9 ms·

Big cars are killing Americans

80 points by jessaustin 5y ago

tristor 5y ago
This is automakers responding to buyer demands and a lax enforcement of government regulations. Nearly every state has bumper height restrictions, yet it is commonplace to see "brodozers" on the road built for decapitating motorcyclists and gassing EV drivers, not for off-roading. Most truck makers are now selling ready-made "brodozers" because trucks and CUV/SUVs are outselling cars. Not only are these vehicles massively more dangerous to pedestrians and people on two-wheel vehicles, but they're also more stressful and dangerous for anyone driving a normal car on the road, because you can't see through them, they block ahead. When multiple normal cars are in a line on a highway, you can usually see beyond the cars in front partially by seeing through their rear window and windshield, but when all you can see is a solid aluminum tailgate, the pumpkin for the rear differential, and a hanging pair of truck nuts, it means you cannot plan ahead and react as quickly as possible to changing road conditions ahead. Nothing is quite as disturbing to me as a conscientious driver as being behind a "brodozer" where I can't see anything ahead of me or having one with an unnecessary cattle/bull bar right behind me, essentially threatening me with certain death as their unnecessary monument to their small penis would roll right over the top of my normal car crushing me if we were to be in an "accident". These vehicles violate existing regulations in nearly every state in the US, yet seem to be epidemic on American highways and not disappearing any time soon.
- klyrs 5y ago
  You've got some good points to make here, but your language is dripping with derision, scorn, and personal judgement/attack. Please mind the site guidelines.
  - aaomidi 5y ago
    - klyrs 5y ago
      I get that. But you're only convincing the people whose personal choices you disagree with that you're a jerk. You're only pouring gas on the fire.
      - fennecs 5y ago
        I don’t know, being nice to car drivers is a bit like appeasement, I think a bit of passion could be good. I think on HN at least you can try and empathise as to why they might feel so strongly. IRL of course you could use a bit of a more diplomatic tone.
        klyrs 5y ago
        There's a broad gulf between "nice" and downright insulting. Somewhere in that gulf, one can find productive discussion. The internet is real life. It's probably where you spend most of your time. It is what you make of it.
    - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
      This is always the excuse for upper crust liberals to sneer down at working class culture. Always. It's always how everyone is in danger. Against mtf in female sports? You're causing violence to trans people. Use a gas powered blower to blow the leaves from the 400 trees on your property? You're killing the planet and everyone on it. Vote republican? You want fascism and the fall of democracy. Everything is always exaggerated to excuse a total lack of civility and then the lack of civility makes solving the problem impossible. bc no one can be the bigger person, the culture divide grows bigger and problems become harder to solve bc the solution requires consensus in our democracy.
      - antisthenes 5y ago
        Never doubt an american's ability to turn a neutral topic like road safety into some kind of twisted partisan issue. Just a reminder - even though you're probably right, in some sense, every time you do this, reasonable public debate gets another nail in the coffin.
  - tristor 5y ago
    > your language is dripping with derision, scorn, and personal judgement Absolutely, and every inch of it fully justified. I stand by my comments, in their entirety, without any desire to mitigate my spite for those who go out of their way to make the world a worse place and get off on threatening physical harm and intimidating other people. That is anti-social, nihilistic, and unacceptable behavior and I have every intent and desire to incur as much shame and derision in the direction of people who engage in such behavior as is possible. People who modify their trucks into "brodozers" are people who understand that a vehicle is a weapon, and then choose to make it /more dangerous/ and /more intimidating/, intentionally, at great expense, to appease their own ego and sociopathy. I have no respect whatsoever for that type of behavior and it has no place on public roadways or in polite society.
- nathias 5y ago
  It isn't just the brodozers, all cars have gotten into that height. I drive cars made in the 90s and even driving behind a tiny car feels like tailing a truck because of the height difference.
- genocidicbunny 5y ago
  Not to mention the headlights. I can deal with most of the rest of the stuff, but the headlights are downright dangerous to all other drivers around. They're rarely correctly angled, so due to the base height of the truck they'll frequently be right at eye level for smaller vehicles. On roads with short or no barriers, they also blind oncoming traffic in addition to whoever happens to be in front of them.
  - antisthenes 5y ago
    That's not just manufacturers though. Plenty of people are replacing standard halogens with aftermarket LEDs in response to others doing the same. The end result is that night-driving is incredibly dangerous, because the brightness is spiraling out of control. Instead of increased visibility, you are forced to squint from the brightness of incoming traffic. I try to avoid night-time driving as a result of this like the plague. It is simply too dangerous for me (I've been in 3 near-accidents in 2021, despite driving the least I've ever driven in a year).
- FredPret 5y ago
  If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. All your problems can be solved with a massive SUV. Now we just need them all to be winter-proof electric and recharged with nuclear power. By the way, they are crazy comfortable - as a tall guy, I’m never squatting and folding my ass into a little Eurocar again.
  - milkytron 5y ago
    > If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. All your problems can be solved with a massive SUV. Is this sarcastic?
- dqv 5y ago
