Motorists already have strong incentives to make their vehicles safer for themselves, but they have very little incentive to make things safer for people outside of their vehicle. For that reason we need better regulations and infrastructure that account for those externalities.
While I'm sure it's happened, death via golfcart is a pretty rare occurrence. Death via a Dodge ram, on the other hand, happens all the time. [1]
Giant trucks are super popular and super deadly. I was nearly killed by one myself (driver ran a red light while I was in the cross walk). While I wouldn't outright ban them, I definitely would be up to something like requiring a CDL before you can buy one.
[1] https://www.autoblog.com/article/most-deadly-cars-other-driv...
I have no interest in unproven high-tech approaches when we haven't even implemented very basic proven pedestrian safety measures like eliminating street-level parking around pedestrian crossings to increase visibility, or mandating pedestrian safety tests for motor vehicles.
I'm guessing you don't live in the south. Pickup trucks are a major way of life for a lot of people. They certainly wouldn't be happy about increased regulatory burden.
Attitudes on roads vary wildly based on the community in question. There's a large surface area of this country that doesn't care to have non-vehicular traffic sharing the roadways.
Urban communities will prioritize different needs than suburban and rural communities. The two ends of the spectrum aren't really compatible because these are wholly different lifestyles that are geographically separable.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ute_(vehicle)#/media/File:1990...
Well depends what you need to do with, of course.
A quick search suggests that this Toyota can tow 3300lb (if the trailer has its own brakes, or only 1650lb if not).
So if you need to tow more than that, it won't work. 3300lb is very little, even our tiny (19ft) and light travel trailer is over 4000lb.
Of course, what is silly is the people with trucks that are never used to tow or carry anything heavier than a bicycle!
Plus, if work vehicles became lighter, work trailers would be forced to as well.
Try shopping for utility trailers. Anything affordable is very heavy steel & lumber. You can get light(er) trailers in aluminum but the price is much higher. I've never actually seen a contractor with one of those, too expensive.
And of course there is all the materials & equipment they're towing on it for the job. How do you suggest any of that become lighter?
given your example it's "want", not "need"
> 3300lb is very little, even our tiny (19ft) and light travel trailer is over 4000lb
Quick googling tells me that most European caravans are sub 1500kg / 3300lb, even the more spacious ones, "very little" and "tiny" are really subjective
Yes, how is this relevant? "Wants" are what drive humanity forward, not mere subsistence.
> Quick googling tells me that most European caravans are sub 1500kg / 3300lb, even the more spacious ones
Can you post a few links? Tried to find the most popular travel trailer models in Europe but not finding a good list.
Unless you're building the whole thing from carbon fiber, anything spacious is necessarily going to have some weight.
Ha, so it's spacious, not tiny and very little anymore...
Here's what seems to be the biggest one of that random brand well ranked on Google, 1330kg: https://www.caravelair-caravans.com/models/exclusive-line-58...
Playing gotcha word games is not the HN ethos.
To clarify, you brought up spacious travel trailers:
> most European caravans are sub 1500kg / 3300lb, even the more spacious ones
In contrast, the one I own is very small at 19ft, as mentioned upthread.
- the wheel wells are clean
- it's got a tonneau cover on
- no hitch receiver, it's empty, or there's no rust on the ball
- aftermarket anything (lights, step bumpers, lift kit, etc
- no dents, major scratches, or foreign materials on the bed or tailgate
Full disclosure: I have a Dodge 1500 in the driveway right now. In my defense the used truck market is fucking insane, I got this basically new for 60% of what a thoroughly used mid-sized truck would have cost me, and I actually do construction and timber work so the thing gets worked.
Mine is also used to haul a bed full of gravel when my drive needs repair or dirt for lawn correction. Not to mention I have a family.
Rear facing child seats while being 6 feet tall. Most cars I've tested don't support this. (Prius) Or no children can sit behind me because my front seat is sitting so close to the back seat that legs don't fit between. (Camero/Mustang)
Camry and Pasat seem to work, but warranties wouldn't cover things like bad child safety locks.... Not to mention, you can't haul things like gravel. =/
You go from full truck down to flat cars, completely ignoring the vehicles in between like soft-roader SUVS or the venerable minivan. Does none of these vehicles meet your people carrying needs?
