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>EU vehicle safety regulations have supported a 36% reduction in European road deaths since 2010. By contrast, road deaths in the US over the same period increa

>EU vehicle safety regulations have supported a 36% reduction in European road deaths since 2010. By contrast, road deaths in the US over the same period increased 30%, with pedestrian deaths up 80% and cyclist deaths up 50% I didn't know this, but it is absolutely crazy. Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety.

CalRobert 11mo ago
They need to prop up dying German car companies, and are OK with using European lives as collateral.
- raverbashing 11mo ago
  As much as German car companies suck it's not them that are road killers
  - CalRobert 11mo ago
    Among other issues, Volkswagen killed roughly 1200 people by cheating on their emissions tests. https://lae.mit.edu/2024/06/28/study-quantifies-premature-deaths-in-europe-resulting-from-volkswagens-excess-emissions/ https://lae.mit.edu/2024/06/28/study-quantifies-premature-de...
    - raverbashing 11mo ago
      Besides the whataboutism, this is 1200 premature deaths (of mostly frail people). As much as I'm sensible to the topic of air pollution, putting that number closer to the number of, I dunno, premature deaths attributable to Coal power plants will give a more realistic view of the problem
  - bluecalm 11mo ago
    I don't know man. Most big SUVs on EU roads are German. Same goes for "sport" cars. While American trucks are terrible the crazies in BMWs and Mercedes SUVs with huge engines have more impact (as they are more of them). EU regulators bent over to German companies allowing those cars on the road without additional restrictions. We all pay for that.
    - raverbashing 11mo ago
      True but the problem with modern American trucks is that they have a high front (which means low frontal visibility) That's the biggest issue now differentiating them Even an older American truck is less dangerous than the modern generation
- jack_tripper 11mo ago
  >They need to prop up dying German car companies Germany isn't the only economy dependent on the legacy auto sector. France, Italy, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia and Belgium also have a lot of jobs, or had, in the auto industry, before the mass layoff of the last 2-3 years.
  - CalRobert 11mo ago
    True, France does too of course, but Germany has been particularly stubborn. There's infighting within Europe, for that matter - note Polestar opposing Merz's attempts to weaken Europe's phase out of combustion vehicles. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsbirmingham/volvo-and-polestar-bosses-urge-eu-to-stick-to-2035-petrol-car-ban/ar-AA1RxqvX https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsbirmingham/volvo-and-pole...
    - jack_tripper 11mo ago
      Stubbornness to change is part of Germany's national identity, more often than not towards its own detriment. But also, Merz is not alone in this, but a lot of Eastern Europe can't afford EVs at current EU prices so the EU has to make some concessions. People in Romania or Bulgaria can't afford to buy a Polestar like people in Netherlands can. EU leaders needs to account for the massive disparities of purchasing power between places like Nordics and Romania/Bulgaria for example when they make sweeping legislation like that. Sure it would be nice if all of EU was like Norway with only EVs everywhere, but this way you'd basically be bankrupting and turning against you the people in the poorer countries of the union who are already disproportionately affected by the CoL crisis of the EU, who are effectively paying German energy and grocery prices but at Eastern EU salaries and pensions. This is not sustainable. Not to mention the disparity in public transportation infrastructure where a car is basically mandatory for commuting outside big cities in place like Romania.
      - CalRobert 11mo ago
        Maybe Europe should allow cheap BYD's to be imported for the poor eastern Europeans them. Fossil fuels need to be eliminated. Europe is the fastest warming continent.
- izacus 11mo ago
  So why would they allow easy imports of US cars?
mihaaly 11mo ago
I second that!
perakojotgenije 11mo ago
And that is not counting in the fact that there far more pedestrians on the street in EU than in the USA. If there were the same amount of pedestrians in the USA as in the EU the statistics would be even worse.
- Fricken 11mo ago
  When there are more obstacles and hazards on the road drivers tend to slow down and pay attention. Pedestrian deaths in my city peaked in 2025, but they didn't happen in the walkable central areas of the city where pedestrians are common, they happened out in the 'burbs where the roads are wide and pedestrians are few.
gblargg 11mo ago
You can't really compare the two. Vehicle safety regulations might not be able to make up for the USA having stroads and in general bad design. For the same reasons trying to move safety standards over could make things even worse than the USA due to them not fitting the conditions.
- herbst 11mo ago
