Larger vehicles don’t have lower safety requirements, that’s just patently false. They’re doing it for emissions compliance reasons as Koala said.
They have the same requirements, and need more much reinforcement to make up for all that added mass. Most of the NHTSA’s tests involve either a vehicle of a set size running into the test vehicle, or the vehicle under testing to run into a wall. A heavier vehicle is going to need a lot more reinforcement to reach the same level of protection running into a wall than a lighter one.
They are less safe for pedestrians, but those requirements are all more or less the same regardless of size. Manufacturers aren’t deliberately trying to make it less safe for pedestrians. They just don’t really put any effort into it other than meeting those requirements, and making the “best” car outside of that.
To be more precise: fuel efficiency standards go down with the physical volume a vehicle takes up.
So every year efficiency requirement goes up, but you just update the body every few years to add a little more sheet metal and stay within your legal mandate.
That’s not gonna solve the problem when everything is switching to electric. It’ll be even cheaper to power a vehicle like this, plus they can cram it with batteries to tout a high range. See: Hummer EV.
I’m from the EU and sadly this has become more and more the norm here. I remember a time when we had very little SUVs here but now they seem to be everywhere. And it’s a really busy capital city, so the streets are narrow. I can’t understand why people would buy big cars here…
Its not just SUVs in western Europe, EU crash regulations for cars hitting pedestrians have forced cars to be higher and taller at the front. Unless the seating position also rises then you lose visibility of the very front of the car. If the seating position has to rise then so does the roof and this often means the floor rises too.
Sure, these ridiculous American trucks are far far worse, and SUVs are just generally bad, but its normal cars as well.
As someone with a utilitarian need for a truck in the US, you are correct. I m7ch rather drive a Fiat Panda than my 2013 Tundra. However, I try to keep my lights low (they are adjustable from inside the cab) so as not to blind others when on the road.
Still, there should be a federal ban on these stupid things, annd these, not to mention a federal law regulating how high headlights can be from the road (looking at you Ford F-250)
Sadly, we cannot really ban them as they are utility vehicles that a small portion of the population needs. However, I still see freakin’ ads that frame them as fancy cars.
Czech ad for Amarok V6
“The new Amarok V6. Pick-up truck for every day. Powerful and comfortable”
I suggest making it illegal to have them in any color other than matte excavator yellow (for construction) or green camo (for hunting and forestry).
It’s not that perfect (public transport) is more difficult than good (electric cars). More often good is the enemy of perfect since the industry is lobbying for it and against the other
Local commuter rail, walkable cities, and nationwide high speed rail are all necessary to completely eliminate 90% of individual car ownership. We should be advocating for these systems of convenience which will make car ownership obsolete while incentivizing EVs while the infrastructure is built up, not demonizing EVs and making them appear as useless and a waste of time for helping fight climate change. Plus we need EV utility vehicles and trucks for professionals who need them to do their job.
Incremental steps are not personal EVs. They are diesel and electric buses. EVs eliminate 1 problem (tailpipe emissions) while creating 2 more (battery manufacturing, increased vehicle weight making road and tire wear worse, and making them more deadly - there’s others, take your pick) and not addressing the other hundred problems with car dependence.
Buses use the same infrastructure as cars. Bus stops are stupid cheap in comparison to anything else. And then, bus lanes can be implemented to prioritise buses and keep them from getting stuck in traffic.
Ok you try riding the bus everywhere with your whole family dude. That’s not happening. It’s incredibly inconvenient. Especially given the infrastructure we have.
I’m loving my electric car and hope you all get one.
Having been to the UK and Germany, it’s incredibly convenient and much quicker than driving in many cases. I’ve used the metro where I live and it’s also much quicker, the only issue is the closest bus stop is 20 minutes away by foot. That’s easy to fix though.
I live in the UK, and I can say it depends greatly on your circumstances.
In general, if you’re traveling between an outside town to a city it’s usually an alright experience.
However, if your commute is between two outside towns then you have to be lucky, otherwise a car ends up being the only real viable option. My work is about 15 miles away, and before I had a car I had the only option of a railway line that ran through my town. If that line ever had issues getting cancelled or on the train strikes were on that day I couldn’t get to work because to get my work was 2 buses and 2 hours to go 15 miles. The train ran once an hour and didn’t call at half the stops on a Sunday including the stop I needed for work so if it was a Sunday I literally could not get to work.
It’s not even cheaper than a car when I factor in leisure travel, many places I regularly go to take longer to get to by car and are usually a worse experience whether that be service infrequency, long layover times or services getting cancelled/being on strike.
Oh sure, I agree that it’s not always perfect, but neither is driving. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been randomly stuck in gridlock because someone got in a crash on the freeway.
The issue here is entirely that there is no choice that can be made. You either drive, or you don’t go anywhere. I don’t want to need a car, I want to want a car. Cars are convenient, but when they’re required to do literally everything then they’re a massive inconvenience.
