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Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else
- hamiltonians 4y agodeadly for pedestrians and bikers too.higher gas prices not enough
- wittycardio 4y agoThis is exactly the type of problem that taxes and regulations are good at solving
- antod 4y agoOr encouraging
- wittycardio 4y agoWell so far a lack of regulation has led to a tragedy of the commons like situation.
- joshxyz 4y agowhats the safest weight we can have that is the least deadliest of them all?
- asdff 4y agoSomething like a honda fit or a similar subcompact car. Lightweight, around 2500 lbs for these cars give or take between makes, plus they all generally have a sloping front end that will just shed pedestrians off of it like a cow catcher on a train. Many SUV and truck front ends are pretty flat otoh.
- anonu 4y agohttps://www.nber.org/papers/w17170 https://www.nber.org/papers/w17170 (11 year old paper) PDF -> https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w17170/w17170.pdf https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w17170/w171...
- joenathanone 4y agoAlso kinda the same reason why buses don't need seatbelts.
- woodruffw 4y agoMy understanding was that buses don't have seatbelts for two reasons: * Per capita and per mile, buses are far safer than personal automobiles. * When buses do get in accidents, seatbelts are more of a hazard than a safety feature (e.g. by preventing impaired riders from fleeing the vehicle on their own). The latter doesn't apply to personal vehicles to the same degree, since they're preventing fatalities in different types of crashes for the latter (e.g. being flung out of the front window).
- corpMaverick 4y agoTo the parent's point. Buses are safer for the occupants because they are heavier. But they are more dangerous to the smaller vehicles occupants. I suppose they don't tend to go into high speed highways.
- pbadams 4y agoThere are also fewer buses needed to carry the same number of people, and they are operated by professional (and hopefully less distracted!) drivers. I'm not sure a good data source, but I'd expect that the serious injury rate per person-mile of buses is much lower than that of private cars.
- dredmorbius 4y agoI don't have serious injury, but deaths per 100m passenger miles is 1/10th to 1/20th the rate for private passenger vehicles. Rail is 1/2 the bus fatality rate. <https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics/deaths-by-transportation-mode/ https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...>
- sethammons 4y ago
- spaghettiToy 4y agoDoes this apply to hitting trees/poles? That's a lot of extra force you need to stop.
- Panzer04 4y agoFor whom? Heavier cars are safer because they slow down less when you hit something. If you hit something sturdy enough to stop you dead anyway you’ll probably cop a similar amount of damage as a smaller car.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y agoThe extra force is mostly a problem for the tree, not for you. You get injured either because something squishes you (modern cars are good at avoiding that), or because you are decelerated too quickly, which is a function of speed and stopping distance. With movable/deformable obstacles, heavier car = obstacle gets moved/deformed more = higher stopping distance. A heavier car doesn't reduce stopping distance with heavier obstacles (a bigger car increases it though).
- letsgo39 4y agoYour own weight has to decelerate to a stop, and the force it takes for your head to go 60 to 0 doesn't change based on what's around you. What does change its that a heavy car may resist the obstacle more -> longer distance until stop -> longer time to stop -> your head has more time to stop -> lower deceleration force on your head.
- supertrope 4y agoNo. In single vehicle crashes heavier weight is deadlier. Increased weight means longer stopping distance and higher rollover risk,
- denkmoon 4y agoI hate that I will likely buy a larger car than my current Corolla just so I can feel slightly safer. I don't need it, I don't really want it, but given the adversarial nature of other drivers, I feel I would be putting myself unnecessarily at risk if I don't.
- gnicholas 4y agoFunny thing is you can do this by buying a new Corolla, which is probably much larger than your current one. Car models have gotten so much bigger over the last several decades; current Corollas are bigger than older Camrys, Civics are bigger than old Accords, etc.
- crooked-v 4y agoEven Mini Coopers are slightly larger every revision now.
- nn3 4y agoOne interesting question is how this trend will end. Possibilities: - Cars get larger and larger forever until cars get abolished for some other reason. - There's some natural limit on how large a car can get and all cars will eventually converge on that limit. - Something happens (what?) that changes the trend and suddenly they become smaller again.
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoAnother option is new smaller models get introduced and begin their own lifecycle of bloating. For example the Honda HRV is roughly the same size and price point as the CRV was originally.
- biotinker 4y agoExactly. It's the automobile equivalent of the Shepard Tone. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shepard_tone
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoAlso why parents buying their teenaged children large vehicles is a tragedy of the commons type situation. They're more likely to get in accidents because they're young and and inexperienced, but hey a big car will save them.. Edit: Wow a whole reply chain spawned from this comment got nuked! Stay safe out there Americans, you've got some wild divisions amongst yourselves and its only getting worse. For the record, I love trains, subways, buses and biking but I also own a crossover sized vehicle and recognize that everyone has their own personal preferences and requirements and that no one transit solution will meet everyone's needs, I hope you all can see that too without violence.
- galangalalgol 4y agoI wonder what the right "if everybody drove this.." is? It is probably not a lotus 7 clone. What is the smallest vehicle with superb crash test ratings?
