71–80 of 358 posts
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!"
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.
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…
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.
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!"
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.
With tiny dogs. Maybe they're the preferred vehicle of tiny dogs.
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 ha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 a…
Does anyone call an SUV a truck? Surely pickups are trucks.
I do think it's common for people to call large SUVs like the Ford Excursion "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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
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
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,” a…
So yeah, "safety".
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!"
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
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/07/trucks-ou...