Yeah but the drivers get to cosplay as Rugged Men™.
The only thing that'll reverse the trend and stop this from getting worse will be government regulation. Then come the cries of "Now they're taking our trucks!"
Yeah but the drivers get to cosplay as Rugged Men™.
The only thing that'll reverse the trend and stop this from getting worse will be government regulation. Then come the cries of "Now they're taking our trucks!"
There is another angle here besides the immediate impact (pun intended) of getting hit by a big truck.
I'm nearly 60, but I can remember what it was like learning to drive back in 1980. Before SUVs and huge pickup trucks became common, and before tinting windows to near opacity became a thing, it was possible to see road conditions three cars ahead -- you simply looked through the windows of the car or cars in front of you. I found it unnerving to drive behind a delivery truck because all I could see of the road was the back of the truck, so I'd change lanes so I could have more advanced notice of what was ahead of me.
These days that is mostly over: windows are too opaque, and very often that is moot because the vehicle immediately before me is well above my Corolla's vantage point.
Streets haven't gotten wider since then either. Maybe less of a problem in the US where everything is planned around humongous fire trucks, but in the EU if you had a street that could easily accommodate two moving lanes with parking on either side, that has basically narrowed down to one moving lane.
Also reminds me of all the regulation around car lights - you literally specified the beam pattern light intensity color and what not, but you couldn't be bothered to narrowly restrict the height off the ground? Great, now everyone in a sedan is being blinded by all sorts of SUVs and trucks. Utter failure.
Great, now everyone in a sedan is being blinded by all sorts of SUVs and trucks. Utter failure.
I drive a truck and live in a mountainous area. Trust me, it's not just sedans. Nearly everyone drives around with their brights on and it seems they no longer bother to turn them down when approaching traffic (automatic dimming features don't work well up here). Consequently, night time driving is dangerous. I don't know what their advertised beam pattern is, but it's like driving passed spotlights aimed at your eyes while on the road when you're on the outside lane.
FWIW mine are halogens (2014). Plenty bright (and aim-able—for towing), but they're useless when you're temporarily blinded by super bright LEDs.
I rode with a work acquaintance at night once, and noticed he kept his high beams on the whole time, despite oncoming traffic. I eventually said something, like shouldn't you dim your lights when there's someone oncoming? He looked at me like I had antlers growing out of my forehead. "Duh... The high beams are brighter and let me see better." That's the bottom line: Not even a thought about other drivers. And these people are everywhere.
My 10 years old VW turns off the high beams when it detects incoming traffic, or in general stronger ambient lights (like, street lighting in a locality). But in the US there are no such requirements, I assume.
It’s a feature on new cars, but it’s not enabled by default (you usually have off, auto, high).
I think you're right. That's more plausible than blaming tech, which I did.
Judging by the increasingly anti-social driving habits I'm seeing during the day time, this possibility definitely stands out (the worst being a tendency for people to slow down traffic 10-15 MPH under the posted speed only to speed up to 10-15 MPH over when someone attempts to pass them).
automatic dimming features don't work well up here
That's disappointing to hear, but a counterpoint: the first car I ever drove that had auto-dimming was a Ford Escape rental in Utah. I drove from SLC to Moab and back, plenty of night driving in mountains, and it performed far beyond my expectations. I really never had to adjust the lights manually.
Which is to say, probably more to do with the specific implementation than the terrain.
That's a good point. If it were brighter, I'd pay more attention to the manufacturer of the vehicle to see if there were any obvious correlation.
(Truthfully, I'm just guessing that the drivers are relying on auto-dimming tech since it seems way too consistent to "just" be "oh, haha, I forgot." But, the latter is certainly possible given your sibling comment—perhaps more and more people genuinely don't care about other drivers.)
Yeah you shouldn't be able to see your car's shadow (cast by the car behinds headlights) on the road in front of you when your headlights are on...
Yeah I hate that narrow UK streets are dominated by idiot box SUVs parked on both fucking sides of the road, making it fully single lane.
I come from New Zealand; I know when you need a ute or an SUV and you do NOT need one in London.
How else do you expect me to drive though puddles?
Streets may not have gotten wider in a given city/town since then, but there's been a lot of population growth and development in that time in the sunbelt where urban planning has favored very wide roads. So even if roads themselves aren't getting wider, people have been moving to places where roads are wide.
This. I was recently in Phoenix for a meeting and was struck by the state of the roads there. Lots of paint on the roads bike lines on 4 or 6 lane 45 mph streets where lots of folks were doing 55+. I class myself as someone who will bike a lot of places in Seattle but I didn't see a single road (i'm sure there are some somewhere there) that I'd be willing to ride in Phoenix.
To add to it, they should put a limit on Lumens on Headlight something like not to exceed 2000 lumens, Also its temperature should be 3000k range like old cars but new ones are like 8000k. yesterday night - saw a light that must be atleast 20000 lumens its like watching sun, cant see anything for a few seconds.
They (The RAC[0]) are actually pushing for regulation here in the UK along those lines.
There seems to be quite a push from the public to do something, so maybe it'll change one day..
"According to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, between the ages of 15 and 65, the time it takes to recover from glare increases from one to nine seconds.
At 60 miles an hour, that’s 250 yards in nine seconds.
Baroness Hayter said: "The Group’s first interaction with Ministers led them to say: No problem here, no evidence of deaths or serious injuries. Since then, the public have reached out to tell us they disagree, and that many are stopping driving at night, with eight out of 10 drivers surveyed wanting action to reduce glare.
"We know other countries share our concern, with drivers demanding action. The Government needs to heed our call for action and be on the side of road safety."
0: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/news/motoring-news/drivers-deman...
Streets haven't gotten wider since then either.
In proper urban design that's actually a feature. People don't care about the posted speed limit - they probably won't even notice the sign. Instead they drive at the speed which they feel is appropriate for the road.
A lot of the suburban infrastructure in the US was developed around collision safety. This means wide roads and large setbacks, all in order to get rid of anything to collide with. However, this means that a regular residential street now feels extremely safe to drive: it's essentially a highway, so people will drive at highway speeds.
On the other hand, plenty of suburban road infrastructure in Europe has been explicitly designed to feel unsafe. The roads are intentionally made narrow, visibility is poor, and you'll run into plenty of obstacles like chicanes. Although plenty of that is a leftover from the pre-car era, it's nowadays an intentional design decision for new roads even when there is plenty of space. It's physically impossible to drive on those streets at highway speeds, so people are forced to slow down. Anyone with even the vaguest sense of self-preservation will drive a lot slower with a 6-inch clearance to oncoming traffic than with a 6-feet clearance. The lower speeds in turn actually make the roads safer, and make it possible to share them with cyclists and other low-speed traffic.
Fun fact: the narrowest residential street allowed in the US is wider than a highway lane in The Netherlands.
Windows and front/back windshields are way smaller now, too. It's like we're all driving around looking out of tank-viewport-slits. (I'm sure there are exceptions in some models—I drove a buddy's Jeep-truck the other day and the unusually-good-by-modern-standards visibility nearly turned me into a Jeep guy on the spot—but that's the trend)
Yes. As you may know, recent safety regulations prompted by rollover incidents have meant that the "A" and "C" pillars connecting the body to the roof have been made wider. [See the first 2 paragraphs of the "Design" section of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pillar_(car) ]
It seems like there's a second-order effect here on visibility that may not have been really appreciated.
With my previous car, I never remember having visibility issues. I then got a 2013. The pillars aie ierfect pedestian blockerr, especially when making turns. I don't see how me doing better in a roll over is better than me running someone over.
I've noticed this in the cars I've had over the past 15 years or so too. We hit a deer two years ago because it was moving perfectly in time with the side curtain airbag laden support column in my field of view. I barely saw it when I hit it even! I understand that rillover accidents have lead to these supports being thicker, but why was the solution not to lower the center of gravity on cars so they are less prone to rolling over?
FWIW that phenomenon is a geometry thing, not just a fluke. If you are on a collision course with an obstacle at constant speed, than the angle remains constant (as the configuration preserves congruent triangles until impact) and the obstacle can easily remain invisible for a long time, until impact, hiding behind the pillars or even just hidden by the blind spot in your eye if you haven’t moved your head
See https://youtu.be/SYeeTvitvFU for an example.
One of the advantages of raking the front windshield for aerodynamics is changing the geometry for the A pillar to be more sideways instead of vertical, allowing a bit more hope of seeing something.
Within the last two weeks I almost collided with another car while leaving a parking lot, because that car was moving in perfect sync with my left A-pillar, such that I didn't see it until it was directly in front of me. It was like a car magically appeared from thin air.
Because changing the center of gravity is an expensive engineering solution. Crossovers came about as a loophole to CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) regulations, as CUVs are considered "light trucks" and are thus tested differently than pedestrian passenger vehicles. Since CUVs had to adhere to that "light truck" designation before the EPA just gave up and let them do whatever, often times that meant they had to have SUV like features such as taller bodies, higher ride heights, and thicker unibodies to enable towing. Lifting an existing sedan platform and creating a subframe for the rear was cheaper than engineering an entirely new platform with a lower center of gravity, and thus that's what they've been doing since 1999. Even as sedans drop like flies leaving only CUVs, SUVs, and trucks, they still engineer them as if they were just adding ride height to a sedan.
Cars in the 80s and 90s definitely had more of a "greenhouse" feel to them, with mostly transparent glass and small framing.
Due to a mixture of standards, this has changed. The roof cap and pillars have thickened and curved for roll-over protection, and front pillars are also thicker to hold air bags that didn't exist in those older cars. The windows sills are higher up relative to the driver, to improve side-impact protection.
There are other changes too, such as dark coatings around the edges of windshields and fat mounts behind the rear view mirror to hold sensors, cameras, etc. As a tall driver, I find these changes very frustrating. The rear view mirror is capable of hiding a crossing car at a 4-way stop, and I sometimes cannot even see overhead traffic lights when stopped in the first position at an intersection.
Due to a mixture of standards, this has changed. The roof cap and pillars have thickened and curved for roll-over protection, and front pillars are also thicker to hold air bags that didn't exist in those older cars. The windows sills are higher up relative to the driver, to improve side-impact protection.
I've heard this argument before, but I'm simply not buying it. Cars like the Honda Civic or Volkswagen Golf have an excellent safety record, outclassing many giant SUVs while still having relatively small A-pillars and large windows on all sides. It is much more likely that it is simply a design choice, making them look "tough", "manly", and "aggressive" - just like that giant snowplow front which has become popular over the past few years.
If anything, giant SUVs are less safe, because they have to follow the less-strict safety standards for small trucks rather than passenger cars. They are especially prone to rollovers due to their high center of gravity. People feel safer in an SUV, because they are surrounded by similarly-sized vehicles rather than being surrounded by cars twice your size, but that doesn't actually make them safer.
I don't disagree that some cars are worse than necessary, and this probably comes from styling/fashion trends. But across all makes and models, there is a trend driven by changing safety requirements.