  Do you actually think that is the case? Because you have big streets and cars, small cars and actual safety standards would make it less safe? That's the most American sentiment I've heard today
  - VBprogrammer 11mo ago
    Whether they like it or not, American cars have become a lot more European over the years. I wish I had figures to back it up but from my own anecdotal experience when we traveled to the US when I was young almost every car was different and, for me at least, this made it feel strange and exciting. Taking my own kids back there this year, most of the normal cars were common, or at most variations of the ones from Europe. Even many of the vans and work vehicles are now common European shapes, occasionally with a different badge. Trucks and full size SUVs were the last hold outs of US specific models. Which makes me wonder, are the pedestrian deaths really heavily weighted towards these models? For what it's worth we hired a full sized SUV. There was one point where I was about to drive out of our Villa's driveway when my partner shouted "wait!" There was a 8ish year old kid walking down the sidewalk towards where I was about to cross it who was completely invisible from the driving position. It was actually safer to forward park that thing because the visibility in the reversing camera was much better than driving forward.
    - herbst 11mo ago
      Anecdotally you got a different impression of the cars than 10 or 20 years ago.
      - VBprogrammer 11mo ago
simianwords 11mo ago
I kind of agree but this is missing a big part in my opinion. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? There might be certain number of deaths we can accept for increased cost but how is it so obvious that this tradeoff was worth it? What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety? Edit: here are some back of envelope numbers from chatgpt A single, ordinary car ride carries an extremely small chance of death: USA: ~1 in 7.7 million EU: ~1 in 20 million Its not super clear that optimising these numbers is obviously worth the increased costs. Edit2: people can make the choice to buy Volvo cars that are ~40% safer. Why isn't every car buyer buying only Volvo? The assumption you have to make is that regulation would make it much cheaper to buy a safe car than just buying Volvo. It is somewhat true but not sure on the extent.
- johanvts 11mo ago
  The Americans didn’t get cheap cars, they just got very large cars which is obviously detrimental to anyone but perhaps the driver.
  - simianwords 11mo ago
    The specific regulations here > EU officials must revisit the hastily agreed trade deal with the US, where the EU stated that it “intends to accept” lower US vehicle standards, say cities – including Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and more than 75 civil society organisations. In a letter to European lawmakers, the signatories warn that aligning European standards with laxer rules in the US would undermine the EU’s global leadership in road safety, public health, climate policy and competitiveness. They point to many things and not only the size of cars - like fewer approvals, lower pollution controls, fewer safety measures. Some of them increase utility (like people might prefer bigger cars) and others decrease cost.
    - Sharlin 11mo ago
      Have you ever heard of the term "negative externalities"?
lloeki 11mo ago
> with pedestrian deaths up 80% and cyclist deaths up 50% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC9a3GR1HJY&t=371s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC9a3GR1HJY&t=371s > I said there was no way this truck would pass a pedestrian impact safety standard. Now, I wasn't wrong that the truck won't pass a pedestrian impact safety standard, it won't! And that's why they can't sell it in Europe. [...] But I didn't realise that America has no pedestrian impact standards. [...] America actually allows companies to self-certify a variety of aspects of safety.
- jacquesm 11mo ago
  See also: Boeing. It is the exact same kind of fuck-up. Regulators should not be in bed with the industries they regulate. That's a hard problem to solve, because where if not in industry would you get the expertise. But these kind of revolving door arrangements are extremely problematic.
arp242 11mo ago
> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety. Yeah, so that would be rampantly anti-Democratic authoritarianism... Peaceful transfer of power is pretty much at the core of why democracy works in the first place, and once you start engaging in political persecution because you don't like some trade-off involving safety ... yeah, that's no longer a democracy but something else.
- iso1631 11mo ago
  Dismissing a politician because you don't like them is the entire point of elections.
  - arp242 11mo ago
    Yes, and? Are they tried for making politician decisions someone (e.g. the next people in power) didn't like? This doesn't engage at all with what I talked about, and I already explicitly acknowledged that peaceful transition of power is important. What is the point of this comment? Why rebuke something I never even remotely said?
cm2187 11mo ago