  A funny thing (not haha funny) I noticed about this article is that it mentions the demographics of the people being hit by the car, but just makes the "hyper-masculine" assumption about the drivers of the cars. You kind of do that here by using the term "brodozers". This is a kind of implicit bias I think a lot of people just accept as fact, but it could be a dangerous assumption to make. Ford did a survey of truck owners and (apparently) 46% of their respondents were women [0]. Now there are two things you can take from that 46% number depending on your beliefs. If you don't believe it, then you should be concerned: it means the companies that make these trucks are trying to get more people to buy trucks by "de-gendering" them. If you do believe it, then you should be concerned about going after only a subset of the demographic who uses these vehicles. It turns it into an identity issue where you're just targeting the safety of "men driving trucks" and not the overall safety of trucks. The result is ... men continuing to drive their trucks as an identity and just increasing the amount of women driving them as well. I write this wall of text to say "truck bad because (our conception of what is toxic) masculinity bad" isn't necessarily helpful. Maybe you only meant to mention the safety, but you could have said all the things you've said about safety without making any specific reference to gender (or at least doing so with a reminder to continue to check the demographics). When we talk about these things and genderize them without referencing the true demographics, we open things up for the wrong conversation. The narrative can shift to "less men are driving trucks" (when really it's less men are driving trucks as a percentage of total truck drivers) after Ford rebrands to a gender-inclusive image for trucks. I think it's just more important to focus on the safety aspect and try to turn it from "men driving trucks aggresively" to "less people driving unsafe trucks". Marketing would love for you to just make this an "irresponsible men" thing so they can keep selling unsafe vehicles. This is not to say that men aren't aggressive drivers or don't get into more accidents, just that I want to make that conclusion on my own and not have marketing departments deflect the true cause of these safety issues. [0]: https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2020/06/22/The-Great-American-Truck-Survey-2020.pdf https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...
  - tristor 5y ago
    I get your point, yet I think you are missing mine. "Brodozers" aren't just pickup trucks, they're specifically pickup trucks that are modified with a lift-kit and usually also larger wheels and tires so that they sit up higher off the ground. There are legitimate purposes for these modifications in off-roading applications, such as when going mudding, but the majority of these vehicles don't even have appropriate wheels and tires for going off-road after being modified. They're "pavement princesses" in the truck-community parlance. I live in Texas, in a working class community, and I don't denigrate "brodozers" because of the politics, gender, or other demographics of this community or typical truck owners. I denigrate them because I'm someone who loves cars (and trucks) and I understand when a modification is reasonable, safe, and necessary and when it is not. If you are modifying your truck specifically to get into off-roading hobbies, go for it, but if you are putting a lift-kit, 36" tires, oversized wheels, and a reinforced bumper on your truck to primarily go down the highway where you are massively endangering everyone else by doing so, that is not okay. The amount of badly done and unnecessary lifts where the owners don't even bother to re-aim their headlights afterwards are epidemic in Texas, but they're found all over the US. They're also generally illegal because they violate bumper height restrictions. This behavior is already against the law, but that law is not really enforced. At no point do I go "truck bad because toxic masculinity", you are assuming a lot of things about my personal philosophy that are not only not in evidence, but are false. This is a safety issue, I don't give a crap who the owner of the vehicle voted for, what is between their legs, their general temperament and character, or what color their hair is. When you drive a vehicle on public highways, you need to ensure that it is safe to operate. I despise "brodozers" for the same reason I despise stance cars. They're intentionally unsafe, anti-social, nihilistic shitboxes that get people killed needlessly. They're also a huge waste of money. There is no world in which it is reasonable or safe for people to be driving around monster trucks that can literally drive over a normal car on public roads. It's deranged. As to the point of demographics, the /majority/ of trucks purchased are used for work and are left unmodified as they rolled off the lot. Those who are modifying their trucks with lift kits are vastly predominantly men, and they're marketed to specifically on how these modifications enhance the appearance of their masculinity, with much of the same imagery and word choices you see in marketing of motorcycles. I don't care if 90% of truck owners are women, these are not the truck owners going out and putting an 8" lift on their 3/4 ton pickup, adding in stacks with clappers so they can roll coal "in style", a hoop with a lightbar, and a steel reinforced bumper guard on the front. The entire marketing and /point/ of these modifications is to make the vehicle appear more menacing and literally use its oversized physical presence to intimidate and dominate other people on the public roadways. If you spend more than a week driving in any major Texas city or on any interstate highways here you'll no doubt get tailgated by a brodozer with a huge lift, intentionally aiming their lights (and possibly turning their lightbar on) behind you at night while doing 20-30+ over the speed limit even when they have a clear lane to pass you, just because it makes these people smile to intimidate others on the roadway and threaten others with imminent physical harm and death.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  I’m not sure who should get to decide the definition of a “normal” car. You? I don’t really agree that there is some universal, canonical “normal” size of a car. In many places I’ve lived, pick up trucks and SUVs vastly (10:1) outnumbered coupes and sedans. In these places, an F-250 is the median, normal size for a car. What is special about (for example) a two-door coupe that makes it “normal”?
  - tristor 5y ago
    > I’m not sure who should get to decide the definition of a “normal” car. You? The definition is something that comes from the NHTSA and the legal statutes of each state.
- chrismcb 5y ago