- markovbot 4y agoit's probably a train
- bombcar 4y agoTrains are the last word when pedestrians gang together and say “hit this”.
- woodruffw 4y agoIt resembles something like a public bus or subway. More realistically, it's smaller cars on slower city streets.
- evandwight 4y agoNot even pedestrians die at 30kmph. Edit: you are right it's about 3% die at 30kpmh, vs ~35% at 50kpmh. My bad. Still lower speeds dramatically improve the safety of cars. https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2011PedestrianRiskVsSpeed.pdf https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2011PedestrianR...
- ck2 4y agoThat's basically a desired property exposed by covid past few years. "So, what's good for me but who cares about everyone else?" Go ask retirement/nursing-home workers how many times they went to work sick and then count how many residents died there. Good luck undo-ing SUVs (and massive 4x4s) I distinctly remember the year they started becoming popular and you could no longer see down the road anymore.
- supertrope 4y agoDisempowered low wage healthcare workers don't really have much of a choice. Line managers push them to cover shifts. These facilities are chronically understaffed because labor intensive work is inherently expensive. Another level up often the funding source is Medicaid which is also low rent. The result is problems such as no paid sick leave, no sick leave period, and workers being capped at part time schedules so they have to string together two jobs and become infection vectors between facilities.
- ck2 4y agoYes, everyone has taken the "no choice but to murder you" option past few years. Everyone has their excuses because there's no penalty for killing someone like that. Your coworkers are doing it do, they won't tell you they tested positive last night or this morning, frack it they are going into work, your problem, not theirs "no choice". Every hourly wage person is doing it to you, every delivery, restaurant, cashier, pharmacist, everyone. Their comfort is their priority, not yours. When the SUV rolls over a pedestrian or cyclist, or punts a car down the road like a soccer ball, that's exactly what they are saying "Sorry, no choice". At least the behavior is predictable now, was hidden before 2020, now obvious. The thing is, people don't just die quick from covid. They die slow and painful. Then there is the millions who will have long-covid maybe for the rest of their lives until they kill themselves from the chronic suffering. So many excuses, so many murderers. Society is just bizarre. Doesn't have to be this way but it's what everyone keeps doing.
- supertrope 4y agoI totally understand your point. Have you ever worked a bad job? And relied on it for yourself or even your entire household? Quitting a job when you can click on one of multiple recruiter emails and start next week, or because it's a casual job you picked up for spending money is entirely different from being one paycheck away from being late on rent. >delivery, restaurant, cashier, pharmacist, everyone One of these is not like the others. Pharmacists did the majority of COVID-19 shots.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoThis is why I drive a Toyota Tacoma. Being high up is also safer, your vitals will be less impacted. I'm always surprised people don't know this. Driving a small car is almost irresponsible, especially with children
- OrangeMonkey 4y agoI legitimately cannot tell if you are serious or joking.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoDead serious. Why would I take on more risk
- OrangeMonkey 4y agoI wasn't judging, I just couldn't tell if it was satire or reality. Thanks!
- ldjkfkdsjnv 4y agoI'm more confused why people are outraged at me wanting to protect my own life, or that I would need to feel judged for driving a bigger car. I'm a responsible driver and a regular citizen.
- anigbrowl 4y agoAs has been explained to you before, you're just dumping the risk onto others. There's nothing especially praiseworthy about this.
- MereInterest 4y agoBecause part of being a responsible driver is minimizing harm dealt to those around you. In the same way that that requires driving at the speed limit, stopping at cross walks, and signaling before turning, it also requires having a bumper that would minimize fatalities when hitting a pedestrian. (Internal bleeding from a chest-height bumper is much harder to survive than a broken leg from a leg-height bumper.) The difference is that the former are required by both law and morality, while the latter is only required by morality.
- soferio 4y agoDo five star crash test ratings therefore overstate the COMPARATIVE safety of small cars? Or do they account for the risk reduction of larger cars? Eg https://www.ancap.com.au/safety-ratings?is_current_model=true&page=1&field=rating_year&direction=desc https://www.ancap.com.au/safety-ratings?is_current_model=tru...
- bioemerl 4y agoThey revised the tests recently to use a bigger car going faster, so they are taking this into account.
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y agoCrash test ratings are generally scoped to within the "vehicle class." So a 5-star sedan is safer than a 3-star sedan, but there's no way to directly compare to the star-rating of a vehicle in a different class. (For example, the rating tells you nothing about how it compares to a 4-star SUV... though we can speculate the 5-star sedan is probably less safe because of the massive size difference.) The only way to have a global metric would be via underlying objective data. The only data I've found for that is "vehicle death rates per 10 billion miles," which is here. [1] The data is a few years old (and was a bit difficult to find!), but I relied on it a lot when I was car-shopping recently. [1]: https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf/55/2 https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
- stjohnswarts 4y agoThis makes sense yet I never really thought about it to be honest. Here's the same things with a filter-able table version https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...
- gnicholas 4y agoWorse for stopping distances though, especially to the extent that SUVs (very popular in the US) have a higher CoG and therefore the ABS has to be calibrated differently. The car is "safer" in that you won't die, but not safer in terms of avoiding accidents.