If I was able to make a choice, I could share a car with someone else. As it stands, we both have to own one.
Having lived in Germany, you obviously didn’t meet enough people. They fucking love thier cars dude. Yeah their buses are better, but I was shown many people’s cars as if they were a child.
Oh sure, obviously people like cars, but in the cities we’d park and switch from car to rail because it’s significantly faster. I also stayed in the city for a couple of weeks and didn’t need a car at all.
Compare that to the US where you need a car or you die, even in the city, and it’s not even a contest.
I have an electric vehicle. I ride it everywhere in my city and it costs basically nothing. It’s an ebike. I’ve done nothing to it, it’s a normal 350w motor capped at 32 km/h. And damn does it feel so much better than driving in traffic.
The number one (by a long way) selling vehicle in the US is a massively over sized truck. Designed to be so heavy to avoid falling under emissions laws.
There is no electric vehicle that comes even close to that. You want those people interested in electric cars. They don’t give a single fuck about what your think about buses and nothing you will ever do in your lifetime will change that. Ever.
Getting people into EVs is an across the board incremental improvement in the exact definition of the word.
You’re right about the massive benefits of transit and trains in particular would be so amazing… but none of the people we want getting out of F150s give a single shit.
I don’t care about getting people into things. That’s a highly individualistic way to look at the problem. Car dependency is a societal problem, and marketing won’t solve societal problems. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way we (specifically the government) view transportation as a whole. (And as an extension to that, there also needs to be a change in regulation to close that loophole for light trucks.)
What’s important to me is getting lawmakers and those advocating to the lawmakers on board with funding public transit and making the streets safer for all people using them. Yes we need people on board too but really only enough to get these ideas in lawmakers heads as a major issue. A minority. The majority of people don’t understand or care and that’s fine, because their minds will start to change once they see it actually working. In the words of NJB, there are not that many car people, bike people, or train people. Most people just want to get to their destinations as quickly and efficiently as possible.
We don’t live in a direct democracy. 51% don’t have to explicitly agree to laws. The government passes laws that are bad for people and the majority disagree with all the time. Not saying the majority of people disagree, I honestly think they couldn’t care less. I’m just saying we don’t actually have to recruit hundreds of millions of people.
Unfortunately, a major part of this plan is going to have to restrict what oil companies are allowed to do and nowadays that’s seemingly impossible. Only seemingly though. Nothing is truly set in stone.
This is facts. Getting rid of cars without any functinal alternative is literally just fucking over poor people. I don’t give two fucks how much ride-sharing apps could be better than people owning cars, ubering to and from work and only on that loop is $300-500+ a week depending on where you live. I’d actually imagine Australian prices are probably worse.
I don’t think you read the article. The data shows that walking and cycling went up massively, as well as increasing public transport use. This is good, and the article as a whole politely makes points compatible with this comm.
Uber only paid 58 people, it’s cool but it’s not enough to create any of the changes you’re mentioning. The article can be polite, but I can still respond to their shitty point nts however I want
It’s a study. People are normally paid to participate in studies because otherwise no-one would bother doing them.
It’s not meant to change the city overnight, it’s a study to test how people’s behaviours change if they reduce the number of cars they own, which is what we want (ideally to zero, of course).
I'm old enough to remember when the roads were fixed as routine maintenance, rather than using infrastructure money for a quick bodge just before an election.
My hometown in the US still does it like that! And they’re stunningly efficient. There was one time we had to go around an enormous detour because the biggest road in town was being redone in like a 2 mile stretch. They did the entire thing overnight in one giant marching construction worker swarm. A few towns over from us did something similar earlier this year but with their local stretch of highway. It was maybe a 15 mile redo all at once took just a few days (they did one lane traffic on one side than the other for that one, small highways). Compare that to where I’m at in Seattle right now Madison has been fucked for like 2 years and I swear none of the roads have actually been resurfaced it is just one construction patch after another when like a pipe needs fixed or something.
I hear it takes weeks to do properly. I’m not a road building expert, but there are many things that go into it, and stuff needs to cool of and consolidate.
To clarify the construction was all done overnight but it hardened/set up for a couple days after and they kept it blocked. Definitely wasn’t weeks though it was like 3 days for people to start driving on it.
Mentioned in the other response construction was overnight and they kept it blocked a couple days after to set up. Very short turnaround though. The only other times I’ve seen so many construction workers on one site is people building towers in Seattle so it was a little shocking to see in a town of 25k people. But also explained why sometimes I would be gone for a weekend and come back to new roads. One of the things is the roads there get obliterated quickly. The winters are somewhat harsh, it is a farming town so lots of big equipment chewing them up, and right on a main highway that people use to get into Washington. They have to be redone often and I think the area has just enough funding and experience to be on top of it.
Pretty sure they built the transcontinental railroad in the time it took my city to add one 2-3 mile auxiliary lane to the side of a road with 2 pre-existing lanes in the same direction and an existing hard shoulder.
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