4 ms·

Buying a smaller car is a choice. Like having the least expensive insurance policy. I'm specifically gonna buy a bigger vehicle to keep the Toyota Corollas of

Buying a smaller car is a choice. Like having the least expensive insurance policy. I'm specifically gonna buy a bigger vehicle to keep the Toyota Corollas of the world from killing me in an accident. Mass is the greatest, most significant safety feature you can get in an automobile.

Suppafly 3y ago
I wonder if this is the game theory reason for so many people buying trucks now. Trucks keep getting bigger and bigger as a defense mechanism or something.
- zelon88 3y ago
  Absolutely. 1000%. I buy trucks primarily because the capability aligns with my hobbies, and secondarily because the mass affords me additional safety. My F150 is 6,000lbs. I imagine a 2,800lb Corolla wouldn't fair too well in a frontal offset crash with me. Infact my vehicle would maintain forward inertia. The Corolla would reverse direction. That's a lot of Gs that the Corolla gets that I won't.
  - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
    All of that benefit is lost if you swerve and start rolling over like trucks with a higher center of gravity tend to. All that extra weight is harder to stop if you need to as well, so it's not purely a safety upgrade.
    - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
      I remember Top Gear doing a feature on this. If I remember correctly SUVs were four times more likely to turn over in an accident than a traditional saloon car.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- noqc 3y ago
  The prisoner's dilemma indeed describes a lot of unregulated markets.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  There was an article I read a few years back (I think on Vice; I might be able to find it again) which more or less made this exact argument. They used the marketing material for trucks as evidence, pointing out that much of the material would show a vehicle "conquering" something like reaching the top of a rock formation or something. Ever since reading that article I pay way more attention to vehicle marketing, video and photo. It's actually pretty common to see the "conquering". The camera is below the car looking up at an angle. Most commonly for SUVs and trucks.
noqc 3y ago
>Mass is the greatest, most significant safety feature you can get in an automobile. "Safety for me, but not for thee"?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- zelon88 3y ago
  They'll sell you one too. But you probably care about silly things like gas mileage or legroom or number of speakers or some other unimportant metric. I can't set other people's priorities for them. All I know is that nobody is gonna remember that time you got 53mpg on a road trip. But a ride in a cool car is not something that you forget.
  - noqc 3y ago
    You misunderstand. I want the government to prevent you from driving a car that is more likely to kill me in an accident. We are enemies here. Not natural enemies, of course, because banning large cars makes you safer, even if you drive a large car, since otherwise everyone must drive large cars for safety, and two large cars colliding is more dangerous.
    - lotsoweiners 3y ago
      So if I was parent in a family of 6-7 I just tell little Timmy that he has to stay home while the rest of us go to the movies? Yeah, that’ll fly.
      - noqc 3y ago
        I'm not going to wade into details of the position when it's so clear from context what is meant by "large cars". Your comment is in bad faith, I think.
      - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        A minivan or a maxivan may be a better option for such a family. Who says they have to be driving a Ford Mountain to get 6-7 people around?
nostrademons 3y ago
Back a few years ago when I was bored, I briefly made this satirical blog of "Business Plans from Hell - Ideas that should never see the light of day." One of the ideas on it was "Proximity-fired collision-avoidance missiles." Basically, with existing technology, we have collision-detection mechanisms on today's cars. What if, instead of flashing an indicator on the dashboard, we just fired an explosive device to take out the threat before it could hit us? Mass is the greatest, most significant safety feature you can get in an automobile, so if you want to be safe, you should divide the mass of other cars on the road into tiny particles so you can drive right through them. The tagline would be "Turning the arms race in vehicle weights into a literal arms race." This has significant game-theoretic benefits for the commons as well. It would remove the incentive toward larger vehicles that tear up the road, emit greenhouse gasses, and use up oil stocks. It would also incentivize people to be really, really careful when driving, if you got blown up every time it looked like you were about to collide with another vehicle. It'd defuse (or give people an incentive to defuse) road-rage situations, since if they escalate, you might end up vaporized. It would take the assholes off the road, and remove them from the gene pool besides.
- gpderetta 3y ago
  Surely next step is ERA plates in our t̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ average-sized SUVs.
quietbritishjim 3y ago
Sounds like you're in violent agreement with the comment you're replying to. As you say, on an individual level, it makes logical sense to use a larger vehicle. On a societal level, it's worse for everyone. So a tax is a good way to adjust the calculus for each individual.
QuadmasterXLII 3y ago
It's really telling that in all your examples you go "If I hit a corolla, they're more fucked than me." An honest comparison would be "If I hit a corolla in a truck, I'm more safe than if I hit a corolla in a corolla" or "If I hit a truck in a truck, I'm more safe than if I hit a truck in a corolla." As it is, by computing "Truck vs Corolla - Corolla vs Truck" you're effectively including the increased harm to the other party as benefit to yourself, which is causing your decision making to be actively homicidal.

