181–190 of 278 posts
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> Imagine if we had cars that were built like cars from the 80s ... I'd happily but such a car for the city, if it was cheap enough to be able to afford a more serious car for long journeys.
You probably wouldn't know the difference between a 1980s car and a modern car if the modern amount of NVH reduction was thrown at the 1980s car.
Last summer someone pulled out in front of me and totaled my Honda Fit. I would have loved to replace it with a new one but they don't sell them in North America any more. In the 90s I had a small Nissan truck (apparently it is called a Hardbody? The manual just said "nissan truck") You can't buy any truck anywhere near as small as that any more. I also had a Dodge Dakota at one point and you can't even really find a…
The thing I’m curious about is, why did sports cars stop being cool? They were everywhere in the eighties, and of course critics would describe their drivers as compensating for a subconscious lacking in masculinity or something… they understandably died off in the nineties… and now we seem to be back to compensating with huge trucks? Sports cars might be dangerous but at least that’s mostly just to the occupiers, wh…
So then the next generation grew up and bought trucks because trucks weren't constantly being shat on. And now we're seeing the beginning of a transition back with the high performance EV sports cars.
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There are three trends: bigger mass, larger sizes and taller vehicles. Which one of the above is the most consequential? I'm guessing height. at 2500 or 5000 lbs, neither is going to be pleasant when you bang in to it. size maybe there is more surface area to get hit by, but that's unlikely to be significant. mass does influence stopping distance though, so that could be, but at the same time we now have large disc b…
Note that minivans have been around longer than SUVs, but do not appear to be as disproportionate in fatalities. I suspect part of this is that they are typically lower to the ground and, more importantly, tend to only weigh about 500 lbs more than the average car at ~4500 lbs. Contrast this with full size SUVs, which are often taller and weigh on average closer to ~5900 lbs.
The minivan didn't become popular until 1980s, while SUVs remained the domain of niches like families too large for a minivan, or those who regularly drove off road for another decade or two. However the SUV is clearly the older of the two.
I drive a Camaro. I can’t fit an infant seat behind my driver’s side seat, and I sit abnormally closer to the steering wheel than most. Never mind a larger child seat. Ok, you’re saying - but that’s a Camaro. Well, said Camaro is in repair at the moment and they gave me a loaner. It’s a Chevy Sonic. I also can’t fit the infant seat behind the driver’s side. To be fair, it’s a subcompact. However, even in my wife’s CX…
There is another form factor: station wagons. I don't know why they have fallen so out of fashion in the US, they are such practical cars. Fit a family of four? No problem. Need material for your project? Fold the back seats and fit full sheets of plywood. Not even the full size SUVs has as much space as a regular old station wagon.
The idiots who cooked up the CAFE footprint rule that resulted in all the OEMs cramming the axles to the far ends of the vehicle (killing a lot of trunk space in the process) are probably responsible for the biggest share but it's very much a death by a thousand cuts situation.
Honestly as an upper middle class or rich American it looks like one of the more dangerous things you could do is probably go out cycling in a road shared by these monster machines. If you crave physical activity so much there’s many other alternatives. When I lived in College Station Texas I had to use a bike (because I was broke) but I stuck to the sidewalks, rules be damned. And even in the sidewalk had to keep an…
If you're a pedestrian walking alongside a busy street, it's almost impossible to hear a cyclist coming up behind you, so unless the cyclist tells you that they're about to pass you, it's easy to unintentionally move into the cyclist's path and risk getting hit.
I've almost gotten hit several times by bikers on the sidewalk, and while such a collision would be much less injurious than a car crash, I can't say I'm opposed to such laws.
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Also, shape. Go look at the front end of a car like a ford F150. The hood is flat and sits 4 feet high. Now go look at a more compact car like a prius. The hood is low, and is angled like a wedge smooth into the windshield. When a prius hits you, its liable that you will just roll up and off of it and not get much of the force from the impact as a result. When an F150 hits you with its 4 foot tall wall of a grill str…
I once managed to barely jump and slide over the hood of a car that came up behind me and turned - at considerable speed - right into the pedestrian crossing I had been traversing on a green light. The driver looked right through me, didn’t even realize it until my - corner of the eye induced - leap. I would be dead for 15 years now if that would have been a SUV. Lots of people really don’t seem to have a good grasp…
They are not tanks. They are suburban armoured personnel carriers.
Impacts with large and heavy vehicles suck. I can not recommend. Stick with bumper cars.
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Also, shape. Go look at the front end of a car like a ford F150. The hood is flat and sits 4 feet high. Now go look at a more compact car like a prius. The hood is low, and is angled like a wedge smooth into the windshield. When a prius hits you, its liable that you will just roll up and off of it and not get much of the force from the impact as a result. When an F150 hits you with its 4 foot tall wall of a grill str…
"Just roll up and off of it" makes it sound like a pleasurable experience. The majority of serious injuries happen not upon collision with the vehicle, but when hitting the ground afterwards. This applies for any vehicle shape, but in different ways.
That claim right there is begging for a source. It's hard to imagine landing from a person's height is worse than hitting a brick wall moving 40 km/h, unless that brick wall also threw you more than 6 meters up into the air, which point at which you'd be moving faster than 40km/h when you hit the ground.
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Pedestrian visibility is also compromised. My SO is not a tall person. We've tested - she's quite invisible standing in front of these trucks and SUVs, because their front hood is so high and square. A small child would be impossible to see even some meters away. Worse if the driver of the vehicle is not tall.
I once had a Toyota land cruiser start climbing onto the hood of my Hyundai accent because the driver couldn’t see me over the hood of his engine as he driving up out of a parking garage.
As an American, we need to rethink how the cities are designed. Way too much emphasis on car centric design. An emphasis on car centric transportation means fed government and people want cars to be safer. Larger A-pillars which decrease line of sight. Larger vehicles give people a higher sense of security and safety. These 2 points make it very safe for the driver and occupants but disregard any safety for pedestria…