The Hondas (and Toyotas) of the 80s had much thinner A-pillars than they do now. Barely enough to hold the weather gasket for the windshield and act as a frame for the front door.
I was in an early 80s Toyota Hi-Lux during a relatively gentle rollover and watched the roof and windshield cave in towards me. I think I was saved by the fiberglass camper shell on the bed, so it only collapsed until the weight of the car was transferred to the hood and the shell. The cab roof got smashed into a linear interpolation of those high points...
Well... There are a few regulations I know exactly that contributed to this. One was the roof crush rollover standard. I believe it was passed in 2007 and stated that any vehicle must be able to hold up it's entire weight upon it's roof in the even of rolling over and being upside down. The other was the front small overlap test, which hit the vehicle directly in line with one of the front wheels. This shunted the wheel and suspension directly back against the firewall, often completely collapsing the A-pillar. In response A-pillars were thickened and given a much more convex shape at the bottom. Aerodynamics also meant that the windshields are also raked further back. Beyond a specific angle an acute triangle begins to weaken, and the acute angles of many A-pillars and C/D-pillars are well beyond that weakening point, necessitating complex inner structures that one again make them thicker. Since 1996 the IIHS and EuroNCAP have also become more and more stringent with the rear passenger side impact intrusion test, designed to protect children in the event of a side-on collision. One of the unintended consequences of this test was the head restriction height for seats, where cars with higher shoulders (the bottom edge of the greenhouse) in the rear did better in preventing a child's head from escaping the vehicle than cars with even shoulders. This is why only very tall cars seem to have flat shoulders and why small vehicles such as the Mazda3 look like someone canted the entire car forward fifteen degrees.
Hmm. I'm not sure how true that is, but that might be a perception thing because hoods have gotten longer and windshields have gotten more slanted. Being farther from the front of the car/windshield makes your view angle smaller even if the height of the window hasn't changed.
Surprisingly, sloped windows are more of a safety thing than a fuel efficiency or aerodynamics thing. If the windshield is too sloped, it acts like a wedge that throws air up above the car and causes a ton of turbulence. It's more important that the airflow stays stuck to the top surface of the car, and a steeper windshield helps with that.
OK, the glass may or may not be smaller on the windshield and rear (I haven't measured, and yeah, a greater slant could be the mechanism, not less glass) but the viewable area is smaller.
Side windows are 100% for-sure smaller, because all the structures around them have gotten much thicker.
I regularly pass people on the right and then cut them off getting back into the left lane just so that I don't have to be stuck behind someone I can't see around.
The tinted front/rear windows really piss me off because they make my drive more dangerous for very little reason. I'd make them illegal if it were up to me.
Know what's already illegal? Passing on the right:
Laws that cover passing when crossing the centerline of the roadway is not required (where there are multiple lanes in the same direction), often say something like this:
The driver of a vehicle overtaking another vehicle proceeding in the same direction shall pass to the left thereof at a safe distance and shall not again drive to the right side of the roadway until safely clear of the overtaken vehicle.
source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/free-books/beat-tick...
It's not illegal everywhere, and it's silly that it's illegal anywhere.
Not silly. Here's why:
1. Passing on the right, i.e. passenger side, means being in the driver's blind spot longer.
2. On- and off-ramps are almost always on the right, as are police making traffic stops, ambulances, cars pulled over on the shoulder, sidewalks, pedestrians, cross streets, etc.
3. Slower traffic is supposed to be in the right lane (because of #2), so a car accelerating to pass the car in front of it, suddenly in a lane of slow traffic, is a safety hazard to the slower drivers, regardless of #2.
I'm writing from the US, so for me left lane = driver's side.
The right lanes are generally explicitly intended to be slower lanes. Making them optionally faster lanes can be dangerously disruptive. As well as, when the rightmost lane is used to pass, difficult for new vehicles to merge from side roads.
These laws are made so people know what to expect for safe driving. When we're all being chauffeured in autonomous vehicles it'll be safe to rethink them.
Those jurisdictions typically have more strongly enforced "slower traffic keep right" laws also. Why the double standard?
Passing on the right is legal in Most states, including mine. Goung slow in the left lane however, is a crime.
Depends on the state.
https://law.justia.com/codes/new-mexico/2011/chapter66/artic...
Which is probably a good thing since drivers from out of state (ahem, Texas) tend to prefer to left lane, will go 10-15 under the posted speed limit, and promptly go 10-15 OVER the posted speed limit when you attempt to overtake them.
Tinted front windshields are illegal in California, among other states, fwiw. The law just isn’t enforced, just like modded exhaust, and residential speed limits … and passing on the right.
It's perfectly legal in California to safely pass on the right on a multilane highway and in some other situations. What is illegal is using anything other than a normal traffic lane to do this, such as the shoulder.
Of course this does not excuse GP's practice where "I regularly pass people on the right and then cut them off getting back into the left lane..."
Unless I misunderstood GP's comment, that sounds like reckless driving.
Source:
CVC 21754. The driver of a vehicle may overtake and pass to the right of another vehicle only under the following conditions: (c) Upon any highway outside of a business or residence district with unobstructed pavement of sufficient width and clearly marked for two or more lines of moving traffic in the direction of travel.
CVC 21755. (a) The driver of a vehicle may overtake and pass another vehicle upon the right only under conditions permitting that movement in safety. In no event shall that movement be made by driving off the paved or main-traveled portion of the roadway.
[other subsections omitted here, see below for full text]
https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-veh/divisi...
https://law.justia.com/codes/california/2022/code-veh/divisi...
You were being pedantic up until here, so let's continue with the presumption of pedantry: what GP described is very far from reckless driving because they knew exactly what they were doing. You can cut people off safely, if dickishly, because of how the laws of physics work: cars can't suddenly teleport into where you will be, acceleration (especially at those speeds) is relatively slow for the vast majority of passenger vehicles.
I hate this so much around me in Massachusetts. Makes it impossible to know what the driver is going to do at an intersection when I can’t seem them. Often they resort to rolling down their window to be able to politely gesture at me, which would not be necessary if I could see them in the first place as should be legally required </rant>
I'd make them illegal if it were up to me.
They mostly are (at least the front windshield is), it's just not really enforced.
This is one of the reasons I daily drive a 1990 BMW 325i—the visibility is just unparalleled.
Even with the increase visibility, I'm sure you'd be much safer in a 2020 BMW 3-series. Heck even a 2010.
The occupants of the vehicle would be safer, but what if your main worry is hitting pedestrians during in-city driving? If that was my worry, I would greatly prefer the 1990 model.
Same with most 90s cars. My old honda is practically a greenhouse, and was ctitisized for its c pillar at the time.
Non-trucks attempting a right-turn-on-red next to trucks are also more likely to hit a pedestrian, though if they are driving in a sane manner, it's unlikely to be fatal. I cannot see a pedestrian over the hood of a truck stopped just short of the crosswalk until my bumper is already well into the crosswalk.
Not nearly as bad as hitting someone, but it's also annoying when a person is honking behind me and I'm thinking "Dude, I can't turn right until the light turns green because I can't see oncoming traffic since the truck/SUV in the left lane pulled forward.".
Oh, I've been honked a few times in the past few months right after pulling up to a light just after it turned red and the cross traffic has a green light. It's like... "you really expect me to pull out INTO traffic because you're so impatient?!" The first time it happened the person kept hitting their horn until they saw the cross traffic. Amazing.
I've noticed this too and this is why I leave at least 5 car lengths in front of me, sometimes even more. I can see around the vehicle in front of me no problem, and can absorb the energy for those rush hour random stops. It seems like 9 out of 10 people follow with less than 3 car lengths, even at 60 to 80mph. This leaves no room for error and anecdotally I've seen it bite people many times.
The 5+ car length strategy has served me extremely well in many years of a 2 hour commute. I can't remember once where I had to panic brake due to being surprised by a random 70mph to 0mph stop, and I can only assume that I'm helping drivers behind me get to their destination safely as well due to absorbing that slinky effect.
The only con is people jump in front of me here and there, but that doesn't bother me one bit.
People way overplay the “everyone will cut in front of you” if you leave five or more spaces - it really will only happen in literal stop-and-go traffic where you are going five miles per hour anyway.
I love the "people will pull in front of you" that people make.
That's what the road is for! On a multi lane road of course people can pull in front of you, that's how driving works. All people gotta do is drop back a little so there's a proper gap again. People get so hot under the collar, chill pill my dudes.
Obv not directed at OP, only at the people that make that argument.
I think that's more of a function of the relative difference between the sizes of your vehicle and the other vehicle, not the absolute size of the other vehicle. The relative size is a big factor in why mixing bikes with cars is so deadly. The other one, of course, is relative speed. Years ago I got my CDL and there was a multiple choice question to the effect of what is the safest speed to drive. Three of the answers were all relative to the speed limit and the correct answer was relative to other traffic: the safest speed is the speed of the cars around you, or zero relative speed.
Just stay well enough back from the car in front of you and you'll be fine..
It's even more noticeable cycling. An adult on a bicycle has their head just above roof level of an ordinary car, which is excellent as it gives a view of cars coming the other way.
I go through the area where all the really rich people live, and it's easy to see over their sports cars, luxury sedans etc.
Continuing through the wannabe-rich area, my view is then blocked by SUVs and similar.
(Whether this is important depends mostly on how well separated car and bicycle traffic is.)
My proposed regulation is to introduce a hazardous vehicle license for large trucks and SUVs. Everyone is automatically granted one alongside their normal drivers license, but if you're caught driving recklessly (weaving through traffic on the highway, aggressively tailgating, speeding through residential or urban areas), you lose it and you have to drive a normal-sized car. Perhaps there's a way to earn it back through paying a fine and taking a safe driving course. The classification of vehicles as hazardous should be based on factors known to increase pedestrian and vehicle collision fatalities to encourage safe designs.
I like the spirit, but don't like the unintended consequence that it would create a stigma around sedans -- "oh, those are the cars for the bad drivers". We need to do something that makes SUV drivers feel ridiculous and humiliated. Or, failing that, just make it expensive: Weight and size dependent tolls, say (using the fourth power of weight, possibly, to match road wear equations?). Or just fewer lanes in which those vehicles are allowed. "You don't get the elite lane."
If we're going to try to "punish" SUV drivers for driving those vehicles, then I think we need to both recognize and do some things:
1) We need to recognize that there's a wide variety of vehicles in the SUV category. Many of them have replaced (not supplemented, replaced, because they sell better and car companies are hyperoptimizing their profits like everyone else) old standards like station wagons and minivans in manufacturer lineups. Most of them do not have the stupidly-high hoods that this article is actually about: those are primarily on pickup trucks.
2) We need to recognize that, at least for some SUVs, there are genuine, non-overcompensating use cases. Like driving on snowy, icy winter roads in the northern US and all of Canada.
3) Having recognized these things, we need to make sure there is provision in place for the people who have actual needs these vehicles are fulfilling—whether because they fall into the smaller category of people who would always need these things, or because they fall into the much larger category of people who would have bought a minivan or station wagon in the '80s and '90s, but most of those have gone away—before we start treating them all like the worst members of the category.