Numbers of km driven in the US has increased by circa 10% [1] over that period while decreased in the EU by circa 10% [2]. Add to that in european cities the multiplication of bike lanes, and the permanent manufactured congestion of certain cities. There are many reasons that can explain the movement, and car design is probably a small factor among many small factors. [1] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-kilometers-0 https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-kilometers-0 [2] https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/transport/distance-travelled-by-car.html https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-secto...
- 9dev 11mo ago
  > car design is probably a small factor That probably is doing a lot of work here. A truck with a driver sitting so high above the street they can't physically see a child or bicycle in front of them is just an inherent risk to pedestrians and cyclists, no matter how you twist it. And don't even get me started on Cybertrucks, which are pretty much designed to cause accidents with casualties. Even if the causal link is more complex than the numbers make it seem, acting like putting heavier and bigger vehicles with less restrictions on streets won't cause accidents is just plain dishonest.
  - cm2187 11mo ago
    > acting like putting heavier and bigger vehicles with less restrictions on streets won't cause accidents is just plain dishonest Implying that I said it has no impact is plain dishonest
jeroenhd 11mo ago
> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety. The problem is coming from the other side, the Americans are threatening to start a new trade war if the EU doesn't permit their murdermobiles on the European roads. IMO pedestrian safety should still come above all else, but this is not an initiative coming from some EU representatives who want to own a Cybertruck. Blocking these cars can have impact on the war against Ukraine and the prices of fuel and other import products on the short term.
- RedShift1 11mo ago
  Fuck it. Let the Americans start another trade war then. This nonsense has been going on long enough, if times need to get tough so be it then, start earlier rather than in 5 years when these misery machines are everywhere and the car arms race is in full effect.
  - n8cpdx 11mo ago
    It’s tough when there’s a war going on and the EU countries don’t really want to pay the true cost for their defense.
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - witheredspirit 11mo ago
      This is a bogus statement. EU countries have met or surpassed defense budget goals, usually the ones that don't have the contracts in progress but the full payouts not done yet since they are still in progress. Percentage of GDP to military spending has been criticized as a bad way to measure how much military spending is done and needed. Additionally, the European countries are paying for the war while the US is taking that money and the optics of providing certain military supplies. This whole situation is just exploitation of the EU with the benefit of the US' companies.
      - 11mo ago
bambax 11mo ago
The general problem is the US are a bully and Europe just caves, always. We should put up a serious fight. Block all US imports, starting with tech, and see what happens. Who cares if we sell less champagne??!?
- n8cpdx 11mo ago
  The US is underwriting European security (and by extension various European welfare states). Do you really want to block the import of arms and financial aid to Ukraine? If Europeans were serious about their sovereignty they’d have made very different choices up until now. It isn’t right that America has so much power in this circumstance, but going back decades the US has been asking for Europe to take defense seriously.
  - ExoticPearTree 11mo ago
    > Do you really want to block the import of arms and financial aid to Ukraine? Umm... yes? Since this whole debacle started, the EU has been shooting itself in the foot with all the sanctions that hurts its industries. On the other hand, the US did the smart thing and did not give out weapons for free, it charged for them. In the end, the US will be the winner of this war and Europe will come out of it incredibly weak economically. And it will have to turn to the US for help. Again.
  - LunaSea 11mo ago
    > It isn’t right that America has so much power in this circumstance, but going back decades the US has been asking for Europe to take defense seriously. Funny because the last time I believe that it was the US that requested help in Iraq and Afghanistan and not the other way around.
  - bambax 11mo ago
    Europe should certainly increase its defense spending (and actual capabilities). But the reason NATO exists isn't just to please Europe. The US have a direct interest in containing Russia; I don't think they can afford to simply stop caring about the rest of the world. And I'd be willing to test that theory.
victorbjorklund 11mo ago
I think it's hard to say for sure that it's only the safety regulations on the car that that have resulted in these reductions, and by contrast those increases in the US. There are so many other things not related to the regulations on the car. My guess for example is that us have a lot less bike roads than europe does and traffic rules are not affected by the regulations on the cars and so on. for sure European European car regulations are probably better than American ones from a safety perspective. but I think it's hard to to say that without them we would have an increase, it would have a smaller reduction.