  What the freak is a "brodozer?" I've never seen that term used before and I can't tell what you are really talking about. Are you talking about large 4x4 trucks that are high of the ground (kind of the opposite of what a bulldozer is)? These 4x4s have been around for ages. Nothing new. What is new (in the last ten it so years) are the SUVs and cross overs. These are larger than a sedan, but I wouldn't call them a brodozer or anything else.
bifrost 5y ago
This article is a bit backwards - the number of pedestrians walking in front of vehicles is much higher than vehicles being at fault for hitting pedestrians. We need to reintroduce the concept of pedestrians and cyclists being mindful of where they are... Or put barriers in place to keep pedestrians where they should be (out of the street).
- beebmam 5y ago
  I'm genuinely curious: is this an ironic comment?
- smm11 5y ago
  The dystopian future leaders applaud you attitude.
- Synaesthesia 5y ago
  It's one of the problems with urban designs, large swathes of the public spaces are now "off-limits" to pedestrians. Either way, there's nothing wrong with trying to make cars safer for pedestrians too.
  - bifrost 5y ago
    No matter how safe you make a car when a 3000lb vehicle hits a 100-200lb human at any speed, the human loses. Cars are not the problem.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- joshgev 5y ago
  I don't disagree that pedestrians and cyclists need to be careful, but as someone who walks far, far more than they drive, I really regret that cars are king in modern cities. Even in Europe, where cities are often better than their American counterparts, it is very difficult to walk without constant interruptions by roads (in the sense that they cause frequent stopping and waiting for traffic lights as well as the constant noise and choking stench of cars with poor exhaust systems). I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
Capitalism can be a very efficient system, but it also has flaws. We have seen a trend towards larger, more sophisticated and more expensive cars. It simply wouldn't be as profitable for manufacturers to make small, reliable and efficient cars. There's less profit in that.
- avalys 5y ago
  What exactly is the "flaw" in capitalism here you are insinuating here? There are plenty of small, cheap, reliable, and efficient cars available, if that's what you want to buy. The Toyota Prius. The Honda Fit. The Tesla Model 3? Is it a "flaw" in capitalism that some people don't want to buy those? That someone can choose to buy a Chevrolet Suburban instead of any of these options? The market for automobiles is as competitive as it gets. If a manufacturer is making profits, it's because they're selling what people want to buy. From my perspective, the only "flaw" here would seem to be that capitalism makes it difficult for you to impose your own preferences on others.
  - chapium 5y ago
    The "flaw" of capitalism is that individuals rarely pay the full cost of their decisions, leading to inefficiency.
  - toxik 5y ago
    Did you not read TFA? The outcome is not positive for any party. Bigger cars consume more gas, kill more people, etc, and people buy them because they can. That’s a failure of market forces to do the right thing.
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      > The outcome is not positive for any party. The outcome for the buyers of those vehicles is estimated by those buyers to be positive. I don't know if it is or isn't, but it seems at least a little presumptuous to conclude that a third party (you or I) knows more about the buyer's preferences/value function than the buyer themself. If the outcome were known to be negative for everyone, it would be a lot less common.
sylens 5y ago
The biggest issue I have is that the headlights of many of these cars, especially lifted trucks, are right at my eye level when I drive a sedan. So at night, I am constantly being blinded by headlights of trucks and SUVs going in the opposite direction. The solution seems to be to buy an SUV myself, but that just feels like I'm contributing to the arms race.
- otachack 5y ago
  Can't you flip up your rearview mirror, instead? And get behind the trucks?
  - otagekki 5y ago
    Flipping rearview mirrors don't do anything against blinding headlights of oncoming vehicles, do they?
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    GP talks about heading towards the trucks and SUVs, they will, in that scenario, eventually be behind the trucks, so yes they can do that. But they (and the rest of us) still have to deal with vehicles with bright lights right at eye level for a typical sedan-sized vehicle heading towards us at night.
  - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    These are oncoming, so unless you drive with welder's goggles, all you can do is glance away from the road in pain. I know that some hi/lo-beams now use LCDs to shape the beam, what I want is a whole windshield covered with them to selectively blot out just the searing headlights.
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  I think really hard to remove, thick stickers are the solution to super bright and/or eye level lights like that. Or hammers. Seriously, wtf is wrong with manufacturers. We need safety regulations that rein in headlights, it's becoming ridiculous.
- 5y ago
cozzyd 5y ago
Easy solution is to set a momentum (or kinetic energy?) limit, rather than a speed limit.
- tylerfontaine 5y ago
  So then a motorcycle could legally go 200mph? And loaded tractor/trailers could go 20MPH? NB: I didn't do the math, so this is probably mildly hyperbolic, but I think it illustrates the point.
  - cozzyd 5y ago
    No, motorcycle could go 25 MPH. Loaded trailer 2.5 mph. Sounds about right to me for urban areas :)
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    This proposal makes a lot of sense!
- bifrost 5y ago
  Or keep people away from cars.
  - tmnvix 5y ago
    How about keeping cars away from people?
    - drewcoo 5y ago
      How about we just keep the people?
  - spixy 5y ago
    And transforming stroads to streets and roads helps to solve that.
- tzs 5y ago
  I don't think either momentum or kinetic energy are very good measures here. Consider getting hit in the head with a fastball pitched by a major league baseball pitcher. A baseball weighs ~0.145 kg, and a fastball might be going 45 m/s. That gives a momentum of 6.5 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 146.8 J, and a serious possibly life threatening injury. Now consider getting hit by a fully loaded B-52 (220000 kg) being towed at 0.5 m/s. That has a momentum of 110000 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 27500 J. That's ~17000 times the momentum of the baseball and ~190 times the kinetic energy, but all it will do is knock you over. (You might subsequently get run over by it, which would do a lot damage, but that injury will be from neither the momentum nor the kinetic energy).
