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> American cars are also much larger and heavier than they reasonably should be. To some extent, the larger vehicle size is a result of US vehicle safety stand
by manfre 4y ago
> American cars are also much larger and heavier than they reasonably should be.
To some extent, the larger vehicle size is a result of US vehicle safety standards.
- ttfkam 4y agoTo some extent but not a large extent. SUVs tend to be less safe than their sedan counterparts. Worse on rollovers, worse on emergency handling, and much worse on visibility. You might survive a crash better in an SUV, but you're more likely to get into a crash with an SUV, canceling out any gains and quite possibly eroding even further into loss of safety. One of the only things that makes SUVs safer is their greater mass, which largely serves to make the road less safe for collisions with non-SUV drivers. With regard to vehicle size, I observed back in the 1990s when the SUV craze began that America was in a war of size attrition with itself. Even a Mini Cooper is quite survivable in a crash. Crumple zones and airbags are not just standard issue on gargantuan vehicles.
- mcv 4y agoFrom what I understand, it's the result of the lack of US vehicle safety standards. Or perhaps a loophole in them. Trucks have different safety standards than cars, and car manufacturers find the car safety standards annoying, so they started marketing trucks to consumers. They don't have to obey the same regulations as cars, and yet because they're light trucks, they don't require a commercial driving license. That's the loophole through which the US car industry managed to drive their entire industry.