People pay double (or more) for gas every year so they can drive around an empty bed and maybe save $50 on a rental once a year.
The gravel isn't for the driveway, but the road. However, we have hauled gravel for flower beds. It's about time to replace fence and some wood around the garage.
No, I don't haul daily or monthly, but more like quarterly and as-needed. (Tillers, Lawn mowers for example)
That is the problem which needs to be solved.
Small cars don't usually fit families well. =(
LOL - I'm imagining a Prius for a family of 6 =P
Because they are killing pedestrians and cyclists at an increasing rate in North America, while the same collisions are coming down in other developed countries. If the industry doesn't regulate itself, the government needs to step in for the common good.
And many of us aren't happy about the number of pedestrian deaths caused by these behemoths. Which one should we prioritize?
In my observation, vehicular traffic anywhere doesn't care to have non-vehicular traffic sharing the roadways. That doesn't mean that pedestrians, cyclists, or regulators should necessarily defer to their wishes.
What about electric vehicles?
Just note that looks can deceive on weight.
A Ford Maverick pickup truck is under 3800lb. A Tesla Plaid Model X is over 5300lb!
Pickup trucks don't need to be heavy. Japan has kei pickups, in the US, we had small pickups in the 80s and 90s. And then they disappeared throughout the early 00s.
A small truck with a small engine does small truck things, and has decent fuel economy and tremendous visibility.
But we can't buy those new anymore because you can't get a small truck to hit cafe standards, so large trucks it is.
The kei trucks aren't really a good replacement even for an S10 since so far as I can tell they won't run at highway speeds, but they're really good replacement for the Canam and Polaris money pits people buy (and are certainly way more capable of real work).
I don't own a truck anymore and now my "hack" is to remove the middle seats from my minivan and fold down the back row seats. That creates enough room that I can fit full 4'x8' sheets in it (with zero room to spare). I've hauled drywall and plywood in it with no problem. I sometimes get weird looks from folks when I roll up to the back of my minivan with a cart of plywood at the big box store.
Pretty sure the tiny bed on my grandfather's 1970 Datsun is larger than the beds on some of these behemoths.
Is it really dads? I've seen claims that is actually moms demanding this, dads just go along. (dads would be happy in a minivan, but their wife won't let their husbands be seen in one)
If you need construction materials delivered, this can accommodate almost anything. However usually for things like a stack of drywall, you would order a truck with a crane - simply because it's quicker to unload. For personal use the answer is simply to get a trailer. Here a lot of gas stations rent trailers by the hour for a reasonable fee, so it's very easy.
RVs also fit into this category. Most of them are under 3.5t, so you just need a standard car license. Some larger B class variants (which I guess in the US would still be considered small) need a C license. Caravans (travel trailers) are designed to be ok to tow on a standard car license, but in some countries you need extra training. Larger RVs don't make much sense here, as you won't be able to go anywhere with them.
People who have boats either leave them docked, or have boats that fit on a trailer that can be towed by a standard car. Nothing special needed. Same for cars, just put them on a trailer and drive away. Professionals often use car carrier variants of the Mercedes Sprinter et al, which can carry one or two cars, and another towed behind.
As a driver of a compact car, the fact that they put the headlights at the very top of the massive grille is just terrible, and there seems to be an arms race between pickup manufacturers to place the headlights as high as possible.
Again, by comparison to medium-duty vehicles, the Freightliner M2 106 puts the headlights right above the bumper.
[...] one in every 22 Dodge Ram 2500 drivers has a drunk driving conviction on their record. The national average is one in 56 drivers, meaning Dodge Ram 2500 drivers are more than twice as likely to have a DUI conviction on their record compared to all other drivers on the road.
That’s an order of magnitude higher than I would’ve guessed. Unbelievable!
And make them both as small as possible and as bright as possible, resulting in pinpoint sources of very bright light which completely destroy the night vision of any oncoming drivers.
