Morally culpable, but also defensible since you’re defending yourself from others in large cars.
Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. The real moral culpability is in the people that created and support the policies enabling the SUV Arma race.
Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. The real moral culpability is in the people that created and support the policies enabling the SUV Arma race.
A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things. They prefer the more upright seating (higher h-point). They prefer the higher entry/exit point. They feel they need all the cargo space. Lots of people which I agree would probably be just as well served by a sedan or a hatchback just don't care for those car styles these days. Even if the sedan was a few grand less than the SUV (they often were when they were still sold), these people probably still go for the SUV if they could afford it. People didn't generally like them in the past because 1) modern SUVs are kind of a new-ish concept which only really started in the 90s where they absolutely exploded in popularity 2) those 90s body-on-frame SUVs drove like trucks while modern unibody crossovers drive more like cars and 3) it wasn't until about the 2000s that car makers started actually trying to make these vehicles appealing to average drivers as opposed to just work vehicles.
These kinds of people are incredibly common from my experiences.
Don't get me wrong, I do agree things like the chicken tax and CAFE requirements drove sedans and "light trucks" closer to the same price points, but generally speaking a ton of consumers want it this way.
> A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things.
Classic.
City-dwelling non-car owners projecting their understanding of the world onto the rest of the country. (Or in the case of Europeans, onto Americans.)
American suburbia and rural life is car-centric, and that's not going to change. People are not going to want to move to densify or live in the city because that's what "everyone should want". They enjoy their private cabins, their tall all-wheel drive vehicles, not shared transit and subway.
If you try to force these people to move to cities through taxation or a lack of support for their infrastructure, they'll vote out your political candidates.
There are a lot of people from SF and NYC here. As is the case with /r/fuckcars and their advocating for bikes and "strong cities", these are not the views shared by the rest of the country. If they were, you'd see policies changing overnight.
And so here we are, at a point where most car models have been canceled by the big auto builders while their SUV offerings have exploded.
The big automakers stopped making small cars because people largely stopped buying them.
I've watched the local town halls in my area filled with people raging about apartment complexes or even owner-occupied townhouses getting built. Voting out the city hall members who approved those developments. The hate for even zero lot line houses as being "too crowded". People questioning why I'd ever even think about taking the light rail into town instead of just driving. Voting against expanding transit access because "the wrong people" would be coming into their town, arguing that having busses run every 10 minutes instead of 20-30 minutes would lead to higher crime rates and make it less safe.
There's tons of Americans who furiously don't want the density. Who don't want transit. Who push to have their lifted trucks with offroad wheels to drop their kids off at daycare and make a 20mi commute to an office job and wouldn't have it any other way. Lots of people here act like these people just don't exist or aren't a significant percentage of the population, but remember, Trump carried 46% of the popular vote. The percentage of these kinds of people is absolutely not a small number.
People act like these zoning laws just appeared on their own. They're made by local governments, some of the easiest people to replace in the end. The zoning laws reflect the popular priorities of the people living there. If the majority of people really wanted dense housing, they'd be voting to change their zoning laws to allow it. But, from what I've seen, a lot of those candidates don't tend to stay in office very long.
I'm reminded of a recent proposed development near me. A developer bought up the remains of an old farm and a cleaned up meat packing plant lot (torn down, cleaned up, empty field at the time). The developer wanted to build a few zero lot line SFHs and a few 3-4 unit townhouses, and then finally a small little commercial spot for potentially like a doughnut shop or cafe or bodega kind of thing. The close neighborhoods instantly fought against it bringing up loads of arguments about increased traffic (the location actually had a couple useful bus lines serving it...needs more frequency) and building too close to the creek (despite the most vocal neighborhood having structures just as close!). The development company tried to make a number of concessions, increasing some of the lot sizes of the SFHs, eliminating some of the construction closer to the creek and instead having a linear park/dog park there, redoing the entry and exit points of the development to adjust traffic patterns, etc. The NIMBYs would never accept any proposal. Eventually the developer gave up as city hall wouldn't risk approving something that so many virulently hated.
In the end, that property was acquired by a different group. Since the property was already zoned industrial, it was quick and easy to get the permits for their tilt wall warehouses to be built. Now instead of reducing the high housing demand and adding a small corner commercial space on a popular bus route, we're going to have loads of semis driving through this overall pretty highly residential/office area. I wonder which was worse for those neighborhood's property values.
No demand for SUVs? That's possible, but hard. Most auto makers have killed most (if not all) of their cars, meaning if you have a family, you're in a sardine can, a muscle car, or an SUV.
I own a Prius, because I don't have a kid. I loaned it out to family who had a kid, and it was a veritable clown car routine anywhere they wanted to go.
I knew a family growing up that had six kids, so 8 person household, they had a minivan (Toyota Tarago).
A modern SUV would likely be a) heavier b) have worse blind spots, and c) has a higher front bumper, so worse impact if you hit a pedestrian.
The "I didn't have a choice" argument is almost always a logical fallacy.
One answer is to not have pedestrians. As the suburbs do.
Not everybody wants to live in a city or can live in a city.
> I knew a family growing up that had six kids, so 8 person household, they had a minivan (Toyota Tarago).
Unlike pickup trucks, SUVs are fantastic for hauling both children and assorted cargo. Unlike minivans, they're great at handling a variety of driving conditions: gravel, dirt, ice/snow, inclines. They're also fun to drive and don't make it feel like the next sixteen years of your family's life is just dedicated to the brood.
That's such and absurd suggestion I'm surprised you felt it worth writing, not to mention there are still plenty of pedestrians even in the suburbs.
It's not absurd at all, which is why it's interesting to watch people who have never fathomed this try to come to grips with it.
There is so much of this country completely unserved by sidewalks, busses, or cycling infrastructure. And it's fine. It works.
The minivan also has horrible clearance that bottoms out frequently when you drive on dirt trails trying to get to hiking trails and primitive campgrounds.
They each serve their purpose. The minivan is by far the best suburban people carrier we could’ve bought, and it has incredible storage capacity when you stow the seats, but it definitely has its limitations.
The idea that SUVs have good storage space is a marketing myth.
This might be morally defensible for players making equal trades between protection for themselves and protection for others, but at some point this is clearly no longer the case. For example, most people would agree that killing 1000 people to save your own life is bad. If players aren't even bothering with this calculating the tradeoff between more protection for themselves and less protection for others -- and I think most people who protect themselves with large cars have not done this calculation -- then yes, it's fine to cast aspersions.
According to this post from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety [1] (which I think is reliable?), going from a 2023 Prius (~88 square feet) to a 2023 Toyota Sequoia (~116 square feet) reduces car driver deaths from 47 per million vehicle years to 26. This seems, uh, fairly low down on the list of interventions your median SUV-driver could take to reduce their mortality, and it's made at a cost to other people, since "light trucks" (like SUVs, trucks, and vans) increase pedestrian fatalities by somewhere north of 50% [2, third page].
At some point, you're just being lazy, which you have a right to do, but I don't think it's particularly defensible.
See also
Hate the player. You can hate the game too but if nobody played it there would be no problems.
My point it is an invalid moral defense in both instances.