Full disclosure: I drive a Subaru Outback. I drive it for three main reasons: it's extremely reliable, it has amazing cargo capacity (which I do use regularly), and its AWD is a godsend on the roads in upstate NY in the winter. (Is it possible to drive on these roads without it? Absolutely; I drove a Toyota Corolla for over a decade. But I am much less stressed with the AWD.) I just bought my second one, after shopping around extensively to find something that would fulfill my requirements, but get better gas mileage (which, to be fair, the Outback's is actually shockingly good for an SUV).
The Outback is also basically the shape of a station wagon. It does not have an unhealthily high hood. I honestly don't know how its weight compares to other non-SUVs, but my understanding is that right now, the heaviest cars are electric cars, so using weight alone is also not a great metric.
Ultimately, I think what people like you need to do is consider this question: Are you actually trying to solve a real problem with what cars are on the road? Or are you just looking for a socially-acceptable group of people to bully and be mean to? Because your proposals sound a lot like they're aimed at the latter, and very little like they'd be effective at the former.
Suv style vehicles are actually a lot more dangerous in the snow. Its so much more mass you are dealing with and damage when you lose grip entirely on ice under gravity power alone. On video clips of this sedans and such might kind of bump against a parked car and come to a stop while the big Suburban goes on to total a parked car with all the kinetic energy. If you want a snow tank, get a car that weighs like ~2500lbs, put on actual snow tires, and keep the transmission in high gear to engine brake. It also helps to learn to brake traction and skid with control in a snowy empty parking lot.
Again: How does this compare to an EV, which are known to be the heaviest vehicles per unit of volume on the road today?
EVs are as you note terrible in the snow. For one they are heavy and its the same rubber compounds holding a heavy vs lighter car, so no matter what you need more friction than you have to stop. For two they are really powerful cars, I wouldn’t be surprised if people break traction easily. And for three your range depletes to a little over 100 miles. Untenable on mountain trips I take where I might go 50-75 miles between gas stations, far further still between superchargers.
This is a very legitimate criticism of EVs.
I think people tolerate this feature of EVs largely because they are viewed as "green", unlike similarly-massive ICE vehicles.
Form factor also plays a role, which as the article here shows is not merely an aesthetic issue. A Model 3 is heavy but at least it has a low hood.
But you are probably right. Not only are they heavy, but, led by Tesla, EVs have put huge acceleration into the hands of untrained people, together with slightly-unfamiliar controls: Single-pedal interfaces without brake lights, touchscreens that don't clearly indicate when you're in reverse, etc. This combination is likely to cause fatalities.
Electric vehicles could provide fantastic local transportation, in the form of e-bikes, scooters, tuk-tuks, and small efficient vehicles like the Aptera. They could be cheaper than current ICE cars rather than (as they are) more expensive. But our infrastructure is not built for this -- probably trillions have been dumped into highways -- and they are incompatible with the current equilibrium on American roads, where large vehicles are a best response.
And fundamentally, the technology just doesn't permit the requisite ranges without large masses. And those ranges are required because of the way everything else has been built. So we're almost trapped by path dependence.
We need to recognize that, at least for some SUVs, there are genuine, non-overcompensating use cases.
For the things I think of as SUVs, I don't think there is any legitimate use case to be honest.
Big SUVs often have less interior room than a sedan or station wagon so interior room is not a use case. They have way less cargo capacity than a pickup so that's not a use case either. They fit less people than a van, so fail again. They are top-heavy and not nimble, another fail. I don't understand the point of SUVs.
I definitely would not support any kind of SUV ban simply because I don't believe in bans, to each their own, but just make a SUV-license require a lot more training which will discourage most soccer-moms/dads from wanting one.
You say Subaru Outback though. I would have never called that a SUV. It's a wagon. I do see the Subaru website calls it a SUV, which I find weird. I guess the definition of SUV has broadened to mean just about anything.
You say Subaru Outback though. I would have never called that a SUV. It's a wagon.
Well, that makes your definition of an SUV pretty useless for trying to actually change policy or culture, then.
We have to work with the definitions of things that actually exist in the world, not the ones we make up in our heads.
We have to work with the definitions of things that actually exist in the world, not the ones we make up in our heads.
Yes we should, ideally. The word station wagon has meant that form factor in a car for over a hundred years (apparently around 1910, from some light searching).
It's annoying that some marketing person suddently decided to call a station wagon a SUV now that SUV is the hip thing.
A friend has a recent model outback. Compared the the outbacks of 20 years ago it seems huge. I didn’t believe him at first that it was an outback.
Full disclosure: I drive a Subaru Outback. [...T]he Outback's [gas mileage] is actually shockingly good for an SUV).
Funny, I call the Outback an AWD station wagon, not an SUV at all. I've got no problem with that; I'd be much happier if people bought those. Indeed, the very existence of Subarus seems to make most SUVs unnecessary. The only SUV Subaru makes (that I am aware of) is the Forester (and while that's a little larger than my ideal, it's not gigantic).
We need to recognize that there's a wide variety of vehicles in the SUV category.
If I were Supreme Ruler, I would permit the Honda CRV (SUV), Toyota RAV4 (SUV), and Ford Maverick (truck) to exist, but no larger (ignoring commercial vehicles). Also station wagons, and minivans up to the size of the Honda Odyssey.
(As I am not Supreme Ruler, I recognize that this has all the weight of a random opinion on the Internet.)
Are you actually trying to solve a real problem with what cars are on the road? Or are you just looking for a socially-acceptable group of people to bully and be mean to?
Full disclosure: I walk everywhere, or else I take the bus -- and on the rare occasions that I rent or borrow a car, it's typically a small sedan. I react negatively to oversized vehicles (a) because I view them as a threat to my person, and (b) because I'm acutely aware of the arms-race dynamics here. People buy big SUVs because they "feel safer", i.e., in a crash, they are more likely to survive and kill the other driver, rather than the other way around. Recognizing the primal violence underlying this, I respond that the solution is more primal violence, to disincentivize this selfishness and arrest the arms race before it goes any further.
None of which, I will add, applies to the Subaru Outback, which I'm totally cool with.
Funny, I call the Outback an AWD station wagon, not an SUV at all.
Then you're going to need to come up with some better way of defining what a Bad Vehicle is if you want to change policy/culture, because your definition of an SUV doesn't match with reality.
When you say something like "we need to make SUV drivers feel ridiculous and humiliated", but you're using a definition of "SUV" that you made up in your head, you're not communicating anything useful or productive to the world at large.
We can probably make this more objective by aiming for lower hood heights and lower vehicle masses.
Or, crash tests, which currently privilege the driver and passengers, should also consider other road-users, like pedestrians, cyclists, and the drivers of other vehicles -- especially small ones.
Fair point though. It's merely a marketing term of the car industry to begin with.
Note that Subaru raised the Outback up higher some years ago specifically so it would qualify as a light truck some years ago. So while I agree that it's more station wagonny than most light trucks it actually legally qualifies as one. I remember because I actually wrote a cranky letter to Subaru US about it and they sent back a polite response saying "hey, incentives!" more or less.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/business/to-avoid-fuel-li...
I won't recognize (2) because it's false. Any current - and past - fwd will work just fine in Canadian snowy and icy conditions. Sure if you drive a shitty propulsion car you will get stuck everywhere but those cars are the exception.
Edit: you acknowledged yourself that argument is mostly bs later in your comment...
Calgarian here. AWD does help in the snow.
FWD comes standard on the most popular SUVs sold in the US and Canada. I don't know for sure, but it wouldn't surprise me if only a minority of SUVs here are AWD.
Decent points, but it's good to remember that all cars have AWS (all wheel stop) - if you're not careful have AWD can make it easier to miss the transition to where AWS is no longer sufficient. In the NW the main attraction of AWD is not getting stuck in ski area parking lots and not having to put on chains when the roads prematurely force chaining up "except for AWD" because the state patrol knows almost no one has snow tires. (And I've never gotten stuck with snows on my FWD Jetta, but have had to put on chains all too many times before I really needed to - which is enough of a pain that I'll probably get AWD on my next car.)
And trailheads around here also often are a lot easier to get to with a bit of extra ground clearance. So I may well give in and get an SUV for my next car. But the real driver (so to speak) will be that given the predominance of trucks on the road, not driving one yourself becomes a risk. (You can see the signal in the IIHS results.) So I'll be looking at how small I can go to meet my needs and minimize externalities, I suppose.
All of that said, the more threatening the roads look to potential bikers and walkers the fewer we'll get of them. And whether it's happiness, health or efficiency you're trying optimize, more of those are pretty clearly a win.
I've biked and walked American cities and country roads for over half a century, and while there have been many improvements over that period, the last five years have seen a series of what feel like steady reversals in the NW US. More and bigger trucks are part of a complex set of setbacks but feel like a key one to me. It doesn't take too many aggressive moves by monster trucks to make you wonder what you're doing out there.
If we want further progress, we'll have to figure out how to mitigate this problem.
All of that said, the more threatening the roads look to potential bikers and walkers the fewer we'll get of them.
And while I agree that that's a big problem in some places....it's really a complete non-issue in most of the places I'm driving. No one's riding bikes or walking along US Route 20 in central NYS—not where there's 20 miles between small towns and a single hill climbs about 200 feet fairly steeply.
Like driving on snowy, icy winter roads in the northern US and all of Canada.
No. Plenty of people get by with normal-sized cars under similar conditions in countries like Sweden, Norway, and Finland. Not to mention that SUVs are actually worse in such environments due to their almost-universal terrible performance in the Moose Test.
Did you miss the part where I pointed out that excessive size is not an inherent property of SUVs?
We need to do something that makes SUV drivers feel ridiculous and humiliated
Oh, that couldn't possibly have any side effects.
Hopefully it would have an effect. 95% of the people in these giant walls of steel have no reason to be driving them.
I see. And how have you determined that?
Maybe not 95%, but quite a lot of truck owners when surveyed essentially never use them for towing or hauling https://www.axios.com/2023/01/23/pickup-trucks-f150-size-wei...
My eyeballs, for one.
they need protection from the other people also driving giant walls of steel for no other reason than...
Easy: mandate a maximum size for parking spaces, and use a physical barrier to prevent double-parking. Have fun driving your oversized SUV when have to do parkour every time you get into your vehicle.
This is honestly the constraint that I have seen push people from huge vehicles back to reasonably-sized ones. When they had to leave their habit in the Sprawl and use parking garages in even moderately-urban areas, it became unwieldy. Driving dynamics may have also played a role: They tried a smaller vehicle and realized, "hey, this drives a lot better". So there is hope.
I like the spirit, but don't like the unintended consequence that it would create a stigma around sedans
It doesn't need to be anything punitive, just make it that more training is required.
You start off with a basic license that allows for something like a 1.0 liter engine car (I know, also need to change regulations to encourage the manufacturing of small cars).
