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Key Ideas: Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants but more dangerous for others: The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavi
by xwall 2y ago
Key Ideas:
Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants but more dangerous for others: The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavier vehicles causing more fatalities in other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists.
The heaviest vehicles kill more people than they save: Analysis of crash data shows that for every life saved by the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks, more than a dozen lives are lost in other vehicles.
Weight advantages have changed little over time: Despite improvements in safety features, the weight advantage of heavier vehicles has remained relatively constant, with heavier vehicles still causing more fatalities in lighter vehicles.
Carmakers prioritize consumer preferences over safety: Manufacturers are producing increasingly heavier vehicles, driven by consumer demand for larger, more powerful cars, despite the safety risks to others.
Regulators are ill-equipped to address the issue: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's rating system focuses on occupant safety, not the safety of other road users, and tax policies subsidize heavier vehicles.
Public awareness and concern are growing: Surveys show increasing concern about the size and safety of SUVs and pickup trucks, with researchers and policymakers starting to take notice.
Electrification may exacerbate the problem: The shift towards electric vehicles, which tend to be heavier than their internal-combustion equivalents, may increase the weight of vehicles on the road, further amplifying the safety risks.
- dionian 2y agoSounds like a heavier car is actually safer to put me and my loved ones inside, at least for now.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoSounds like it's safest for me and my family to physically prevent you from doing that. See how deranged this line of escalation is? How sick in the soul I would have to be to choose to harm your family to increase the safety of mine? Can you see what kind of world you're building when you advocate this?
- sieabahlpark 2y ago[dead]
- taway1874 2y agoThis! +1MM
- niemandhier 2y agoWell put. The extrem version is a world where everybody is expected to kill the people in the other car that killed a loved one, nullifying every advantage that choosing your own safety over another’s might have.
- dataflow 2y ago> Well put. The extreme version is a world where everybody is expected to kill This is a pretty bad argument, the extreme doesn't necessarily define the middle. The extreme version of free speech is a world where fraud is legal. The extreme version of fire safety is a building with openings everywhere so there's no need for doors. The extreme version of policing is having cops follow you everywhere, including into your house. You can't just reason like that.
- dataflow 2y ago> Sounds like it's safest for me and my family to physically prevent you from doing that. See how deranged this line of escalation is? How sick in the soul I would have to be to choose to harm your family to increase the safety of mine? I wouldn't throw stones, we all live in glass houses. Pedestrians (and cyclists, etc.) could say the exact same thing about car drivers - they're putting their lives at much higher risk by not biking (or using a motorcycle, or public transportation, etc.). Heck, drivers are also endangering pedestrians' children through global warming. If you really tried you could probably name a dozen more examples of ordinary people like yourself putting others at risk for their own benefits. This isn't to say the parent's decision is great, but that this sort of counterargument isn't all that strong, either.
- Eumenes 2y ago> How sick in the soul I would have to be to choose to harm your family to increase the safety of mine? First of all, this is human nature 101. Secondly, simply owning a large vehicle does not equate to 'harming your family'. Bad/impaired drivers are responsible for that. Any other inanimate objects people shouldn't own because you don't like them? People aren't going to simply put their families in Fiat's with Escalade's on the road to show solidarity with the "we need smaller cars" movement.
- the__alchemist 2y agoConsider increasing the size of your tribe.
- taway1874 2y agoAnd this kind of thinking is how we end up with a society shown in the move Idiocracy. While you and your loved ones might survive at the cost of other more considerate people BUT the human race will become slightly dumber.
- rzz3 2y agoI can’t really understand where you’re coming from. Self preservation is at the absolute core of us all. You can’t honestly expect the average human to put the lives of unknown strangers before the lives of their own, as you say, loved ones.
- blibble 2y agopreventing this sort of arms race is the job of the government otherwise in 50 years everyone will be driving around an ex-army abrams
- juliushuijnk 2y agoThis assumes life is a zero sum game. If you put the lives of strangers above your own, your life might improve.
