Germany. Not the most honest move.

I'd argue 80% of customers are sheeple following whatever is advertised on TV / parked in the neighbours driveway. I used to enjoy cars but with the climate crisis and just by how automotive attempts to innovate these days, I cancelled this entire industry.

Gonna get a Bullitt Cargobike soon

Same reason for why a lot of people seem to think it's a good idea to have a gun in the US. Everybody else (including criminals) already has one.

It's an arms race that just leaves everyone worse off than at the start.

Name a point in USA’s 240 year history that private gun ownership was not common.

What percentage do you consider common? And if you're interested why don't you do some digging and give a graph of gun ownership over those 240 years. It might actually be interesting.

Go ahead an school me. I can't wait for the sources from one of Bloomberg's antigun groups, or out of the wing of Harvard he funds for the same effect. PLEASE make it something from Hemmenway, I do so love his flavor of "science".

Gun ownership has always been common. I didn't say more or less common than any point to compare to.

We're lucky it's more common now than in previous points in history. You just don't know it yet.

Firstly, weapons ownership of any kind is much lower than it was historically in my country, and yet we survive.

Secondly, I have no interest in schooling you. You're an American, right? No free education for you. Pay for it!

Thirdly, I was being serious. Do you actually know what the data look like or are you guessing?

Citation desprately needed. Please dont conflate your politics and firearms issues, which should be distinct.

That's a fantastic response. And yes, that's exactly how it is. It's safer. For them.

It's safer as in "whatever I hit, I win". A pretty narrow definition of safety.

Not really winning if an F150 hits my fiat 500x. The f150 loses everything in a vehicular manslaughter trial. It’s more a lose-lose.

And that’s all fine and dandy until 30% of the theater is standing and then what are you going to do? Pick your poison

> It's a deadly arms race to get as big as you can.

SUVs too - I'm 3x more likely to die in the same crash if I'm hit by one rather than by a passenger sedan.

Of course, the real people hurt are the pedestrians and cyclists who can't participate in the arms race at all. Not to mention that leading everyone to use heavy cars for safety every time they leave the house is catastrophically bad for the environment.

>Not to mention that leading everyone to use heavy cars for safety every time they leave the house is catastrophically bad for the environment.

It's worse, but hardly "catastrophically bad".

>According to Consumer Reports, the three top-selling crossovers in the US in 2018 (Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V, and Nissan Rogue) return an average of 10% less fuel economy than the top three selling sedan equivalents in the mid-size segment (Toyota Camry, Honda Accord, Nissan Altima), but provide almost 1.5 times the cargo space.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossover_(automobile)

It's a lot worse than no car at all - which people understandably don't feel comfortable doing when they're surrounded by vehicles with bumpers as high as their chest.

I get hit by a sedan, I break my legs, it sucks. I get hit by a crossover, I'm thrown forward from my center of mass and likely under the vehicle. I get hit by an F-150, the hood is at head height and I die.

If you run the numbers, getting hit by any car while riding a bike carries with it a fair probability of death or lifelong injury. The forces involved do not lie, and your feelings of getting hit by a compact car and surviving are foolish at best.

Bikes simply are not safe when occupying the same space as a vehicle. The solution is not 'make vehicles that can't kill cyclists', the solution is to prevent these two modes of transportation from operating in the same space. Banning bikes from roadways for the safety of cyclists is entirely logical. Building cycle paths separate from roadways is entirely logical. Anything outside of that is an experiment we already have data for, and it means more dead cyclists regardless of how you go about it which to any reasonable person is not an acceptable outcome.

There's a separate problem here, which is that large heavy cars are not required to be designed in a way that takes the injury to people outside the car (pedestrians, cyclists, or in other cars) into account. This results in people buying heavy cars in order to be "safe" from other people buying heavy cars.

And while we can't build thousands of miles of new bike lanes overnight, we can definitely start the process of making new vehicles more safe to other road users today. Both are necessary, IMO.

re: injury, sure getting hit is not great, but the SUV is substantially more likely to injure or kill the pedestrian in the same collision. There's lots of data to show this.

How likely do you find to be an acceptable level of likelihood?

For me it's zero, or at least very, very close to it. We're never going to get to zero by complaining that cars are too heavy. It's an ideological dead end. I mean, hell, a tesla, not commonly seen as a large car, weighs over 2 tons. Chassis alone is close to 2 tons by itself. How are you going to make that not kill someone on a bike? Or take, say, the world's lightest production car, the absolutely tiny Caterham Seven 170, which weighs somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000lbs. You and an absurdly heavy bike, a real value brand steel frame special, is like a quarter of that, and, it's not really feasible to say that everyone should drive a small, two seat open cockpit, open wheel roadster.

F=MA is unavoidable, you should stop pretending it is, you'll live longer. Then write your local government, or better, show up to the public forums they hold, and lobby for bike paths. Partner with bike shops, get in with the mom groups, have them make donations to pro-bike path politicians. That's how the world works now.

Those are all relatively small, I think they're all lifted sedans. When people are talking about an arms race, they're probably talking about the true SUVs, which are built on truck frames - the Escalades, Suburbans, etc. They're gargantuan compared to a RAV4/CR-V. An Escalade gets 14 mpg city, the RAV4 gets 27 mpg in the city, the hybrid version, 41 mpg.

