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American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

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Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#71

Post by xethos »

chrisco255 wrote: post #55
resoluteteeth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large cars aren't inherently safer for passengers. They are only safer in collisions with other cars that are smaller, at the expense of the safety of the people in the smaller cars. Having an arms race where people buy bigger and bigger cars to be safer in collisions with other cars is really not ideal, because it doesn't improve overall automobile safety on a national level even just for drivers, and it hurts safet…

Pedestrians aren't getting killed more often because cars are bigger. They're not being seen due to low visibility from A pillar designs. SUVs used to be quite boxy and large in the 90s and early 00s (think 90s Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc), but began to take on a more streamlined, car-like look in the late 00s / early 10s. As a result of this design shift to crossovers, the A column gets slanted and blocks a w…

It's not the slant so much as the width - it wouldn't be thick enough, close enough, and leave such poor visibility were it thinner. But it's required to be thicker to survive a rollover without the big heavy body crushing the roof (and occupants).

I've driven vehicles that don't have to survive a rollover (a few models of New Flyer diesel bus). The A pillar being slanted or straight makes no difference. It's the thickness that'll block a pedestrian.

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#72

Post by paulryanrogers »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #68
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #41

Lots of people want big cars, and they vote with their checkbook. I have a big car. I have children. They have stuff, and friends and we go on long drives sometimes. It's nice to have a big car.

It is also far safer to have a big car since there are so many other big cars on the road.

Proliferation FTW

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#73

Post by tzs »

Barrin92 wrote: post #34

doesn't make a lot of sense to put this on manufacturers. The safety aspect is a collective action problem. When only one person buys a smaller car they're not safer, so you need to get everyone to change. Next big factor is regulation and protectionism. Read a depressing blog about the effort a guy had to go through to get a mini truck from China to the US and he couldn't even drive it on some roads. Importing the t…

> The safety aspect is a collective action problem. When only one person buys a smaller car they're not safer, so you need to get everyone to change.

The difficulty with getting people to agree to that is that when it comes to crashes between two cars, or between one car and some stationary object like a big tree, "everyone has a smaller car" is less safe than "everyone has a larger car".

"Everyone has a smaller car" would be safer for pedestrians and cyclists, but something like 80% of deaths involving cars are from cars hitting cars or cars hitting stationary objects accidents so that's probably going to be the priority for most people.

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#74

Post by gruez »

tastyfreeze wrote: post #23
orangecat wrote: post #6

You could just make them smaller. There's no rule saying you can't. There kind of is. Fuel efficiency requirements are stricter for smaller vehicles, creating a perverse incentive to increase size. Here's a 2011 paper that predicted exactly what would happen: https://news.umich.edu/cafe-standards-create-profit-incentiv...

This is the reason we are all driving beasts. For a small wheelbase vehicle to meet CAFE standards it has to get an unreasonable 90mpg or the manufacturer gets fined.

> For a small wheelbase vehicle to meet CAFE standards it has to get an unreasonable 90mpg or the manufacturer gets fined.

Source? At least according to this source[1], a car with footprint similar to a Honda Fit only needs to hit 51 mpg this year, which it currently meets[2][3]. There are certainly cars that are even smaller than a Honda Fit, and maybe those do need to hit 90mpg, but the existence of cars like the Honda Fit proves that you can have CAFE compliant cars that aren't "beasts".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...

[2] https://hondanews.eu/eu/fi/cars/media/pressreleases/1523/hon...

[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=+4.5+L%2F100km+to+mpg

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#75

Post by falcolas »

orangecat wrote: post #6

You could just make them smaller. There's no rule saying you can't. There kind of is. Fuel efficiency requirements are stricter for smaller vehicles, creating a perverse incentive to increase size. Here's a 2011 paper that predicted exactly what would happen: https://news.umich.edu/cafe-standards-create-profit-incentiv...

Don't forget the chicken tax.

> The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks ... imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken.

> ... since 1964 this form of protectionism has remained in place to give US domestic automakers an advantage over imported competitors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#76

Post by drewcoo »

ericmay wrote: post #58
orangecat wrote: post #6

You could just make them smaller. There's no rule saying you can't. There kind of is. Fuel efficiency requirements are stricter for smaller vehicles, creating a perverse incentive to increase size. Here's a 2011 paper that predicted exactly what would happen: https://news.umich.edu/cafe-standards-create-profit-incentiv...

Thanks for sharing this here, it really does appear to be the primary culprit. If anything the larger the vehicle the more fuel efficient it should be, not the opposite. But that is just one part of the puzzle. The other is of course just normal marketing, advertising, etc. convincing people that they do lots of things outdoors that they don't actually do. Ford, GM, Toyota, Dodge, etc. are not the only ones guilty of…

> The other is of course just normal marketing, advertising, etc. convincing people that they do lots of things outdoors that they don't actually do.

> but people who tend to want trucks want them because of what they think they enable

Those two of statements, sandwiching a paragraph, are completely contradictory.

If the marketing works (and I would claim it does) then people who want FOO want it because of marketing, not because of actual real need fulfillment.