Then with more experience and more training you can level up to higher power and weight categories, if you want. The training needs to become more and more difficult (not paper DMV tests), that cuts out the people who want the 9000lb truck just for status since most people won't bother. If you need that 9000lb truck enough to go through the training, have at it.
Just require a class A/B license to drive anything above...I don't know, 4000lbs? Exclude batteries from the weight if that becomes a problem for electric cars.
In the F150 Lightning the batteries even on a standard range weigh as much as a Volkswagen. The standard range batteries weigh something like 1800lbs. The ER model has about 25% more battery and the Platinum weight is like 7150lbs! So maybe around 2100lbs of that is battery?
So you’re still over 5000lbs on that monster without the batteries.
I feel confident in wagering that GP didn't intend to allow driving an F150 with a regular license.
In the F150 Lightning the batteries even on a standard range weigh as much as a Volkswagen.
Even a Smart Fortwo is minimally 1800 lbs curb weight. How old is this Volkswagen? :)
Why exclude ecars? They are just as dangerous.
Form factor, per TFA, is a significant part of how dangerous cars are. Ecars with a smaller form factor will weigh more, and my goal would be to target form factor through weight (since it makes it harder to find loopholes), rather than actually targeting weight itself.
Exclude batteries from the weight if that becomes a problem for electric cars.
Mass is mass, whether in the form of battery or frame metal.
While encouraging lighter cars would be a huge win, carving a massive exception to heavy EVs completely defeats the point.
Mass is mass, but electric cars of the same size tend to be heavier than their ICE counterparts. If the only goal is to keep cars light, then it completely defeats the point. If the goal is to keep cars smaller, and is at all informed by emissions than it makes sense to have at least part of a carve out for batteries.
Although I see why you'd want to exclude batteries from weight, I'm not sure it's totally justified. After all, F = MA regardless. A friend of mine was hit by an EV and suffered broken bones, despite being belted, and on the opposite side of the car that was hit. If it had been a lighter vehicle, her injuries wouldn't have been as bad.
My main thinking was there are a lot of things weight can (somewhat) be a shorthand for: Visibility past/around the car, visibility from within the car, carbon emissions, difficulty to drive, amount of space taken to park, deadliness of collision due directly to weight, impact on roads, and deadliness of collision due to form factor.
Of those, the deadliness of collision due to weight and impact on roads are the only ones that still hold up if it's an EV. I just want to avoid a situation in which someone gets a gas engine instead of an EV of the same form factor because they would need a special license to drive the EV, which just barely gets over the weight limit. But I would also be open to this law in any form.
The reason some of these vehicles ARE so big IS the regulations. We could look at rolling back THOSE changes first.
Consumers just prefer larger vehicles here in the US, and those same preferences are also becoming the norm in other countries. You can't blame the modern Camry being gigantic on the Chicken Tax. You can't blame larger vehicles being associated with luxury on efficiency regulations.
Consumers prefer a vehicle that looks like it'll keep them and their family alive on the streets as given - if some other persons kid ends up dead as a result of their choice - well "whateves".
Make the streets less dangerous and they might prefer something cheaper and as a side bonus less deadly to their neighbors.
The streets are dangerous precisely because people are in an arms race to have the biggest more "protective" vehicle. Instead regulations would scale that back resulting in safer streets
I don't think that's accurate, vehicles are being made larger to get around emission limitations. I'd love a new small truck like what Toyota used to make and ford f150/ranger's used to be ~10-20 years ago, but such vehicles just don't really exist anymore.
This is the one time I always pull out my “Thanks Obama!” without being ironic.
Yes, clearly the US needed less sedans and more F150s.
Quite the opposite. Getting rid of small truck classifications ballooned the size of suvs and pickup trucks which is partially why we are in the mess we are in. There just aren’t small trucks anymore because of the changes.
Few people need the monster suvs and pickup trucks that are on the roads these days.
In Europe vehicles like the Humer electric can't even be driven with a regular license because of its weight (3500kg is the limit). It's basically a large truck and requires a much more involved license.
The EV Hummer is probably impossible to get registered as anything other than a truck, but there's some trickery you can do with regular pick-up trucks. I found at least one F-150 on sale that is registered as a van and you can drive it with a regular passenger car (B) license instead of a light truck (C1) license. Shockingly, the van F-150 isn't even prohibitely expensive in tax: just 531€ per year. Although with 1.70€ to 1.90€ per litre of 95E10, you'll probably just deposit all of your savings at the pump instead.
The F150 lightnings registered as a VAN can carry two passengers and about 250kg before going over it's registered and allowable weight limit. As a civilian those fines are hefty where I live, doing it as a company is extremely expensive. It's a useless vehicle except maybe for towing. If you fill all seats with some hefty adults wou'll already cross the weight limit.
They should just be outright banned. The high hood doesn't serve any practical purpose.
How do you even work on the engine in that thing?
Yes.
I've always wondered if a larger vehicle hit a smaller vehicle, can they sue the larger vehicle for knowing that it could possibly inflict more damage to the smaller car? In other words, more care to avoid collisions?
Interestingly, agricultural tractors have evolved to have better sightlines. Could that be because for these machines, the pedestrian deaths are usually members of the tractor drivers' family?
https://www.profi.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2020/06/2...
vs
https://bigiron.blob.core.windows.net/public/items/72b53c753...
Could that be because for these machines, the pedestrian deaths are usually members of the tractor drivers' family
I have a different guess after seeing tractors in use as a kid: Driving tractors is a high precision affair. You're moving around expensive equipment that you don't want to bump. You're plowing next to all sorts of hazards you don't want to fall into. You have to park within an inch of attachments before hooking them on.
Good sight lines help with all this.
One could say that navigating a large vehicle through streets populated by humans should be considered a high precision affair, or is the difference expensive equipment vs human lives?
I try not to get within 6 feet of a human in my car, let alone 6 inches.
It can be difficult to manage when you can't see them over your hood
is the difference expensive equipment vs human lives?
The difference is in safety margins. You really shouldn't drive a vehicle to within 2cm of any object on public streets. Not even while parking. 0.5m (2ft) is about the closest you should ever drive your car to anything really.
Whereas for a tractor getting within 2cm is normal operating procedure. You won't be able to grab a 500kg (1100lb) attachment and drag it over to your tractor because you stopped too far away.
Not even while parking. 0.5m (2ft) is about the closest you should ever drive your car to anything really.
I've lived in several US states and the law has always been to park less than a foot from the curb.
Also, tractors are built to do work, not keep their occupants safe in a crash.
not keep their occupants safe in a crash.
perfect expression of the tragedy of the commons. Until there's top down government intervention, people choose to be either part of the problem or part of the solution.
Not totally true, tractors gained roll bars and roll cages 40 or so years ago for a reason, and it was safety.
It looks like sloped noses are about a decade old and are sold as hi vis for work. Given the obvious advantages, something must have changed for them to be so new? Now that ag tractors have slope noses, might Chelsea tractors eventually copy the look?
Agricultural tractors aren't made with any consideration for pedestrian safety. The reason they have good visibility is because that makes them easier to use, and there is no other competing reason not to surround the driver with a lot of glass.
Passenger vehicles have other requirements that complicate this:
1. They must be attractive enough to sell in volume to the end buyer
2. They require large A-pillars to absorb crash impacts
You could make an SUV that looks big fish bowl, but it would be difficult to simultaneously achieve safety targets and be a commercial success.
I'm sure you could achieve safety targets with a vehicle that was safe for those outside of it as well, perhaps safety for your children crossing the road should be attractive to consumers?
Sedans, hatchbacks, and wagons are those vehicles. They are slipping in sales compared to SUVs despite having better pedestrian safety. People have many priorities when buying a vehicle, and most people simply don't think they're at risk of running over their own kid, until they do.
People are really good at being wrong about things, especially as evidenced by how many people do run over theirs and other peoples kids
Children keep getting killed by their own parents' SUVs though...
Some SUVs even have front cameras now to help see children
Mine also has cameras and radars on the sides. Makes parking easier and backing out safer. The radars can see speeding cars in the parking lot before I can. :)
One of the reason I'm holding on to an old car, apart from out of spite, is the big windows and fantastic visibility. It's like stepping into a sunroom compared to new cars.
London has enforced a Direct Vision Standard [1 example image] for big vehicles. I hope my city will soon as well. Having large trucks, trailers etc. in the city with no visibility to pedestrians is a death trap.
My city's new trash truck [2]. Instead of the standard "high" trailer seating above the engine, it's now down on a pedestrian level and can see clearly in what's normally a "blind spot" when turning right.
[1]: https://fncdn.blob.core.windows.net/web-clean/1/root/direct-... [2]: https://storage.googleapis.com/smallstep/sites/33/2022/02/Re...
Whoever injures - or knock on wood kills - somebody with a truck with such a high hood should serve a mandatory prison sentence.
vehicular manslaughter is already a crime, and these trucks have been regulated INTO existence, not out of consumer desire and a lack of regulation. Consumers preferred small trucks until they disappeared due to CAFE standards.
If you want the government to intervene, their first step should be to remove the regulations that encourage this growth in vehicle size to begin with, rather than going after consumers who have very little choice in trucks
The average American truck buyer picked it as a lifestyle accessory - it’s not like there was a huge shift in the percentage of trades jobs over the last few decades! Liability would be one way to encourage expressing that fashion aesthetic in other ways.
Liability already exists. what next?
No, not effectively. Drivers are given extreme deference by law enforcement and in lawsuits where it’s usually assumed that the victim was at fault unless video evidence exists and is immediately available, and concepts like contributory negligence are often used to reduce legal responsibility without regard for the relative damage levels. Insurance is required, but the coverage levels are low so it’s common for the people who do successfully sue often get less than they need for ongoing treatment and support.
We can’t change everything all at once but requiring more comprehensive coverage in general and especially for the most dangerous vehicles would be a good start.
But contributory negligence should never depend on the relative damage level.
If an accident had 10 or 1 million in damages, and was 80-20% why would the total ever matter?
I think your points about insurance are worth thinking about, minimum liability is lower than most expected earnings.
But contributory negligence should never depend on the relative damage level.
The angle I’m thinking about is that the person operating heavy equipment should be expected to exercise greater caution. If a pedestrian sets foot out of a painted crosswalk, it seems harsh to say that means the SUV driver who plowed into them is off the hook for 30% of the damages when the situation would almost certainly have avoided any injury had everyone been on foot/bike/scooter or substantially less lethal if the driver had been in a normal sedan.
Basically when I drive I’m cognizant of the fact that it’s the most dangerous thing most of us do on a regular basis. I’d like that attitude to be the default.
The angle I’m thinking about is that the person operating heavy equipment should be expected to exercise greater caution.
I think that is already baked in to contributory negligence. Its not just "you were speeding, and you stepped over a line, so 50/50%".
I think it should depend on the circumstances.
If the pedestrian is at fault, I think the individual, or their estate, should have to pay for the truck repairs and therapy for the driver.
