8 ms·

Ha the typical "but think of the country side". 80% of americans live in a urban area.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Automakers will still market to where the dollars are: people who buy cars (17 million/year in the US, 60 million/year globally). Outside of NYC, Chicago, and SF, there’s very little mass transit to speak of, even in urban areas. Texas and Florida have significant population centers where car ownership is required, and that’s where folks are moving to.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  Nothing but their own egos requires monster vehicles. It's not like Dallas and Orlando are full of unpaved roads.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    True! But they’re spending the dollars, so their preference is what will be built for (see: Ford’s vehicle lineup, all trucks and SUVs). And if you attempt to regulate against them, you’ll get voted out (just like NIMBYs).
    - kennywinker 6y ago
      There are a lot of personal preferences we regulate away. I prefer to drive drunk home from the bar, but that's illegal. I prefer to build buildings without obeying fire safety building codes, but apparently that's also illegal. 30k / year die in car accidents in the USA. This is a real problem with a huge human toll, akin to drunk driving or building codes. Step 1 is slow the vehicles down. As soon as they slow down, one of the main drivers of size - fear of an accident with a bigger vehicle - will be greatly decreased and we can do step 2: shrink them.
      - valuearb 6y ago
        If everyone rode all your straw horses we’d all be safe to sip from chocolate streams and eat from gumdrop trees. Driving has never been safer in this country. Slowing cars down is silly, interstates were built to drive 85 MPH on safely with cars without airbags, ABS, even seatbelts. We went through that with the 55 MPH federal mandate, which lowered death rates only a small percent at a large economic cost.
        kennywinker 6y ago
        You are also right driving has never been safer. But you could have said that before airbags or abs or even seatbelts. and fyi, interstate driving is dangerous: > the fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled in 2015 was still 2.6 times higher in rural areas than in urban areas (1.84 in rural areas compared with 0.71 in urban areas) https://www.tariolaw.com/fatal-car-crashes-urban-car-accidents-vs-rural-car-accidents/ https://www.tariolaw.com/fatal-car-crashes-urban-car-acciden...
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - rootusrootus 6y ago
        > Step 1 is slow the vehicles down I can't even imagine what that would do to traffic that is already pretty congested. Large swaths of suburban metros would just grind to a halt. > 30k / year die in car accidents in the USA Closer to 40K. Even then, that is compared with almost 3 million people who die for all reasons combined. It's actually sort of amazing how low the fatality rate is given just how much movement there is every day. One for every 100,000,000 miles driven. That's remarkable.
        Thlom 6y ago
        Slower speeds means cars drive closer together which means throughput increases (to a point). I think around 60km/h is generally considered the speed which yields the biggest throughput of cars.
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Until you need to haul 6 kids, or three bikes, or furniture, or hone remodeling supplies from Home Depot, etc. Cars aren’t sized to our average use case, they they are sized to frequent use cases. I’m getting tired of the “all I need is a tiny tin box thus so should you” crowd.
    - stephencanon 6y ago
      The only one of those that requires a large car is six kids (which is pretty rare). Bike racks work great on small cars. Home Depot delivers. I rent a van or truck to move furniture the one time a year I need to do it. Most people who drive a giant SUV absolutely do not need one.
      - valuearb 6y ago
        No one needs a car at all. We could live like hermits in the woods and go back to hunting and gathering. But if you live in the real world, why not drive a car that makes it easier to do all the things you want to do, if it’s easily affordable?
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        Thanks for the slippery slope, but they're saying that it barely makes it easier. So the question is how much money you want to spend on that barely.
        stephencanon 6y ago
        Or alternatively, how much nicer of a car would you like to have for the same money? Most large SUVs are not well-constructed, nor are they much fun to drive. They’re just big. My smallish wagon does everything a typical family (2 adults, 2 kids, dog) has a regular need for (heck, I carry trees and 2x12s and gravel in it, which is more than most people need). On the rare occasion that I’m buying furniture and they don’t deliver or whatever, I rent a van. As a result, my day-to-day driving experience is infinitely more pleasant.
        6y ago
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Sure, but they don't necessarily need such big ones. Big cars are primarily a consumer preference thing in the US rather than an actual need, and consumer preferences can change, both organically and due to outside pressure (the 70s oil crisis did reduce the size of American cars significantly, for instance). Also, of course, bad mass transit is fixable. And potentially fairly cheaply; for the lowish density cities common in the US BRT systems would likely largely be fine.
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    They might not need them but they like them and can afford them.
    - jakear 6y ago
      We can afford them for now. If oil prices go up significantly I’ll seriously reconsider my 18MPG suv... but I’ll reconsider to an alternative that can still support my lifestyle (perhaps Tesla truck, or something like RAV4 Prime/Hybrid but larger). Not a mini car that can’t go fast.
      - dkdk8283 6y ago
        Going fast is the fun in driving.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        I like the sights, myself. The only time I go over 100kph is on the freeway, and it's not by much.
        jakear 6y ago
        Based on the metric I’m guessing you don’t live in USA? Here we have vast expanses of designated wilderness area (well over 1M sq km), where it can be really quite fun to get up to speed while enjoying the views.
- samfisher83 6y ago
  Bay Area public transport is not good compared to East Coast or Chicago.
  - ZanyProgrammer 6y ago
    That’s not what his comment was really saying, only that those cities have much better transit than most of America.
adventured 6y ago
> 80% of americans live in a urban area. No they do not. Half of Americans live in the suburbs or equivalent, which are not urban environments and certainly nothing remotely compared to what qualifies as an urban environment in eg Europe. Having a Target, Costco, Home Depot, Whole Foods and Starbucks doesn't qualify a region as urban. 70%-75% of Americans don't live in urban environments: "America Really Is a Nation of Suburbs" "According to the newly released 2017 American Housing Survey (of nearly 76,000 households nationwide), about 52 percent of people in the United States describe their neighborhood as suburban, while about 27 percent describe their neighborhood as urban, and 21 percent as rural." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-majority-suburban-but-doesn-t-define-suburb https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-ma...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Towns and suburbs are generally classed as urban. Maybe low density urban, but urban nonetheless. It probably makes sense. Having yards and trees and driving 2 miles to Target is more similar to not having trees and driving 2 miles to Target than it is similar to driving 200 miles to Target. Have sidewalks? Probably urban.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    A better dividing line is: Given the choice, how would someone living there most often visit a grocery store? In an urban area walking might be the common mode. In a suburban area driving is OFTEN going to be the preferred mode, and even in small cities (particularly ones still small enough to have free parking at a nearby grocery store) driving there is still going to be preferred; at least in the US. In my experience Bellevue WA is a small, still suburban like city, while Seattle has crossed the anti-car (and expensive real-estate) line to 'big city'; but is neither old enough (pre-industrial grocery store layouts) nor big enough to be a healthy big urban city. Offhand, I would define rural as any area where a drive to the third closest typical grocery store is at least a one hour round trip (by car, at legal speeds, including delays at any traffic device or from commute volume).
pmart123 6y ago
Urban definitions are not consistent across countries.