- simongr3dal 4y agoWhy would the ABS need to be calibrated differently? I thought the car was just monitoring if any wheel is about to stop rolling and then it would ease-up the brake on that specific wheel.
- pxeboot 4y agoI believe you are correct. The parent post is probably referring to traction control, or something else more recent than the original ABS.
- gnicholas 4y agoI recall learning this in a class on the automotive industry about 20 years ago. We learned about unintended consequences that caused the US automotive market to favor SUVs (see the Chicken tax [1]), and some of the downsides of SUVs. My recollection is that SUVs have longer stopping distances because the ABS has to pause braking more frequently to avoid instability or rollover. It's possible, as another commenter suggested, that I'm recalling ESC, but that wasn't very common in the early 2000s. I think it might have something to do with the fact that the nose of a vehicle dives when braking, and a high CoG exacerbates this. But it's been 20 years, and I've scarcely thought about the course since then! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
- QuarterReptile 4y agoNo discussion of the federal government pushing Americans to buy SUVs would be complete without mentioning the favorable depreciation schedule that can (could?) be applied to larger SUVs [1] and the lower standards that they face for fuel efficiency.[2] [1] https://www.section179.org/section_179_vehicle_deductions/ https://www.section179.org/section_179_vehicle_deductions/ [2] https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1102305_will-tighter-cafe-rules-bring-more-trucks-fewer-small-cars https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1102305_will-tighter-ca... (Both links are admittedly lazy, but think of them as entering arguments for further research if you care.)
- lliamander 4y agoWhy would taxes be needed to internalize the increased risk to others? It seems to me that liability insurance is the appropriate place to factor those risks in.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoDrastically higher minimums for liability insurance would be better, but politically unpopular for the same reason that higher taxes would be unpopular.
- throwaway0a5e 4y agoHigher liability minimums would be very regressive making support tepid among the demographics who usually want really high taxes.
- letsgo39 4y ago
- lliamander 4y agoThe higher liabilitie minimums would be specifically for those who have larger vehicles. How is that regressive?
- harha 4y agoThat’s the cool thing about insurance, it doesn’t have to be popular - you have a risk you’d like to cover, here’s what it costs you
- maxerickson 4y agoHow does liability insurance cover the risk of an uninsured under-insured driver hitting me? (I live in Michigan and continue to carry unlimited PIP FWIW)
- 4y ago
- xnx 4y agoInertia arms race
- calvinmorrison 4y agoIt's an arms race basically.
- bickett 4y agoa
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- samdg 4y agoInteresting prisoner's dilemma example.
- oc_elder 4y agoNumber one reason I ride the bus.
- dahfizz 4y agoAh yes, a bus. The obvious solution to large, heavy vehicles on the road.
- jononomo 4y agoone bus means 30 fewer heavy vehicles on the road
- twoWhlsGud 4y agoActually yes. Buses are driven by professional drivers who have to pass through a much more aggressive filter than your average SUV drive does. When I'm out driving, walking or biking in Seattle I worry much much less about bus drivers doing something unpredictable than I do about light vehicle drivers.
- drieddust 4y ago
- tjmc 4y agoThere's another factor here and it's large animal collisions. You're safer in a high driving position with a heavier vehicle. Here in Australia SUVs with "roo bars" are popular with people who do a lot of bush driving. There are a lot of collisions with kangaroos and other animals unfortunately and they can more easily come over the bonnet and through the windscreen of small cars.
- hiharryhere 4y agoThe new Hummer EV is over 4 tons and does 0-100km/h in around 3 seconds. Between the obvious danger per the article, there’s also lots of extra wear on roads, particularly small residential ones. Lots of external costs.
- stjohnswarts 4y agoI'm not worried about those as much as the midsize and up SUV's, there will be very few Hummer EV's on the road statistically but mid size SUV's have become almost the standard American car.
- Tokkemon 4y agoWell, I live in the burbs and have a kid in his carseat in the back, plus stroller and groceries. Not to mention I'm a rather large man and when we last looked for cars I literally couldn't fit into a lot of them, I need more space. Even more, great gas mileage and reliability, and very safe. "Compact SUVs" or whatever they call the Subaru Forester now and it's ilk are exactly perfect for my family, especially with another kid on the way.
- fahrradflucht 4y agoAt least in Europe, 10 years ago you would have bought a family van. Nothing in this list of requirements says you need truck like features of an SUV.
- morsch 4y agoFor two kids? Not even a van, just a station wagon.
- sixstringtheory 4y agoI don’t know what kind of van you have in mind but there are plenty of vans in the US that are actually more powerful and heavy than a SUV. A Chrysler Voyager has 100 more hp and weighs about 900 lbs more than a Forester.
- paustint 4y agoWe have had big cars for a really long time. Look back to the 70s, the cars then were called "boats" because they were huge and they had a lot more steel than current cars. Yes, I agree, more people are favoring SUVs and trucks than prior generations, but huge cars have been around for decades. I recently purchased a 79 Lincoln Continental Mark V and it is that same length as my 2020 F150 - 40 year spread, same size vehicle. People need to drive safe and not be stupid behind the wheel. I would guess that cell phone use while driving kills way more people than "big vehicles" do (most of us are guilty of this). I feel it is a technology+cultural issue.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago"Boat" was a derogatory term. There was significant social pressure not to buy a large car. I wish such social pressure existed today.