crimsoneer 11mo ago
At the risk of sounding contrarian, do we have any idea what the drivers of this are? Is this actually about car design, or is it other bits? Just as a starter for ten, is that 30% increase distributed around the US or concentrated in certain states? I can't imagine we've seen the same increase in New York than in rural Alabama (and if that's the case, how much of it is really attributable to car designs)?
uniqueuid 11mo ago
I'm with you regarding the argument, but want to nitpick: "dismissing" a politician sounds like an easy fix but we probably don't want hyper-polarized dismissal wars where politicians are "shot down" immediately after being elected. That's why there are other mechanisms such as not re-electing, public shaming, transparency fora etc. ... we need to work on strengthening those, the accountability and transparency.
drstewart 11mo ago
> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety. No. Every EU politician who doesn't support BANNING all cars should be dismissed and tried and executed! Look, I'm even tougher on pedestrian safety than you are!
AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> I didn't know this, but it is absolutely crazy. It's crazy because the numbers don't line up with the theory. If you look at US traffic deaths by year, they were basically flat in terms of vehicle miles traveled between 2010 and 2019 and then took a big jump from COVID which is only now starting to come back down. Meanwhile in Europe road fatalities were also fairly flat up until 2019, and then went down significantly from COVID. Now we have to guess why the responses to COVID had the opposite effect in each place, but it's pretty obvious that the difference was a primarily result of COVID rather than differences in vehicle safety regulations, unless the vehicle safety regulations all changed in 2020 and everyone immediately replaced the installed base of cars everywhere overnight.
- crimsoneer 11mo ago
  Cybertrucks init (/s)
- energy123 11mo ago
  Why do you think COVID is relevant aside from being a placeholder for the year 2020?
  - AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
    COVID happened in the year of the discontinuity and caused major changes to commuting behavior as a result of remote work, people afraid of infection avoided mass transit, many people moved out of cities or lost their jobs, people bought cars who didn't used to drive and now there are more new/inexperienced drivers with cars (and it's easier to get a license in the US than Europe), etc. Also, the numbers for at least the US are apparently just wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... 1.27 fatalities per 100M VMT in 2023 (the latest year with data), 1.11 in 2010, that's a difference of 14%, not 30%. Even the peak during COVID was only 24% above 2010. The only way I can see to get 30% is to use the during-COVID number for only the total number of motor vehicle fatalities without accounting for population growth or vehicle miles traveled, which is not a great metric for making comparisons.
mrdevlar 11mo ago
This was all an EU tactic, we do it a lot. Agree to the deal, Trump shuts up and ignores us, destroy the deal in the courts, no real effect of the deal.
quitit 11mo ago
Keep in mind that the US stats are derived from cities that are designed around personal automobile transportation, so they're likely muted. Europe on the other hand has a much higher level of intermingling between pedestrians and vehicles. This puts pedestrians more often in harms way, and likely will lead to out-sized dangers that aren't seen as frequently in the USA. Pedestrian safety is a key requirement for European car safety. If the EU is politically forced into accepting the US standards: The slack will need to be picked up by European insurance companies, who should charge extreme premiums for unsafe designs, effectively blocking the sale of the vehicles from dangerous, young, or casual drivers and limiting those designs to those who truly need them (which I suspect is very few.) This should also go a long way in addressing inexpensive Chinese vehicles that ape the American designs. Since that is more likely going to be what is on the roads.
- bluecalm 11mo ago
  >>If the EU is politically forced into accepting the US standards: The slack will need to be picked up by European insurance companies, who should charge extreme premiums for unsafe designs, effectively blocking the sale of the vehicles from dangerous, young, or casual drivers and limiting those designs to those who truly need them (which I suspect is very few.) That only works if there are big penalties for killing people with your car. As it is as long as you are not drunk and have your license you get away with a minor slap on the wrist. You pay if you damage someone's else car but if you kill them then there is usually no financial responsibility and thus no reason to rise insurance premiums.

