The US finally takes aim at truck bloat
theverge.com
theverge.com
I.E., there is a tax incentive to make trucks and buy them.
The occupant safety regulations means we make the worlds safest vehicles (for occupants) - roll over regulations have made the an and bill pillars thicker.
If we manage to remove the tariff protection and remove the tax incentives to buy trucks - we will save lives.
I do wonder if it's too late, though. Many people in the US are now used to large vehicles, and see the size itself as a safety feature. Sure, if SUVs and trucks got significantly more expensive to buy, some people might be priced out, but I'm not sure that's going to be enough.
This is the thing. The sightlines and pillars are so big it's literally difficult to see other cars on the road with you.
That alone should warrant some safety regulation.
I knew things were off the rails when I parked my beater 2nd-gen Ranger next to a then-new F-250 and couldn't see the top of the Ranger's cab when looking through the F-250's windows.
I don't think main street has an argument any more for why we should risk getting run over for out of town shoppers and office space can largely be rezoned.
I don't particularly like the experience of walking in a city with bikers, but at least they are engaging in as much risk as they put others through and accidents with them are likely to be short term inconvenience instead of permanent injuries and death.
Because people of all capabilities need to get to the businesses in the cities. If you're proposing prohibiting private transportation, you first need adequate public transportation, which is expensive and often lacking.
The alternative, where _nobody_ has easy access to the city's businesses, tends to result in the businesses moving out of the city to somewhere else, taking their tax payments with them, often places that are _even harder_ to get to for people who don't have cars... because businesses need customers. If you won't support them (by providing affordable and convenient means for the customers to reach the businesses), they won't wait to die, they will solve the problem themselves.
Only cities which have well-developed public transport networks, and have very popular city centres (to the point of congestion) are even thinking of banning cars from them. The rest of the cities need all the help they can get to fend off financial ruin from e-commerce.
Popular cities don't really need to compete to fill a bunch of commercial real estate. They have people who commute every day by public transport and residents who are competing for real estate with this property.
It's enough now with the cars, there are mall towns and cities happily lose 'business' to them because it is not worth wasting 30% of all land to attract a bunch of people who may never actually get out of their car in your city and then at most to a business that probably pays less in property tax than a correspondingly sized residence.
These businesses can't vote and if they aren't in town to complain the noise from them stops. There were also a lot of angry horse cart drivers once.
But people in the US don't actually want that, unfortunately. They mostly like being able to drive around in cities (either their own city, or nearby cities where they want to visit). It's weird to say that, because most people would probably say they hate driving in city traffic. But when the alternative is driving to some sort of park-and-ride and switching to trains or buses, many US residents will prefer to drive.
Let's also not forget that even some of the most transit-heavy places in the world still allow private vehicles. In some (Tokyo especially comes to mind), it ends up usually being more expensive and take more time to drive than to take transit, but people still choose or need to do it for whatever reason.
Your phrasing of "why cities allow" is a common one, but remember that a city isn't its own entity with its own wants and desires. The laws reflect the wants and desires of the voters who live there.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/document/final-rule-federal-motor-vehi...
But they have to be even bigger still when you have trucks weighing in at 6,000lb+, and have taller cabs (which also makes them more prone to rollover).
Minimal visibility requirements around A pillars (and in front of the car/over the hood) sound like the logical next step.
Also the far greater mass of the vehicle requires far stronger A-, B- and C-pillars to not crush in a rollover
Forcing all vehicles onto a 30-50% weight loss diet would help every factor tremendously, including reduced braking distances and more nimble turning to reduce collisions in the first place, reduced impact when there are collisions, reduced road wear, reduced fuel/energy consumption, etc.. Everything gets better with lighter weight, but engineers/designers seem happy to blow right past any weight budget at the slightest excuse (if there even is a weight budget in the design brief). The sheer mass of vehicles these days, even so-called "sportscars" never ceases to amaze me, and when it gets to SUVs and trucks, it's just insane. The technology certainly exists to cut weights by close to half, to levels of 35 years ago, and improve safety and performance while doing so.
I've done some tests with mine and it doesn't look like they would be able to block me from seeing any pedestrian that is near enough that I might hit them.