- SamPatt 4y agoMy Dad owned a "boat" without any shame. I don't think it was entirely derogatory. Or even if it were, that social pressure obviously wasn't very effective.
- piperswe 4y agoAmong young people there does seem to be such pressure - I hear plenty of folks around my age (late teens, early 20s) talking about a car being a boat as a downside.
- bluGill 4y agoIt was called boat because they didn't handle very well, and were tricky in tight situations. It was derogatory, though it was said in that tone of voice for sarcastic reasons.
- antod 4y agoNot growing up in the US and only seeing cars like that on TV, I always assumed "boat" was referring to the handling more than the size.
- 4y ago
- userbinator 4y agoMore anti-car rhetoric from the globalist academics... No thanks, I'd rather live a life I enjoy than what they think, even if it's more dangerous. Large-scale personal autonomy is precisely what they are most afraid of.
- logicalmonster 4y agoI can't mind-read the motivations of the academics here, but I do think the concept of the plebs having great personal mobility has been strangely under disfavor in recent years. As just one example, we saw during the biggest hysteria periods during Covid that people weren't allowed to leave too far from their homes.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoThe personal mobility and freedom for all you claim to love looks like a Renault Twizy or a 5kW electric motorbike or a velomobile with a 500W motor as well as walking, bikes and a functional transit system. SUVs and 'Trucks' are just a danger and direct harm to your neighbors and subsidizing them imposes a massive burden on the people paying for the vast swathes of asphalt, inflation of infrastructure costs and medical care they entail. They limit mobility rather than enabling it because they require any spaces which they dominate to be made impassible without a giant protective metal shell They're so destructive and awful to be near that entire neighborhoods need to be redesigned to get them away from the residents as quickly as possible when in use. This results in requiring any worthwhile destination to be removed so that cars do not come towards residences.
- userbinator 4y agoThe personal mobility and freedom for all you claim to love looks like a Renault Twizy or a 5kW electric motorbike or a velomobile with a 500W motor as well as walking, bikes and a functional transit system. Try going across the country that way...
- deleted 4y ago
- ckozlowski 4y agoPerhaps an interesting, related anecdote to this is that the song "Red Barchetta" by Rush is based on a speculative short story related to this article's premise. In the story, Modern Safety Vehicles are by design massive and heavy, and through their design (and either carelessness or aggression by those who drive them), are a danger to older, smaller cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Barchetta http://www.fiatbarchetta.com/links/nice.html http://www.fiatbarchetta.com/links/nice.html
- milleramp 4y agoWow thanks for posting that, did not know that!
- jader201 4y agoSomewhat off topic, I was curious to read the lyrics, and Google confidently pointed me to the lyrics to Presto instead. I was so confused until I realized those weren’t lyrics to Red Barchetta. https://www.google.com/search?q=rush+red+barchetta https://www.google.com/search?q=rush+red+barchetta
- anigbrowl 4y agoWhat if there was a speed governor proportional to the weight of the vehicle, so as to cap the possible level of kinetic force? People driving monster SUVs and pickups would still be safe from collisions, but would have to travel much slower and/or be confined to specific lanes.
- rootusrootus 4y agoA dream of small car owners. The majority of the public likes SUVs and would just vote that nonsense out.
- toast0 4y agoLimiting tractor trailers like that would destroy the economy.
- anigbrowl 4y agoI don't recall including tractor trailers in my suggestion - the reason being that commercial drivers tend to be more safety minded, and in some cases are already routed to dedicated infrastructure.
- zibby8 4y agoI think people are letting their personal biases (e.g. SUV=bad) get the better of them. With the rise of EVs, even small vehicles will weigh a lot. For instance, the curb weight of a Tesla Model 3 is between 3,648 and 4,250 lbs, which is about the same as a Toyota Highlander.
- someguydave 4y agorationally the speed limits should be lowered accordingly
- nemo44x 4y agoI agree that momentum should be the prime consideration. Especially as it relates to heavy trucks. Those guys shouldn’t be allowed to go over 55.
- tzs 4y agoIs momentum what actually matters? A Ford F-150 at 45 MPH has less momentum than a typical locomotive has at 1 MPH, but I'd sure rather be hit by the latter.
- nemo44x 4y agoVelocity is squared so yes that part matters more. Your extreme example is an edge case, sure, but not realistic. But overall, momentum is the force applied.
- yibg 4y agoThat doesn’t sound right. A 1mph train hitting you won’t kill you, it’ll just push you along. The sudden acceleration of all or parts of your body is important.
- nemo44x 4y agoStand there for a few seconds or minutes. It’s what glaciers did. They travelled far slower than 1mph and took out mountains. I don’t make the physics, I just live with them.
- hakuseki 4y agoThis headline contradicts the linked article. The HN headline (Heavier cars are safer for their drivers, but far deadlier for everyone else) includes the non-driving passengers with "everyone else," implying that heavier cars are deadlier for them. The first sentence of the abstract in the link states "Heavier vehicles are safer for their own occupants but more hazardous for other vehicles."