In the Norwegian traffic law, it specifically says that you are to slow down in areas with children. So "the child ran into the street chasing a ball right in front of my truck" isn't a valid excuse, as that's something "to be expected" when driving in a residential area.
At least in theory. Unfortunately the cops here almost never wants to prosecute cars hitting kids or pedestrians. There's always an excuse. "The sun was in their eye", "kid didn't wear high vis (it was daytime)".
I agree that there is an ammount of reasonable care drivers should have. However, I think the contribution of pedestrians is generally understated.
AT least in the US, 33% of pedestrians involved in fatal accidents were drunk.
16% were on freeways. 59% were on non-freeway arterials, while 22% were on local streets. [1]
I found it surprising that fatalities are far more likely to involve Pedestrians being drunk or jaywalking on high-speed throughfare than drunk drivers.
https://www.ghsa.org/sites/default/files/2020-02/GHSA-Pedest...
In those cases, the person who designed the road should be charged with manslaughter.
People don't just walk along the side of a freeway because they felt like it. They do it because negligent planners left them with no better route.
I'd guess the majority of pedestrians who are at fault for accidents are vagrants who can't or won't pay for any damage they cause.
I don't see well-to-do businessmen jumping into the road all that often, but I do see deadbeat beggars do it every day.
After the cybertruck my working assumption had been that US regulators had just given up on pedestrian safety.
The cybertruck has not been shown to have lower pedestrian safety than other trucks.
Ironically, you’re commenting on an article about higher hoods, and the CT has one of the lowest hoods among trucks on the market.
The Cybetruck's obnoxious hood height[0] and curb weight[1] all but guarantees that it's dangerous for pedestrians. Not that singling out Cybetruck is completely fair, all large EVs are strictly worse for pedestrian safety due to their weight.
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2023/12/05/with-litt...
[1] https://www.autoweek.com/news/a46013576/tesla-cybertruck-spe...
The Cybertruck is lighter than the Rivian and the F-150 Lightning. It's around 3,000lbs lighter than the electric Hummer.
It's also lower than all of them.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a46031051/2024-tesla-cyber...
The height is adjustable via air springs. It can ride lower, higher, or equal to those.
It can't ride at either of it's two highest settings when going above 15 and 25 mph respectively.
Slightly lighter than Rivian R1 and roughly same weight as F-150 Lightning. But I agree, quite possibly not the absolute most dangerous vehicle on the road.
I'm commenting on pedestrian safety & regulators absence. Sharp edges and rolled steel instead of crumple zones is absolutely a bad time if you're a pedestrian. High hoods isn't the only possible risk.
1) It seems you are confusing crumple zones (which the ct definitely has lol) with cushioning the impact for a pedestrian.
2) sure, but the only research we have says higher hood = much more deadly. Cybertruck has a lower hood with a better angle. So why single it out when the jury is out on what’s more important for safety
Cybertruck Man Bad.
The thing looks like a maul made for splitting wood and you know its owners will drive like they have a lawyer on retainer.
I thought there were regulations against sharp angles on hoods. I assume cybertruck geometry does not violate, but those chamfers still look dangerous as hell.
Honestly all the "self-driving" car companies allowed to beta test their products on public streets show a strong disregard for pedestrian/public safety.
Vans are a lot better for both transporting people (more spacious compared to SUVs) and goods (easier loading and protected from the weather compared to pickups), plus of course having vastly better visibility. It always seems odd how trucks and SUVs are seen as status symbols in the US whereas in, say, Hong Kong, it is the MPV that is the status symbol. I suppose certain tax and emissions regulations in favor of trucks also contribute to their popularity.
Vans are not better for goods as a universal rule, they are better for certain classes of goods. I do not want a yard of manure/dirt/gravel dumped in my van, but thats a common use of a pickup in my neck of the woods. Like extremely common.
Hong Kong
Hot take: The Americas just aren't developed to the level of Eurasia, and we should stop pretending like they are.
I think this is an incentives game, Americans have much more land and money to pay for expensive development (like suburbs) that just do not make financial sense in the EU or Asia in general, as they either lack land or it would be too expensive to pay for the infrastructure needed to make it all work.
I also haven't met an American that has been to a high quality of life and walkable city in the EU and didn't come back with a changed perspective on what life could be like. Once you visit places like London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam and the like and stay there for a while you rethink the suburban life.
I'm in the burbs because having small kids in big US cities is super shitty and expensive but as soon as they get older the goal is to find a nice city to move to. Either here or in Europe.
Suburbia is expensive in some ways, but suburbs are often built as a less expensive place to live or at least less expensive for a given size. Of course, it's often hard to find a studio apartment in the suburbs and it's hard to find a single story detached home in the city, so it's comparing different kinds of apples; they're comparable but not fungible.
I had a very nice visit to Paris and London for business many years ago. And I tried to get my boss to transfer me to the Paris office. But I moved from the suburbs to a ruralish community where I can live on a 9 acre wooded lot where I know my neighbors but rarely hear them.
They’re only less expensive on paper because the rest of the county, state and federal government are footing the bill for infrastructure, gas for all the driving and everything else. If we were paying the actual price of suburbia people would likely be moving closer to the cities.
I also haven't met an American that has been to a high quality of life and walkable city in the EU and didn't come back with a changed perspective on what life could be like. Once you visit places like London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam and the like and stay there for a while you rethink the suburban life.
Then you haven’t met enough people. Lots of Americans, like me, visit those cities, enjoy our visit, and come back happy to live in suburbia with our big homes and yards. Those cities are great to visit, but I wouldn’t want to try to raise a family there.
Vans tend to have pretty good visibility, but not compared to a single cab truck.
Loading into a van can be easier or harder depending on the goods. Larger items are easier into a truck, IMHO, since you don't have to rearrange or remove the seating, and don't have to negotiate door openings, and sometimes it's useful to get help over the sides of the bed. Lower typical height of van floors can be helpful though. Pickup beds tend to have more and better tiedown points, too.
I have a pickup and a van, and a c-max, and I would most likely give up the c-max first; especially if either or both the van and the pickup had reasonable fuel efficiency.
Larger items are easier into a truck, IMHO, since you don't have to rearrange or remove the seating
Think less minivan and more Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. You load them more like a moving truck: giant doors in the rear, big empty space to put stuff in.
AFAIK, exactly this - something about how trucks and SUVs are classified differently and so have different emission standards, which results in other effects that are then appealing to consumers.
Plus, of course, marketing.
Minivans are light trucks for fleet purposes, so they can also get bigger engines and what not, if that's what people are looking for.
Can't even buy the MPV in the US anymore...
Did we really need a study for this? What's next? A study to find out whether a hammer to the head or torso is more lethal than a hammer to the legs? What a total racket to spend money on something like this.
Hood heights that are too low are also shown to cause more injuries. In fact, there would seem to be an optimal range. Studies seem like a great way to find out what that range is in practice.
But remember, injuries and fatalities are not the same thing. It could be the building shin-busting bumpers is the best way to save lives. Who knows?
First, things that are obvious aren't always correct. It's better to rely on actual data than intuition alone. Second, the study not only gives the qualitative result that higher hoods are more dangerous, but also begins to quantify the effect, and can give an idea of the specific height at which the pedestrian danger begins to spike.
I'll take your question seriously. Why do people do studies like this when the answer seems obvious?
(1) It quantifies the seriousness of the problem. Does it increase the chance of death or significant injury by 1%, 10%, 50%? Without reading the article, what is the "obvious" answer to that question?
(2) People believe many "obvious" things that aren't true. They are trivial to find simply by finding two groups with opposite beliefs on a subject and both think their conclusions are obvious. Eg, did the COVID-19 vaccines reduce or increase death rates? It seems obvious to me that it was a great benefit, but there are people going on TV claiming the vaccines killed millions of people.
(3) Even in areas that aren't contentious, there are many widely believed but untested assumptions. If someone didn't spend the time and effort to validate those things, we might never find what is really true. 50 years ago it was unquestioned that stress is what causes ulcers. Almost nobody questioned that except for the one guy who did the experiment that proved it was bacterial in origin. Had his result been negative, you'd be here to mock him.
You need a study because otherwise people keep posting links to youtube videos claiming that hood heights aren't that dangerous and it's actually less lethal because pedestrians are less likely to hit the windshield with their head.
You may enjoy
"Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma when jumping from aircraft: randomized controlled trial"
If one wanted to make a regulation regarding hood height, having a study like this as evidence would be critically important. Gut instinct alone wouldn't suffice
There are definitely polls that show women find men in trucks more attractive in the US than, say, vans. If you want to signal wealth and refinement get a luxury vehicle. If you want to signal utility and masculinity get a truck.
honestly, I believe it. I would blame the truck ads that have brainwashed Americans into thinking that driving a truck makes you more masculine or tough.
I'd go even earlier though. Frederick Jackson Turner "The Significance of the Frontier in American History". Americans have different views on rugged individualism than Europeans do, so I didn't think it's surprising that we want to project cowboy country onto urban environments. Advertising is just tapping into the rugged lumberjack ideal.
I would be very shocked to learn those polls were funded by the makers of large SUVs and trucks. /s
Great. Tax the trucks more and driving one will be an even better signal!
Seriously? There are polls that show anything you want. And if you have trouble finding one, you just create your own. Polls are essentially meaningless.
Of course studies showing anything are out there. Much less likely that they are properly set up and therefore believable.
I honestly do not understand, why regulators have not mandated limits on front dead angles (space occluded from view by the hood) and max vehicle hood hight by now. Well, I understand why it hasn't happened in the U.S. (how could any regulator curtail the manhood of the truck aficionados?), but in the E.U. regulators usually are more on top of these things.
Are you saying that trucks with high hoods are prohibited in the EU?
They're not. The Netherlands is full of Dodge Rams.
If by "full" you mean "might encounter a single one on your commute", then yes.
There's three between my house and my daughters' school a 5 minute bike ride away in Hilversum. All with V plates, naturally.
the current pavement princess trends have left me doubting that any more regulation of any kind will happen in the US.
Not just the pavement princess stuff - Congress is simply doing less period.[1]
Through most of the 20th century, 1000+ laws/year was common. Since 2000, that's dropped to <500 laws/year.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_federal_...
Pages of laws passed is a better metric as the laws have become more bundled due to partisanship.
Even then, one era might write more tersely than another.
Hard to measure between eras with the evolution of pork barrel politicking and other recent cultural practices.
It seems that no one has yet posted the famous article linking SUVs to immaturity and low self esteem, so here we go.
Car companies managed this remarkable feat because they ran—and continue to run—quite possibly the most sophisticated marketing operations on the planet. They knew what people really wanted: to project an image of selfish superiority. And then they sold it to them at a markup
Who has been buying SUVs since automakers turned them into family vehicles? They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors or communities.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7q7eb/electric-or-not-big-s...
Judgement and condescension are unlikely to change minds or behavior, or add anything else of value. It will only make people wonder who really has an issue with immaturity and low self esteem.
Those words are the characteristics that the actual SUV marketers see in their data and user behavior :).