Suppafly 3y ago

I wonder if this is the game theory reason for so many people buying trucks now. Trucks keep getting bigger and bigger as a defense mechanism or something.

zelon88 3y ago
Absolutely. 1000%. I buy trucks primarily because the capability aligns with my hobbies, and secondarily because the mass affords me additional safety. My F150 is 6,000lbs. I imagine a 2,800lb Corolla wouldn't fair too well in a frontal offset crash with me. Infact my vehicle would maintain forward inertia. The Corolla would reverse direction. That's a lot of Gs that the Corolla gets that I won't.
- I_Am_Nous 3y ago
  All of that benefit is lost if you swerve and start rolling over like trucks with a higher center of gravity tend to. All that extra weight is harder to stop if you need to as well, so it's not purely a safety upgrade.
  - tonyedgecombe 3y ago
    I remember Top Gear doing a feature on this. If I remember correctly SUVs were four times more likely to turn over in an accident than a traditional saloon car.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
noqc 3y ago
The prisoner's dilemma indeed describes a lot of unregulated markets.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
There was an article I read a few years back (I think on Vice; I might be able to find it again) which more or less made this exact argument. They used the marketing material for trucks as evidence, pointing out that much of the material would show a vehicle "conquering" something like reaching the top of a rock formation or something. Ever since reading that article I pay way more attention to vehicle marketing, video and photo. It's actually pretty common to see the "conquering". The camera is below the car looking up at an angle. Most commonly for SUVs and trucks.

noqc 3y ago

>Mass is the greatest, most significant safety feature you can get in an automobile. "Safety for me, but not for thee"?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zelon88 3y ago
They'll sell you one too. But you probably care about silly things like gas mileage or legroom or number of speakers or some other unimportant metric. I can't set other people's priorities for them. All I know is that nobody is gonna remember that time you got 53mpg on a road trip. But a ride in a cool car is not something that you forget.
- noqc 3y ago
  You misunderstand. I want the government to prevent you from driving a car that is more likely to kill me in an accident. We are enemies here. Not natural enemies, of course, because banning large cars makes you safer, even if you drive a large car, since otherwise everyone must drive large cars for safety, and two large cars colliding is more dangerous.
  - lotsoweiners 3y ago
    So if I was parent in a family of 6-7 I just tell little Timmy that he has to stay home while the rest of us go to the movies? Yeah, that’ll fly.
    - noqc 3y ago
      I'm not going to wade into details of the position when it's so clear from context what is meant by "large cars". Your comment is in bad faith, I think.
    - I_Am_Nous 3y ago
      A minivan or a maxivan may be a better option for such a family. Who says they have to be driving a Ford Mountain to get 6-7 people around?

nostrademons 3y ago

Back a few years ago when I was bored, I briefly made this satirical blog of "Business Plans from Hell - Ideas that should never see the light of day." One of the ideas on it was "Proximity-fired collision-avoidance missiles." Basically, with existing technology, we have collision-detection mechanisms on today's cars. What if, instead of flashing an indicator on the dashboard, we just fired an explosive device to take out the threat before it could hit us? Mass is the greatest, most significant safety feature you can get in an automobile, so if you want to be safe, you should divide the mass of other cars on the road into tiny particles so you can drive right through them. The tagline would be "Turning the arms race in vehicle weights into a literal arms race." This has significant game-theoretic benefits for the commons as well. It would remove the incentive toward larger vehicles that tear up the road, emit greenhouse gasses, and use up oil stocks. It would also incentivize people to be really, really careful when driving, if you got blown up every time it looked like you were about to collide with another vehicle. It'd defuse (or give people an incentive to defuse) road-rage situations, since if they escalate, you might end up vaporized. It would take the assholes off the road, and remove them from the gene pool besides.

gpderetta 3y ago
Surely next step is ERA plates in our t̶a̶n̶k̶s̶ average-sized SUVs.

quietbritishjim 3y ago

Sounds like you're in violent agreement with the comment you're replying to. As you say, on an individual level, it makes logical sense to use a larger vehicle. On a societal level, it's worse for everyone. So a tax is a good way to adjust the calculus for each individual.

QuadmasterXLII 3y ago

It's really telling that in all your examples you go "If I hit a corolla, they're more fucked than me." An honest comparison would be "If I hit a corolla in a truck, I'm more safe than if I hit a corolla in a corolla" or "If I hit a truck in a truck, I'm more safe than if I hit a truck in a corolla." As it is, by computing "Truck vs Corolla - Corolla vs Truck" you're effectively including the increased harm to the other party as benefit to yourself, which is causing your decision making to be actively homicidal.