Bernays told us that propaganda/PR/marketing was about selling feelings, not facts. And he demonstrated to us all how well it worked in various domains. The auto industry has been selling more "freedom" than cars and trucks for longer than I have been alive.

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#77

Post by chrisco255 »

xethos wrote: post #71
chrisco255 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pedestrians aren't getting killed more often because cars are bigger. They're not being seen due to low visibility from A pillar designs. SUVs used to be quite boxy and large in the 90s and early 00s (think 90s Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc), but began to take on a more streamlined, car-like look in the late 00s / early 10s. As a result of this design shift to crossovers, the A column gets slanted and blocks a w…

It's not the slant so much as the width - it wouldn't be thick enough, close enough, and leave such poor visibility were it thinner. But it's required to be thicker to survive a rollover without the big heavy body crushing the roof (and occupants). I've driven vehicles that don't have to survive a rollover (a few models of New Flyer diesel bus). The A pillar being slanted or straight makes no difference. It's the thi…

This is definitely true, but if a pillar is vertically oriented, it's going to obscure less horizontal area regardless of thickness. Both factors work against visibility.

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#78

Post by tzs »

chrisco255 wrote: post #55
resoluteteeth wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large cars aren't inherently safer for passengers. They are only safer in collisions with other cars that are smaller, at the expense of the safety of the people in the smaller cars. Having an arms race where people buy bigger and bigger cars to be safer in collisions with other cars is really not ideal, because it doesn't improve overall automobile safety on a national level even just for drivers, and it hurts safet…

Pedestrians aren't getting killed more often because cars are bigger. They're not being seen due to low visibility from A pillar designs. SUVs used to be quite boxy and large in the 90s and early 00s (think 90s Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc), but began to take on a more streamlined, car-like look in the late 00s / early 10s. As a result of this design shift to crossovers, the A column gets slanted and blocks a w…

> They're not being seen due to low visibility from A column designs. SUVs used to be quite boxy and large in the 90s and early 00s (think 90s Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc), but began to take on a more streamlined, car-like look in the late 00s / early 10s. As a result of this design shift to crossovers, the A column gets slanted and blocks a wide field of view that especially affects drivers when making left turns

I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this. I've done some visibility tests in my car, a 2006 Honda CR-V, and I don't think the A columns would cause me to miss a pedestrian. I'm not sure how that compares to newer cars, but just looking from the outside at newer cars in parking lots and on the street the size and slant of the A columns seems similar to mine.

What I found in my tests is that the slant of the columns helps with me seeing pedestrians. Yes, along any given horizontal line the column could completely span the visual width of a pedestrian who is not very close to the car, but since pedestrians stand vertically it is only covering part of them vertically. E.g., if the column is blocking me seeing waist it won't be blocking the chest or head. If it is blocking their chest I'll see their waist and head.

A column with little or no slant would be able to block from head to waist.

From my perspective in the driver's seat, the driver side column is less slanted than the passenger side column, so it does block more of a pedestrian. Still, I think if a walking pedestrian was close enough that I might hit them when turning in that direction they would be close enough that enough of them would be unblocked for me to see them.

Also, since I'm much closer to the driver side column, when I turn my head from looking straight ahead to looking to the left that moves my eyes enough that there is enough perspective shift that the places that someone who is at a distance where they could be completely blocked cannot remain blocked throughout the head turn. I'll either catch them with my right eye at early in the head turn or my left late in the head turn.

This might vary between people. When I turn my head to check the driver's side I also move my head back a little. Someone who moves their head forward as they turn it could end up with the perspective shift from the turn being offset by the perspective shift from moving the head forward.

PS: while writing this I had an idea for a simple add on that could make it a lot easier to see pedestrians near the car. Why not add a pair of mirrors near the bottom of the windshield directly in front of the driver. One mirror would be angled to let the driver see what is on the left, and one to see what is on the right.

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#79

Post by chiefalchemist »

sp332 wrote: post #3
chiefalchemist wrote: post #2

Not really, it's not the automakers, it's the auto buyers. The American market wants and expects BIG. There's no incentive for anything otherwise, especially when the price of gas is *once again* falling. This isn't going to be solved until we have "autos on demand", and then pricing will be based on the vehicle size ordered. At that point, there will be no justification for an SUV if there's just a single person nee…

Smaller cars are less available. They have longer wait times and higher dealer markup. In the article, the two smaller cars mentioned aren't even sold in the United States.

And that's because smaller cars are less desired by The Market.

Let's forget small / smaller for a second. Let's just go with mid-sized. *Plenty* of options there and yet SUVs and trucks are the goto choice. See?

It's the market.

Re: American cars are huge and unsafe, but automakers don't want the simple solution

#80

Post by chiefalchemist »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #2

Not really, it's not the automakers, it's the auto buyers. The American market wants and expects BIG. There's no incentive for anything otherwise, especially when the price of gas is *once again* falling. This isn't going to be solved until we have "autos on demand", and then pricing will be based on the vehicle size ordered. At that point, there will be no justification for an SUV if there's just a single person nee…

WTF? Down voted? Who on HN failed Economics 101? God bless you, but please stay away from the DV button.
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