- AndrewKemendo 4y agoPrisoners dilemma very much at play here
- asdff 4y agoOnly if your frame of reference is the driver in the car. However, you are not always a car driver. Sometimes you are crossing the street on foot to get to your car. Then the very thing you optimized for comes back to hurt you, literally. The reality is that we are a meta organism. The vehicle fleet itself has some optimal weight that balances survival for all individuals in the system to its most optimal level, but this paper shows that heavier vehicles are not that and in fact do more harm than good for the system overall.
- lostmsu 4y ago> but this paper shows that heavier vehicles are not that and in fact do more harm than good for the system overall How did you derive that from the paper? If anything, this paper + the data from https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-model https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-... actually sound like everyone should switch to SUVs, cause switching to SUV reduces the death rate by up to 6 times, and everyone else doing the same (according to the paper) only adds up to 50%, so the total is a reduction of up to 4x. I mean it is kinda obvious, that the bigger - the safer. Cause in a collision of to ginormous mechs chances to keeps a small capsule with the driver intact are basically 100%. I am impressed so many people here read the report and took it as a confirmation of their existing bias towards small cars with 0 thinking.
- phendrenad2 4y agoMeanwhile, being hit by a bus or train is far more deadly than being hit by the largest SUV on the market. And yet will anyone here say that moving away from cars and adopting public transit is a bad thing? Perhaps focusing on one variable isn't the best way to reason about the world. Just maybe...
- Schroedingersat 4y agoI don't get drunk train drivers speeding down my street at 3 am and I've never seen a bus suddenly back out of a parking lot or driveway without looking. Correctly designed transit and trucking has very few conflict points (ie. none on a grade separated metro or proper RBT) and many many fewer vehicles. Cars represent unique dangers which are made significantly worse by size, speed, and mass. It is very difficult to kill someone in a 20-30mph LEV which weighs 100-400kg
- phendrenad2 4y agoYou're still just accounting for one or two variables. Which is pretty much how all discussions online go, so I'm not sure why I'm wasting my time.
- Schroedingersat 4y agoWell by which variables does manipulating markets to make small vehicles uncompetitive (or outright ban them) and having public policy designed to make non-car travel as difficult as possible make anyone's life better?
- phendrenad2 4y agoNo idea, but that's changing the subject.
- echelon 4y agoWe humans like to get mad at things, especially things we have no power to control. Which externalities do we tax? Which behavior of others should we control? What corporate and economic policies are bad? What should we do to stop the country from melting? I do it too. It's a tale as old as time.
- StopHammoTime 4y agoYep, when I bought my Hilux I was told that it had an ANCAP Safety Rating of "5" (which is the highest in Australia). If I chose to get a bullbar installed, it would reduce to "4" even though I would be safer as pedestrian safety is significantly reduced and that factors into the rating.
- Smoosh 4y agoIt may not be safer if the bull bar messes with the other safety systems (crumple zones, airbag deployment timings etc). No idea if this was a factor in the rating reduction by ANCAP. Also be aware that many ANCAP ratings are cut and pasted from overseas tests and many are outdated, referring to previous models.
- wepple 4y agoAlso a bullbar absolutely throws the vehicle off balance if you don’t put in new springs up front. Not sure if they consider that in the ratings.
- neilv 4y ago> Using three separate identification strategies we show that, controlling for own-vehicle weight, being hit by a vehicle that is 1000 pounds heavier generates a 40–50% increase in fatality risk. [...] We consider two policies for internalizing this external cost, a weight-varying mileage tax and a gas tax, and find that they are similar for most vehicles. The findings suggest that European gas taxes may be much closer to optimal levels than the US gas tax. In an environment of wealth inequality, this seems like another way that the wealthy can benefit: easily afford to drive heavier vehicles that increase their personal safety while increasing the lethal threats against the poor. How about instead: if larger vehicles are more dangerous for the population overall, then they should be banned for everyone, not only effectively off-limits to the poor.
- kippster 4y agoPoor people drive pickup trucks too
- brutal_chaos_ 4y agoAnd would be eventually priced out by something like this.
- rootusrootus 4y agoThey'd drive them a lot less with European levels of gasoline tax.
- cdot2 4y agoLots of poor people actually need those vehicles. They would just suffer from having to pay the taxes.
- SECProto 4y agoI work construction. at least half of the people on the same jobs as me drive their personal trucks 80km to work, park them until the end of the day, and drive home. Not a single tool in them. The other half drive sedans.
- aasasd 4y agoAbout ten years ago, when the idea that we might soon be buying self-driving cars was itself rather new and the speculations on ‘robot ethics’ popular in the media, one dude wrote: “This will be easily decided by capitalism—why would anyone buy a car that kills its driver and not others?”. Though for Tesla the prediction was afterwards adjusted by current obvious cyberpunk tendencies, in that publicity points for the corporation turned out to override the driver's wishes—still, evidently traditional manufactures don't have the same compunctious, as they need little advertisement in the US.
