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Comment by pc86 | Hacker News Reader

The question for me is, what is safer for my family? A huge proportion of the cars I see day to day are full-size SUVs like Tahoes, Yukons, and that QX80 monstrosity from Infiniti. There's a decent chance if I'm involved in an accident it will be with one of those cars.

You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.

If you want to ban vehicles above a certain weight or a certain displacement, fine let's talk about that. But until that happens I'm not going to intentionally make my kids less safe to reduce some wishy-washy definition of my "moral culpability" for accidents and deaths I've played no part in.

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These cars are more likely to kill your children by running over them as they cross the street. You are more likely to kill your neighbor's kids by running over them because you don't have visibility 6+ feet in front of you. This isn't some sort of wish-washy definition. These are hard to swallow facts.

Why does an suv not have visibility in front of it?

Because we can safely assume that under normal atmospheric conditions and within the distances we are talking about, light travels in straight lines and the SUV is too high thus blocking some of it from reaching the drivers eyes. I can't pull the sources now, but there was a study discussed here on HN a couple months ago showing an analysis of how this plays out.

Consider the larger vehicle shown in the picture at the top of the linked article; now imagine a child before the adolescent growth spurt standing in front of it — how far away does the child have to be, for any part of them to be visible to a driver sitting in the driver's seat?

This should help you understand the problem of higher vehicles limiting visibility of what's in front of them: https://imgur.com/a/aYbCbyg

Modern vehicles beep like crazy with sensors when something is in front of the car like that though. It is impossible not to know.

To add to this, an M1 Abrams tank and a Peterbilt 857 semi have better visibility than some SUVs and pick-up trucks:

* https://ifunny.co/picture/a-semi-truck-has-better-visibility...

Becauase they are high and tend to have long flat front hoods, creating an extended blind spot for short objects (like children) in front.

Newer models have forward collision sensors that partially mitigate that. (And backup cameras that do an even better job of mitigating the rear low-height blind spot, as long as people use them instead of direct vision when backing up.)

Actually, most of the time it's the parents running over their own children, in their own driveway.

I haven't killed anyone by any means, so I'm not morally culpable of anything. But my moral obligation to protecting my family supersedes any moral obligation I have to protecting strangers.

By this logic, because I haven't killed anyone drunk driving, I should be allowed to drive drunk.

No, it's important to point out hard facts here: by driving a car with less visibility, you become more dangerous to your family and your neighborhood. You don't even protect your family, because you've now entered a vehicle significantly more likely to flip over in an accident-- which you are now more likely to have because you bought a vehicle with reduced capacity to see what is in front of you.

Your choice is your choice-- but it's important not to lie to yourself or others about what that choice entails.

> By this logic, because I haven't killed anyone drunk driving, I should be allowed to drive drunk.

Drunk driving is illegal, having a large vehicle isn't. If it's illegal, I won't do it.

And even ignoring that, this isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that because you haven't killed anyone drunk driving, you're not morally culpable for drunk driving deaths. Which you're not.

If you drive a larger vehicle, you are taking on the increased risk of hitting other children or your own children. Whether or not you've actually hit a child doesn't change that fact and trying to wiggle out of it through that logic is the same as arguing just because an irresponsible driver hasn't killed anyone means they're actually safer than an irresponsible driver who has. The fundamental attribution is their irresponsibility, not whether or not their irresponsibility has resulted in a consequence for them.

similarly, regardless of whether or not you've killed anyone with a larger vehicle, the fact is that larger vehicles pose a greater danger of running over children.

> Drunk driving is illegal, having a large vehicle isn't.

Legality and morality are not the same things.

I'm noticing you are mixing up "legal" and "moral" a lot in this thread. They are separate concepts. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is morally right. Morals are something that someone can chose to live by to help them pick between right and wrong. Laws are literally the absolute bare minimum to participate in society without have your rights to property or freedom revoked. Ideally a common societal agreement of morals and ethics should play in laws, but that doesn't always happen.

> I'm saying that because you haven't killed anyone drunk driving, you're not morally culpable for drunk driving deaths

This is a weird statement... which I guess is true in the narrowest possible meaning. It's true in the way that it is written, but not in a way that matters.

If you drive drunk but haven't killed anyone yet you aren't directly culpable for drunk driving deaths.... but it is still an immoral action. Just because it hasn't caused the worst possible results yet doesn't mean it doesn't significantly raise the risk.

