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I was in San Francisco last week, and the car rental agency "upgraded" me from the compact I had requested to a full size SUV. Fortunately we weren't staying i

I was in San Francisco last week, and the car rental agency "upgraded" me from the compact I had requested to a full size SUV. Fortunately we weren't staying in the city, but that thing was definitely no fun headed up Hwy 1... I regularly drive ambulances and fire trucks, so I'm used to "aggressively" driving large vehicles, but that was a whole new level of stressful. California either needs wider roads, or to mandate narrower cars (it seems to have worked well enough for emissions...)

staticautomatic 7y ago
With the cyclists on Hwy 1 it's hard enough driving a Civic.
yibg 7y ago
Same thing happened to me. I got a Toyota sequoia instead of a smaller car I reserved for a family trip down hwy 1. Width aside it was just clumsy and rolled a lot. Had to go pretty slow to have people in the car not throw up. I’m a bit of a car enthusiast and enjoy canyon carving, but this was definitely not a fun drive.
jmkni 7y ago
I had a similar experience in London recently. I wanted a small car because, well, it's London. They "upgraded" me to a big SUV thing.
- switch007 7y ago
  It’s their fleet. They have an awful lot of crossovers and SUVs (presumably because that’s what is popular with our market) but they continue to misrepresent their fleet in their booking engines (it’s been years now).
helen___keller 7y ago
> California either needs wider roads, or to mandate narrower cars (it seems to have worked well enough for emissions...) Taking the opposite view, mandating narrower roads (or, refusing to widen existing narrow roads) has worked great for opposing the problem of car growth in some countries. If you watch a busy intersection in Japan you see a ton of incredibly tiny cars go by, and it's no coincidence that backstreets in major Japanese cities are often nightmarishly narrow alleyways, sometimes without sidewalks so you even have pedestrians sharing the already-tiny road. For example consider this side street near a touristy zone of Kyoto: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0010412,135.7662851,3a,75y,202.16h,58.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s8_LbqTQ65DZcGd6l8ruLjA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0010412,135.7662851,3a,75y,2... You can see people walking right along the road. An average person would not feel comfortable driving with a big car, nor driving aggressively nor at a high speed, on this road. Taken combined, this is what makes these roads safe and pedestrian-friendly, even though at face value a road without sidewalks might seem the opposite.

staticautomatic 7y ago

With the cyclists on Hwy 1 it's hard enough driving a Civic.

yibg 7y ago

Same thing happened to me. I got a Toyota sequoia instead of a smaller car I reserved for a family trip down hwy 1. Width aside it was just clumsy and rolled a lot. Had to go pretty slow to have people in the car not throw up. I’m a bit of a car enthusiast and enjoy canyon carving, but this was definitely not a fun drive.

jmkni 7y ago

I had a similar experience in London recently. I wanted a small car because, well, it's London. They "upgraded" me to a big SUV thing.

switch007 7y ago
It’s their fleet. They have an awful lot of crossovers and SUVs (presumably because that’s what is popular with our market) but they continue to misrepresent their fleet in their booking engines (it’s been years now).

helen___keller 7y ago

> California either needs wider roads, or to mandate narrower cars (it seems to have worked well enough for emissions...) Taking the opposite view, mandating narrower roads (or, refusing to widen existing narrow roads) has worked great for opposing the problem of car growth in some countries. If you watch a busy intersection in Japan you see a ton of incredibly tiny cars go by, and it's no coincidence that backstreets in major Japanese cities are often nightmarishly narrow alleyways, sometimes without sidewalks so you even have pedestrians sharing the already-tiny road. For example consider this side street near a touristy zone of Kyoto: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0010412,135.7662851,3a,75y,202.16h,58.68t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s8_LbqTQ65DZcGd6l8ruLjA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192 https://www.google.com/maps/@35.0010412,135.7662851,3a,75y,2... You can see people walking right along the road. An average person would not feel comfortable driving with a big car, nor driving aggressively nor at a high speed, on this road. Taken combined, this is what makes these roads safe and pedestrian-friendly, even though at face value a road without sidewalks might seem the opposite.