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If someone wrote about their experiences travelling the world, would you make a similar criticism? After all, they are flying, which causes a lot of extra carbo

If someone wrote about their experiences travelling the world, would you make a similar criticism? After all, they are flying, which causes a lot of extra carbon emissions. Or is the fire truck particularly bad for some reason?

Swizec 14y ago
As a European I don't understand the american fascination with impractically fhuge cars for every day commuting. Okay I get it, you want a big car for that roadtrip or vacation. Understandable, I do too. But for everyday stuff? My hatchback does perfectly fine around town ... hell, it does perfectly well on most vacations and long drives too.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  There's no complicated fascination. It is simple. People like big cars because they are spacious, feel safer, provide a higher vantage point, and a host of other reasons. Your hatchback is perfectly fine around town, but it can't tow a boat, and most people don't like to have multiple cars. So, what winds up happening is people buy the most car they think they will need. It's totally overkill driving to work, and plenty of people never actually tow that boat, but this is why it happens. Europeans would do the exact same thing, I figure, if they lived in an economic climate with similar gas prices and car taxes and such. With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small.
  - byroot 14y ago
    > With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small. It's more the rule than the exception. European car makers have a specific car category named "City cars", big enough to host 4 to 5 people but as small as possible to be easy to park etc. Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is why he don't understand. American cities are modern and built for cars, most big european cities have been built for walkers and horses, so now we got a tons of oneway streets and a general lack of space to park cars.
    - justincormack 14y ago
      Or the smaller ones for 2 people...
    - chaz 14y ago
      Combine that with a fairly sophisticated highway system that runs everywhere around the country, a post-war boom in car and suburban home ownership, and low cost of fuel, and it becomes imbued within the culture as the norm.
    - Swizec 14y ago
      > Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is a very important distinction! What a European considers a huge SUV is a small town car in the US. At least judging from what I've seen on my visits. Some of those cars are just uncomfortably big.
    - zanny 14y ago
      It kind of depends where you live in the US. I live in a rural PA town where they have built highways over dirt roads and the main state route into town is a two lane country street that carries 18 wheelers every hour of the day and has a never ending backup. Parking on main street, for example, is nigh impossible. Parts of it aren't wide enough for many cars to go past one another while the streetside parking is in use (and it always is, the town has no parking since... who needed parking in 1800?). And then there is a big state university in town, so you end up getting delivery trucks to the campus all the time and some drivers don't have the experience to know not to try taking an 18 wheeler down main street.
      - LancerSykera 14y ago
        Okay, I give up. It's either Kutztown or Lock Haven. I've been to Lock Haven, it's not an amusing place to navigate (especially the campus).
        pc86 14y ago
        I've only ever been to Kutztown and didn't think it was too bad (granted, I was in a mid-size sedan and not an Escalade), so my money's on Lock Haven.
  - Swizec 14y ago
    "but it can't tow a boat" It probably could and where the hell would I even put a boat. Silly americans :D
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      Depends on the boat. I want to buy a 13ft one-man sailboat that weights 130lbs. Any car can tow that. Some people have boats that weight two tons. Good luck towing that in a Fiat 500.
      - venus 14y ago
        Well, when you win the lottery and are able to actually buy that boat, perhaps you can budget in the cost of a car to pull it? This "aspirational" angle to buying big cars actually explains a lot, like a fat kid drinking Gatorade or out of shape guys wearing tracksuits to the mall, "just in case". After all, if you're driving a big car, no-one will be able to definitively say you don't own a boat..
        sliverstorm 14y ago
        Yup, it's even a common marketing angle. Ever heard of greenwashing? SUV marketing often depicts a vehicle being driven offroad and/or through rough conditions, when 99% of their buyers will never use the car like that. They are playing on buyer's desire to cultivate a certain image.
  - Retric 14y ago
    You might be surprised. 50 years ago it was a major issue, but now engines are powerful and small so all you need is a tow hitch and a small boat. EX: Toyota Corolla can tow 1500 lbs which is a fair sized load. Granted if, you want to pull a 22' boat that's another story. But, for lake fishing it's fine.