- Eumenes 2y agoYou must drive a smaller car so others around you are safer. Just like how you have to vaccinated to protect others. Its part of the social contract that you signed, duh.
- tialaramex 2y agoActually medical ethics rejects herd immunity as the purpose of vaccination. All the recommended vaccinations are because the benefit to the individual vaccinated significantly outweighs the cost to them. Herd immunity is a public health benefit but ethically it wouldn't be enough to justify the intervention. For HPV for example, the reason there's a period when it was given to girls not boys is that the evidence wasn't available to show a benefit for the boys. Obviously vaccinating boys means they're less likely to give the disease to anybody they have sex with, but that's not a personal benefit and so it's not an ethical reason to recommend vaccinating boys. The evidence that they wouldn't get a bunch of other rarer cancers caused by HPV was enough reason to vaccinate boys, and that arrived later. That ethical dilemma about sacrificing one patient to save more? That's not a thing.
- orwin 2y agoI caught the bad HPV variant early in my sex life (the one with buttons on the thighs, I think it's HPV 9 but my memory is fuzzy) and still have scars, as well as a long period of shame and shyness, so get vaccinated young guys, especially if you go in a hippy squat :D
- unethical_ban 2y agoThe comment ignores the discussion points around broader public safety, comments in a fashion criticized by the points made, and makes no effort to address any issue. I think it's worth flagging, but also worth noting the issues in case it wasn't intentional.
- erikaww 2y ago“Got mine!”
- baq 2y agoUpvoting because that’s literally the point. c.f. The Onion in 2020: https://theonion.com/conscientious-suv-shopper-just-wants-something-that-wil-1844930331/ https://theonion.com/conscientious-suv-shopper-just-wants-so...
- CalRobert 2y agoIndeed, the same way a heavier car is safer for me and my kids to ensure that your family is the one that dies, and not mine.
- brendoelfrendo 2y agoSo you've never been a pedestrian before ever? What do you want driving down the street when your kid chases a ball into the road? Or do you not allow your kids outside either, because you bought a big house with a small yard because that is optimally safe?
- xscott 2y ago"Think of the children" or not, it really doesn't matter the size of the vehicle. A SmartCar, or even a motorcycle, at 30 mph is likely to kill your kid too.
- brendoelfrendo 2y agoAssuming weight doesn't matter, it's also a question of visibility. Large SUVs and trucks have such high waistlines and poor front and side visibility that I could easily see a child running out thinking they were visible when they weren't.
- WheatMillington 2y agoYou're being downvoted for understanding the issue perfectly. Classic HN.
- hermitcrab 2y agoCheck out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- t0bia_s 2y agoBasic arguments for hypocrisy about actual care about environment. Trend of making cars bigger and "safer" proofs, that consumers and car manufacturers dont care about fuel consumption and increasing pollution.
- Modified3019 2y agoAnother thing when it comes to large heavy vehicles being more dangerous, is that our current guard rail design has become something that is increasingly likely to kill you. There’s a channel dedicated to the subject due to the creators personal tragedy with them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrR81g1ZkRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrR81g1ZkRQ
- dataflow 2y ago> Carmakers prioritize consumer preferences over safety: Manufacturers are producing increasingly heavier vehicles, driven by consumer demand for larger, more powerful cars, despite the safety risks to others. That is prioritizing safety - of the very customers themselves, whose preferences very much do include safety! Sounds like the market functioning exactly as designed. And sounds like we need regulation here.
- Groxx 2y agoIs a near ideal example of why free markets can lead to a worse overall result, yeah. Everyone wants to be individually safer, this is all a reasonable trajectory brought on by incremental steps in that direction. We desperately need regulation. The market won't turn itself around, it'll just ensure the ones that are helping are killed the quickest.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoThe question is, what regulation? If you just try to ban or heavily tax larger vehicles, well, there are legitimate reasons to have those sometimes. Businesses need trucks and you don't want heavy taxes on innocent small businesses. Parents involved in school activities are regularly transporting entire sports teams etc. and putting a dozen kids in two vehicles is safer and more efficient than three or four vehicles. So you need some way to distinguish the people buying large SUVs for these reasons from the people buying them out of schlong insufficiency, but nobody seems to have a good way to do that.
