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Comment by matonias | Hacker News Reader

This morning in Amsterdam a dog got struck and was killed by one of these vehicles, happend right in front of me. Poor doggo

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What idiot would drive one of these in Amsterdam to begin with? It just doesn't fit the way traffic is organized there.

It doesn't, but people do it.

Here's one in Utrecht https://urbanists.social/@Fuzzbizz/109608802470660144

That doesn't just seem selfish, it is selfish. And if it was a renovation crew or so carrying tools I would say they at least have some use for it (though a VW transporter would be just as effective, if not more so).

A Mercedes Vito, despite being nearly 1m shorter and normal car width, has 4-5x the carry capacity and a 3x longer bed than the RAM. These cars are just for show, you can probably find a Kei truck with similar capacity.

> These cars are just for show

I love vans more than any vehicle, but they're garbage at offroad compared to trucks (even 4motion, etc can't compare). Most people don't use them for that, but in villa constructions sometimes you really want a pickup to get to the site. They're also better than vans in snow. Edge cases but they exist and they're not so obscure that I haven't experienced them.

Indeed, there are probably a few applications where it makes sense – though I suspect a classic, normal-sized Hilux/Frontier/Ranger would excel at that with none of the downsides.

That said, 95% of construction work in europe does not involve any off-road driving at all, and definitely not around the Amsterdam/Utrecht area.

If all off-road vehicles that had never gone off-road evaporated the world would instantly be a better place.

A RAM 1500 can haul 1.3x the weight and tow 4.7x the weight of a Vito. And a RAM can go off-road.

They are, ultimately, made for different workloads.

There is one driving around near where I live in Amsterdam as well.

I am quite tall, even for Dutch standards, but the hood reaches my shoulder easily. It also drives around quite a busy neighbourhood. So I expect this specific car to kill someone within the next 5 years or so.

There are much more dangerous vehicles around on European roads, such as most buses, trams and lorries.

Those tend to have no bonnets. So there are some risks and accidents still, but in general they do have better visibility.

And professional drivers.

They get paid for what they do, their "profession". Most of them are not particularly good ;)

That may be true, but on average I would expect them to be better drivers than the pick-up-in-the-inner-city crowd, whose choices are already off to a poor start before they turn the ignition key, after all, they picked the wrong vehicle for the surroundings.

There are probably less than two hundred people like that in the entire EU. Kind of a pointlessly small demographic to focus on.

Please stop polluting HN threads with nonsense. Thank you.

What nonsense? Do you genuinely believe that there are loads of people driving big American pickups in EU inner cities?

I think “a couple of hundred” is an absolutely reasonable estimate. Even in big cities like London or Paris you’re not going to find more than a couple (counting all the Mercedes G 6x6s too)

The people driving these cars exist mostly outside of inner cities.

If you disagree, you can do so like an adult instead of spewing out completely unnecessary and unjustified insults.

Don't they also need special driver licences, which can have more stringent rules?

Yes, but that is mostly "one time you get it" and then some courses every now and then. You do have more stringent medical rules at every renewal.

Here's an example of driving "standard" historic UK rural roads:

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/b2ad/live/a20a6d...

from: 'Carspreading' is on the rise - and not everyone is happy about it - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7vdvl2531o

Throws in the term "Chelsea Tractor", in Australia in the 1980's they were called Toorak Tractors or simply Yank Tanks.

I don't see the issue with the driving standards in the photo. Road is quite wide too, and those yellow lines suggest some town area.

You do get problems in rural areas with idiots in Chelsea Tractors though. Leave them in the city -- there's no room for you in rural areas.

(For those whining about having to do the school run, just got back in my 1.6m wide car with 2 kids, 6 bags, skateboard and guitar, no problems on the 8 miles of single track road even when the lorries come the other way)

> I don't see the issue with the driving standards in the photo. Road is quite wide too, and those yellow lines suggest some town area.

It isn't the Rural Roads in the UK. Also the cars in the photo are kinda normal sized. The Volkwagen people carrier thing in the photo isn't that wide actually.

That doesn't look like rural road in the UK (yellow lines down each side). I drive down rural roads everyday and there are usually no road markings.

Honestly getting past people isn't that much of an issue. There are normally passing spots where you pull over to let people through.

"Chelsea Tractor" is more of a dig at people Range Rovers for the looks and it never been using off-road.

There is a brand in the UK that have decided to "own" the label. Not sure why you would want/need a Ineos Grenadier in London, but some people will buy one.

https://www.chelseatruckcompany.com/

> "Chelsea Tractor" is more of a dig at people Range Rovers for the looks and it never been using off-road.

People in London bought 4x4s (in part) so they could still comfortably travel down roads covered in highly aggressive speed bumps. The joke is that we made London roads miserable to drive in a sensible small car (even at safe and legal speeds, I usually have to stop on approaching some of this stuff in a bog standard A1).

There are plenty of factors at play, but sometimes incentives are obvious

They're starting to become more common in Spain too, even in villages/towns where they definitely don't fit. Through the years I've seen two of them stuck because they tried to fit into small village roads where hardly normal passenger cars can fit.

I saw a Ferrari trying to navigate speed bumps and a roundabout once.

People are strange.

In Amsterdam I got called by a friend if I could please drive a car out of a garage. I thought it was a pretty strange request. Turned out this was in a building on Stadhouderskade, an underground garage. Some guy had driven his Ferrari down into the garage, parked it, had his meeting and on the way out realized he couldn't turn it around but he did not dare to make the trip backwards... I said sure, got in reversed it up the ramp and he was pretty happy, then asked if I wasn't nervous.

"Not my car" :)

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