The driver's side one is wide enough that its angular width might be wider than the angular width of a nearby pedestrian, but the pillar is not vertical and so only overlaps a horizontal slice of the pedestrian someone in their midsection. The parts above and below that are easily visible.
Worth nothing that those standards were begged, pleaded, demanded, cried and shitted for on the part of every major US automaker before they were passed, and it was only after that/because of that that every major automaker began working like hell to sell the American public on SUVs and trucks. Simple fact is that full-size trucks are the only vehicle category that Detroit is able to compete on (less so now than then, but then this was extremely true) after they got their asses roundly handed to them by the various Asian ones that did cars, vans, and MPVs much better.
US automakers bet the farm on building ever larger and more ridiculous vehicles for Americans because it was just easier than competing with the Japanese/Koreans on a fair field.
I hope like hell this goes somewhere and we can get these stupid things under control. Feels like every Tom, Dick, and Harry around where I live is driving a 3-ton or greater truck that's never seen anything more strenuous than getting a load of fertilizer for mom's garden, and like, that's fine. But their choices in vehicles are putting negative externalities all over the community and risking everyone's safety, including their own children, and it's fucking ridiculous.
Yup. An Audi mid-size SUV has a towing capacity of nearly 8,000lb. Moving your horse from the top paddock to the bottom and back, every six months does not mean you need a dual-wheeled F350 as your daily driver.
If you’ve done any towing, you would know that Audi SUVs are terrible at it in practice, despite the advertised numbers. There’s a lot to the practical experience of towing that trucks get right in their design and features. Many of the SUVs that show high towing numbers are almost never seen towing on the roads for a reason.
Also there are a lot of trucks that are not a dual wheeled F350. I feel like that is a misrepresentation when people are overwhelmingly buying half ton trucks like the F150. Also keep in mind, full size SUVs (like the Yukon) are similar in size to a half ton trucks. People gets lots of use out of them in their daily lives - it’s not just about towing horses or doing farm work, but also just hauling a family and gear around. Like if you’re a family of four going for a day at the beach, you can easily exceed the capacity of mid-size SUVs or small trucks.
I say this as someone who doesn’t own any of these but would certainly get use out of one. I think there is lots of room to improve road safety by simply mandating the usual modern features like sensors, automatic braking, blind spot detection, better mirrors, cameras on all sides, etc.
Doesn't change the the vast majority of F-150's are not being used for actual truck-appropriate tasks. They're hundred-thousand-dollar grocery getters, and like, I wouldn't give half a shit what other people are buying and running, if not for the fact that we're currently on-pace to boil ourselves to death and a chief cause of that is oversized vehicles that require more energy to move than otherwise, while offering more and larger blind-spots and more aggressive designs that heighten their ability to kill people, so that a middle-aged accountant can feel like "more of a man" than he would in a van.
> Also keep in mind, full size SUVs (like the Yukon) are similar in size to a half ton trucks.
Yes, which is why they're arguably even worse since you just have a vehicle with the dimensions of a truck, that lacks the capabilities a truck offers. Not that most consumers need EITHER ONE but that's neither here nor there.
> but also just hauling a family and gear around
Literally any class of vehicle is better than this. For decades prior to SUV's becoming dominant, people accomplished all of this in minivans and station wagons, which offer more carrying capacity than an SUV (thanks to not having so much dead space in the middle behind interior panels and styling) and they offer a lower loading height, which makes them easier to take things in an out of.
An SUV is just a van, but worse, and sitting an extra foot off the ground that it doesn't need to, which also thanks to sharing suspension components and engines with the truck it's based on, gets worse fuel economy than it could, so higher fuel costs, and inherits the higher maintenance costs of the truck too.
You're literally any way you go as a family man further ahead buying a van, a station wagon, a sedan, or an MPV.
As for sitting an extra foot off the ground - that’s very useful in very common conditions like snow on the ground, or unpaved roads, or whatever else.
And, even if you are somehow doing that, then don't buy a minivan, buy a van. A full size van with a finished interior can hold an astonishing amount of stuff.
Only if the snow is unplowed and has piled up more than a foot or two. And arguably most people shouldn't be driving in those conditions anyway. I do just fine driving up to and around Tahoe in my AWD coupe, even in conditions when I probably shouldn't be out.