I got in an argument with the Ford CMO on Twitter about this. He said that the F150 has maintained the overall footprint for years, which is true. However, if you super-impose an image of older F150s and newer ones (which I did) you find that the hood is much more "cubic" leading to a higher edge and much worse viewing angle. I believe this is entirely stylistic.
Another big difference between a new one and a 50 year old one, is the cabin on the old one is basically like driving in an aquarium tank in terms of visibility with the lack of a or b pillar obstruction and low belt lines. Suspension is also generally lower on smaller tires from the ones I still see around town from the 70s. Sometimes their hoods aren’t much taller than a sedan but that could be from the suspension setup.
The opaque tinted side windows make it hard to tell if the driver sees you at the pedestrian cross. I'm often forced to wait till they leave and they sometimes wait for me so ...
Illegal but not enforced in California. I say we let these people run a few more years and then basically revoke the license of anyone that has done this for a year. The front dark tinted window is nearly 100% correlated with reckless, aggressive driving for me.
Article is current but the data is from 2021. I can easily find a deep journal-esque writeup dating to aug 1 2022. (JPHSC). https://doi.org/10.15586/jphsc. v1i1.47
Currently, it seems unlikely that NHTSA will move to regulate hood heights on new vehicles.
That's quite interesting statement. Hood (or is it bumper? -- which implies hood) heights are already regulated. Too low of a height has been determined to result in more injuries (not fatalities I guess), so the height has been forced to increase over the last decade or decades. Because of that you will never see (eg) a Lambo Diablo design again. Very very hard to find information about this imposed minimum height requirement because search results are flooded with this new finding since approx Nov 2023.
can't understand the downvote but i found the reg.
FMVSS (not sure if this is written by NTHSA or what) requires bumper to be 16-20in for passenger cars and max 28in for light trucks. This then effectively dictates the minimum hood height.
I additionally found a voluntary program in Eu called EEVC around bumper, hood and windshield design factors to reduce ped injury. NHTSA also has pubs around it but in the time I'm willing to invest I couldn't find if these are required or even voluntary or what in the US. Nice, brief summary article with diagrams from 2002: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123098/
They're also do not seem aerodynamic. Note that many cars now have features meant to protect pedestrians a bit if there's an impact: the bonnet shall rise with springs, instantly (not unlike an airbag) and then the springs shall absorb the impact a bit. Some bonnet even have airbag outside the car that are supposed to protect pedestrians.
But, yup, these huge, tall, flat hoods don't seem that great.
Drive a Porsche guys, not a RAM ; )
Americans love to buy 6,000lb tanks with the aerodynamics of a brick and then complain about high gas prices. It's the American way.
We’ve known this for years…
The US has some dumb legal incentives for people to drive the big stuff like
The “light truck” loophole for pickups and SUVs that allow them to pollute more than other cars. https://www.vice.com/en/article/3abk7b/bidens-new-fuel-econo...
They should in any sane world go the other way - have a benefits for small safer cars and a bunch of tax and regulation on the monster ones.
Large trucks are safer in intra-vehicle collisions. Imagine RAM vs sedan or average SUV. It’s completely rational to purchase the largest car you can afford, as long as you’re concerned about the safety of your family and yourself
Yeah, that makes sense. But lots of people pointed out to me that "right of way won't matter when you're dead" and that "cemeteries are filled with people who had the right of way". That's true and taking that to heart means buying a big truck because then right of way doesn't matter and it's the other guy in the cemetery. After all, "I'd rather be judged by 12 than buried by 6" or whatever. Yield to gross tonnage.
Related: Vehicles with higher, more vertical front ends pose greater risk to pedestrians (iihs.org) | 322 points by yours truly | 463 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38267588
Every single time I see a huge SUV being backed into a spot instead of just parking I think about how dangerous this is. Starting in 2016 all vehicles have backup cameras so that you don't accidentally run someone over. The backup cameras have wide angle lenses. But now you'll have to pull forward with no such camera and a HUGE blind spot.
Didn't we know this decades ago? Back when we also stopped allowing pop up headlights (even though I think they're so cool).
I think we should have banned or restricted sales of SUVs and "trucks" as Americans call 'em, a long time ago.
When I was growing up, cars were a very reasonable size, even for a family. Now the streets are full of giant SUVs, mostly driven by a single occupant, and usually with a driving style that the confidence and apathy of being in a larger vehicle gives them.
Too late now, I guess.
No duh?
No sh*t sherlock!
As a pedestrian who found himself on the receiving end of a hood and survived via a last-second jump to end up on top of the said hood, I certainly concur.
This should be a surprise for nobody. See for example this great video by NotJustBikes: https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo?si=o8JKltCiITzISK8d
The US government is completely MIA on this issue. There’s no reason people need these monster trucks to drive to and from their job every day or to and from the grocery store.
Every time I see someone behind the wheel of the absolute largest SUV a company offers, it's a small woman. Even as far back when SUVs first became a thing, I noticed that the smallest moms at school at the biggest SUVs.
They love the "might" that a huge vehicle gives them.
God, this is pretty much my mother.
She couldn’t care any less about “ruggedness” or that “tough guy” image. Her only argument ever is “safety.”
I am not in it to change her mind. But whenever she brings this topic up and I show her the actual safety ratings for different vehicles, it’s almost as if her brain shuts down. She would say something along the lines “uh oh idk, maybe, who knows, it doesn’t feel as safe,” and the whole thing gets forgotten. Right until she decides to bring it up again from scratch at some point later, as if our previous conversations about it never happened.
Lowkey, I think it would be an interesting idea to mandate displaying brightly colored safety ratings for every car on display at a dealership. No need to overcomplicate it by showing the entire stat sheet with a bajillion different numbers. Just one giant number for the overall rating, and about 4-5 subcategory numbers (e.g., driver safety score, passenger safety score, etc.). I think 1-2 of those metrics should be “the safety sub-category on which our car scored the worst.”
My only worry about this is that the metrics themselves become the target goal, leading to either car manufacturers influencing safety rating boards or them maliciously complying by gaming the metrics just for those measured categories at the expense of everything else. Though the latter isn’t as much of a concern, given that it is pretty difficult to accomplish, and it would still have a large negative effect on the overall score.
Every year, loads of kids die because a family member runs over them by accident in the driveway, a parking lot etc. With these huge cars, you don't properly see around them, and 360 cameras and sensors will not make up for all of that.
So yeah, "safety".
A lot of those car manufacturers just don’t care, and it isn’t exclusive to large cars either (though the damage they can do is obviously much higher, making them more dangerous to pedestrians).
I like sports cars, so I tried test driving a Camaro about 5 years ago. You would think that visibility on a rather small and fast 2-seater would be at least better than on an average SUV.
It was singularly the worst car I’ve ever driven in terms of visibility, compared to even most SUVs. Not even joking, it feels like driving a military tank, but just faster and smaller, with the field of view being extremely reminiscent of seeing the road through a thin horizontal slit. It’s not like it got worse over time either, because I remember the 2013 version was at least just as awful. Way to ruin a fine car with that tank-slit visibility.
This specific case didn’t even have anything inherently to do with the type or size of the car (unlike with some giant trucks), so it made me extremely mad. It was quite literally for nothing.
I got to ride as passenger in someone's new Camaro at about that time, and I fully agree: the visibility was absolutely horrendous. I couldn't believe it. How is such a vehicle legal to drive? Does the US not have any kind of auto regulations governing visibility at all?
Apparently not, considering the topic of TFA
They do. Just because those regulations might not be good enough, that doesn’t mean that they don’t have any at all.
For a specific example, I am pretty sure that backup cameras have been mandatory on all new cars since at least 2018.
Right, so the US now has some regulation to make sure people can see behind them. However, there seems to be basically no regulation to make sure they can see in front of the vehicle.
To be fair, that same Chevy Camaro I am complaining about above was sold in EU and UK as well, so I wouldn’t throw stones at the US regulation being behind in this case.
It only stopped being sold in 2019 in EU+UK, only the SS version, and not due to the front visibility. Sadly, seems like Chevy announced last year the end of production of Camaros in 2024 in general.
Good point. It looks like all the regulators need to create some new regulations requiring decent forward-looking visibility, which means no more humongous hoodlines.
A Camaro is not a small 2 seater by any means, it’s a rather big muscle car. If you want to experience what a small 2 seater feels like, try a Miata or a Cayman. Those 2 have outstanding visibility. Many sports car have bad visibility due to the mid engine blocking the rearview.
It is small, in the context of a conversation about SUVs and pickup trucks. Yes, I am aware that it is not “small” in the context of 2 seaters, where you can go for miatas/brzs/911s/etc.
Sure, and that I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is the frontview having that same awful tank-slit visibility, which I’ve only encountered on a Camaro so far.
The NHTSA safety ratings come with the following notation:
"Note: A vehicle’s rating, or Overall Vehicle Score, can be compared with other vehicles of similar size and weight"
She may be, whether knowingly or not, interpreting the data offered more in-line with the guidance provided with the data.
Which was kind of my point. I would love if there was some sort of a safety rating that was cross-comparable across all vehicles, not just within the same category/type.
I wouldn’t want it to be replacing the per-category one, as that one is way more precise and accurate. But there should be a way to roughly compare the safety of two different cars of different classes.
Given the NHTSA rating notation you posted mentioning normalization by size and weight, I wonder if there is a rough function of weight and size that would allow for “denormalizing” scores into raw approximates.
it's because they are mothers with >2 children. You cannot fit three car seats in the backseat of modern sedans, and station wagons don't meet the emissions requirements.
Large SUVs meet CAFE regulations by being large enough to be regulated as a different class of vehicle. Want smaller trucks? Complain to your Congresscritter to reign in the EPA and force them to write better regulation that does not have these unintended effects.
There are WAY more trucks/SUVs out there than 3-child households.
And I'm not sure what you mean by "wagons don't meet emissions requirements" - wagons would meet the same regulations as sedans.
Wagons are heavier and less aerodynamic than sedans. When coupled with the same engine they are less fuel efficient (compare the E450 sedan to wagon). The fact that they are heavier and sell poorly means they will only usually be available with the large(r,st) engine (no E350 wagon in the US).
Note that I used the Mercedes because it's the only non-compact wagon I'm aware of for sale in the US.
There's also the Audi RS6 Avant, a good option for anyone interested in spending $160K on a station wagon with 621 horsepower.
Oh, that beats out the AMG E-series wagon by 18 HP!
That's fair, but the wagon should still outperform an equivalent cross-over in just about any measure.
What I don't know is where the line is between car-based cross-over and actual truck (as it related to emissions and safety standards).
There's an envelope, rather than a single line, but one line that makes up that envelope is AWD, such that some models without optional AWD are cars, but trucks with optional AWD
All true, also sad. That aside, how's the EPA responsible, not sure if I understand the connection?
Trucks (and SUVs) don't follow the same emissions regulations as sedans/wagons.
I don't know if that's just EPA policy or part of the legislation that allows them to regulate auto emissions.