- consteval 2y agoOff the top of my head - a large vehicle license, which comes with increased taxes or fees or something. Businesses that require those vehicles can pay it. And maybe we can even have waivers or something for small businesses, or non-profits, or households with 4+ kids.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
- tootie 2y agoAny politician saying we should limit motor vehicle size would committing career suicide. That would be a slam dunk wedge issue for Republicans.
- eyelidlessness 2y agoYou’re not wrong. But only because Democrats are terrible at messaging (and seem allergic to getting better at it). “We’ll get you needlessly dead for our own power” isn’t exactly a popular policy position if someone is willing to call it what it is.
- PaulHoule 2y agoCould be the opposite. Part of the problem is that carmakers refuse to sell small cars. If you don’t believe me try to buy a small car at a car dealership in America. Consumers are angry about rising costs, particularly for automobiles, and having a choice to buy an affordable vehicle could be surprisingly popular. For instance I think electric vehicle adoption is stalled because there aren’t many people who can afford a $105k pickup truck with limited range while towing (e.g. you might really need a big-ass vehicle if you trailer your horse to Ocala, FL every year, but no way you are going to make your animals sit through 20-30 charging stops). A $20k electric with (say) a 60 mile range would get me to and from work and able to do shopping and would be a great second or third car for many households. All it takes is asking BYD what they need to enter the market.
- gruez 2y ago>Part of the problem is that carmakers refuse to sell small cars. If you don’t believe me try to buy a small car at a car dealership in America. >Consumers are angry about rising costs, particularly for automobiles, and having a choice to buy an affordable vehicle could be surprisingly popular. Consumers may claim they care about rising costs, but the fact that more expensive SUVs are outselling sedans makes me think it's the consumers who are refusing to buy small cars, rather than carmakers refusing to sell them.
- 2y ago
- thot_experiment 2y agoCars damage infrastructure in proportion to the fourth power of axle load. Not only are people in big cars killing people in little cars, they're also HEAVILY subsidized by the people they kill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
- dataflow 2y agoI feel like this means taxes should be imposed on cars proportionally to the fourth power of axle load too.
- lostlogin 2y agoThe US is a poster child for ‘user pays’, but I wouldn’t fancy the chance of success.
- erikaww 2y agoCar makers would adjust but road freight would fight this tooth and nail
- dataflow 2y agoGood point, but one could probably easily treat freight vehicles differently.
- coryrc 2y agoNo, they should be paying for their damage. Bring back local railroads if it's a problem. Add more axles, move less at once.
- Groxx 2y agoIf only we had other technologies for moving heavy things without using concrete roads
- 2y ago
- seagullriffic 2y ago> The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's rating system focuses on occupant safety, not the safety of other road users, and tax policies subsidize heavier vehicles. Sociopathic. Regulations and safety standards should be updated to consider both occupants' and others' safety. The auto manufacturers won't like this, because they are cheap and greedy.
- dham 2y agoYeah, there is. It's called everyone having an automated driving system like FSD. The NHTSA is too concerned with me taking my eyes off the road for 2 seconds while FSD is enabled versus getting manufacturers to actually implement this stuff. Why can I take my eyes off the road with FSD off and not with it on? They should mandate driver monitoring in every car when you're not driving with an autonomous system. As a motorcycle rider also, I'm telling you that everyone is literally on their phone when driving. I can see it all because I sit higher than everyone else. That's what the NHTSA should focus on.