- bickett 4y agoThis is
- jmugan 4y agoA higher gas tax is an obvious approach for both safety and climate change. We could lower income tax a little to make up for it and add a supplement for those who can least afford it.
- supertrope 4y agoOr just to keep up with road maintenance and construction costs. The Federal gasoline tax was last increased in 1993 and should have doubled by now to keep up with inflation. The end result is that Americans have revealed through their elected representatives that they prefer to keep fuel tax low and let general taxes pick up the slack. Big numbers on signs have undue influence on voter opinions.
- LAC-Tech 4y agoI feel like heavier cars being a separate license or an endorsement on your existing car license is a sensible idea. They have very different handling characteristics, and it's pretty noticeable a lot of their drivers lack the skill required to operate them safely. I mean the idea that you can sit your license test in a subcompact and then go out and drive a 4 door high displacement ute/pickup truck is pretty absurd on the face of it.
- bluGill 4y agoEven for the smallest car the requirements go drive are too minimal. And once you meet those we never make you update your training.
- closeparen 4y agoRequirements to drive in a car dependent region have to be minimal. Lots of people shouldn’t be on the road, but there’s not exactly room for them in Manhattan, SF, or the handful of other areas where you can live without a car.
- bluGill 4y agoI don't know how to get there, but most people live in an area with enough density to support most people living without a car (leaving only those who need a car - plumbers for example). However it only takes a few to use a car anyway and there isn't enough demand to support the transit needed for everyone to live without a car. These areas mostly don't have traffic, so there is no real negative to using a car in those areas unless you are very poor (at which point the expense isn't choose which luxury to spend money on)
- dm319 4y agoAgreed, there should be a 5 year refresher. There are similar refreshers for other life-affecting licenses (medical / first aid licenses for one).
- user3939382 4y ago
- steelframe 4y agoAs a road cyclist commuter, I find that the most aggressive motorists tend to also be in larger vehicles. Whenever I'm taking the lane to attempt to prevent an unsafe pass, it's almost always the driver of a large truck that will still execute an unsafe pass anyway (forcing oncoming traffic to take evasive action) or will tailgate, rev their engine, yell out their window, and/or wiggle back and forth in apparent frustration and intent to intimidate me.
- bparsons 4y agoI too have noticed that the more impervious the motorist feels, the more sociopathic the driving behavior.
- soco 4y agoSo basically (some) people only drive carefully when threatened with personal harm...
- LAC-Tech 4y agoYeah I think it's largely a psychological issue. I'm a slightly larger than average man - imagine how much of a nut job people would see me as if I did that all that because a little old lady was slowing me down in a narrow supermarket aisle. But somehow this behaviour is acceptable from inside a giant vehicle. It's also not an "I'm being slowed down" issue - roads here all single lane and often used by farm tractors, I've never heard a single person go into a rage fantasy about that.
- mrinterweb 4y agoThis is basic and obvious physics. I always was frustrated any time I heard someone say they liked their massive vehicle because it made them feel safer. It is such a selfish way of thinking. Sure you're safe, but think what you're going to do to the other car and people inside. Might as well add missiles that preemptively fire and blast the other car off the road in a detected collision. That would even be safer for you.
- avalys 4y agoIf I'm a responsible driver myself, then making myself and my family safe against the actions of other irresponsible drivers is totally rational and moral. If someone is drunk driving in a Toyota Yaris and runs a red light and smashes into me, I'm not going to shed any tears that my big heavy SUV made it unsafe for them.
- mrinterweb 4y agoYou may be safe most of the time. No one is perfect. Buying increasingly large vehicles is an kinetic energy arms race.
- asdff 4y agoEven being a responsible driver you are still open to the edge case that you are going 45mph on a road that has a 45mph speed limit, doing nothing wrong, and a child steps out into your lane. Larger, heavier vehicles basically guarantee a fatality at that speed. The event was entirely out of your hands, well within the random risks of these events while driving, but your choice of vehicle has now made it a much more dangerous situation when it didn't have to be so dangerous. Pedestrians are involved in a minority of auto accidents but a majority of fatal ones, so if your goals are to decrease the risk of death in the general sense every time you go out on the road, you'd do well to choose the lightest and most sloping faced vehicle available to you.
- frumper 4y agoTheir goal is to decrease the risk to their family.
- denimnerd42 4y agothese internet anti car and urban planning discussions are like bubbles of alien culture. I would not be able to walk around town, well one of the largest cities in the US, and find ANYONE that thinks like this. maybe if I camped out in one or two particular locations over a few days like the most hipster bike shops I know. Before I was able to WFH I even rode my bike to work 60% of the time. I'm the outlier..
- aasasd 4y agoThe ‘fuckcars’ subreddit is popular lately, often pops up on the r/all ‘front page’. It vaguely seems that US people have a suspicion that the need for cars and the revulsion to public transport are in large part due to the existing state of things, and aren't an absolute requirement. Still, it's fun to see that USians' current ideal of public coexistence is to be separated from each other as much as possible.