DOT used to regulate headlight brightness, placement, and beam pattern, it seems that if these regulations are still in force they are being completely ignored without consequence.
That stopped being true in the late 90's/early 2000's when HID headlights entered the market, and the standard was further updated a few years ago (after a decade's delay) to allow for adaptive-shape headlights (ie ones that can control the shape of the high beam, for example to still provide high beams, but not in areas occupied by oncoming traffic.)
DOT still does regulate all or most those things and many other elements about vehicle lights you probably never thought about (and I'll get back to headlights in a couple of paragraphs.)
Ever notice that most cars with "animated" turn signals have a portion that lights up immediately, or the entire signal lights up full brightness immediately and then fades, versus fading up or gradually lighting up a larger area? That's because of a DOT regulation that says X amount of area / brightness has to come on when the signal first lights up. This is why Audi's animated tail lights, for example, usually have two areas - one that is animated and 'grows'...and another that lights up fully. Ditto for Mazda's 'pulsing' turn signals.
Ever notice that a lot of "cute utes" and crossovers with hatches have either brake/turn signals in the bumper awkwardly very low, sometimes in addition to ones on the hatch? That's because DOT regulations require turn, brake, and marker lights be mounted in/on a non-moving part of the body. Got a friend with an Audi Q-series? have them step on the brake / use a turn signal, then open the hatch and do it again. Bam, those red lights way down in the bumper you never see light up...now light up in place of those on the hatch.
DOT has standards around placement of turn signals near other lights (DRLs and headlight beams.) That's why on many vehicles the DRLs go out when the turn signal comes on, or in fancier european/japanese cars, the DRL and turn signal are the same element and it switches from white to blinking yellow.
DOT also used to require that only two sets of lights on the front of the car be turned on at once. This is why some cars deactivate fog lights when the high beams are turned on, and some older cars don't turn on the lows and highs at the same time.
Fun fact: DOT used to require rear facing fog lights only be on one side. I'm not sure if the regulation still exists, but back in the mid to late 90's, european car manufacturers started ignoring the regulation, installing bulbs in both tail lamps, because they would be inundated with customers complaining to dealers that "one of my tail lights is out." Thus the whole damn point of a rear fog light - is it one very bright light, driver's side - which is different from two or three very bright lights (brake lights!) - was largely erased.
But...back to headlights. DOT regulations used to require sealed-beam headlights well past when the rest of the world had moved to 'aero' headlights with reflectors shaped to better distribute light across the road surface and limit light spillage where it would blind oncoming traffic or be wasted.
DOT regulations used to require a crazy amount of light spillage off to the sides because they predated reflective road sign technology. I'm not joking when I say that DOT headlight regulations up until some time in the 80's had not been updated in around forty years. Many EU and Asian cars had to be sold with US-only sealed beam headlights when ROW (Rest Of World) they were sold with aero headlights, because they had to meet inferior, outdated DOT standards. This raised costs for imported vehicles and allowed US manufacturers to save costs by not developing better headlights, and US manufacturers and their unions liked that because it was effectively a tariff on imported cars.
Why did the standards eventually get updated? Ford bet the company - billions in late 1970's early 1980s money on the Taurus (successfully. It saved the company.) Ford needed aero headlights to meet its aerodynamic drag goals (which were insanely good even by today's standards.) So, suddenly Ford wanted aero headlights to be legal. Bam. Aero headlights became legal. And suddenly ever ford was getting aero headlights. They were still garbage compared to what was sold in Europe; many car enthusiasts with 80's/90's era cars illegally imported and installed european headlights because the beam patterns were so much better.
Nothing happens to US vehicle regulations unless US auto manufacturers want it. We lag the rest of the world in almost every standard imaginable. We lag on passenger car features (it took until something like the mid 2000's for ABS to be required!)