I think the important thing here is that morals and ethics are a relative concept. It's deeply personal and everyone places there own values on it. You've taken a stance that your absolute responsibility above all else is to your family. If your actions makes things safer for your family at the determent to others then you see that as the moral thing to do. That's valid. You've got the right to the world view but it doesn't change the larger discussion. People will discuss this in a moral lens. Some of them will view your stance as immoral or selfish.

Big trucks, big SUVs, and minivans do in fact have a significantly lower death rate for people in the vehicle than do smaller vehicles [1] so if his goal is to lower the chances of his family dying in a car accident he is achieving it.

[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/are-bigger-cars-safer/

>my moral obligation to protecting my family supersedes any moral obligation I have to protecting strangers

Surely it doesn’t supersede any obligation you have to protecting strangers. If you’d greatly increase the likelihood that you end up killing a pedestrian to only slightly increase the safety of your own family, I think that is morally wrong.

You're rewriting the GP's argument and then responding to that instead of what the person actually wrote. Try again.

Maybe you should read my comment they're replying to.

I did. They pointed out a fundamental flaw in that argument which you have declined to address - specifically, the increased risk factors to your own family members from accidents that do not involve collisions with other vehicles.

This is the dictionary definition of a tragedy of the commons. You must recognize that regardless of your individual decision making, the fact that vehicle sizes have ballooned has made everyone on the road, your family included, much less safe.

Where does it stop though? Are you fine putting everyone else in danger so you feel safe? Are you buying a tank next?

I'm sure he would if it were legal.

On a statistical macro sense, yes you have.

This is untrue. You have a moral obligation to protect strangers from your car. And a legal one.

Not at the expense of my family, I don't.

It's not moral when all public good is sacrificed for familial benefit.

You are intentionally endangering others to give yourself the "feeling" of protecting your family. That is selfish and immoral.

It takes would take some strong avoidance of reality and logic to clamp down on people's individual safety (by mandating smaller vehicles) to 'help save' the ~ < 50 children that get run over (BY ALL VEHICLES, incidentally) every year.

Not sure where your number is coming from. A quick search[0] led me to 181 pedestrian and 40 cyclist child fatalities in 2019.

[0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

The stats I found put it at around 200 per year in the US for children under 13, probably thousands globally. That was from 2021, and since pedestrian deaths in general have gone up a lot since then, I wouldn't be surprised if the number is greater now. Plus some trucks and SUVs have hoods that are so tall now that even 13+ children are occluded.

I'm not saying any of this data is wrong but I'm not sure there's any correlation between pedestrian deaths generally and deaths of children in this way. Most of the children hurt/killed in this manner are probably in driveways, parking lots, subdivisions etc. while I would expect most pedestrian deaths to be in more business district type areas, crossing the street, that sort of thing. I would also expect most child deaths to be a result of not seeing them, and most pedestrian deaths to be a result of speed - hence much fewer [adult] pedestrian deaths in driveways.

So I wouldn't expect a rise in pedestrian deaths (particularly over a very short 2 year period which could just be an aberration in the data) to necessarily mean there was a similar rise in child deaths if they happen in fundamentally different circumstances for different reasons.

Kids need to be taught not to play behind a moving vehicle, the same as they need to be taught not to stick their fingers in an electric socket. "Someone else's kids" who aren't being raised properly isn't enough of a reason to force people to own a particular kind of automobile (At least this was the predominant thinking before we lived in a nanny state).

A plan which makes small children responsible for preventing their own deaths at the hands of adults driving vehicles they personally chose seems at the very least unlikely to produce good results, assuming you are trying to keep children from dying. I suppose if your metric is “nanny state impositions prevented” rather than “children being crushed to death” then it could be considered a success.

Every meaningful action carries some risk to ourselves and others.

In and of itself it is not an excuse to curtail freedoms because nothing would get done. There needs to be an acceptable risk level for things. We need to talk about "unreasonable risks" that are based on evidence and not what might or could happen.

I'm okay with discussing reasonable risks people are taking. I'm just arguing not to bullshit me with what the risks are. I'm okay with motorcyclists on the road. I'm not okay with a motorcyclist trying to say "no, cycling actually makes me safer because I'm more agile and can drive between the lanes, so I'm totally out of the way of cars now!"