CalRobert 11mo ago

They need to prop up dying German car companies, and are OK with using European lives as collateral.

raverbashing 11mo ago
As much as German car companies suck it's not them that are road killers
- CalRobert 11mo ago
  Among other issues, Volkswagen killed roughly 1200 people by cheating on their emissions tests. https://lae.mit.edu/2024/06/28/study-quantifies-premature-deaths-in-europe-resulting-from-volkswagens-excess-emissions/ https://lae.mit.edu/2024/06/28/study-quantifies-premature-de...
  - raverbashing 11mo ago
    Besides the whataboutism, this is 1200 premature deaths (of mostly frail people). As much as I'm sensible to the topic of air pollution, putting that number closer to the number of, I dunno, premature deaths attributable to Coal power plants will give a more realistic view of the problem
- bluecalm 11mo ago
  I don't know man. Most big SUVs on EU roads are German. Same goes for "sport" cars. While American trucks are terrible the crazies in BMWs and Mercedes SUVs with huge engines have more impact (as they are more of them). EU regulators bent over to German companies allowing those cars on the road without additional restrictions. We all pay for that.
  - raverbashing 11mo ago
    True but the problem with modern American trucks is that they have a high front (which means low frontal visibility) That's the biggest issue now differentiating them Even an older American truck is less dangerous than the modern generation
jack_tripper 11mo ago
>They need to prop up dying German car companies Germany isn't the only economy dependent on the legacy auto sector. France, Italy, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia and Belgium also have a lot of jobs, or had, in the auto industry, before the mass layoff of the last 2-3 years.
- CalRobert 11mo ago
  True, France does too of course, but Germany has been particularly stubborn. There's infighting within Europe, for that matter - note Polestar opposing Merz's attempts to weaken Europe's phase out of combustion vehicles. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsbirmingham/volvo-and-polestar-bosses-urge-eu-to-stick-to-2035-petrol-car-ban/ar-AA1RxqvX https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsbirmingham/volvo-and-pole...
  - jack_tripper 11mo ago
    Stubbornness to change is part of Germany's national identity, more often than not towards its own detriment. But also, Merz is not alone in this, but a lot of Eastern Europe can't afford EVs at current EU prices so the EU has to make some concessions. People in Romania or Bulgaria can't afford to buy a Polestar like people in Netherlands can. EU leaders needs to account for the massive disparities of purchasing power between places like Nordics and Romania/Bulgaria for example when they make sweeping legislation like that. Sure it would be nice if all of EU was like Norway with only EVs everywhere, but this way you'd basically be bankrupting and turning against you the people in the poorer countries of the union who are already disproportionately affected by the CoL crisis of the EU, who are effectively paying German energy and grocery prices but at Eastern EU salaries and pensions. This is not sustainable. Not to mention the disparity in public transportation infrastructure where a car is basically mandatory for commuting outside big cities in place like Romania.
    - CalRobert 11mo ago
      Maybe Europe should allow cheap BYD's to be imported for the poor eastern Europeans them. Fossil fuels need to be eliminated. Europe is the fastest warming continent.
izacus 11mo ago
So why would they allow easy imports of US cars?

mihaaly 11mo ago

I second that!

perakojotgenije 11mo ago

And that is not counting in the fact that there far more pedestrians on the street in EU than in the USA. If there were the same amount of pedestrians in the USA as in the EU the statistics would be even worse.