rytcio 5y ago
And big cars are caused by safety regulations. People like to deny unintended consequences, but modern vehicles are a big example of this.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  So it is not legal to buy a small car in America?
  - c0nducktr 5y ago
    It's legal to buy them, but you can't manufacture/sell them like you used to. For small cars (compacts, sedans, coupes), the one thing I've noticed is that they seem to have much less window space than they used to. The reason for this, I've been told, is that there's a minimum height which the top of the door frame now has to reach. In older small cars, I remember being able to comfortably sit with my arm resting on the window sill. Modern cars, my arm has to be at an uncomfortable angle to even attempt to do so. Last time I was car shopping, I had a couple people mention that it was because of a safety regulation. Which is fine, passenger safety is a nice thing, but there then is the unintended consequence of less overall visibility when driving. My parents had a Saturn SL2 when I was a child. The car had amazing visibility, huge windows. It felt like driving in a bubble. When I compare that to newer cars, the visibility is much lower because of the smaller windows, maybe larger vertical support beams between the front and back seats... I assume that why they started having to include back-up cameras. You just can't see as much in a modern car as you could in an older one. (Edited a couple things for clarity)
apetrov 5y ago
What about bus? it's way bigger than CUV/SUV etc thereby more dangerous. According the premise in the article they have to be banned out right.
- fredophile 5y ago
  Busses are more dangerous. They also require special licensing to drive everywhere I've ever lived.
- sheeeep86 5y ago
  Busses and trucks are operated by professional drivers with more training and higher standards for vision and health. These drivers tend to know how to stay out of dangerous situations and how to react when they do come up.
foxes 5y ago
I am so sick of car culture. One good part of covid was seeing all the pointless car driving significantly reduced. The usual arguments I see here on HN which are pro cars are "what about the children/disabled/elderly". Completely nonsense pro car argument. An efficient, humane public transport system that is well connected, gets you to where you want to go, well funded and maintained would probably be better for a majority of the people in these groups anyway. Im not even advocating for removal of cars, but Im sure the majority of the population could easily reduce dependence. As for the "freedom" argument. Sitting in some box confined to miles of endless tarmac with countless rules, regulations, taxes, insurance doesn't seem free at all. Sure, I like the ability to go out into the country side to go for a trail run, but again that is not the majority of my trips. The vast majority of trips in a city could probably easily be replaced by public transport for a lot of people. It's just laziness and a deeply embedded car culture. Looking at pictures of American cities with enormous parking lots horrifies me.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > I am so sick of car culture. I think "car culture" is a bit too broad. I don't have as much of a problem with car enthusiasts, more so our country's continuous commitment to car infrastructure without supporting other options. I'm actually a huge car enthusiast, I love them. I don't own one though, nor do I drive much at all. But I think there is a difference between being passionate about cars, and forcing that passion to require people to use cars for nearly all transportation. Totally agree with your other points, although the US has a lot of work to start incentivizing other modes of transportation.
  - foxes 5y ago
    Yes, you can appreciate the technology and the engineering involved. My comment and issue is towards the general mass adoption, car focused infrastructure. I don't want them eliminated entirely, they are still useful, certain people do have use cases. But I am sure for the vast majority of people their dependence could be quite reduced by supporting alternatives. There are plenty of disabled people that can't drive, and plenty of old people that can still ride a bike. I just see these arguments come up every time on HN and they are too focused on specifics.
sheeeep86 5y ago
I have also experienced this buying behavior first hand when a colleagues spouse had an avoidable accident with the kid on board. The thought was - My partner cannot drive, so I need to buy a bigger car so that they dont endanger my kid. The US needs regulation and more driving training to protect the other traffic participants. While we are at it also safer bike lanes and walk ways and crossings.
- tristor 5y ago
  > My partner cannot drive, so I need to buy a bigger car so that they dont endanger my kid. I've seen this same logic from many people who have asked me for my advice about vehicle purchases. The thing is, the evidence doesn't support the conclusion that larger/heavier vehicles are safer. In fact, it's just the opposite. We really need stricter licensing requirements for driving in the US. Compare the way people in Germany drive to the way people in the US drive on average, and it's night and day. Most Americans drive aggressively, without regard for others, with little attention being paid, looking just barely in front of their vehicle and never their complete surroundings, and without even basic understanding of vehicle dynamics or roadway rules and etiquette. I daily see drivers, especially in larger vehicles, incapable of even maintaining lane presence while going straight down a highway, which is like remedial driving 020 skill levels. Most American drivers aren't even at 101 level.
waffle_maniac 5y ago
https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/AtTPZlAj9QVkg7ZtJ6q9Vk9cll4=/0x0:2048x1152/1310x736/media/img/posts/2021/12/FC3tgqEWQAoO6mv_1/original.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/AtTPZlAj9QVkg7ZtJ6q9Vk9c... Woah, is that an Oldsmobile Alero in the background? I had a coupe as a kid and boy was that car a piece of shit. The same components failed consistently.