Motorcyclist here. A lot of the danger of motorcycles is the rider. The level of danger to a 20 year old man on a sports bike is orders of magnitude higher than that of a 50 year old on touring bike.

Same story with guns: the danger of guns is entirely correlated with demographics. People outside of certain demographics and locales face very little risk from guns.

You're arguing besides my point. My point is that I don't buy bullshit reasons how a riskier behavior is actually safer. A 50 year old motorcyclist trying to tell me "my age actually makes me safer on a motorcycle than if I was in a car" would get a similar wtf.

Motorcyclist here who's in their 50's - you'd better sit down. I have some sobering facts for you.

The fatalities per 100 million miles driven are as follows (NHTSA data):

- 1.1 for car and truck drivers

- 2.3 for all motorcyclists

- 21.8 for motorcyclists over 50

Why is a 50 year old 20 times more likely to die on a motorcycle than a 20 year old? Here are some reasons given by the MSF:

- Decline is physical and cognitive abilities

- Increased risk-taking behavior (20 year olds don't typically do poker runs from bar to bar, for example)

- Riding bigger, faster bikes (as you know, tourers cost a lot of money, money that a 20 year old simply doesn't have)

Now I know neither you nor I are going to park our bikes, but it behooves us both to recognize the dangers in riding at our age and doing what we can to mitigate those risks.

Also, remember this: when those 20 year olds do something stupid on their sport bikes and crash they're pretty much good to go due to the resilience of their young bodies. Us? We're going to the hospital or the morgue. Those are just life's realities.

Keep the rubber down!

I wonder what the break down is on over 50 doing dumb shit/not dumb shit?

I remember how fun riding was after a few beers when I was young, and that's why I don't do that now, but biker gang culture, which is older doesn't care.

I suspect you're a lot like me and wondering how can it be that riding is so dangerous for us. I'm suspecting it's alcohol. They have poker runs all the time where each of the stations is at a bar - and people are drinking up. They end up riding bar to bar to bar to bar, drinking all the way. And they're riding in groups which tends to get things bunched up. I stay away from these events. They're just not my thing.

I don't know a lot of people who've died while riding, but for the couple I do they were riding late at night (wee hours of the morning) and were well over the legal limit for a DUI. One was a buddy of mine who was having a bit of problems in his personal life and went to the bar and got shit faced and left around 2:30 AM. Went riding home on a 4 lane rd here that has a 50 MPH speed limit and winding curves. He failed to negotiate a curve.

So stay sober and enjoy your ride!

I suppose this article is lampooning you, then: https://www.theonion.com/conscientious-suv-shopper-just-want...

It's The Onion, so you don't need to read the article to get the point. Its title is "Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident."

If the vehicle weights are equal, both families will probably survive. But if they're unequal, the smaller vehicle will suffer more damage.

A sucky arms race.

You'll have to look at individual crash safety ratings; but, if memory serves me, large SUVs have worse ratings than smaller cars, in general. That could have changed or I could be wrong, though.

Also, large SUVs are waaay more likely to roll in the event of a "dodge to not die" scenario.

> You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.

You certainly can what the hell. Nowhere is it guaranteed that moral necessities align with comfort or safety.

You have a moral obligation to your own family though. I think that is the point that OP is making.

Why is protecting strangers a moral necessity but protecting your own family is not?

I'm not even making that claim here, come on.

If being in traffic is so dangerous to your family then your protective response should be to reduce their exposure to it as much as possible.

People in this thread are jumping straight to their right to increase the overall danger of driving, and put more of that danger outside their personal sphere, before taking any other actions to reduce or mitigate it.

They certainly have that right under the current arrangement. And I'm not saying all evaluations or decisions along these lines are immoral, I can approach this with understanding of real conditions and nuance. But along with that right comes being considered morally culpable or even cowardly for exercising it.

Let's take as a given that heavier cars are more dangerous to be around.

An individual who needs to commute by car has two options:

1) put themselves and their family in greater danger by driving a lighter car.

2) protect themselves and their family but increase total danger to society by driving a heavier car.

I am unconvinced that there is an obvious morally correct answer. What are one's moral obligations to themselves, their families, and their society? How are these prioritized?

You can't just say "don't drive lul". It's literally not an option. We should have better public transportation, but we don't.