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- whiddershins 4y agoPublic transportation is inferior in almost every way to private cars. The only real advantages are cost, emissions, and the ability to read a book instead of focusing on the road. The US, being overall a very wealthy country, is going to go straight to self-driving Teslas which address the second and third consideration, and not indulge in every other irritating and suboptimal aspect of public transportation while pretending it is better.
- aasasd 4y agoAh yes, infamous US buses getting people injured and killed every day, and mowing down pedestrians, bikers and cyclists. Jamming up roads with thousands of buses, making driving actually slower than... proper public transportation. With endless unsafe driving and road rage from the droves of inexperienced bus drives. All the road maintenance from uncountable buses everywhere, oh wow. The infamous US subway taking just as long as a car, instead of a direct route at 80 kmh. I'm so glad I'm not living in the US. If for some reason you're gonna engage in the same tired internet arguments in which everyone else have already been, should at least come prepared.
- NonNefarious 4y agoTo add irony, part of the added weight of cars is the ton of safety equipment that legislators mandate more and more of every year. Maybe the last stage will be airbags on the OUTSIDE of the car.
- fomine3 4y agoIt's a thing https://www.automoblog.net/volvo-v40-offers-world-first-exterior-pedestrian-airbag/ https://www.automoblog.net/volvo-v40-offers-world-first-exte... https://www.motor1.com/news/520551/subaru-levorg-external-airbag/ https://www.motor1.com/news/520551/subaru-levorg-external-ai...
- asdff 4y agoIt's a red herring though. The 2020 toyota yaris weighed 2400 lbs like something out of the 90s.
- NonNefarious 4y agoWhat is?
- NonNefarious 4y agoOnce again, some Redditard modded FACTS down. https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/why-are-modern-cars-so-heavy https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/why-are-modern-...
- dijonman2 4y agoAhh, time to shit on drivers of larger vehicles and pontificate on all the ways we can tax or regulate owners into submission. I will say one thing we can benefit from is raising the bar to getting your license. It’s extremely easy to get in the US, and it should be much harder. Regardless of what you drive.
- Tokkemon 4y agoIt's so easy because not having a license functionally cuts you out of any sort of economic or social activity except for a very small sliver of people who live in transit-rich cities like New York and Boston. America's car culture is too ingrained to insist on higher standards, or the people would revolt.
- fzeroracer 4y agoRaising the bar to get your license doesn't do anything to solve the problem because people will still drive just as badly once they get their license. Especially the richer, wealthier people that are driving the largest cars on the road already. The actual solution is to either tax larger vehicles into oblivion and force the downsizing of cars so that the vehicle size arms race stops or redesign our road infrastructure further so that pedestrians and vehicles are completely separate.
- mohas 4y agoSo basically tanks are at the pinnacle of driver safety
- nonbirithm 4y agoA few weeks ago I was nearly killed by a Jeep Grand Cherokee turning left across an intersection I was crossing (as a pedestrian). It was going faster than 25 MPH and I only had two seconds of leeway to scramble back onto the sidewalk. If I hadn't been vigilant in paying attention I would not be alive today. And I only had that vigilance because I already believed that if I was going to die suddenly, it was probably going to be because of a vehicle. It still gives me anxiety nearly every day, knowing that there's nothing more I can do to address the situation except to keep being vigilant when crossing roads. People are not going to give up their SUVs or stop buying them.
- matrix_overload 4y agoIf you look at the top-notch SUVs from Mercedes and other European manufacturers, there's actually a lot done to improve the safety. Like automatic recognition of pedestrians, obstacles, rough road and so on. Give it another decade or so and such technology will be as ubiquitous as airbags or backup cameras.
- anotherboffin 4y agoNot saying it’s not a good thing, but this tries to address the symptom and not the cause. It might actually lead to drivers being even less careful since they will just blindly trust the car (as we’ve seen in many Autopilot accidents)
- hackeraccount 4y agoI'm not making light of the situation but any car in that situation - heck probably any motorcycle - would have killed you just a surely as an SUV. Arguably because an SUV driver sits higher up they should have been more likely to see you. That sitting higher up is what really annoys me as a car driver. It's fine when you're the one in the SUV but I've got a car and when I'm on the the road with one of those things in front of me it's impossible to figure out what's going on ahead. If traffic slows or stops is the accident or whatever on the right or the left? Which way should I get over? An invariably the jerk in the car ahead wants to wait until the absolute last moment before merging. I hate driving.
- atoav 4y agoHeavier cars are not only deadlier — the formula for road wear is a ratio of weights raised to the power of 4 — that means heavier cars are also worse for our roads by magnitudes. Sure they still don't compare to trucks, but hey, sure.
- wcoenen 4y agoThe HN title is inaccurate. Based on the abstract, it should say "occupants" instead of "drivers".
- musha68k 4y agoThey even had to change a decade old standard crash test to account for increase in weight and count of current style SUVs. IMO they should be banned as the creeping normality will lead to all of us sitting in battle mechs eventually: https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-tougher-side-test https://www.iihs.org/news/detail/small-suvs-struggle-in-new-... https://youtu.be/3Lu-t5dJrxI https://youtu.be/3Lu-t5dJrxI
- mike_d 4y ago> creeping normality will lead to all of us sitting in battle mechs eventually You say that like it is a bad thing? The future sounds awesome!
