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Exactly on topic: a philosophy paper "Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked?" by Douglas Husak. Author argues that because of the high crash
by yboris 4y ago
Exactly on topic: a philosophy paper "Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked?" by Douglas Husak. Author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility with other vehicles (and pedestrians), SUV driving is immoral - imposing an oversized amount of harm to others with no proportional safety for self.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447 https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447
- mc32 4y agoThere are three trends: bigger mass, larger sizes and taller vehicles. Which one of the above is the most consequential? I'm guessing height. at 2500 or 5000 lbs, neither is going to be pleasant when you bang in to it. size maybe there is more surface area to get hit by, but that's unlikely to be significant. mass does influence stopping distance though, so that could be, but at the same time we now have large disc brakes with anti-skid.
- wefarrell 4y agoI got into a head on collision with an SUV that came off two wheels while rounding a curve and crossed the yellow divider right into my little car. In that case it was definitely the height that did us in.
- timellis-smith 4y agoGlad to hear that you lived to tell the tale. Sounds like a horrendous collision.
- wefarrell 4y agoMy car crumpled perfectly and my only injuries were scrapes from the airbag. The other driver broke a few ribs. I will never forget the split second I recognized there was a huge mass of metal coming straight at me at a high speed and I resigned to the fact that it would probably mean life altering injuries. Good thing I wore my seat belt!
- ajuc 4y agoE=mV^2/2 60 km/h car will kill you either way, 1 km/h car won't kill you either way, but somewhere in between there's a velocity range where a SUV will kill you and a compact car won't - simply because of the mass difference. I'd argue it's the velocity range in which a lot of collisions happen (especially in city traffic).
- 2rsf 4y agoIt is not just the mass, the design is critical as well. Check pedestrian impact tests, on regular cars pedestrians can roll over while with tall cars or SUVs they are simply splashed against it.
- mc32 4y agoI think that band where the light car is not lethal is a narrow bad. I could be wrong but I have a feeling it's sitting up high in an SUV/truck that is causing some of this.
- vihren 4y agoIts the momentum that kills you p=mV, not the kinetic energy. So I would guess that mass ia much more important.
- Ma8ee 4y agoWhy would that be? Isn't it the energy spent tearing your body apart that is relevant?
- tzs 4y agoA typical locomotive at 1 mph has more momentum than a Ford F-150 at 45 mph, but the latter is far more likely to kill you in collision so it doesn’t look like it is momentum that kills.
- pif 4y agoYou are both wrong, It's the acceleration that kills you.
- 4y ago
- asdff 4y agoAlso, shape. Go look at the front end of a car like a ford F150. The hood is flat and sits 4 feet high. Now go look at a more compact car like a prius. The hood is low, and is angled like a wedge smooth into the windshield. When a prius hits you, its liable that you will just roll up and off of it and not get much of the force from the impact as a result. When an F150 hits you with its 4 foot tall wall of a grill straight in your chest, I don't think you will be rolling up and over. Maybe your head would just pop off from the kinetic force, sparing you from a slower death?
- musha68k 4y agoI once managed to barely jump and slide over the hood of a car that came up behind me and turned - at considerable speed - right into the pedestrian crossing I had been traversing on a green light. The driver looked right through me, didn’t even realize it until my - corner of the eye induced - leap. I would be dead for 15 years now if that would have been a SUV. Lots of people really don’t seem to have a good grasp of the sheer physics involved while driving these tanks especially.
- a4isms 4y ago> driving these tanks They are not tanks. They are suburban armoured personnel carriers.
- mc32 4y agoNot even. You see them in cities themselves. Like why? Finding large parking lots is hard and it’s by definition urban and you can’t possibly have mud or ditches to traverse in your 4x4!
- _Wintermute 4y agoEven worse is that they're becoming increasingly common in European cities that really don't have much space.
- jbay808 4y ago
- yread 4y agoHigher weight also requires thicker pillars so that the car doesn't smush you when it rolls over leading to worse visibility
- NBJack 4y agoNote that minivans have been around longer than SUVs, but do not appear to be as disproportionate in fatalities. I suspect part of this is that they are typically lower to the ground and, more importantly, tend to only weigh about 500 lbs more than the average car at ~4500 lbs. Contrast this with full size SUVs, which are often taller and weigh on average closer to ~5900 lbs.
- bluGill 4y agoThe Chevrolet suburban from 1947 was clearly a large SUV. (the suburban was introduced in 1935, but you could argue those models were station wagons, by 1947 they were clearly SUVs). The VW microbus - was from 1950. The minivan didn't become popular until 1980s, while SUVs remained the domain of niches like families too large for a minivan, or those who regularly drove off road for another decade or two. However the SUV is clearly the older of the two.
- pif 4y agoI'll always choose height for my car because I want comfort. My top priority when driving is safety for everybody, as in doing all my best to prevent accidents. My second priority is personal comfort, which helps in guaranteeing the first priority to be respected.
- ars 4y agoLet's say we magically got rid of all SUV's. Then Douglas would find the next largest car and say the same thing. You need to have some kind of line that distinguishes moral from immoral, if you can't do that, then your calculation is risk based, not morality.