> or unpaved roads, or whatever else.
Which 90% of SUV/truck buyers will never, ever see.
And for the snow conditions where high clearance matters, more than half of SUV/truck buyers will probably never see those, either.
Is it that much of an improvement, though? When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, we did just fine with a 4-door sedan, including lots of multi-hour car trips to amusement parks and beaches and nearby cities. My parents eventually bought a minivan, but I was puzzled by that choice since I was in high school (and would move away in a couple years), and my sister was only a few years younger. (To me one of the big draws of a minivan or SUV for families is when you have young children and need to get into the car with them to strap them in or otherwise deal with them.)
To me, many SUVs are worse at these sorts of trips. You have a lot of extra unusable space because of their interior height, and the cargo space in the back is more vertical than horizontal, which can sometimes be a challenge depending on what you're bringing. Loading and unloading people inside is harder due to the passenger compartment being higher off the ground. Mid- and large-size sedans, station wagons (I know they've fallen out of favor, but so what), and minivans are way better for this.
Also not sure what kind of beach gear families of four are lugging out these days. Towels, toys, fold-up strollers, snorkel gear, and even some folding chairs and a sun umbrella should fit just fine in a sedan's trunk, no? (Ok, you might have to strap the umbrella to the roof, but otherwise...)
I won't comment on towing since I've never done it; you seem to know your stuff there.
I think people just make excuses for why they "need" the larger vehicle.
>Starting in 2011, the CAFE standards are newly expressed as mathematical functions depending on vehicle footprint, a measure of vehicle size determined by multiplying the vehicle's wheelbase by its average track width. A complicated 2011 mathematical formula was replaced starting in 2012 with a simpler inverse-linear formula with cutoff values.[9] CAFE footprint requirements are set up such that a vehicle with a larger footprint has a lower fuel economy requirement than a vehicle with a smaller footprint. For example, the fuel economy target for the 2012 Honda Fit with a footprint of 40 sq ft (3.7 m2) is 36 miles per US gallon (6.5 L/100 km), equivalent to a published fuel economy of 27 miles per US gallon (8.7 L/100 km) (see #Calculations of MPG overestimated for information regarding the difference), and a Ford F-150 with its footprint of 65–75 sq ft (6.0–7.0 m2) has a fuel economy target of 22 miles per US gallon (11 L/100 km), i.e., 17 miles per US gallon (14 L/100 km) published. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/CAFE_per...
The agency has the power to fix this; All they have to do is propose a rule change, do the necessary notice and comment period and then implement.
Also it is amazing they are patting themselves on the back for the estimated 67 less deaths given >The report's conclusions include a finding that in the absence of CAFE, and with no other fuel economy regulation substituted, motor vehicle fuel consumption would have been approximately 14 percent higher than it actually was in 2002. However, due to the effect of these standards on the types and weights of vehicles sold, it has increased the costs of vehicles and may have led to an estimated 1,300 to 2,600 increased fatalities in the year 1993 alone
Theoretically. In practice I doubt it's this easy. Bought-out judges in Texas have had a field day since chevron is gone and you can easily say "well the law didn't say this!!!"
Our current regulations made the cut off. Going forward, I have much less faith in the agencies (or congress) to actually get anything done regulatory-wise. Which, frankly, has been the aim of the American right for at least 50 years.
Why aren't these same judges blocking this rule? It's from the same agency.
We have had this problem for how many years exactly? Chevron was overturned this year.
And when has the possibility of a court blocking action ever stopped an agency from even trying? Trump with his stupid boarder antics went through at least 5 lawsuits, Biden tried to get student loan forgiveness at least 3 times.
If the agency gives a damn, they try lawsuits be damned. This is just them clapping themselves on the back for doing what amounts to almost nothing.
Fair enough, I'm being overly cynical
It's telling that, aside from the Mustang, Ford now exclusively makes SUVs, trucks, and a couple transit (not mini) vans.
Vehicle designs today, particularly front ends, but also door mirrors and other features, are a direct result of regulatory requirements designed to reduce pedestrian injury and fatality. For coming up on 100 years now, fenders have been required on passenger vehicles, in part because they reduce pedestrian injury and fatality. Perhaps they're claiming that this particular regulator, the NHTSA, is doing this for the first time, but it is very misleading to insinuate that no regulatory requirements have appeared on behalf of pedestrian safety for 50 years.