- FieryTransition 4y agoBeing a cyclist in a crash will be like swatting a fly against a windshield. But I guess that in the future, no one will drive themselves anyway. Whether due to automation or cost.
- gfaster 4y ago...until you have to exist outside of a car, then it is downright terrifying (and extra deadly).
- pentae 4y agoYeah i'd love to drive a battle mech that'd be amazing. And imagine how jealous the Moms down at soccer pickup would be!
- lb1lf 4y ago-SUVs aside, do keep in mind EVs are quite heavy compared to their ICE counterparts, too. (On the upside, I guess they, being newer, involve more passive safety for whatever they run into). For instance, my 20 year old Land Cruiser (Which I, perhaps engaging in a bit of semantic pedantry would call a 4x4, not a SUV) has a dry weight of pretty much 2 tons / 4,500lbs. A Nissan Leaf? 1,600kg/3,500lbs. (Tiny compared to the LC) Tesla Model S? 1,950-2,300kg / 4,300-5,000lbs (Still small compared to the LC)
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- xvinci 4y agoWhen picking a car I wanted as much safety as possible for myself but also especially my kid and the obvious choice was a SUV (Qashqai in my case). I am aware of the dangers of a big car to others and try to drive responsible, but self-preservation (and that of my family) is top priority. Whether that warrants discussion (Maybe it's better dying myself than killing a family of 5 driving the other car) I don't know, but we're touching absolute basic instincts here if we want to change that. On a side note: Newer cars also really do a lot to avoid dangers to the outside world (e.g. emergency braking for bikes and pedestrians), so I would rather throw a lot at improving here than discussing the safety of heavier-build cars.
- cycomanic 4y agoThis is essentially a short-term over long-term rewards type thinking. By choosing the larger car you are effectively creating a world that is unsafer for your child, both in terms of if they are not in a car on the road, but also in terms of increased global warming. I would also like to see statistics if kids in families with large SUVs are actually safer. There were enough cases of parents accidentally driving over the kids because they didn't see them that it might very well change the statistics.
- vixen99 4y ago'mass * velocity' means it's a truism that heavier cars are more dangerous if they hit you. All factors being equal the question of car mass is indeed a significant issue. But if you compare road deaths in (for instance) Britain (about 21 per million) and Romania (about 93 per million) it's clear that priorities in this case at least, should be a focus on driver behaviour unless someone wants to suggest there's some other factor I've missed. That's my experience having driven extensively in both countries. I gather EU average is around 44 deaths per million.
- samhuk 4y agoThis is exactly what taxation, regulation, laws, and the like are designed to solve (and what Nash spent a lot of effort studying [0]). Buying and using a car is a great example of a "finite non-cooperative game". Everyone's self-interest in not dying drives them to make decisions that increase the chance of dying for everyone else. Everyone against everyone. Individual gains result in an aggregate loss for the whole population (everyone drives increasingly larger cars, dangerous to more and more people, i.e. cyclists, pedestrians, other cars, etc.) The fact that the US government simply just allowed a cave-man-esque non-coop game to take hold is the most shocking aspect of all this, particularly when there is an entire field dedicated to studying this kind of phenomenon. As someone who doesn't live in the US, how did it get like this? In my own country, higher taxes for larger vehicles and smaller roads luckily exist. I disagree with the other comments that mention taxation as a solution, as that's just, obviously, egregiously, an awful tragedy of the commons. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium#Examples
- fennecfoxy 4y agoI used to live in NZ where big Utes and whatnot were relatively common. But in the cities people still generally drove city cars. You'd see Utes more often when you were close to the border between populated/rural. Sometimes in city/town if someone had come in to do some shopping. Now that I live in London I see huge SUVs CONSTANTLY. And the pandemic made it worse! I started driving myself during the pandemic and picked up a little (BMW) Mini. When I first started, every car in our parking was your average kind of car. Now they're all SUVs, it's kind of funny to see the Mini nestled in between them; you can't even see it until you walk along the row of apartments on wheels and see if squeezed in between them. If the mayor of London was smarter, they'd have banned new registrations for SUVs in London 10 years ago. But of course that would never happen, because £££. Nobody _needs_ an SUV in London. Nobody. Hell, even the styling of these huge cars has changed from being rugged/practical to be used on a farm like the kind I grew up with, to being rounded/soft/comfortable designed and expected to be driven to the supermarket when instead they should be using a Fiat 500/Mini/Micra etc for that.
- clarge1120 4y agoWe’ve known that the heaviest cars are the safest for a long time. It’s the reason why, in the 1970’s and 80’s, parents bought big heavy cars for their college-bound children.
- tlavoie 4y agoHere's an odd idea. Imagine being able to limit the overall momentum of a vehicle based on its expected mass. That is, a governor would cause the top speed to max out sooner for heavier vehicles, so owners would have to tolerate being just a bit slower than their more nimble road-mates. Sure, people could fudge with them, just like some do with scooters, but could be tied to penalties in the event of a collision or other traffic enforcement that detects the excess speed. Defaults matter, so the net effect would still be improved safety.