80 points by jessaustin 5y ago

This is automakers responding to buyer demands and a lax enforcement of government regulations. Nearly every state has bumper height restrictions, yet it is commonplace to see "brodozers" on the road built for decapitating motorcyclists and gassing EV drivers, not for off-roading. Most truck makers are now selling ready-made "brodozers" because trucks and CUV/SUVs are outselling cars. Not only are these vehicles massively more dangerous to pedestrians and people on two-wheel vehicles, but they're also more stressful and dangerous for anyone driving a normal car on the road, because you can't see through them, they block ahead. When multiple normal cars are in a line on a highway, you can usually see beyond the cars in front partially by seeing through their rear window and windshield, but when all you can see is a solid aluminum tailgate, the pumpkin for the rear differential, and a hanging pair of truck nuts, it means you cannot plan ahead and react as quickly as possible to changing road conditions ahead. Nothing is quite as disturbing to me as a conscientious driver as being behind a "brodozer" where I can't see anything ahead of me or having one with an unnecessary cattle/bull bar right behind me, essentially threatening me with certain death as their unnecessary monument to their small penis would roll right over the top of my normal car crushing me if we were to be in an "accident". These vehicles violate existing regulations in nearly every state in the US, yet seem to be epidemic on American highways and not disappearing any time soon.