- roughly 2y ago> Key Ideas: Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants but more dangerous for others: The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavier vehicles causing more fatalities in other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. I'm actually curious how much of this danger is primarily to pedestrians and cyclists. On the margins, I'd expect in a crash a 6000lb vehicle with modern safety equipment to be safer than a 3000lb vehicle with modern safety equipment, but folks have crashed modern sports cars at triple-digit speeds and (literally) walked away. For a pedestrian or cyclist, though, getting hit by a large truck or SUV is a different story, primarily because the shape and frontal area are so much larger, and the collision rates are higher because visibility and vehicle control are much worse than smaller cars. I'm also curious how much of the perceived safety benefit of larger cars is offset by the reduced ability to control the vehicle - in other words, I'm curious what the per-capita crash rates are in SUVs compared to normal cars.
- Spooky23 2y agoI think a lot of this is details lost in the stats. Every car is heavier due to safety standards. A 2024 Civic is bigger than a 1994 Accord. The pickups are less safe for all stakeholders and are a dominant category. They have poor safety features, handle poorly and have comically bad visibility. That plus the abandonment of speed enforcement drives death. 2000lb or 8000lb car, if you get hit at 45mph, you’re dead. Velocity is exponentially more important than mass.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- coredog64 2y agoEven cars are getting comically bad visibility. While there might be a big piece of glass bonded to the rear quarter, it’s got a huge black painted border on the outside and frit on the inside. Then there’s fat plastic trim that obscures driver sight lines from what is left. NHTSA would be better off at having a visibility requirement for 5th and 95th percentile men/women. I’d allow cameras to play a part, but if used, everything in the system has to be warrantied for 10 years/100k miles (similar to emissions equipment).
- throwtex 2y ago[flagged]
- huuhee3 2y agoLots of countries beyond Western world have growing middle class and rich people with big carbon footprint. Framing it just a Western issue is very outdated.
- skeeter2020 2y ago...and also inaccurate. The two western countries in the top 10 for CO2 emmissions are USA (#2) and Germany (#8). Per Capita there are none, with many of the "poor little countries" we're supposedly destroying represented.
- loeg 2y ago> Regulators are ill-equipped to address the issue: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's rating system focuses on occupant safety, not the safety of other road users, and tax policies subsidize heavier vehicles. Ill-equipped, or asleep at the wheel? NHTSA could extend their rating system to incorporate the safety of people outside the tested vehicle, but have failed to.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoWho is the target audience? Insurance companies already have the statistics. Buyers care about occupant safety and would largely ignore a pedestrian safety rating. If you tried to force it into a combined rating you'd probably make the problem worse because then people would know that large vehicles are being punished in safety ratings and refuse to buy small vehicles even more than they do now because they can't distinguish whether a good safety rating is from occupant or pedestrian safety.
- dwattttt 2y agoWe don't have to assume buyers would ignore a pedestrian safety rating. It might make people feel uncomfortable, and that's entirely ok.
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoI suspect the people it would make feel uncomfortable and the people currently buying unnecessarily large vehicles wouldn't have a lot of overlap.
- consteval 2y ago> people currently buying unnecessarily large vehicles wouldn't have a lot of overlap Maybe I'm naive, but I think most people buying large vehicles aren't selfish, they're ill-informed and susceptible to social pressure and advertising. The only reason I say this is because most people have big cars in the US now. But they're also objectively worse for most commuters. It doesn't add up.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoWhat about the internal organs of people in big cars? IIRC, a long time ago, after a serious collision, paramedics were at first puzzled as to why the seemingly unharmed person behind the wheel was dead. Later it turned out that their internal organs had been ripped out of their arteries because big cars have/have much worse impact zones than smaller cars.
- nradov 2y agoYou have that story confused or backwards. Occasionally vehicle crash victims will suffer such internal injuries, mainly the elderly who already have weak blood vessels. But big cars don't have worse crumple zones, rather the opposite.
- lofaszvanitt 2y agoWell, it's according to paramedics....
- AnthonyMouse 2y agoIt's not "heavier vehicles", it's trucks. A lot of pickup trucks (and the SUVs based on them) were designed to prioritize load carrying capacity over occupant safety and have worse safety features than other passenger vehicles despite being heavier, and it turns out that matters.