But, it's also Congress's fault for leaving the chicken tax in place (25% tariff on imported trucks/vans). This essentially allowed domestic brands to price gouge on trucks/suvs (as VW at the time, and then the Japanese brands as well) couldn't compete.
Toyota has plants in the US; I assume they make the Tacoma in the US, which should avoid the chicken tax?
Correct. The Tacoma and Tundra are assembled in the US so should avoid the tax. The Land Cruiser is still produced in Japan, so subject to the tax. Same for the Lexus GX (no Toyota equiv in US) and LX (rebadged Land Cruiser).
The old mini-truck and T100 were made in Japan (except maybe a year or two at the end of T100 production).
The tax was implemented in the 60s or 70s, as VW was trying to get into the van and truck market in the US.
I fit 3 diono car seats across my Honda Fit.
Most aren’t even using the 3rd row for seating.
Now a wagon or SUV is good for carpooling, but a minivan obv would be best.
I love how everybody here who mentions the CAFE regulations neglects to mention that they were a gift to the automakers.
TBF Trucks and SUVs are relatively easier to drive in certain regards.
Such as being able to see over parked traffic when making a turn.
And I've found driving taller vehicles more comfortable for my back coincidentally.
When you become the parked traffic, how does anyone see over you? Guess they need an even taller vehicle.
Yup. There's certainly a feedback loop.
Just stating things that make these larger vehicles more easier to drive, especially for women whom on average are generally shorter so, even with pumping the seat up it's still considerably harder to see around traffic.
I definitely get it. My girlfriend drives an SUV and I'd be lying if I said I never felt glad about that the way drivers and roads are out here. She's also been in an accident (with minimal injuries miraculously) where an SUV wrecked her E-bike in a pedestrian crossing because it "couldn't see" her.
I find it important to continually bring up the fact that it can be different. More public transit and bike paths. If I we could take bikes around the city without worrying about being killed or having them stolen it would be a dream.
in no world does having a higher center of gravity, and much higher mass make a car easier to drive. i find them painful to drive because i feel so unstable and slow.
Your average American driver has no understanding of this and never will. There's a reason the goofball in the Tahoe XL that takes every corner at 5mph is fine with going 90mph on the highway; they truly have zero idea on how to assess the handling of a vehicle.
Until the parked vehicles also become taller
If you’re short, you prefer a vehicle which elevates your view.
If you're short, you can't see a damn thing over the hood of those vehicles. An entire class of schoolchildren could be standing right in front of your vehicle and you wouldn't even notice.
This sounds like hyperbole but is actually not hyperbole - https://youtu.be/NDH3FDfVQl0?t=180
I'm a short woman and drive a sedan.
All true.
_everybody_ drives huge SUVs. A few rugged men(TM) driving a large truck isn't the problem, they're couleur locale. It'd be adorable, like people wearing cowboy hats in Texas.
The web of interwoven incentive structures - reptile brains, cafe standards, cheap gas, safety arms race, ... - pushing _everybody_ towards larger vehicles is the problem. System and id are completely misaligned, killing thousands in the process.
Roughly 18% of the light vehicles sold in the US in 2023 were pickup trucks. The top 3 selling models in the US were pickup trucks. Yes there were about 3x as many SUVs sold[1] as pickups, but pickups aren't nothing.
1: I partitioned the "light truck" class into just pickups and SUVs; 78% of cars sold in 2023 were classified as "light trucks" per [2]; I got the 18% figure for pickups by totaling the sales of the 8 most popular pickup models by hand and dividing by 14.9M
2: https://carsurance.net/insights/car-sales-statistics/
With tiny dogs. Maybe they're the preferred vehicle of tiny dogs.
In the UK we call these "Chelsea tractors".
9lIe a large vehicle more suited to offload conditions being driven short distances round highly affluent areas by people who wouldn't know the countryside if it bit them on the arsenal.
So… Rugged Women™, then.
It's government regulations that made trucks get this big, most people simply buy what is available in the form factor they like. Trucks are the most popular form factor in the United States (with pickups a close second)[1], and the manufacturers keep making the cars bigger because of the poorly written CAFE laws[2]. I, and I suspect most Americans with pickups, would prefer to purchase one the size of a '90s F-150 as compared to the monsters of today but manufacturers can't or won't sell me one. Making up some macho strawman to attack actually obfuscates the problem and makes discussing solutions more difficult.
[1] https://www.motortrend.com/features/car-types-models-body-st....
[2]https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...
Does anyone call an SUV a truck? Surely pickups are trucks.
According to chrysler, the PT Cruiser was a "light truck".
I do think it's common for people to call large SUVs like the Ford Excursion "trucks".
They were only classed as trucks because they could not pass emmissions otherwise. A great example of the truck laws perverse incentives to automakers.
If you see enough pickup trucks with bed caps you'll start to just view SUVs as those
My wife is from the Midwest, and on visits there I’ve regularly heard people refer to suburbans/explorers/etc. as “trucks”. Essentially the same platform, but with an enclosed rear with seats.
Some SUVs qualify as trucks under the definitions written into the law.
Blaming the government for getting captured by industry also obfuscates the problem and makes discussing solutions more difficult. The current (grotesque) CAFE standards went in during the last months of the Bush administration, as a gift to the automakers.
It also looks like the solution to the problem isn't to get rid of the regulations, but to change them so that light trucks and giant cars no longer get a break on emissions/fuel economy standards. Revised regulations that incentive smaller cars would solve a lot of problems.
I agree wholeheartedly, but the change in the CAFE standards had another effect that was just as important: it allowed Ford and GM to get out of the market for actual cars (sedans, coupes, and station wagons) almost entirely. Changing back to the CAFE standards from 2007 would probably decimate their current business model, and the political backlash would be severe.
At the end of the day, the government makes the laws - regardless of any influences upon it. I think we both want the laws to change, we just disagree about what changes are needed. I encourage you to call your representatives, as I have done.
This is presented incredibly dishonestly in this context. It's well understood that automakers had their grubby little hands all over emissions regulations in the late Bush admin. They spent oodles of cash, tons of lobbyist time, and BEGGED for the exclusions for trucks that made complete sense at the time for TRUCKS, as in, pickup trucks used by laborers that needed the power and relaxed emissions standards that they asked for. And then, once that was done, set about changing 2/3 of their sales into trucks, so they could continue selling ever larger vehicles at ever higher prices with ever worse fuel economy.
Which is directly traceable to substantial and aggressive marketing pushes by the American auto industry to shove trucks and SUV's down American's throats, because they could sell them for higher prices than the vans and station wagons that were already popular at the time.
And even now, the solution proposed for all the issues these oversized stupid machines cause, is more sensors, more cameras, more safety features that, OH WOW, they get to charge more money for! No way!
Again, the way this is framed posits that the CAFE standards were flawed output by the legislators themselves, and not the result of back and forth negotiations with the auto industry for decades prior.
Except now after decades of this shit, even if you can find a smaller vehicle, many consumers have (correctly) identified that their neighbors are driving suburban panzers, and not having one yourself puts you and yours at an elevated risk in a collision. Tons of people have reasonably sized vehicles in this country, and if you get t-boned by some jack-off in a lifted F-350 driving one, there is a not-insubstantial chance you're going to die, because those vehicles are not designed with safety in mind: they are designed to appeal to a marketing demographic that has been created: the modern man seeking to reclaim his masculinity because his accounting job doesn't let him imagine himself a hunter seeking the mammoth well enough, or whatever the fuck.
It isn't making up strawmen, it's pointing to a strawman manufactured by the auto industry that needs to be burned. The ONLY reason all these stupid machines are out driving today is because we as a society permit it. That can be changed. We are allowed to simply say that if you cannot demonstrate competence to handle a vehicle of this size, you do not get to drive one, end of discussion. It's not like we haven't had multiple classes of drivers licenses since basically the inception of drivers' licenses for this exact reason: because handling a 55 foot LTL truck is harder than handling a Honda Civic.
This is a cultural issue as much as it is a political one. You can't just not take into account the long-term and well documented history of the auto industry and it's involvement here, any more than you can not take into account the documented history of the NRA/gun manufacturers with regard to our gun problem.
Keith Bradsher's High and Mighty is a somewhat old but masterful book on the subject of how the SUV was put on the road to dominance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_and_Mighty_(book)
well worth reading if you're trying to understand how we got in this mess
With the ubiquity of SUVs at this point I can't imagine that many of them are being sold to men wanting to feel more "Rugged". I would think the vast majority are bought by those who want the additional space and safety of these cars, like families. It's going to be very difficult to convince consumers to drive cars smaller cars they see as less safe without some significant costs imposed on larger cars.
It's government regulations that made trucks get this big, most people simply buy what is available in the form factor they like.
Lots of Americans want smaller trucks. I just saw a Netflix show where a main character prized his old Toyota pickup. This is also evidenced in the importation of Japanese "K-car" trucks.
I agree! I believe I said similar in my above comment. I'm looking into getting one myself, though I'm apprehensive about purchasing a car built in 99 without being able to test drive or inspect it.
You can still get something like a 90s F-150, but it's now called a midsize truck. The main difference is that the bed will be smaller and the interior will be larger. There are even some smaller unibody trucks like the Maverick coming on the market.
What you can't seem to get is something like a first generation Tacoma or 90s S-10 without 4WD that's low to the ground. All of the newer trucks have very high bed sides that make loading them from the side a huge pain even if you're tall.
They're a step in the right direction for certain, I have what would now be a mid-size pickup myself, but even the Ford Mavericks are pretty big compared to these 90s cars.
Trucks sure are popular, but gov't regulations didn't "make" them big.
Given the popularity of F-250s / 2500s, which hardly meet any CAFE standard, the truckers don't yearn for the Ranger. They like 12mpg turbo diesel. We could repeal CAFE, get Ford to make them, but they still wouldn't sell. Tacoma loyalists keep the mid-size truck alive, but they're just a small fraction of 1500/2500 buyers.
People like big trucks, and that's fine: but why blame it on the gov't ?
Why do people like big trucks? Marketing works. Since there has been a 25% import tax on trucks (and SUVs) since the 1960's and not on cars, domestic manufacturers have been trying to get more and more people to buy them instead of cars. Seems to have worked.
Please don't ignore that every other person also has moved from driving cars to crossovers that offer no actual advantages over a regular car. Most people want to sit high, and that's what sells crossovers. The hoods are higher in them too and we can't discount this and blame it all on big trucks.
that offer no actual advantages over a regular car. Most people want to sit high
Isn't that the advantage? In a world where SUV's and trucks are more popular than sedans, sitting higher gives a sight advantage (and probably safety advantage in a side collision with one of those high cars). I drive a midsized sedan most of the time, but when I drive the RV (which has a higher seating position than many SUV's), I love the extra forward visibility, instead being at tailgate level, I can see through the back window of the truck/SUV in front of me.
Seating height doesn't help you see over cars when everybody else is also in a crossover at the same height as you.