Fricken 11mo ago
When there are more obstacles and hazards on the road drivers tend to slow down and pay attention. Pedestrian deaths in my city peaked in 2025, but they didn't happen in the walkable central areas of the city where pedestrians are common, they happened out in the 'burbs where the roads are wide and pedestrians are few.

gblargg 11mo ago

You can't really compare the two. Vehicle safety regulations might not be able to make up for the USA having stroads and in general bad design. For the same reasons trying to move safety standards over could make things even worse than the USA due to them not fitting the conditions.

herbst 11mo ago
Do you actually think that is the case? Because you have big streets and cars, small cars and actual safety standards would make it less safe? That's the most American sentiment I've heard today
- VBprogrammer 11mo ago
  Whether they like it or not, American cars have become a lot more European over the years. I wish I had figures to back it up but from my own anecdotal experience when we traveled to the US when I was young almost every car was different and, for me at least, this made it feel strange and exciting. Taking my own kids back there this year, most of the normal cars were common, or at most variations of the ones from Europe. Even many of the vans and work vehicles are now common European shapes, occasionally with a different badge. Trucks and full size SUVs were the last hold outs of US specific models. Which makes me wonder, are the pedestrian deaths really heavily weighted towards these models? For what it's worth we hired a full sized SUV. There was one point where I was about to drive out of our Villa's driveway when my partner shouted "wait!" There was a 8ish year old kid walking down the sidewalk towards where I was about to cross it who was completely invisible from the driving position. It was actually safer to forward park that thing because the visibility in the reversing camera was much better than driving forward.
  - herbst 11mo ago
    Anecdotally you got a different impression of the cars than 10 or 20 years ago.
    - VBprogrammer 11mo ago

simianwords 11mo ago

I kind of agree but this is missing a big part in my opinion. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation? There might be certain number of deaths we can accept for increased cost but how is it so obvious that this tradeoff was worth it? What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety? Edit: here are some back of envelope numbers from chatgpt A single, ordinary car ride carries an extremely small chance of death: USA: ~1 in 7.7 million EU: ~1 in 20 million Its not super clear that optimising these numbers is obviously worth the increased costs. Edit2: people can make the choice to buy Volvo cars that are ~40% safer. Why isn't every car buyer buying only Volvo? The assumption you have to make is that regulation would make it much cheaper to buy a safe car than just buying Volvo. It is somewhat true but not sure on the extent.

johanvts 11mo ago
The Americans didn’t get cheap cars, they just got very large cars which is obviously detrimental to anyone but perhaps the driver.
- simianwords 11mo ago
  The specific regulations here > EU officials must revisit the hastily agreed trade deal with the US, where the EU stated that it “intends to accept” lower US vehicle standards, say cities – including Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and more than 75 civil society organisations. In a letter to European lawmakers, the signatories warn that aligning European standards with laxer rules in the US would undermine the EU’s global leadership in road safety, public health, climate policy and competitiveness. They point to many things and not only the size of cars - like fewer approvals, lower pollution controls, fewer safety measures. Some of them increase utility (like people might prefer bigger cars) and others decrease cost.
  - Sharlin 11mo ago
    Have you ever heard of the term "negative externalities"?

lloeki 11mo ago

> with pedestrian deaths up 80% and cyclist deaths up 50% https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC9a3GR1HJY&t=371s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC9a3GR1HJY&t=371s > I said there was no way this truck would pass a pedestrian impact safety standard. Now, I wasn't wrong that the truck won't pass a pedestrian impact safety standard, it won't! And that's why they can't sell it in Europe. [...] But I didn't realise that America has no pedestrian impact standards. [...] America actually allows companies to self-certify a variety of aspects of safety.

jacquesm 11mo ago
See also: Boeing. It is the exact same kind of fuck-up. Regulators should not be in bed with the industries they regulate. That's a hard problem to solve, because where if not in industry would you get the expertise. But these kind of revolving door arrangements are extremely problematic.

arp242 11mo ago

> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety. Yeah, so that would be rampantly anti-Democratic authoritarianism... Peaceful transfer of power is pretty much at the core of why democracy works in the first place, and once you start engaging in political persecution because you don't like some trade-off involving safety ... yeah, that's no longer a democracy but something else.

iso1631 11mo ago
Dismissing a politician because you don't like them is the entire point of elections.
- arp242 11mo ago
  Yes, and? Are they tried for making politician decisions someone (e.g. the next people in power) didn't like? This doesn't engage at all with what I talked about, and I already explicitly acknowledged that peaceful transition of power is important. What is the point of this comment? Why rebuke something I never even remotely said?

cm2187 11mo ago

Numbers of km driven in the US has increased by circa 10% [1] over that period while decreased in the EU by circa 10% [2]. Add to that in european cities the multiplication of bike lanes, and the permanent manufactured congestion of certain cities. There are many reasons that can explain the movement, and car design is probably a small factor among many small factors. [1] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-kilometers-0 https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-kilometers-0 [2] https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/transport/distance-travelled-by-car.html https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-secto...