    - sliverstorm 14y ago
      First, plenty of boats weight more than 1500lbs, especially if you include the trailer. Trailers always weight more than you think. For example, U-Haul's smallest utility trailer is 630lbs. Second, there are more issues than power. Towing 1500lbs behind a Corolla puts a lot of strain on the car that it wasn't particularly meant to handle on anything other than an occasional basis, especially with things like automatic transmissions. Also very important, a Corolla is 2700lbs. 1500lbs of trailer starts to get sketchy, and the trailer can start yanking around the tow vehicle. Edit: yes, you are right, lake fishing in a rowboat, you don't need a dedicated tow vehicle. Thing is, people dream they will get that 22' boat in a few years, so they buy the F-650 or whatever.
      - Retric 14y ago
        U-Haul's designing that to last though a beating and carry cargo for a boat you can go as low as a 125 lbs for the trailer. As a SUT-200-S will handle a 200LB boat and it's shipping wieght is 125 lb. http://www.clcboats.com/shop/products/boat-gear/boat-transportation-storage-gear/trailex-sut-200-s-single-boat-trailer-kit.html http://www.clcboats.com/shop/products/boat-gear/boat-transpo... Anyway, sure there are limits, but a nice 14 foot boat at 1,000lb plus 500lb for the trailer is still a decent boat IMO.
    - matwood 14y ago
      Toyota Corolla can tow 1500 lbs which is a fair sized load. While the engine can handle it, that's generally not the issue with towing anymore. Like you said, todays engines are powerful. It's the rest of the car that needs to be beefed up for towing. Particularly the transmission and breaks. My 4-runner had plenty of power to tow my boat, but over time the wear and tear on the rest of the vehicle would destroy a perfectly good car. I now have a Tundra that is build to pull the load. FYI, my boat ready to fish plus trailer is ~7k pounds. To the original poster wondering why people want such big cars. Personally I would love a smaller car, but I enjoy my boat more :)
- sharkweek 14y ago
  I've got a Toyota 4Runner, perfectly capable of moving people and towing a trailer on rare occasions. It also comes in really handy when we do our Costco grocery shopping. For the "everyday" commute, I'm proudly on the bus and noticing as of late that this is getting more and more common with younger age groups who want to live in urban areas, where mass transit is most convenient. I would bet this trend continues for the next few decades in the United States.
  - BruceIV 14y ago
    Agreed. I do most of my commuting by bus, and mostly drive my car nights and weekends, when the bus doesn't run as often, or my few trips out of town - most months I only fill up once. That said, I wouldn't get rid of my car: I live in one of about 15 cities in Canada large enough to have a decent bus system [1, >300,000 people], and when I make the 15 hour drive a quarter of the way across the country to visit my family, I need the car to get around, because they live 10 kilometres from the nearest town large enough to have a supermarket. Public transit is awesome, but most of my country simply doesn't have the population density to support it (the distances and travel times are similar in the US, though there are more cities, so I understand the car culture) [1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/d...
- alan_cx 14y ago
  Im a European, well British anyway.... Something occurred to me today regarding Americans and big huge stupid cars... I was watching the NASCAR earlier and there was a throwaway comment about some driver's sponsors being "local". By local they mean 60 miles away. Now to a Brit, maybe other Europeans, 60 miles feels like anything but "local". So, I get the impression that we don't understand the sort of scale of travel there is in the US. Which kinda begins to explain this fascination with big large cars with big lazy engines. These cars fit American geography and scale. I think it also explain what oil seems that bit more important to the Americans. See, Im pretty sure that if an American came to live in the UK (maybe else where in Europe) and tried to run a big old American car here, it would take about a week before this American when off and bought a little European type car. Equally, Im pretty sure we'd ditch a small Euro type car for a big old American thing is we went to the US. I too think American cars are a bit silly, but I think they make sense in context. I think American cars will get smaller and more efficient, but I think they will always be designed with those long distances and scales in mind.
  - scott_s 14y ago
    "A Brit is someone who thinks 100 miles in a long distance, and an American is someone who thinks 100 years is a long time."
  - courtewing 14y ago
    To give you some sense of how "local" 60 miles can be in the US, I live a more urban life style than most people in the US (although likely less than most people on this board), but I frequently drive 60 miles simply to have dinner with friends or family. We never considered that a hike, it's just a quick trip in the car. Our 2005 Honda CRV is approaching 120,000 miles, and both myself and my fiancée telecommute.
    - arethuza 14y ago
      I'm in the UK (Scotland) and I don't think twice about driving 6 hours in one day to go skiing (3 hour drive, say 6 hours skiing, 3 hour drive back) - in fact thinking about doing that tomorrow. A colleage just drove/ferry back home from Germany - which nobody regards as anything unusual.