- ryndbfsrw 2y ago"Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants.." Only if the other vehicle is smaller/lighter. SUVs were relatively uncommon when this perception of safety was established. Its now just something people like to tell themselves as justification for buying an even bigger car.
- grecy 2y ago> Regulators are ill-equipped to address the issue: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's rating system focuses on occupant safety, not the safety of other road users In the US. In Europe pedestrian crash safety is a BIG deal.
- nickmp 2y agoNot a big enough deal. Pedestrian airbags are a thing that have been invented, but are scarecely on cars or trucks. Same with external cameras for better visibility. Lots of dragging feet from the industry.
- berikv 2y agoAll of this. Plus the exhaust gasses and tire wear pollutants causing early deaths. The noise (bigger) cars make disrupting quiet places like parks and porches, balconies, bedrooms causing stress. The waste of used cars, often being transported to third world countries. Cars kill in so many ways, especially big cars.
- WheatMillington 2y agoIs this a tragedy of the commons, or am I misapplying this term? At an individual level it makes complete sense to put your family into the safest car possible - your thoughts are with you and your family, not the strangers around you.
- brailsafe 2y agoPersonal automobile ownership is the source of more tragedies of the commons than anything else I can think of.
- brailsafe 2y agoPersonal automobile ownership is the source of more tragedies of the commons than anything else I can think of. The only personally incurred negative externality that comes to mind at the moment would be the decreased likelihood of having a healthy lifestyle based on decreased need to walk anywhere.
- t0bia_s 2y agoYou still increase death risk of your children simple by sitting them in car. Car accidents are leading cause of death of children in wealth countries.
- tzs 2y ago> The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavier vehicles causing more fatalities in other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. In a high speed collision between two cars I can see how a weight difference could greatly increase the danger in the lighter vehicle. In a collision between a car and a pedestrian I don't see how weight could make much of a difference. Yes, I know that if car A weighs 50% more than car B then at a given speed A will have 1.5 times as much momentum and 2.5 times as much kinetic energy as car B, but when there is a large mass difference between the thing doing the hitting (the car in this case) and the thing being hit (a pedestrian) momentum and kinetic energy don't really matter. Think of it this way. A large freight train moving at 1 km/hr will have way more momentum and kinetic energy than a Ford F-150 moving at 80 km/hr, but getting hit by the freight train probably wouldn't seriously hurt you (unless you happened to fall and it ran over you) whereas an 80 km/hr F-150 would very likely kill you on impact. From what I've read the problem with these vehicles in pedestrian collisions is with the shape of the front of them. They tend to have high, fairly vertical, front ends which can sweep you up so you are rapidly accelerated to the velocity of that car. Damage would be similar to what you'd get if you fell at the velocity of the car onto a rigid surface. Cars with lower, most slanted, front ends toss you onto the hood and over the car, which is much less likely to kill you.
- the_snooze 2y agoDespite how large vehicles are getting, people don't seem to want to have other passengers in them. Single-occupant vehicles account for something like 75% of daily commuters. Between safety concerns, sedentary lifestyles, road congestion, and the loneliness epidemic, you'd think there would be a push to reduce that number. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/commuting/guidance/acs-1yr/Mean-drove-alone.pdf https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/commuting/guidance/...
- VieEnCode 2y ago"tax policies subsidize heavier vehicles" Interesting post. Can I ask you/somebody to expand a bit on the quote above please?
- dusted 2y agoThis is my concern as well, it becomes a weapons race towards the most idiot-sized vehicle possible, since a reasonably sized vehicle will put you at a survival disadvantage. I live in Denmark, where this problem is yet very much in its infancy, but it's a clear trend. I hope regulation catches up. Some kind of bounding-box volume and weight restriction would be nice.
- Ekaros 2y agoThere is weight restriction, 3500 kg albeit that is too much already. I would go just with strict limit on energy consumption, fuel specific one. Effectively stop too large EVs too.