As compared to a lower car, it absolutely helps. (I used to drive a lowered Alfa Romeo Spider. Sometimes I could see traffic better underneath the lifted trucks in front of me...)
I can't control what cars other people buy and drive. I can control what I buy and drive.
Which is why suggested regulation that would control what cars other people buy and drive.
But it helps you see car brake lights ahead through the back window of the SUV in front of you
If there wasn't an SUV in front of you this wouldn't be an issue
You can also look at things that are not cars, for example the road.
That's just led to an arms race where nobody wins. Everybody wants to get higher and higher to get a less obstructed view. Restricting the height of cars would at least put a cap on the escalation while a push for smaller cars would make it less of a problem for everyone over time.
...what?
If you've got back, hip, knee, or ankle problems, then trying to bend down into a low car is an undignified exercise at best, a struggle at worst. A CUV doesn't have that problem, you just sit into it like a chair.
For a family with young children, securing child seats into a CUV involves a lot less bending over then in lower car. Bear in mind that many child seats are 40 lbs.
If you live in a snowy area, the greater ground clearance makes it less likely to get stuck in residential roads that are lower priority for snow removal. You also have better approach angles as well, which can become a concern if you live in an area that's very hilly with steep driveways.
You probably don't see advantages, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Minivan. You can get a minivan that has more room than a crossover, lower load height so that you hurt even less getting in, and you have more headroom to get car seats in and out. They're far superior in every way. But everybody quit buying them because of some "uncool" factor. It's stupid.
The ground clearance on most crossovers is a joke. I have to point out how my Lotus Elise has 6 inches of ground clearance, and most CUVs have maybe an inch more than that. They have low-hanging diffs that hang up, and no recovery points for when you do get stuck. They're still the same car, barely jacked up. They look higher, but they aren't that much higher. Your one inch of extra clearance isn't saving you. The black plastic fenders don't make it rugged or capable. Most are just FWD, and the ones that are AWD just overheat and burn out the transfer case.
I live in a rural area, in the mountains, with lots of steep hills. My long ass driveway doesn't get plowed, my street is extremely low priority for plowing, never had problems getting around with 2wd cars. You sound like my neighbors who keep saying that I need a big 4wd truck to live out here. People just keep making these excuses to buy bigger cars that sit higher, without actually evaluating if these vehicles actually have the things they're marketed to be able to do.
I rented a Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid on my last business trip. No snow (SW) but a mix of suburban and rural roads and I was surprised at how much more fun it was to drive than the RAV4 I had on my last business trip (not to mention the giagantor 4Runner I rented over the winter break - to stop that thing you pass a motion, second it, send it to the executive branch and then hope it gets signed by the time you get to the stop sign at the bottom of the hill, but I digress). Modern minivans have apparently reached some odd pinnacle of car evolution right as they are going extinct. I imagine there's an alternate timeline where we have jetpacks and a general cure for cancer but only farm hands drive pickups...
(And you definitely don't step down into anything to get into it-quite the opposite. The driver's chair even auto pulls back to let you in which is definitely geezer friendly : )
First thing I thought of. I had to move from a sedans to crossover/small SUV when my knees couldn't take getting in and out anymore.
I'm sure that's not the case for everyone, or even most people, but who am I to gatekeep.
Maybe this is the way. We should run ad campaigns emphasizing that large, high vehicles are for the physically infirm. Make them as sexy as walkers with toilet seats. Show images of doddering old people getting into them.
Ease of entry alone, especially for the elderly or with young children, is an incredible advantage.
What it sounds like is that crossovers don't offer advantages that appeal to you.
My grandma has a minivan. It's way better than a crossover for ease of getting into. The floor height is nice and low so she doesn't have to step way up into it. The roof height is high so she doesn't have to scrunch in. It's easier to strap in car seats, it's easier to load your kids into. It's not a marketing joke like crossovers are.
What it sounds like, is that you didn't actually shop very hard for the right vehicle that actually has those advantages.
Minivans, at least in my market, are more or less double the price of crossovers, so they're not like-for-like.
You're very dismissive in your comments here. I wonder if some self reflection is in order here.
While I do believe people often buy trucks for the looks and emotional feeling, I equally feel that your projection itself is just as dangerous as the idea behind it.
Yeah, contemptuously painting a diverse group of people with a broad brush as pernicious -- History has something to say about this mental move.
I have a hard time believing that truck drivers are a diverse group of people when they're really only popular in a single region of the world.
In the top 10 most sold vehicles in USA 8-9 are trucks if I remember correctly. Ford F150 and Chevy Silvardo are typically number 1 and 2 consistently for decades. At that scale everything is likely to be diverse.
For the soyboys drinking their vegan milk and driving their lime bike to pride parade, it might come as a surprise, but it in indeed is. (<= This is an attempt to show that how any group can be dangerously maligned)
Exactly, "in USA". That's where the "only popular in a single region of the world" part comes in.
Trucks, especially the variety seen in the US, are practically unheard of anywhere else in the world. When a specific style of vehicle is that popular in a single country it probably has more to do with legislation than driver preference. There is almost certainly a decent portion of people driving trucks who would prefer an alternative form factor - if only it were available. It'd make sense to distinguish "truck drivers" from "people driving trucks".
I have a hard time believing that truck drivers are a diverse group of people
Painting a diverse group of millions of people with a broad brush, and making a claim that they're "all basically the same." History has something to say about that mental move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
Your comment is the thing which invokes the thing that triggers Godwin's law in this thread. It's entirely possible, and quite morally important to call out the particular mental move, nonetheless.
In 2024, I find it's often now people who really, really want to make that mental move, who invoke Godwin's, so they can end the current conversation and find another conversation where they can.
Common sense is the first casualty when any topic has political bias to it. This comment demonstrates that.
Large vehicles are important part of American economy and mostly driven by blue collar workers doing their work. For example things like plumbing, construction site work etc. Now a days environment scientists and engineers too drive these large vehicles as they are very important for their day to day work. Not everyone can drive Tesla Model 3 everywhere.
In fact majority of those large vehicles are you see are mostly driven by such needs ( pun intended).
But the research on this topic itself is pretty shoddy. For example one has to look at other variables. Who was driving when the accident happened ? Chances are someone who was rushing to his work.
A lot of other data points out that the drivers are at fault are often poor people going to their work in their work vehicle. Another data is he victims too are poor people going to their work and disregarding basic pedestrian safety.
These are not men pretending to be rugged.
Aaaaaaaabsolutely not! Trucks outnumber cars in every U.S. state. "Blue Collar" workers represent something like 16% of the U.S. workforce. The vast majority of truck drivers are not blue collar workers.
Other countries have blue collar workers too. And trucks! Have you seen what they look like? Check this bad-boy out. This is peak performance when it comes to manly-man workin' trucks. [1]
[1] https://c8.alamy.com/comp/2FA3BTR/a-small-blue-pickup-utilit...
Not to forget the ubiquitous small delivery vans all over Europe that seem to work fine for craft folk. Not everything that's been turned into a culture war by those who are up for profiting needs be.
The problem is that this argument is demonstrably not true. Trucks vastly outnumber blue collar workers, and most blue collar workers would be better served by a Volkswagen Transporter or a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter. You're not seeing those in the US because they have an insane import tax.
The traditional target for pickup trucks, farmers, almost universally hate modern trucks because they are simply way too tall to be practical - they'd rather have a 1990 model than a 2024 one.
The vast majority of pickup trucks see zero offroad use, and practically never carry anything in their bed. They are essentially pavement princesses used to commute to an office job.
So in my professional life I work optimising operations for large fleets of maintenance workers.
The UK Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate (ZEVM) is setting annual targets for the sale of new EVs in the UK, including vans. The govt stick is large penalties against motor manufacturers for non compliance. Fleet operators are beginning to come under pressure because they can't buy new ICE vans as they are not being made, forcing a transition to EVs.
This is an issue, because the traditional work van (Ford Transit or similar) has about a 150KwHr battery. So you can't do a full recharge on a 1 Phase 7Kw charger in less than 20hrs. And most of these vans have sat outside the drivers house at night so they can go straight yo the first job in the morning.
At the moment the answer looks like data science (but hey I'm a data scientist). With better data on root caused of problems, and on what equipment is actually where, we are able to get much better at knowing what the right tools and parts are for each job. And that enables the vans to carry less stock, which in turn enables us to reduce the van size down to something more like a Berlingo, which has a smaller battery and can be charged overnight on a household EV charger.
Trucks have a 25% import tax in the US and cars don't since the 1960. US domestic vehicle manufacturers have spent many decades to convince people to buy trucks and SUVs because of this fact. Google "chicken tax". Large station wagons used to be quite popular in the 1960's
It's not just because of this fact. It's also because trucks and SUVs are exempted from fuel efficiency standards that apply to sedans. So out sedans go, Ford doesn't even bother with them at all anymore.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/07/trucks-ou...
That is another reason. But the smallest trucks were put in the car efficiency standards. There used to be a Ford F100. Full size truck but lighter load capacity. RIP. Tax gas if you want people to burn less of it.
I don't think that's exactly true. It's just that fuel standards for light trucks are now defined in terms of the footprint of the vehicle -- the smaller the truck, the higher the fuel standard. Which is, of course, exactly what the automakers wanted: They make more money selling bigger trucks.
I found the light truck CAFE standards online. Notice how simple they were from 2001-2010, and how ridiculous they are since the 2008 change: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-49/subtitle-B/chapter-V/p...
Change CAFE first, then tax. There's only so much people can do to day-to-day to change their fuel consumption. It really comes down to 1) Where they live 2) Where they work and 3) What they drive. If we're going to raise taxes, we have to start by turning the ship around as far as the available vehicles. Right now the streets are filled with brodozers.
That is quite a complicated way to calculate the CAFE standard. I wonder what the definition of "light truck" is?
CAFE doesn't help day to day either. When you buy the car is when you are thinking most about gas prices and fuel efficiency. When gas prices are high people buy fuel efficient cars. The Prius, Teslas, etc. already exists so people can already show preference for fuel efficiency and manufactures can follow.
Edit: I was just thinking, if you force high fuel efficiency on the fleet and people want cars/trucks on average that get worse fuel efficiency than the stated goal, the market is going to always make the gas guzzlers more profitable and the fuel efficient cars loss leaders. We should either tax the gas or have a sliding scale tax on cars depending on the fuel efficiency. And taxing gas is better. I'm sure fuel efficiency standard can be gamed like diesel gate more easliy than the volume of a gallon of gas.
Government regulation is what forced manufacturers to make bigger vehicles.
But who asked for the government regulations? Perhaps the manufacturers themselves?
Edit: Yeah, it was the manufacturers.
The only way to reverse the trend is to create a motocross hitch that doesn't pulverize the suspension of a car/crossover.
Better their trucks than my family members.
You think it's all dudes driving these things though? Surely yeah, that's the case for big stupid pickup trucks. But SUVs are driven by anxious Starbucks moms. "I need to feel safe." Hausfrauenpanzeren.