- goatforce5 14y ago
  Apparently the fascination is ending: "According to Polk's data, the large mainstream sedan segment has plunged from a 5.8-percent share of the US car market in 2008 to just 3.5 percent in 2012. That sales drop is enough to put this most American of car bodystyles behind the minivan segment, a market whose own sales slide has been comparatively well documented." http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-withering-away-will-it-survive/ http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-witherin...
- jetti 14y ago
  I currently drive a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup and love it. Do I have a need for it all the time? No. But there were a few factors that went into the decision: - My wife wants to get a boat as well as we were gifted jet skis by her family. - I anticipate moving at least three times over the next 10 years (the lifetime I give to the car barring any accidents) which the pickup will be great to be able to move things as well as being able to hookup a UHaul and go. The biggest plus for me though is that I'm 6' 3" and 250lb and don't necessarily fit into some of the cars that are economical when it comes to fuel. My previous car (Toyota Corolla) actually would hurt my knees when driving more than 30 minutes because I had to angle my legs in a weird position in order to drive.
- brc 14y ago
  Cut the guy some slack, he lives in Montana. Space and distances are hardly a rare commodity in Montana. It's OK for other people to have a bit of fun. Really, it is.
fzzzy 14y ago
This is one thing that bugs me about complaints about the carbon emissions of cars. Planes cause far more carbon emissions, and they do it way up in the atmosphere where it seems plausible that it actually does more damage. It's a giant elephant in the room.
- jonknee 14y ago
  You can take steps to reduce carbon emissions in cars (smaller car, drive more efficiently, etc), but you can't with planes other than not flying. Luckily, it's in the best interest of airlines to reduce emissions since that means less jet fuel and more profits.
  - fzzzy 14y ago
    Indeed, this is true. Thanks for this. The realization that it is also in the best interest of an airline to reduce emissions, especially as the price of oil increases, really helps make me feel better. Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it.
    - Peaker 14y ago
      Of course it does reduce emissions. Increasing demand for flights means the airlines fly more planes.
    - zevyoura 14y ago
      >Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it. On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights.
      - claudius 14y ago
        > On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights. Try to get flights from London to Paris or from Paris to Lyon. Not flying stops planes from flying very quickly.

Swizec 14y ago

As a European I don't understand the american fascination with impractically fhuge cars for every day commuting. Okay I get it, you want a big car for that roadtrip or vacation. Understandable, I do too. But for everyday stuff? My hatchback does perfectly fine around town ... hell, it does perfectly well on most vacations and long drives too.

sliverstorm 14y ago
There's no complicated fascination. It is simple. People like big cars because they are spacious, feel safer, provide a higher vantage point, and a host of other reasons. Your hatchback is perfectly fine around town, but it can't tow a boat, and most people don't like to have multiple cars. So, what winds up happening is people buy the most car they think they will need. It's totally overkill driving to work, and plenty of people never actually tow that boat, but this is why it happens. Europeans would do the exact same thing, I figure, if they lived in an economic climate with similar gas prices and car taxes and such. With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small.
- byroot 14y ago
  > With the possible exception of people living in old cities whose roads are just too small. It's more the rule than the exception. European car makers have a specific car category named "City cars", big enough to host 4 to 5 people but as small as possible to be easy to park etc. Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is why he don't understand. American cities are modern and built for cars, most big european cities have been built for walkers and horses, so now we got a tons of oneway streets and a general lack of space to park cars.
  - justincormack 14y ago
    Or the smaller ones for 2 people...
  - chaz 14y ago
    Combine that with a fairly sophisticated highway system that runs everywhere around the country, a post-war boom in car and suburban home ownership, and low cost of fuel, and it becomes imbued within the culture as the norm.
  - Swizec 14y ago
    > Driving, and worse parking, an american sized SUV in europe is very painful. This is a very important distinction! What a European considers a huge SUV is a small town car in the US. At least judging from what I've seen on my visits. Some of those cars are just uncomfortably big.
  - zanny 14y ago
    It kind of depends where you live in the US. I live in a rural PA town where they have built highways over dirt roads and the main state route into town is a two lane country street that carries 18 wheelers every hour of the day and has a never ending backup. Parking on main street, for example, is nigh impossible. Parts of it aren't wide enough for many cars to go past one another while the streetside parking is in use (and it always is, the town has no parking since... who needed parking in 1800?). And then there is a big state university in town, so you end up getting delivery trucks to the campus all the time and some drivers don't have the experience to know not to try taking an 18 wheeler down main street.