Regarding "truck bloat": the most outrageous bloat occurring now in production vehicles is electric trucks. The GM Chevrolet Silverado EV GVRW is 10,500 lbs. and has a curb weight of 8532 lbs. That is about 3000 lbs heavier than an ICE equivalent. These things are at the edge of requiring CDLs to drive, and when you get t-boned by something that heavy, even if you're in a large vehicle yourself, you're going to get annihilated.
But there’s 40k deaths per year from auto accidents; so this is not going to move the needle.
If the problem is big trucks then maybe don’t penalize the sales of small trucks?
This right here. If I lived almost anywhere else in the world I could get a 70 series land cruiser or Hilux or any number of others that are rated for 1+ ton capacity and 7700lb+ towing capacity, all while getting 20+mpg with a decent diesel engine. Instead, I'm stuck with some dystopian chicken tax + diesel phobic lunacy and end up burning twice as much fuel to tow or carry half as much. Idiotic.
E.g., Volvo XC40 T5 is 1600 kg in the U.S. https://www.volvocars.com/en-ca/support/car/xc40/21w22/artic...
but 2100 kg in the UK https://www.volvocars.com/uk/support/car/xc40/21w46/article/...
As I recall it has to do with standards for stability at speed...
All to say you can probably tow more than you think with a U.S. car that's also sold in Europe, just maybe don't go above 55mph...?
The only saving grace here is (a) the EPA doesn't actually enforce rules against diesel swaps, and most states tolerate it--some will even give you a new VIN! (b) nobody (law enforcement) cares about GVWR unless you're operating commercially or doing something obviously unhinged.
Almost 14k of the 40k are drunk driving: if you want to move the needle that's another big chunk to look at. https://www.nhtsa.gov/risky-driving/drunk-driving
Note that road fatalities per capita is 85% of what it was 20 years ago, and it is similarly lower if you look at it on a per mile driven basis. Sales of consumer trucks is 150% of what it was 20 years ago, despite the reduction in fatalities over that time. So I don’t think we can really attribute deaths to trucks or SUVs.
When studies actually look at the issue deaths are not caused by distracted pedestrians but by poor road and vehicle design[1].
> Contrary to their portrayal as reckless rule-breakers, distracted pedestrians were more likely to cross with the light and use the crosswalk. Similarly, while distracted walkers did indeed take longer to identify gaps in traffic, this is a form of compensatory behavior that reduces risk.
>The authors point to two alternative culprits for the rise in pedestrian deaths: distracted driving and SUVs, both of which are incredibly deadly and have become more prevalent over time.
>Similarly, the risks to pedestrians were lowest in tech centers (San Francisco, New York, and Seattle) and in college towns (Madison, Wisc.). Instead, pedestrian risks were highest in several metropolitan areas of Florida that are known more for their inhospitable streetscapes than their distracted walkers.
0: https://citationsneeded.medium.com/the-great-neoliberal-burd...
1:https://bloustein.rutgers.edu/distracted-pedestrians-may-not...
But still, 67 vs. 7500 is still a large gulf. If they're only expecting these new measures to reduce pedestrian deaths by about 1%, the changes don't go far enough at all.
Oh, so instead of fixing the standards that caused the shift to large trucks and SUVs to begin with they are going to mandate more crash safety....
>The proposed rule would apply to passenger vehicles with a gross vehicle weight rating of 10,000 pounds or less, including multipurpose passenger vehicles (trucks, SUVs, crossovers and vans).
>The proposed standard would establish test procedures simulating a head-to-hood impact and performance requirements to minimize the risk of head injury. NHTSA estimates the new standard would save 67 lives a year.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/nhtsa-proposes-new-vehi...
Basically nothing.
How about making more rigorous standards for heavier vehicles and tighten the emission standards for the heavier vehicles as well?
I just hope this doesn't go in this wrong direction.
Geez your computer looks to be using alot of power.
We need people to register their computer to estimate your computer footprint.
Then we can regulate it.