- rdtwo 4y agoSUV problem is mostly a grill size problem. They are designed to be aggressive and kill, you could drop them lower increase visibility and improve pedestrian impact like they do in Europe
- ocbyc 4y agoThey're designed to kill?
- donw 4y agoThe big problem -- pun intended -- is that vehicles are de facto required by law to be huge. Imagine if we had cars that were built like cars from the 80s -- smaller, lightweight, tons of visibility, minimal equipment -- but with modern engine technology and a few of the electronics that don't add much weight, but add a ton of functionality (like 360-degree cameras). I'll take the road noise, less interior comfort, and all the rest, just for a basic... car. I'd love to have a modern reboot 80s compact pickup that wasn't a bloated mess like the new Ford Ranger.
- ramraj07 4y agoUhm not seeing your point? Cars are made to keep who’s inside alive, and you can’t do that with paper thin walls that made the original mini. No law makes an SUV a requirement though. That’s just people getting greedy while the roads are getting larger allowing them to see no difference driving large vehicles.
- buscoquadnary 4y agoI live in an area that is sparsely populated and has hard winters, oftentimes plowing isn't going to happen soon if it happens on the day of a snow storm. I also have several children that I need to transport to various places. I have yet to find a mini-van that is able to handle appropriately in the snow and conditions I am likely to face, and a smaller vehicle can't carry my family. Just because you can't think of a reason doesn't mean someone who does something you disagree with is morally deficient.
- joadha 4y agoTIL that only two minivans (the Sienna and the Pacifica) offer AWD. That surprised me! And incidentally (getting back to the original point of the article), both models feature a pretty flat front-end for a minivan. I wouldn't be surprised if they are considered among the least pedestrian-safe vehicles of the class.
- jackvalentine 4y agoThey're not required by law to be huge - they're required by law to be safe, which being larger ends up being a side effect. Sure a 2022 Toyota Corolla is gigantic compared to a 1985 Corolla, but it's nothing compared to a 2022 F150. The best selling 'car' in North America. I know which one I'd prefer to be hit by.
- radu_floricica 4y agoVans are nightmare stuff for motorcyclists. Hitting a compact car from most angles means rolling over it. Hitting a van from any angle is instant SPLAT - all potential energy gets instantly converted into damage. We don't have SUVs here (Eastern Europe), but I think they're a closer to vans than to compacts.
- HailTheGreenOne 4y agoWhat do you mean we don't have SUVs in Eastern Europe? Where would you have to live to think that?
- egman_ekki 4y agoGuessing by the name, perhaps Romania. Maybe they mean large ones like Ford F150? otherwise (Eastern) Europeans love their SUVs for sure, 45% of new vehicles bought in Europe are SUVs.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoI think it's more of a sliding scale than a rigid dichotomy. The car we drive might reasonably be described as an SUV, the Seat Tarraco. As a pedestrian or a cyclist I'd take my chances on against it before something like the Chevy Suburban any day of the week.
- orangepurple 4y agoGetting hit by a Romanian Dacia Sandero is just as bad as getting hit by a Chevy Suburban at the same speed.
- VBprogrammer 4y agoIf that's the case then presumably getting hit by a Nissan Leaf at the same speed is just as bad and the whole premise is bullshit? I haven't seen one in person for a while but but a Chevy Suburban is practically flat until 4ft off the ground. A Dacia Sandero isn't nearly that tall. I find it hard to believe that it is the same as a Sandero at least at potentially survivable speeds around 30mph.
- samatman 4y agoI'm willing to go along with this so long as blame is apportioned where it belongs: with the Federal government of the United States. My case is that manufacturing vehicles is a public good. We can talk about restoring city centers to human beings and I'll agree with you all day, but if you want to make the case that motor vehicles, cars included, are themselves immoral, we don't share enough values to have a productive conversation. So these companies, to provide this benefit, must comply with the law. Consumers have choice in what to buy, but strictly limited by price tag and availability. Note that we don't have a cultural trend of buying cars with enormous rotating blades on the bumpers. It's not so much because this is illegal, as none are available for purchase. The government decided, correctly, that the fleet should be more fuel efficient. All the reasons for this are good. So they did the obvious thing: imposed increasing taxes on gasoline. Ok, let's back up: no, they passed insane regulations leading directly to the prevalence of SUVs and the increasingly hostile road profile of pickup trucks. The law allows them less fuel efficiency if they make the wheelbase bigger. That's insane. Shall we apportion some of the blame to the car lobby? Ok. Sure. Ultimately the government is responsible for the law, and the manufacturers are responsible for following it. End the insanity, and the problem goes away over a decade or so.
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- sidewndr46 4y agoI don't agree that consumers are strictly limited by price. It's been the norm to finance vehicles with loans for a while now. So much that dealerships make more on financing than they do on selling cars in some cases. As profit in the industry has grown, so too has the amount of available credit. We now see 7 year loans on vehicles becoming more common.
- gruez 4y ago>I don't agree that consumers are strictly limited by price. It's been the norm to finance vehicles with loans for a while now. The monthly payments are dictated by the purchase price and interest rate. Guess who controls the interest rates?