    - LancerSykera 14y ago
      Okay, I give up. It's either Kutztown or Lock Haven. I've been to Lock Haven, it's not an amusing place to navigate (especially the campus).
      - pc86 14y ago
        I've only ever been to Kutztown and didn't think it was too bad (granted, I was in a mid-size sedan and not an Escalade), so my money's on Lock Haven.
- Swizec 14y ago
  "but it can't tow a boat" It probably could and where the hell would I even put a boat. Silly americans :D
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    Depends on the boat. I want to buy a 13ft one-man sailboat that weights 130lbs. Any car can tow that. Some people have boats that weight two tons. Good luck towing that in a Fiat 500.
    - venus 14y ago
      Well, when you win the lottery and are able to actually buy that boat, perhaps you can budget in the cost of a car to pull it? This "aspirational" angle to buying big cars actually explains a lot, like a fat kid drinking Gatorade or out of shape guys wearing tracksuits to the mall, "just in case". After all, if you're driving a big car, no-one will be able to definitively say you don't own a boat..
      - sliverstorm 14y ago
        Yup, it's even a common marketing angle. Ever heard of greenwashing? SUV marketing often depicts a vehicle being driven offroad and/or through rough conditions, when 99% of their buyers will never use the car like that. They are playing on buyer's desire to cultivate a certain image.
- Retric 14y ago
  You might be surprised. 50 years ago it was a major issue, but now engines are powerful and small so all you need is a tow hitch and a small boat. EX: Toyota Corolla can tow 1500 lbs which is a fair sized load. Granted if, you want to pull a 22' boat that's another story. But, for lake fishing it's fine.
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    First, plenty of boats weight more than 1500lbs, especially if you include the trailer. Trailers always weight more than you think. For example, U-Haul's smallest utility trailer is 630lbs. Second, there are more issues than power. Towing 1500lbs behind a Corolla puts a lot of strain on the car that it wasn't particularly meant to handle on anything other than an occasional basis, especially with things like automatic transmissions. Also very important, a Corolla is 2700lbs. 1500lbs of trailer starts to get sketchy, and the trailer can start yanking around the tow vehicle. Edit: yes, you are right, lake fishing in a rowboat, you don't need a dedicated tow vehicle. Thing is, people dream they will get that 22' boat in a few years, so they buy the F-650 or whatever.
    - Retric 14y ago
      U-Haul's designing that to last though a beating and carry cargo for a boat you can go as low as a 125 lbs for the trailer. As a SUT-200-S will handle a 200LB boat and it's shipping wieght is 125 lb. http://www.clcboats.com/shop/products/boat-gear/boat-transportation-storage-gear/trailex-sut-200-s-single-boat-trailer-kit.html http://www.clcboats.com/shop/products/boat-gear/boat-transpo... Anyway, sure there are limits, but a nice 14 foot boat at 1,000lb plus 500lb for the trailer is still a decent boat IMO.
  - matwood 14y ago
    Toyota Corolla can tow 1500 lbs which is a fair sized load. While the engine can handle it, that's generally not the issue with towing anymore. Like you said, todays engines are powerful. It's the rest of the car that needs to be beefed up for towing. Particularly the transmission and breaks. My 4-runner had plenty of power to tow my boat, but over time the wear and tear on the rest of the vehicle would destroy a perfectly good car. I now have a Tundra that is build to pull the load. FYI, my boat ready to fish plus trailer is ~7k pounds. To the original poster wondering why people want such big cars. Personally I would love a smaller car, but I enjoy my boat more :)
sharkweek 14y ago
I've got a Toyota 4Runner, perfectly capable of moving people and towing a trailer on rare occasions. It also comes in really handy when we do our Costco grocery shopping. For the "everyday" commute, I'm proudly on the bus and noticing as of late that this is getting more and more common with younger age groups who want to live in urban areas, where mass transit is most convenient. I would bet this trend continues for the next few decades in the United States.