Automakers will still market to where the dollars are: people who buy cars (17 million/year in the US, 60 million/year globally). Outside of NYC, Chicago, and SF, there’s very little mass transit to speak of, even in urban areas. Texas and Florida have significant population centers where car ownership is required, and that’s where folks are moving to.

Ericson2314 6y ago
Nothing but their own egos requires monster vehicles. It's not like Dallas and Orlando are full of unpaved roads.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  True! But they’re spending the dollars, so their preference is what will be built for (see: Ford’s vehicle lineup, all trucks and SUVs). And if you attempt to regulate against them, you’ll get voted out (just like NIMBYs).
  - kennywinker 6y ago
    There are a lot of personal preferences we regulate away. I prefer to drive drunk home from the bar, but that's illegal. I prefer to build buildings without obeying fire safety building codes, but apparently that's also illegal. 30k / year die in car accidents in the USA. This is a real problem with a huge human toll, akin to drunk driving or building codes. Step 1 is slow the vehicles down. As soon as they slow down, one of the main drivers of size - fear of an accident with a bigger vehicle - will be greatly decreased and we can do step 2: shrink them.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      If everyone rode all your straw horses we’d all be safe to sip from chocolate streams and eat from gumdrop trees. Driving has never been safer in this country. Slowing cars down is silly, interstates were built to drive 85 MPH on safely with cars without airbags, ABS, even seatbelts. We went through that with the 55 MPH federal mandate, which lowered death rates only a small percent at a large economic cost.
      - kennywinker 6y ago
        You are also right driving has never been safer. But you could have said that before airbags or abs or even seatbelts. and fyi, interstate driving is dangerous: > the fatality rate per 100 million miles traveled in 2015 was still 2.6 times higher in rural areas than in urban areas (1.84 in rural areas compared with 0.71 in urban areas) https://www.tariolaw.com/fatal-car-crashes-urban-car-accidents-vs-rural-car-accidents/ https://www.tariolaw.com/fatal-car-crashes-urban-car-acciden...
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
    - rootusrootus 6y ago
      > Step 1 is slow the vehicles down I can't even imagine what that would do to traffic that is already pretty congested. Large swaths of suburban metros would just grind to a halt. > 30k / year die in car accidents in the USA Closer to 40K. Even then, that is compared with almost 3 million people who die for all reasons combined. It's actually sort of amazing how low the fatality rate is given just how much movement there is every day. One for every 100,000,000 miles driven. That's remarkable.
      - Thlom 6y ago
        Slower speeds means cars drive closer together which means throughput increases (to a point). I think around 60km/h is generally considered the speed which yields the biggest throughput of cars.
- valuearb 6y ago
  Until you need to haul 6 kids, or three bikes, or furniture, or hone remodeling supplies from Home Depot, etc. Cars aren’t sized to our average use case, they they are sized to frequent use cases. I’m getting tired of the “all I need is a tiny tin box thus so should you” crowd.
  - stephencanon 6y ago
    The only one of those that requires a large car is six kids (which is pretty rare). Bike racks work great on small cars. Home Depot delivers. I rent a van or truck to move furniture the one time a year I need to do it. Most people who drive a giant SUV absolutely do not need one.
    - valuearb 6y ago
      No one needs a car at all. We could live like hermits in the woods and go back to hunting and gathering. But if you live in the real world, why not drive a car that makes it easier to do all the things you want to do, if it’s easily affordable?
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        Thanks for the slippery slope, but they're saying that it barely makes it easier. So the question is how much money you want to spend on that barely.
        stephencanon 6y ago
