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There are a lot of big pickups and SUVs on the road. There's a tiny percentage where the vehicle suits the use, but in the vast majority of cases, the vehicles

There are a lot of big pickups and SUVs on the road. There's a tiny percentage where the vehicle suits the use, but in the vast majority of cases, the vehicles are entirely a fashion with no real utility - or even negative utility. There is only a self-reinforcing utility of defending yourself from other tall and heavy vehicles. All this has been said many times before. When it comes to vehicles, people have no shame. What it tells us about the future of global warming seems very clear.

HamburgerEmoji 5y ago
To me you seem to be so deep within a fearful delusion about climate disaster that you think it's normal and justified, good even, to micromanage the car choices of others.
flavius29663 5y ago
prisoner's dilemma: if everyone is arming up with larger vehicles, will you keep a sedan just to make a point, putting your family at increasing risks?
- richardatlarge 5y ago
  Not sure from a rational point of view that the risks are lowered; safest cars today are not SUVs Tragedy of the commons: everyone takes a bit more land to feed their extra goat, the field is overgrazed, all the goats starve. Ie, in wanting more we end up all losers
  - flavius29663 5y ago
    SUVs are certainly safer: https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
  - pleb_nz 5y ago
    Agreed, but SUVs do cause additional risk to smaller vehicles. For example, at busy intersections drivers in smaller cars have a lot less visibility due to the walls of SUVs around them. I can't count the amount of times I've had to delay turning at a stop sign to wait for a larger vehicle that has pulled up next to me to leave so I can regain visibility and make the turn. That or it becomes a game of edging out past the big vehicle.
UncleMeat 5y ago
People repeat this “defense” thing but it makes little sense to me. The range of crashes where it would be fatal if you were in a sudan and survivable if you were in an suv is surely small. Especially since suvs have additional risk of rolling. Spending tens of thousands extra to make yourself safer on the road is surely better accomplished with better safety features in the car rather than tons of steel.
- smileysteve 5y ago
  People are really bad at evaluating risk. Rollover, Blindspot, and high speed loss of control are huge safety factors that SUVs underperform Sedans in, but "bigger is safer" has somehow persisted.
  - helij 5y ago
    Our new SUV (Honda CR-V Hybrid) has less blind spots than any sedan and hatchback I had in the last 20 years. Life is also much easier with SUV once you have children. Safety features are amazing on CR-V although not much more than Civic 2017 we had earlier. At speeds below 70mph the behaviour of CR-V is pretty similar to Civic.

HamburgerEmoji 5y ago

To me you seem to be so deep within a fearful delusion about climate disaster that you think it's normal and justified, good even, to micromanage the car choices of others.

flavius29663 5y ago

prisoner's dilemma: if everyone is arming up with larger vehicles, will you keep a sedan just to make a point, putting your family at increasing risks?

richardatlarge 5y ago
Not sure from a rational point of view that the risks are lowered; safest cars today are not SUVs Tragedy of the commons: everyone takes a bit more land to feed their extra goat, the field is overgrazed, all the goats starve. Ie, in wanting more we end up all losers
- flavius29663 5y ago
  SUVs are certainly safer: https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
- pleb_nz 5y ago
  Agreed, but SUVs do cause additional risk to smaller vehicles. For example, at busy intersections drivers in smaller cars have a lot less visibility due to the walls of SUVs around them. I can't count the amount of times I've had to delay turning at a stop sign to wait for a larger vehicle that has pulled up next to me to leave so I can regain visibility and make the turn. That or it becomes a game of edging out past the big vehicle.

UncleMeat 5y ago

People repeat this “defense” thing but it makes little sense to me. The range of crashes where it would be fatal if you were in a sudan and survivable if you were in an suv is surely small. Especially since suvs have additional risk of rolling. Spending tens of thousands extra to make yourself safer on the road is surely better accomplished with better safety features in the car rather than tons of steel.

smileysteve 5y ago
People are really bad at evaluating risk. Rollover, Blindspot, and high speed loss of control are huge safety factors that SUVs underperform Sedans in, but "bigger is safer" has somehow persisted.
- helij 5y ago
  Our new SUV (Honda CR-V Hybrid) has less blind spots than any sedan and hatchback I had in the last 20 years. Life is also much easier with SUV once you have children. Safety features are amazing on CR-V although not much more than Civic 2017 we had earlier. At speeds below 70mph the behaviour of CR-V is pretty similar to Civic.