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And when the drunk driver of a 10-seat family van plows into you at high speed, do you want your "compact car" to become a "compacted car" with you inside? Per
by mmirate 8y ago
And when the drunk driver of a 10-seat family van plows into you at high speed, do you want your "compact car" to become a "compacted car" with you inside?
Personally, I don't believe my life is quite worth the money I'd have saved by driving a small sedan instead of the larger vehicle I drive.
(If it were, then I daresay my budget would be severely lopsided. Seriously; what kind of idiot would I have to be to spend more than 70% of my net income to car-related expenses?)
- corv 8y agoA pickup or SUV isn’t needed to stay safe - especially not when all other cars are compact. This reasoning reminds me of the tragedy of the commons.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoThis is totally tragedy of the commons reasoning. There exist big cars on the road, so I need a bigger one to protect myself against them. I'm half-surprised that no one is selling civilian-use APCs at this point.
- mmirate 8y agoPfft. I couldn't weave, pass and lanechange through the usual shitty traffic if my vehicle was that unmaneuverable.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIsn't the traffic shitty (and dangerous) precisely because of the occasional people "weaving, passing and lanechanging" like crazy?
- mmirate 8y agoWhen I make a right-hand turn onto the far-right lane of a divided highway with four lanes in my direction, and over the next three blocks, three lanes become right-turn-only (gradually narrowing the road down to one lane) but I need to not make any of those right turns? You bet I need some fancy footwork to avoid being forcibly detoured. And you bet that once I'm in the correct lane, I make a point of emulating the people far in front of me, by almost-tailgating the person directly in front of me.
- mmirate 8y agoIn such a tragedy, any one person's most logical action is to obtain as much of the price-controlled commodity as possible, before the price returns to normal.
- XorNot 8y agoSUVs are top heavy with high rollover rates and generally worse crash test performance then smaller, better engineered vehicles.
- dingaling 8y agoAnd when the tired driver of a 40-tonner truck careers into your SUV you'll be compacted just as nicely. So where do you draw the line? The semi-worst-case planning delusion is why we have convoys of 2.5 tonne SUVs doing the school run with two kids each. There doesn't seem to be any way to end the constant vehicle size escalation other than through legislation.
- mmirate 8y agoOn the contrary. There are several reasons why vehicle size isn't going any further. SUVs are at the upper limit of what most people are willing to tolerate in terms of unmaneuverability. Too big a vehicle, and you have trouble passing and weaving through the shitty commute traffic. And if you try, and the vehicle is too slow for what you're doing, you'll probably crash. So it's a balance between being more survivable and being less likely to crash in the first place. Also, bigger vehicles tend to be more expensive, non-size-related factors held equal.
- adrianN 8y agoWe can't stop making cars bigger until everybody drives a Marauder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDoRmT0iRic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDoRmT0iRic
- mmirate 8y agoYou find a way to make that hunk-o-junk accelerate as fast as my small SUV can accelerate to get a right turn into a gap in traffic ... and I just might believe you.