Also, your computer's power consumption is in fact regulated on a semi-voluntary basis via a program called Energy Star. People are fine with it because Energy Star certification saves them money. By contrast, the problem with trucks is that their unsafe design is subsidized by the government, so smaller more efficient vehicles that would normally save people money end up being penalized.
While I agree that large pickup trucks and SUVs pose an increased risk to pedestrians, particularly in urban areas, and should be discouraged as single person commuter vehicles, particularly in urban areas, there are a lot of other use cases. What should someone who needs to move bulky/heavy/rough things with regularity and can only afford to have one vehicle use?
Discouraging negative externalities through taxation makes sense, but setting taxes to be so punitive that they make it difficult for people to afford the vehicles they need to do what they need to do is also harmful.
As an example, I have a pickup truck and a regular car. Driving around town I use my regular car, but when I need to move large or heavy things I use my truck. It's much more convenient to be able to use my truck when I need it rather than having to rent one every time or hire a company to move things for me.
The pickup truck is large (RAM 1500), and some would argue it's dangerously oversized, but its size is needed when I need to do truck things with it. The truck being affordable means I can afford to have a regular sized vehicle for tasks that don't involve moving big/heavy/dirty things.
I agree that trucks like the RAM 1500 are useful in many applications. They should be taxed appropriately (in a way that offsets or negates what currently amounts to subsidies in the US market), and manufacturers should be required to enable the driver to see a certain minimum distance in front of the vehicle and obstruct a certain maximum angle around A pillars. Trucks and SUVs over a certain size should also have speed limiter governors that activate on city streets. It is not acceptable to have drivers of these vehicles - which were originally developed for specialized industry applications - speed in areas where it directly endangers pedestrians and cyclists.
The CAFE exemptions for SUVs and trucks compared to cars don't make sense to me and encourage maximizing vehicle footprint, so changing those rules would make sense. What else do you consider "subsidies" for this size of pickup trucks? Not being subject to the "chicken tax"? (not directly relevant to me as I'm in Canada)
Poor example, they already are. You require a special license. This is a tax, and a rather severe one. Never mind that those drivers are also directly responsible if their vehicle malfunctions. That's how some big rig drivers are able to get 150 years in jail because their brakes went out.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41418562 - Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41461138 - What to do about America's killer cars
And see also AP's earlier reporting (yesterday): https://apnews.com/article/us-pedestrian-safety-rule-suvs-pi...
I know this is an unpopular take here, but I also feel the search for safety on roads is going too far. Cars give us a benefit - we can get to places fast, on our own schedule unlike public transit, with all the people or cargo we want to take. Life is much better because of it. Chasing zero fatalities just seems illogical - when life inherently comes with risk. I am comfortable having some number of deaths for these benefits, and would like to see an accounting of how much benefit people derive from these targeted vehicles and weigh that against the costs. To me, NHTSA’s claim of saving 67 lives a year though this program isn’t really worth it.
I’ll also note that The Verge is guilty of poor journalism on this topic. For example it makes a claim that vehicle design doesn’t address crash fatalities when all the safety features this article dismisses - like cameras, blind spot detection, and automatic braking - are part of that vehicle’s design in reducing fatalities. They also don’t talk about how cars are incredibly safe today, with only around 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven. We have about the same number of total road deaths as the year 2000 even though the population is 20% higher.
I would like to see more consistent enforcement against reckless driving, personally. Drivers who weave at high speeds in small gaps to change lanes, for example. Speed in general is one of the biggest factors of collision fatalities.
Actually using a F-150 sized truck to do work (almost nobody does) is considerably harder because of how high off the ground it is and more difficult to maneuver because if its size/height. And the cost is just absurd.
Fixing it though would require government money redesigning infrastructure, new rules makes it where you can push off the costs to car companies.
This deliberately unsafe design needs to be outlawed. Infrastructure improvements like traffic calming and dedicated grade-separated pedestrian/cyclist infrastructure are great too, but we need both.
* headlights same height as all cars
* bumpers all being the same height too
"Don't hit anything. At all. Ever." seems like a reasonable default prime directive for new vehicles (with obvious exceptions for police etc).
"Each year, cars kill roughly 40,000 Americans."
Well that's dumb, skip it. Unless there are other reasons beyond safety, 67 lives is nothing.