For example, in the EU, trucks are required to have:
- ABS, stability control, and automatic emergency warning/braking systems (and I think side collision warning systems? not sure.) - Full mirror coverage - bumper features that keep them from riding up a passenger car they rear-end - trailer rear end crash bars that keep cars rear ending trailers from going under the trailer and decapitating the occupants - modern emissions controls - electronic logbook systems
In the US? A 1970's peterbuilt that belches black smoke, has sealed beam headlights, flat side mirrors looking back, no ABS much less stability control/braking...is A-OK. Similarly, our rear collision safety standards for trailers are very watered down because of trucking industry lobbyists. Saves the trucking industry tens of billions, and costs the rest of society probably hundreds of billions if not trillions between injuries/deaths/property damage/lost productivity and health impacts from essentially unregulated emissions.
There are "coach builders" that focus on skirting emissions regulations - completely legally - via regulations that let an old, pre-emissions-control truck engine be installed into a brand new truck body.
I could go on and on about how asinine, outdated, and ineffective US motor vehicle safety and equipment regulations are. I could go on even further about how completely ineffective motor vehicle inspections are even in states that require them, because they're conducted by a private business with a vested interest in ignoring customers not meeting standards or purposefully violating them.
And you should. This is fascinating! You answered so many nagging questions I’ve had for years about the weird behavior of fog lamps and DRLs.
Any reason why some manufacturers allow the lights to remain on when the ignition is killed with an obnoxious beep (Ford, VW), and others don’t (Subaru, Toyota)?
But, variable resistors that are rated for a lot of power (roughly half the power of the diodes at max brightness) will add to the BOM.
1: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2001/09/28/01-2443...
It boggles the mind that people drop absolutely inordinate amounts of money on the King Ranch Escalade doo-doo trucks that don't seem to do work any better than any truck I've owned, but cost an arm and a leg when something goes wrong. The Telsa truck looks like one of the worst offenders: it's rare to see a vehicle that is THAT stupidly designed inside and out.
If it is a truck then dents from loading and hauling cargo are normal (though cargo should be tied down). Likewise scratched paint caused by off road driving are normal things for trucks with 4 wheel drive (buy a 2 wheel drive if you are only driving on road). If it is a truck you cannot consider cosmetic damage in the value, if it is road worthy then the value is about how many hours are on the engine and nothing else. (this just killed the used and trade in market for trucks so if you buy one you better keep it for 15000 engine hours)
I know everyone says that the EPA killed small trucks in 2008[1] but Toyota replaced the "Toyota Pickup" with the less-practical Tundra in '95, and embiggened it in 2004, so I'm not convinced that companies would make them even were they legal.
https://mobikefed.org/2020/10/research-risk-death-pedestrian...
Modern pick ups are urban tanks meant to out weigh other vehicles protecting the occupants. That’s why people buy them, because they are scared. Of the other scared idiots in the other urban tanks.
Otherwise there should be nothing bigger/faster/louder than a standard gas-powered golf cart.
Bonus: golf carts are fun. When was the last time you had fun driving at 25mph?
I would like to see the cost to register these behemoths to be commiserate with the actual cost to society.
Toyota Camry 1979 – 980–1,060 kg (2,161–2,337 lb)
Toyota Camry 2024 – 1,480–1,660 kg (3,262–3,659 lb)
This is the problem: All cars are getting bigger and heavier. By a lot. But us squishy humans still have the same impact tolerances we did 40 years ago.
While cars are undoubtedly heavier now than in the past, they are also in most cases the most fuel efficient they have ever been. Some of the weight is a direct result of fuel saving technologies in many cases; hybrid systems and traction batteries often weigh more than less efficient legacy ICE powertrains did.
I would like these vehicles to be sent to the landfill immediately.
So you'll never have anything delivered anymore nor have a contractor be able to show up and work on anything. How will that work with your plan?
By all means lets look into some of the tech solutions. But politicians (policy makers and pundits) are not the ones to listen to.
Is it really though? Is it?
One example of this that drives me crazy is how soundproof vehicles have become. Horns and sirens keep getting louder to make up for it, which makes being near traffic incredibly painful. Sirens are often 120+ decibels, a volume that is unsafe for listeners for more than 10 seconds. All cars should be mandated to easily be able to hear a 100 decibel siren.
It would help drivers use it more thoughtfully, instead of pressing it multiple times at the slightest feeling of inconvenience.