9dev 11mo ago
> car design is probably a small factor That probably is doing a lot of work here. A truck with a driver sitting so high above the street they can't physically see a child or bicycle in front of them is just an inherent risk to pedestrians and cyclists, no matter how you twist it. And don't even get me started on Cybertrucks, which are pretty much designed to cause accidents with casualties. Even if the causal link is more complex than the numbers make it seem, acting like putting heavier and bigger vehicles with less restrictions on streets won't cause accidents is just plain dishonest.
- cm2187 11mo ago
  > acting like putting heavier and bigger vehicles with less restrictions on streets won't cause accidents is just plain dishonest Implying that I said it has no impact is plain dishonest

jeroenhd 11mo ago

> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety. The problem is coming from the other side, the Americans are threatening to start a new trade war if the EU doesn't permit their murdermobiles on the European roads. IMO pedestrian safety should still come above all else, but this is not an initiative coming from some EU representatives who want to own a Cybertruck. Blocking these cars can have impact on the war against Ukraine and the prices of fuel and other import products on the short term.

RedShift1 11mo ago
Fuck it. Let the Americans start another trade war then. This nonsense has been going on long enough, if times need to get tough so be it then, start earlier rather than in 5 years when these misery machines are everywhere and the car arms race is in full effect.
- n8cpdx 11mo ago
  It’s tough when there’s a war going on and the EU countries don’t really want to pay the true cost for their defense.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - witheredspirit 11mo ago
    This is a bogus statement. EU countries have met or surpassed defense budget goals, usually the ones that don't have the contracts in progress but the full payouts not done yet since they are still in progress. Percentage of GDP to military spending has been criticized as a bad way to measure how much military spending is done and needed. Additionally, the European countries are paying for the war while the US is taking that money and the optics of providing certain military supplies. This whole situation is just exploitation of the EU with the benefit of the US' companies.
    - 11mo ago

bambax 11mo ago

The general problem is the US are a bully and Europe just caves, always. We should put up a serious fight. Block all US imports, starting with tech, and see what happens. Who cares if we sell less champagne??!?

n8cpdx 11mo ago
The US is underwriting European security (and by extension various European welfare states). Do you really want to block the import of arms and financial aid to Ukraine? If Europeans were serious about their sovereignty they’d have made very different choices up until now. It isn’t right that America has so much power in this circumstance, but going back decades the US has been asking for Europe to take defense seriously.
- ExoticPearTree 11mo ago
  > Do you really want to block the import of arms and financial aid to Ukraine? Umm... yes? Since this whole debacle started, the EU has been shooting itself in the foot with all the sanctions that hurts its industries. On the other hand, the US did the smart thing and did not give out weapons for free, it charged for them. In the end, the US will be the winner of this war and Europe will come out of it incredibly weak economically. And it will have to turn to the US for help. Again.
- LunaSea 11mo ago
  > It isn’t right that America has so much power in this circumstance, but going back decades the US has been asking for Europe to take defense seriously. Funny because the last time I believe that it was the US that requested help in Iraq and Afghanistan and not the other way around.
- bambax 11mo ago
  Europe should certainly increase its defense spending (and actual capabilities). But the reason NATO exists isn't just to please Europe. The US have a direct interest in containing Russia; I don't think they can afford to simply stop caring about the rest of the world. And I'd be willing to test that theory.

victorbjorklund 11mo ago

I think it's hard to say for sure that it's only the safety regulations on the car that that have resulted in these reductions, and by contrast those increases in the US. There are so many other things not related to the regulations on the car. My guess for example is that us have a lot less bike roads than europe does and traffic rules are not affected by the regulations on the cars and so on. for sure European European car regulations are probably better than American ones from a safety perspective. but I think it's hard to to say that without them we would have an increase, it would have a smaller reduction.