For example, it's the only way that some means of disease prevention work.

What means of disease prevention require not protecting your own family?

"Make your family less safe to make strangers more safe" is certainly a hard to sell to approximately 99% of the world.

Not to 99% of the world, but to 99% of the people in an egocentric society.

Would you rather raise your family in:

(0) a place where nobody else can have an SUV whose extra size directly increases the danger to your kids, but you also can't own one to keep your kids slightly safer while you drive them; or

(1) a place where you can have an SUV that keeps your family slightly safer while they're in it, but everyone else can also own one and they make your family less safe whenever they're not in an SUV themselves?

Social rules are, at least at their best, a way to do better than a Nash equilibrium of mutual defection.

Since (0) is impossible, the answer is the one already proposed.

Why do you think (0) is impossible? Do laws not exist where you are? Are you not able to change them?

To make (0) happen you have to force 10s or 100s of millions of people to give up their current vehicle and buy a new one. To some people that sounds feasible, but they're a good bit more authoritarian than the average politician in the US.

It doesn't need to be a Fox news black and white argument about personal freedoms. Impose safety regulations that accounts for the people outside the vehicle, and the overall safety of the streets. You don't need to wipe out current SUVs and trucks overnight.

If they took away gas guzzling V8 engines, they can take away unwieldy oversized light pickups and SUVs.

Most people don’t own SUVs, even in the USA; and even if they did, laws can be local, so it would be your city or whatever rather than everyone everywhere.

But in this case if everyone thinks that way and buys an SUV the world in general is less safe for your family and you're in fact to safer from having a bigger car, if you ever were which seems to be debatable.

False premise

"Make your passengers more safe, by making your community less safe" is also a not an easy sell, but Americans are paying the big bucks to do it.

At some point your family is going to be on the receiving end. We don't have to be so shortsighted.

I completely disagree. Your moral obligation to your own family trumps that of your obligation to society at large. Even if you could argue that it should not be so, it is in practice.

The harm/benefit to society would have to be much larger for even the most altruistic people to give it more weight than the harm/benefit to their own family.

That’s not the case here.

> You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.

I don't mean to be snarky, but most moral dilemmas boil down to some trade off between what is best for yourself and whats best for society. In an evolutionary sense, our monkey brains see our children as an extension of our self. It seems to fit well.

You might decide that trade off is well worth it, which is a fair conclusion, but you can't deny that moral calculus is there to some degree.

Intentionally putting others in danger is immoral to many. But morality is subjective. Putting the whole community at net negative risk so you can squeak out personal advantage is perfectly acceptable behavior to some.

A similar argument can be made about gun ownership: in an armed society, is it rational not to own a firearm?

sadly yeah

Considering how gun ownership makes you more likely to be killed by a firearm, I'd say yes, it's very rational to not own one.

The largest threat to gun owners is their own gun.

Considering how car ownership makes you more likely to be killed by a car, I'd say yes, it's very rational to not own one.

Don't SUV have less safety features than normal cars? They are classified as light trucks to avoid safety regulations. Does the increased mass make up less safe vehicle?

You are describing a prisoner's dilemma where one person's decision to buy a bigger, more dangerous vehicle pushes you to do the same.

This can all be priced in. If bigger vehicles are more dangerous, we could make auto insurance premiums a function of weight (and other criteria).

> The question for me is, what is safer for my family?

picking up and moving to a location on earth which doesn't require you to own a car to live is the safest bet

it's possible; i'm one (of many many millions around me)

We could make it more expensive to think that way for sure.

Do you have any actual safety numbers? Or are you just going on your gut instinct of "bigger must be better just because"? There was a time when those big SUV vehicles were more likely to kill your family than a mini-van or sedan because the high center of gravity + no rollbar (and other such protection) made it both more likely to roll and more devastating when it did so.

The IIHS has stats on this and it does seem that larger vehicles have lower average death rates[1].

In a world of only smaller sized cars, having a larger car would likely be less safe for the reasons you listed. However, with large cars being so popular, it would make sense that being in a smaller car is less safe as you are more likely to be in a collision with a vehicle that has more mass than yours—not to mention you have less room for crumple zones and the larger vehicle would hit you at a higher point on your vehicles, which is known to be more lethal.

[1]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics

Humans can rationalize anything, thank you for linking actual data.

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