- BruceIV 14y ago
  Agreed. I do most of my commuting by bus, and mostly drive my car nights and weekends, when the bus doesn't run as often, or my few trips out of town - most months I only fill up once. That said, I wouldn't get rid of my car: I live in one of about 15 cities in Canada large enough to have a decent bus system [1, >300,000 people], and when I make the 15 hour drive a quarter of the way across the country to visit my family, I need the car to get around, because they live 10 kilometres from the nearest town large enough to have a supermarket. Public transit is awesome, but most of my country simply doesn't have the population density to support it (the distances and travel times are similar in the US, though there are more cities, so I understand the car culture) [1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo05a-eng.htm http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/d...
alan_cx 14y ago
Im a European, well British anyway.... Something occurred to me today regarding Americans and big huge stupid cars... I was watching the NASCAR earlier and there was a throwaway comment about some driver's sponsors being "local". By local they mean 60 miles away. Now to a Brit, maybe other Europeans, 60 miles feels like anything but "local". So, I get the impression that we don't understand the sort of scale of travel there is in the US. Which kinda begins to explain this fascination with big large cars with big lazy engines. These cars fit American geography and scale. I think it also explain what oil seems that bit more important to the Americans. See, Im pretty sure that if an American came to live in the UK (maybe else where in Europe) and tried to run a big old American car here, it would take about a week before this American when off and bought a little European type car. Equally, Im pretty sure we'd ditch a small Euro type car for a big old American thing is we went to the US. I too think American cars are a bit silly, but I think they make sense in context. I think American cars will get smaller and more efficient, but I think they will always be designed with those long distances and scales in mind.
- scott_s 14y ago
  "A Brit is someone who thinks 100 miles in a long distance, and an American is someone who thinks 100 years is a long time."
- courtewing 14y ago
  To give you some sense of how "local" 60 miles can be in the US, I live a more urban life style than most people in the US (although likely less than most people on this board), but I frequently drive 60 miles simply to have dinner with friends or family. We never considered that a hike, it's just a quick trip in the car. Our 2005 Honda CRV is approaching 120,000 miles, and both myself and my fiancée telecommute.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    I'm in the UK (Scotland) and I don't think twice about driving 6 hours in one day to go skiing (3 hour drive, say 6 hours skiing, 3 hour drive back) - in fact thinking about doing that tomorrow. A colleage just drove/ferry back home from Germany - which nobody regards as anything unusual.
goatforce5 14y ago
Apparently the fascination is ending: "According to Polk's data, the large mainstream sedan segment has plunged from a 5.8-percent share of the US car market in 2008 to just 3.5 percent in 2012. That sales drop is enough to put this most American of car bodystyles behind the minivan segment, a market whose own sales slide has been comparatively well documented." http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-withering-away-will-it-survive/ http://www.autoblog.com/2013/03/24/large-car-market-witherin...
jetti 14y ago
I currently drive a Dodge Ram 1500 pickup and love it. Do I have a need for it all the time? No. But there were a few factors that went into the decision: - My wife wants to get a boat as well as we were gifted jet skis by her family. - I anticipate moving at least three times over the next 10 years (the lifetime I give to the car barring any accidents) which the pickup will be great to be able to move things as well as being able to hookup a UHaul and go. The biggest plus for me though is that I'm 6' 3" and 250lb and don't necessarily fit into some of the cars that are economical when it comes to fuel. My previous car (Toyota Corolla) actually would hurt my knees when driving more than 30 minutes because I had to angle my legs in a weird position in order to drive.
brc 14y ago
Cut the guy some slack, he lives in Montana. Space and distances are hardly a rare commodity in Montana. It's OK for other people to have a bit of fun. Really, it is.

fzzzy 14y ago

This is one thing that bugs me about complaints about the carbon emissions of cars. Planes cause far more carbon emissions, and they do it way up in the atmosphere where it seems plausible that it actually does more damage. It's a giant elephant in the room.

jonknee 14y ago
You can take steps to reduce carbon emissions in cars (smaller car, drive more efficiently, etc), but you can't with planes other than not flying. Luckily, it's in the best interest of airlines to reduce emissions since that means less jet fuel and more profits.
- fzzzy 14y ago
  Indeed, this is true. Thanks for this. The realization that it is also in the best interest of an airline to reduce emissions, especially as the price of oil increases, really helps make me feel better. Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it.
  - Peaker 14y ago
    Of course it does reduce emissions. Increasing demand for flights means the airlines fly more planes.
  - zevyoura 14y ago
    >Not flying doesn't really reduce emissions though... Those planes are going to fly whether or not you are on it. On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights.
    - claudius 14y ago
      > On an individual level, sure, but not flying reduces demand, which in turn reduces the number of flights. Try to get flights from London to Paris or from Paris to Lyon. Not flying stops planes from flying very quickly.