klyrs 5y ago
You've got some good points to make here, but your language is dripping with derision, scorn, and personal judgement/attack. Please mind the site guidelines.
- aaomidi 5y ago
  - klyrs 5y ago
    I get that. But you're only convincing the people whose personal choices you disagree with that you're a jerk. You're only pouring gas on the fire.
    - fennecs 5y ago
      I don’t know, being nice to car drivers is a bit like appeasement, I think a bit of passion could be good. I think on HN at least you can try and empathise as to why they might feel so strongly. IRL of course you could use a bit of a more diplomatic tone.
      - klyrs 5y ago
        There's a broad gulf between "nice" and downright insulting. Somewhere in that gulf, one can find productive discussion. The internet is real life. It's probably where you spend most of your time. It is what you make of it.
  - loudtieblahblah 5y ago
    This is always the excuse for upper crust liberals to sneer down at working class culture. Always. It's always how everyone is in danger. Against mtf in female sports? You're causing violence to trans people. Use a gas powered blower to blow the leaves from the 400 trees on your property? You're killing the planet and everyone on it. Vote republican? You want fascism and the fall of democracy. Everything is always exaggerated to excuse a total lack of civility and then the lack of civility makes solving the problem impossible. bc no one can be the bigger person, the culture divide grows bigger and problems become harder to solve bc the solution requires consensus in our democracy.
    - antisthenes 5y ago
      Never doubt an american's ability to turn a neutral topic like road safety into some kind of twisted partisan issue. Just a reminder - even though you're probably right, in some sense, every time you do this, reasonable public debate gets another nail in the coffin.
- tristor 5y ago
  > your language is dripping with derision, scorn, and personal judgement Absolutely, and every inch of it fully justified. I stand by my comments, in their entirety, without any desire to mitigate my spite for those who go out of their way to make the world a worse place and get off on threatening physical harm and intimidating other people. That is anti-social, nihilistic, and unacceptable behavior and I have every intent and desire to incur as much shame and derision in the direction of people who engage in such behavior as is possible. People who modify their trucks into "brodozers" are people who understand that a vehicle is a weapon, and then choose to make it /more dangerous/ and /more intimidating/, intentionally, at great expense, to appease their own ego and sociopathy. I have no respect whatsoever for that type of behavior and it has no place on public roadways or in polite society.
nathias 5y ago
It isn't just the brodozers, all cars have gotten into that height. I drive cars made in the 90s and even driving behind a tiny car feels like tailing a truck because of the height difference.
genocidicbunny 5y ago
Not to mention the headlights. I can deal with most of the rest of the stuff, but the headlights are downright dangerous to all other drivers around. They're rarely correctly angled, so due to the base height of the truck they'll frequently be right at eye level for smaller vehicles. On roads with short or no barriers, they also blind oncoming traffic in addition to whoever happens to be in front of them.
- antisthenes 5y ago
  That's not just manufacturers though. Plenty of people are replacing standard halogens with aftermarket LEDs in response to others doing the same. The end result is that night-driving is incredibly dangerous, because the brightness is spiraling out of control. Instead of increased visibility, you are forced to squint from the brightness of incoming traffic. I try to avoid night-time driving as a result of this like the plague. It is simply too dangerous for me (I've been in 3 near-accidents in 2021, despite driving the least I've ever driven in a year).
FredPret 5y ago
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. All your problems can be solved with a massive SUV. Now we just need them all to be winter-proof electric and recharged with nuclear power. By the way, they are crazy comfortable - as a tall guy, I’m never squatting and folding my ass into a little Eurocar again.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. All your problems can be solved with a massive SUV. Is this sarcastic?
dqv 5y ago
A funny thing (not haha funny) I noticed about this article is that it mentions the demographics of the people being hit by the car, but just makes the "hyper-masculine" assumption about the drivers of the cars. You kind of do that here by using the term "brodozers". This is a kind of implicit bias I think a lot of people just accept as fact, but it could be a dangerous assumption to make. Ford did a survey of truck owners and (apparently) 46% of their respondents were women [0]. Now there are two things you can take from that 46% number depending on your beliefs. If you don't believe it, then you should be concerned: it means the companies that make these trucks are trying to get more people to buy trucks by "de-gendering" them. If you do believe it, then you should be concerned about going after only a subset of the demographic who uses these vehicles. It turns it into an identity issue where you're just targeting the safety of "men driving trucks" and not the overall safety of trucks. The result is ... men continuing to drive their trucks as an identity and just increasing the amount of women driving them as well. I write this wall of text to say "truck bad because (our conception of what is toxic) masculinity bad" isn't necessarily helpful. Maybe you only meant to mention the safety, but you could have said all the things you've said about safety without making any specific reference to gender (or at least doing so with a reminder to continue to check the demographics). When we talk about these things and genderize them without referencing the true demographics, we open things up for the wrong conversation. The narrative can shift to "less men are driving trucks" (when really it's less men are driving trucks as a percentage of total truck drivers) after Ford rebrands to a gender-inclusive image for trucks. I think it's just more important to focus on the safety aspect and try to turn it from "men driving trucks aggresively" to "less people driving unsafe trucks". Marketing would love for you to just make this an "irresponsible men" thing so they can keep selling unsafe vehicles. This is not to say that men aren't aggressive drivers or don't get into more accidents, just that I want to make that conclusion on my own and not have marketing departments deflect the true cause of these safety issues. [0]: https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America/US/2020/06/22/The-Great-American-Truck-Survey-2020.pdf https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...
- tristor 5y ago
  I get your point, yet I think you are missing mine. "Brodozers" aren't just pickup trucks, they're specifically pickup trucks that are modified with a lift-kit and usually also larger wheels and tires so that they sit up higher off the ground. There are legitimate purposes for these modifications in off-roading applications, such as when going mudding, but the majority of these vehicles don't even have appropriate wheels and tires for going off-road after being modified. They're "pavement princesses" in the truck-community parlance. I live in Texas, in a working class community, and I don't denigrate "brodozers" because of the politics, gender, or other demographics of this community or typical truck owners. I denigrate them because I'm someone who loves cars (and trucks) and I understand when a modification is reasonable, safe, and necessary and when it is not. If you are modifying your truck specifically to get into off-roading hobbies, go for it, but if you are putting a lift-kit, 36" tires, oversized wheels, and a reinforced bumper on your truck to primarily go down the highway where you are massively endangering everyone else by doing so, that is not okay. The amount of badly done and unnecessary lifts where the owners don't even bother to re-aim their headlights afterwards are epidemic in Texas, but they're found all over the US. They're also generally illegal because they violate bumper height restrictions. This behavior is already against the law, but that law is not really enforced. At no point do I go "truck bad because toxic masculinity", you are assuming a lot of things about my personal philosophy that are not only not in evidence, but are false. This is a safety issue, I don't give a crap who the owner of the vehicle voted for, what is between their legs, their general temperament and character, or what color their hair is. When you drive a vehicle on public highways, you need to ensure that it is safe to operate. I despise "brodozers" for the same reason I despise stance cars. They're intentionally unsafe, anti-social, nihilistic shitboxes that get people killed needlessly. They're also a huge waste of money. There is no world in which it is reasonable or safe for people to be driving around monster trucks that can literally drive over a normal car on public roads. It's deranged. As to the point of demographics, the /majority/ of trucks purchased are used for work and are left unmodified as they rolled off the lot. Those who are modifying their trucks with lift kits are vastly predominantly men, and they're marketed to specifically on how these modifications enhance the appearance of their masculinity, with much of the same imagery and word choices you see in marketing of motorcycles. I don't care if 90% of truck owners are women, these are not the truck owners going out and putting an 8" lift on their 3/4 ton pickup, adding in stacks with clappers so they can roll coal "in style", a hoop with a lightbar, and a steel reinforced bumper guard on the front. The entire marketing and /point/ of these modifications is to make the vehicle appear more menacing and literally use its oversized physical presence to intimidate and dominate other people on the public roadways. If you spend more than a week driving in any major Texas city or on any interstate highways here you'll no doubt get tailgated by a brodozer with a huge lift, intentionally aiming their lights (and possibly turning their lightbar on) behind you at night while doing 20-30+ over the speed limit even when they have a clear lane to pass you, just because it makes these people smile to intimidate others on the roadway and threaten others with imminent physical harm and death.
ryandrake 5y ago
I’m not sure who should get to decide the definition of a “normal” car. You? I don’t really agree that there is some universal, canonical “normal” size of a car. In many places I’ve lived, pick up trucks and SUVs vastly (10:1) outnumbered coupes and sedans. In these places, an F-250 is the median, normal size for a car. What is special about (for example) a two-door coupe that makes it “normal”?
- tristor 5y ago
  > I’m not sure who should get to decide the definition of a “normal” car. You? The definition is something that comes from the NHTSA and the legal statutes of each state.
chrismcb 5y ago
What the freak is a "brodozer?" I've never seen that term used before and I can't tell what you are really talking about. Are you talking about large 4x4 trucks that are high of the ground (kind of the opposite of what a bulldozer is)? These 4x4s have been around for ages. Nothing new. What is new (in the last ten it so years) are the SUVs and cross overs. These are larger than a sedan, but I wouldn't call them a brodozer or anything else.