crimsoneer 11mo ago

At the risk of sounding contrarian, do we have any idea what the drivers of this are? Is this actually about car design, or is it other bits? Just as a starter for ten, is that 30% increase distributed around the US or concentrated in certain states? I can't imagine we've seen the same increase in New York than in rural Alabama (and if that's the case, how much of it is really attributable to car designs)?

uniqueuid 11mo ago

I'm with you regarding the argument, but want to nitpick: "dismissing" a politician sounds like an easy fix but we probably don't want hyper-polarized dismissal wars where politicians are "shot down" immediately after being elected. That's why there are other mechanisms such as not re-electing, public shaming, transparency fora etc. ... we need to work on strengthening those, the accountability and transparency.

drstewart 11mo ago

> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety. No. Every EU politician who doesn't support BANNING all cars should be dismissed and tried and executed! Look, I'm even tougher on pedestrian safety than you are!

AnthonyMouse 11mo ago

> I didn't know this, but it is absolutely crazy. It's crazy because the numbers don't line up with the theory. If you look at US traffic deaths by year, they were basically flat in terms of vehicle miles traveled between 2010 and 2019 and then took a big jump from COVID which is only now starting to come back down. Meanwhile in Europe road fatalities were also fairly flat up until 2019, and then went down significantly from COVID. Now we have to guess why the responses to COVID had the opposite effect in each place, but it's pretty obvious that the difference was a primarily result of COVID rather than differences in vehicle safety regulations, unless the vehicle safety regulations all changed in 2020 and everyone immediately replaced the installed base of cars everywhere overnight.

crimsoneer 11mo ago
Cybertrucks init (/s)
energy123 11mo ago
Why do you think COVID is relevant aside from being a placeholder for the year 2020?
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
  COVID happened in the year of the discontinuity and caused major changes to commuting behavior as a result of remote work, people afraid of infection avoided mass transit, many people moved out of cities or lost their jobs, people bought cars who didn't used to drive and now there are more new/inexperienced drivers with cars (and it's easier to get a license in the US than Europe), etc. Also, the numbers for at least the US are apparently just wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... 1.27 fatalities per 100M VMT in 2023 (the latest year with data), 1.11 in 2010, that's a difference of 14%, not 30%. Even the peak during COVID was only 24% above 2010. The only way I can see to get 30% is to use the during-COVID number for only the total number of motor vehicle fatalities without accounting for population growth or vehicle miles traveled, which is not a great metric for making comparisons.

mrdevlar 11mo ago

This was all an EU tactic, we do it a lot. Agree to the deal, Trump shuts up and ignores us, destroy the deal in the courts, no real effect of the deal.

quitit 11mo ago

Keep in mind that the US stats are derived from cities that are designed around personal automobile transportation, so they're likely muted. Europe on the other hand has a much higher level of intermingling between pedestrians and vehicles. This puts pedestrians more often in harms way, and likely will lead to out-sized dangers that aren't seen as frequently in the USA. Pedestrian safety is a key requirement for European car safety. If the EU is politically forced into accepting the US standards: The slack will need to be picked up by European insurance companies, who should charge extreme premiums for unsafe designs, effectively blocking the sale of the vehicles from dangerous, young, or casual drivers and limiting those designs to those who truly need them (which I suspect is very few.) This should also go a long way in addressing inexpensive Chinese vehicles that ape the American designs. Since that is more likely going to be what is on the roads.

bluecalm 11mo ago
>>If the EU is politically forced into accepting the US standards: The slack will need to be picked up by European insurance companies, who should charge extreme premiums for unsafe designs, effectively blocking the sale of the vehicles from dangerous, young, or casual drivers and limiting those designs to those who truly need them (which I suspect is very few.) That only works if there are big penalties for killing people with your car. As it is as long as you are not drunk and have your license you get away with a minor slap on the wrist. You pay if you damage someone's else car but if you kill them then there is usually no financial responsibility and thus no reason to rise insurance premiums.