I don’t want it to be more survivable when someone is hit by a 6 foot tall hood 7500 pound truck someone is using to go grocery shopping.
I don’t want 6’ tall hoods. I’m 6’ tall and sitting in my small SUV the hoods of new trucks are over my eyeline. That’s insane.
Put limits on hood height. Put limits on weight. Or at least huge taxes. You want to pay an extra $149,000 in fees for your monstrosity? Go ahead. Either you’re ultra-rich or you’re really using it and it’s not a suburban vanity truck.
Limit length. Limit footprint. Limit weight. Repeal the chicken tax. Things are crazy out there. GMC added cameras to the front of some of their trucks to be able to see pedestrians at crosswalks. How is that sane?
Or maybe better to charge a big daily tariff for driving it in metro areas? So if it's only being 'actually used' it will never hit the tariff, whoever you are, business or not, and however rich. But if you take it between school, Wholefoods, and the soccer field, bam. (I don't know if the infrastructure to do that is common in the US though, I'm imagining like London's U/LEZ & congestion charge.)
Trucks worked fine 40 years ago. I don’t see why they need to be the insane size they are today. I’m not saying they all have to be the size of a Miata or something.
The industry taught people to want giant monstrosities because it saved them money. I don’t think they’re inherently superior and trying to control the size is de facto making them worse.
Where lines are drawn is for lawmakers. I can see business needing big trucks. Maybe put them behind a tougher license. I don’t know.
The status who is insane. I moved up from an Accord because SUVs had hoods above my roofline. My little SUV isn’t much better. It’s an arms race and we need to do something.
SMH
With large cars its the opposite. The people who drive large cars take on no risk, while everyone else is subjected to their negative externalities.
Government agencies used to be able to do their jobs, but ever since the Reagan era, that has diminished. And as a result, since 2010 pedestrian deaths (and deaths for vehicle occupants) has actually increased, after falling for decades. If you want to do dangerous stuff, like riding a motorcycle, free climbing, etc, you should be able to. But when you're doing stuff where the risk is entirely placed on someone else, that's literally the point of regulation.
https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/pedes...
What? People will eventually end up in front of a car, either by their own mistake or when a inattentive driver hits them, it will happen. Factoring that in those unfortunate occasions you want the human being to have higher chances to survive is fucking absolutely a factor.
I'm sorry to ask this on HN but: are you a moron or a troll?
It seems like you’re implying that everyone eventually dies by getting hit by a car (sorry if I am reading this incorrectly)? But that is simply not true. There are approximately 7000 pedestrian deaths a year right now, compared to a population of about 340 million people. So the probability of dying in a given year is 0.00002. With a 79 year life expectancy on average, the chance of dying as a pedestrian over a lifetime is like 0.15%. By the way, MOST pedestrian deaths are at night, so it seems like an easy way to drive this even lower is just to improve lighting and ask pedestrians to make themselves more visible.
> I'm sorry to ask this on HN but: are you a moron or a troll?
I think this type of comment doesn’t belong here per the guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Yes, you interpreted my comment absolutely incorrectly.
I meant that there's always going to be someone getting hit by a car, it's a fact of life when the road is shared between cars and people. Not considering this fact when designing a car is not possible.
Hence my comment asking if GP was a moron or a troll after they stated this:
> large suvs are to protect the occupants. people jumping in front of it should not even factor in. I don't drive on sidewalks.
I simply cannot accept that a user on this forum really thinks this way, it's an absurdly moronic statement.
You are - obviously he's not saying "everyone" will get hit by a car. This is obvious, because that's clearly untrue. In fact, out of 8 billion people on Earth I don't think a single one would argue that "everyone" will get hit by a car.
What's more likely here, you misunderstood? Or you found someone 1 in 8 billion, someone truly one of a kind?
Right, so you misunderstood. Worse, you know you misunderstood but you proceeded anyway. That's dishonest - if you can't make your argument without lying and smearing your opponent, your argument doesn't deserve to be spoken.
And, as a point of information, you DO drive where there are pedestrians. Pedestrians cross streets and walk in parking lots. If you can't see them and the consequences of not seeing them are more fatal, then that should factor in.