bifrost 5y ago

This article is a bit backwards - the number of pedestrians walking in front of vehicles is much higher than vehicles being at fault for hitting pedestrians. We need to reintroduce the concept of pedestrians and cyclists being mindful of where they are... Or put barriers in place to keep pedestrians where they should be (out of the street).

beebmam 5y ago
I'm genuinely curious: is this an ironic comment?
smm11 5y ago
The dystopian future leaders applaud you attitude.
Synaesthesia 5y ago
It's one of the problems with urban designs, large swathes of the public spaces are now "off-limits" to pedestrians. Either way, there's nothing wrong with trying to make cars safer for pedestrians too.
- bifrost 5y ago
  No matter how safe you make a car when a 3000lb vehicle hits a 100-200lb human at any speed, the human loses. Cars are not the problem.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
joshgev 5y ago
I don't disagree that pedestrians and cyclists need to be careful, but as someone who walks far, far more than they drive, I really regret that cars are king in modern cities. Even in Europe, where cities are often better than their American counterparts, it is very difficult to walk without constant interruptions by roads (in the sense that they cause frequent stopping and waiting for traffic lights as well as the constant noise and choking stench of cars with poor exhaust systems). I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense.

Synaesthesia 5y ago

Capitalism can be a very efficient system, but it also has flaws. We have seen a trend towards larger, more sophisticated and more expensive cars. It simply wouldn't be as profitable for manufacturers to make small, reliable and efficient cars. There's less profit in that.

avalys 5y ago
What exactly is the "flaw" in capitalism here you are insinuating here? There are plenty of small, cheap, reliable, and efficient cars available, if that's what you want to buy. The Toyota Prius. The Honda Fit. The Tesla Model 3? Is it a "flaw" in capitalism that some people don't want to buy those? That someone can choose to buy a Chevrolet Suburban instead of any of these options? The market for automobiles is as competitive as it gets. If a manufacturer is making profits, it's because they're selling what people want to buy. From my perspective, the only "flaw" here would seem to be that capitalism makes it difficult for you to impose your own preferences on others.
- chapium 5y ago
  The "flaw" of capitalism is that individuals rarely pay the full cost of their decisions, leading to inefficiency.
- toxik 5y ago
  Did you not read TFA? The outcome is not positive for any party. Bigger cars consume more gas, kill more people, etc, and people buy them because they can. That’s a failure of market forces to do the right thing.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    > The outcome is not positive for any party. The outcome for the buyers of those vehicles is estimated by those buyers to be positive. I don't know if it is or isn't, but it seems at least a little presumptuous to conclude that a third party (you or I) knows more about the buyer's preferences/value function than the buyer themself. If the outcome were known to be negative for everyone, it would be a lot less common.

sylens 5y ago

The biggest issue I have is that the headlights of many of these cars, especially lifted trucks, are right at my eye level when I drive a sedan. So at night, I am constantly being blinded by headlights of trucks and SUVs going in the opposite direction. The solution seems to be to buy an SUV myself, but that just feels like I'm contributing to the arms race.

otachack 5y ago
Can't you flip up your rearview mirror, instead? And get behind the trucks?
- otagekki 5y ago
  Flipping rearview mirrors don't do anything against blinding headlights of oncoming vehicles, do they?
- Jtsummers 5y ago
  GP talks about heading towards the trucks and SUVs, they will, in that scenario, eventually be behind the trucks, so yes they can do that. But they (and the rest of us) still have to deal with vehicles with bright lights right at eye level for a typical sedan-sized vehicle heading towards us at night.
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  These are oncoming, so unless you drive with welder's goggles, all you can do is glance away from the road in pain. I know that some hi/lo-beams now use LCDs to shape the beam, what I want is a whole windshield covered with them to selectively blot out just the searing headlights.
robbedpeter 5y ago
I think really hard to remove, thick stickers are the solution to super bright and/or eye level lights like that. Or hammers. Seriously, wtf is wrong with manufacturers. We need safety regulations that rein in headlights, it's becoming ridiculous.
5y ago

cozzyd 5y ago

Easy solution is to set a momentum (or kinetic energy?) limit, rather than a speed limit.

tylerfontaine 5y ago
So then a motorcycle could legally go 200mph? And loaded tractor/trailers could go 20MPH? NB: I didn't do the math, so this is probably mildly hyperbolic, but I think it illustrates the point.
- cozzyd 5y ago
  No, motorcycle could go 25 MPH. Loaded trailer 2.5 mph. Sounds about right to me for urban areas :)
- jessaustin 5y ago
  This proposal makes a lot of sense!
bifrost 5y ago
Or keep people away from cars.
- tmnvix 5y ago
  How about keeping cars away from people?
  - drewcoo 5y ago
    How about we just keep the people?
- spixy 5y ago
  And transforming stroads to streets and roads helps to solve that.
tzs 5y ago
I don't think either momentum or kinetic energy are very good measures here. Consider getting hit in the head with a fastball pitched by a major league baseball pitcher. A baseball weighs ~0.145 kg, and a fastball might be going 45 m/s. That gives a momentum of 6.5 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 146.8 J, and a serious possibly life threatening injury. Now consider getting hit by a fully loaded B-52 (220000 kg) being towed at 0.5 m/s. That has a momentum of 110000 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 27500 J. That's ~17000 times the momentum of the baseball and ~190 times the kinetic energy, but all it will do is knock you over. (You might subsequently get run over by it, which would do a lot damage, but that injury will be from neither the momentum nor the kinetic energy).

rytcio 5y ago

And big cars are caused by safety regulations. People like to deny unintended consequences, but modern vehicles are a big example of this.