        Or alternatively, how much nicer of a car would you like to have for the same money? Most large SUVs are not well-constructed, nor are they much fun to drive. They’re just big. My smallish wagon does everything a typical family (2 adults, 2 kids, dog) has a regular need for (heck, I carry trees and 2x12s and gravel in it, which is more than most people need). On the rare occasion that I’m buying furniture and they don’t deliver or whatever, I rent a van. As a result, my day-to-day driving experience is infinitely more pleasant.
        6y ago
rsynnott 6y ago
Sure, but they don't necessarily need such big ones. Big cars are primarily a consumer preference thing in the US rather than an actual need, and consumer preferences can change, both organically and due to outside pressure (the 70s oil crisis did reduce the size of American cars significantly, for instance). Also, of course, bad mass transit is fixable. And potentially fairly cheaply; for the lowish density cities common in the US BRT systems would likely largely be fine.
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  They might not need them but they like them and can afford them.
  - jakear 6y ago
    We can afford them for now. If oil prices go up significantly I’ll seriously reconsider my 18MPG suv... but I’ll reconsider to an alternative that can still support my lifestyle (perhaps Tesla truck, or something like RAV4 Prime/Hybrid but larger). Not a mini car that can’t go fast.
    - dkdk8283 6y ago
      Going fast is the fun in driving.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        I like the sights, myself. The only time I go over 100kph is on the freeway, and it's not by much.
        jakear 6y ago
        Based on the metric I’m guessing you don’t live in USA? Here we have vast expanses of designated wilderness area (well over 1M sq km), where it can be really quite fun to get up to speed while enjoying the views.
samfisher83 6y ago
Bay Area public transport is not good compared to East Coast or Chicago.
- ZanyProgrammer 6y ago
  That’s not what his comment was really saying, only that those cities have much better transit than most of America.

adventured 6y ago

> 80% of americans live in a urban area. No they do not. Half of Americans live in the suburbs or equivalent, which are not urban environments and certainly nothing remotely compared to what qualifies as an urban environment in eg Europe. Having a Target, Costco, Home Depot, Whole Foods and Starbucks doesn't qualify a region as urban. 70%-75% of Americans don't live in urban environments: "America Really Is a Nation of Suburbs" "According to the newly released 2017 American Housing Survey (of nearly 76,000 households nationwide), about 52 percent of people in the United States describe their neighborhood as suburban, while about 27 percent describe their neighborhood as urban, and 21 percent as rural." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-majority-suburban-but-doesn-t-define-suburb https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-14/u-s-is-ma...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
maxerickson 6y ago
Towns and suburbs are generally classed as urban. Maybe low density urban, but urban nonetheless. It probably makes sense. Having yards and trees and driving 2 miles to Target is more similar to not having trees and driving 2 miles to Target than it is similar to driving 200 miles to Target. Have sidewalks? Probably urban.
- mjevans 6y ago
  A better dividing line is: Given the choice, how would someone living there most often visit a grocery store? In an urban area walking might be the common mode. In a suburban area driving is OFTEN going to be the preferred mode, and even in small cities (particularly ones still small enough to have free parking at a nearby grocery store) driving there is still going to be preferred; at least in the US. In my experience Bellevue WA is a small, still suburban like city, while Seattle has crossed the anti-car (and expensive real-estate) line to 'big city'; but is neither old enough (pre-industrial grocery store layouts) nor big enough to be a healthy big urban city. Offhand, I would define rural as any area where a drive to the third closest typical grocery store is at least a one hour round trip (by car, at legal speeds, including delays at any traffic device or from commute volume).

pmart123 6y ago

Urban definitions are not consistent across countries.