>When people are talking about an arms race, they're probably talking about the true SUVs, which are built on truck frames - the Escalades, Suburbans, etc. They're gargantuan compared to a RAV4/CR-V. An Escalade gets 14 mpg city, the RAV4 gets 27 mpg in the city, the hybrid version, 41 mpg.

The sales data doesn't really show such an arms race is taking place. Eyeballing this chart, SUV sales actually shrank, presumably being cannibalized by crossovers. Pickup sales inched higher but they're still not back to early 2000s levels.

https://advocacy.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/2019...

Crossovers are still markedly worse to be on the receiving end of a collision from than an ordinary car. That's the problem.

Pay attention to the thread. I was only discussing environmental impacts.

> Certainly in the US these days, anything that isn't an SUV is unsafe (for the occupants) in traffic.

Honestly it doesn’t matter if the car weighs 2000lbs or 6000lbs, a recumbent bike is getting crushed either way. I don’t know why you’d bring SUVs up specifically. The same problem exists in any country where bikes and cars occupy the same spaces. US isn’t unique.

The problem is that you get hit by another car in an accident. Getting hit by an SUV while in a sedan tends to end up a lot worse than getting hit by an SUV while in another SUV. The bumper height mismatch and large weight disparity are serious killers.

Of course, the right answer would be to regulate car size, not have everyone buy increasingly large cars because they feel unsafe. Those large SUVs are absolute killers for cyclists and pedestrians, not to mention that they are actually less safe than a sedan due to the high center of mass creating a rollover problem.

People buy SUVs because they’re comfortable. You are more upright, have more space, car seats fit, you can haul around your junk without thinking or planning. Most people driving SUVs have not and will never kill a cyclist or pedestrian.

> Most people driving SUVs have not and will never kill a cyclist or pedestrian.

But far more have/will compared to those driving normal cars (including comfortable ones that fit car seats and plenty of junk).

I was hit by a bicyclist once. He could have chosen to walk, but instead he chose to ride at something like 25mph down the same path as I was walking. He saved a few minutes. A lot more people get injured from bicycles than from safety minded pedestrians.

Yes, this happens, but I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. That, like cars, bicycles should also be separated from pedestrians? I agree, dedicated cycle lanes are great and we should have more of them. But this is an entirely separate issue.

No they don't. Far more pedestrians are injured by other pedestrians than by cyclists. If you're going to make up a story, try to make it realistic.

“you can haul around your junk without thinking or planning”

A lack of thinking and planning seems to be the root cause of most of the world’s problems. It’s not active malice - it’s just thoughtlessness in the service of convenience and comfort.

Cool, thanks for responding about one. I’d rather not have to worry about how to fit our double stroller, pack n play and bags in our sedan.

"I'm happy knowing that my vehicle choice is making the roads more dangerous and making me specifically more likely to kill someone else in an accident because it makes my life easier"

Sure, but actually own that choice. Say your convenience is worth someone else's safety.

My safety is worth more to me than yours. We would all be safer if we didn’t have to race to the bottom but such is life and them are the rules. Change the rules and I’ll change my behavior.

Kid stuff is a lot bulkier in the US, from what I’ve seen.

We fit into a Ford Focus station wagon what my sister-in-law in Texas perceived herself to need a Tahoe for (instead of her “little” Mazda CX-5). Our neighbors with two kids tend to be station wagon owners, too. Another has a Toyota Proace, which is an amazing amount of cargo capacity but still plays nicer with regular cars and non-car traffic because it’s originally a sedan underneath (the Peugeot 306, I believe).

I sometimes have to waste 15 minutes or so organizing the car when some new piece comes into the puzzle, true. We’re also a bit more deliberate about when we actually use the car - keeping another set of kid stuff at Oma and Opa’s makes the train a lot easier, and is far less expensive than owning a larger vehicle.

But this all requires a bit of planning and deprioritizing our immediate convenience.

That is not accurate. Some modern SUVs have lower driver death rates than pretty much any other passenger vehicle. The latest stability control systems and suspension designs have eliminated rollovers as a serious risk in real world driving.

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

How about the death rates to people _in the other car_ in the collision? Or the pedestrian they hit?

> bikes and cars occupy the same spaces

That's a big part of the problem right there. You want to separate them, as they did in the Netherlands and Paris appears to be doing.

> It's a deadly arms race to get as big as you can

The only reasonable solution is to mandate the only vehicle allowed to be sold in the USA is the Canyonero.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PI_Jl5WFQkA

Top o' the line in utility sports. Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts-- Canyonerooooo!

> Certainly in the US these days, anything that isn't an SUV is unsafe (for the occupants) in traffic

This is false. Bigger does not equate to safer.

It's not as much about size, mainly bumper height from what I understand. An SUV hitting anything smaller will essentially always end worse for the smaller car than small car vs small car or SUV vs SUV. And since there are so many SUVs out there, smaller cars are always in danger.

Size is an important factor because the extra crush room allows for more gradual deceleration in a crash.

Mass is an important factor because in an inelastic collision, the lighter object will experience greater G-forces.

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