Gigachad 5y ago
So it is not legal to buy a small car in America?
- c0nducktr 5y ago
  It's legal to buy them, but you can't manufacture/sell them like you used to. For small cars (compacts, sedans, coupes), the one thing I've noticed is that they seem to have much less window space than they used to. The reason for this, I've been told, is that there's a minimum height which the top of the door frame now has to reach. In older small cars, I remember being able to comfortably sit with my arm resting on the window sill. Modern cars, my arm has to be at an uncomfortable angle to even attempt to do so. Last time I was car shopping, I had a couple people mention that it was because of a safety regulation. Which is fine, passenger safety is a nice thing, but there then is the unintended consequence of less overall visibility when driving. My parents had a Saturn SL2 when I was a child. The car had amazing visibility, huge windows. It felt like driving in a bubble. When I compare that to newer cars, the visibility is much lower because of the smaller windows, maybe larger vertical support beams between the front and back seats... I assume that why they started having to include back-up cameras. You just can't see as much in a modern car as you could in an older one. (Edited a couple things for clarity)

apetrov 5y ago

What about bus? it's way bigger than CUV/SUV etc thereby more dangerous. According the premise in the article they have to be banned out right.

fredophile 5y ago
Busses are more dangerous. They also require special licensing to drive everywhere I've ever lived.
sheeeep86 5y ago
Busses and trucks are operated by professional drivers with more training and higher standards for vision and health. These drivers tend to know how to stay out of dangerous situations and how to react when they do come up.

foxes 5y ago

I am so sick of car culture. One good part of covid was seeing all the pointless car driving significantly reduced. The usual arguments I see here on HN which are pro cars are "what about the children/disabled/elderly". Completely nonsense pro car argument. An efficient, humane public transport system that is well connected, gets you to where you want to go, well funded and maintained would probably be better for a majority of the people in these groups anyway. Im not even advocating for removal of cars, but Im sure the majority of the population could easily reduce dependence. As for the "freedom" argument. Sitting in some box confined to miles of endless tarmac with countless rules, regulations, taxes, insurance doesn't seem free at all. Sure, I like the ability to go out into the country side to go for a trail run, but again that is not the majority of my trips. The vast majority of trips in a city could probably easily be replaced by public transport for a lot of people. It's just laziness and a deeply embedded car culture. Looking at pictures of American cities with enormous parking lots horrifies me.

milkytron 5y ago
> I am so sick of car culture. I think "car culture" is a bit too broad. I don't have as much of a problem with car enthusiasts, more so our country's continuous commitment to car infrastructure without supporting other options. I'm actually a huge car enthusiast, I love them. I don't own one though, nor do I drive much at all. But I think there is a difference between being passionate about cars, and forcing that passion to require people to use cars for nearly all transportation. Totally agree with your other points, although the US has a lot of work to start incentivizing other modes of transportation.
- foxes 5y ago
  Yes, you can appreciate the technology and the engineering involved. My comment and issue is towards the general mass adoption, car focused infrastructure. I don't want them eliminated entirely, they are still useful, certain people do have use cases. But I am sure for the vast majority of people their dependence could be quite reduced by supporting alternatives. There are plenty of disabled people that can't drive, and plenty of old people that can still ride a bike. I just see these arguments come up every time on HN and they are too focused on specifics.

sheeeep86 5y ago

I have also experienced this buying behavior first hand when a colleagues spouse had an avoidable accident with the kid on board. The thought was - My partner cannot drive, so I need to buy a bigger car so that they dont endanger my kid. The US needs regulation and more driving training to protect the other traffic participants. While we are at it also safer bike lanes and walk ways and crossings.

tristor 5y ago
> My partner cannot drive, so I need to buy a bigger car so that they dont endanger my kid. I've seen this same logic from many people who have asked me for my advice about vehicle purchases. The thing is, the evidence doesn't support the conclusion that larger/heavier vehicles are safer. In fact, it's just the opposite. We really need stricter licensing requirements for driving in the US. Compare the way people in Germany drive to the way people in the US drive on average, and it's night and day. Most Americans drive aggressively, without regard for others, with little attention being paid, looking just barely in front of their vehicle and never their complete surroundings, and without even basic understanding of vehicle dynamics or roadway rules and etiquette. I daily see drivers, especially in larger vehicles, incapable of even maintaining lane presence while going straight down a highway, which is like remedial driving 020 skill levels. Most American drivers aren't even at 101 level.

waffle_maniac 5y ago

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/AtTPZlAj9QVkg7ZtJ6q9Vk9cll4=/0x0:2048x1152/1310x736/media/img/posts/2021/12/FC3tgqEWQAoO6mv_1/original.jpg https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/AtTPZlAj9QVkg7ZtJ6q9Vk9c... Woah, is that an Oldsmobile Alero in the background? I had a coupe as a kid and boy was that car a piece of shit. The same components failed consistently.