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Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

economist.com

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Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#151

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

spacebanana7 wrote: post #81
thot_experiment wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars damage infrastructure in proportion to the fourth power of axle load. Not only are people in big cars killing people in little cars, they're also HEAVILY subsidized by the people they kill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

Because that function is so convex, almost all of the cumulative damage to roads is done by lorries, buses and fuel trucks. Cars, even big ones, are negligible compared to the fourth power of bus weight.

Sure, but there are plenty of roads that don't see much, if any, traffic of that type.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#152

Post by gamepsys »

jl6 wrote: post #128
dataflow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this means taxes should be imposed on cars proportionally to the fourth power of axle load too.

The unintended consequences of this would be: Massive increase in the cost of public transport as buses pass their tax costs onto users. Massive increase in the cost of freight shipping, which would be passed on to consumers, i.e. everybody, since virtually every part of the economy depends indirectly on freight transport. It would amount to everybody paying, and thus being more or less equivalent to public funding o…

Freight -- Ideally this causes more investment into freight rail and more freight to be moved by rail/boat. This might cause short term price increases to expand the infrastructure, but long term it's much cheaper/greener/efficient to move this stuff on rail. Last mile (maybe last 100 miles) will always be by truck, but we have way too much long haul stuff.

Public Transport -- If tax payers are currently paying for the external costs of public transportation (via taxes to repair roads) then it won't cost anymore public money if taxpayers continue to cover that cost. For private busses this is a case of tax payers unfairly subsiding their external costs.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#153

Post by AdrianB1 »

jl6 wrote: post #128
dataflow wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this means taxes should be imposed on cars proportionally to the fourth power of axle load too.

The unintended consequences of this would be: Massive increase in the cost of public transport as buses pass their tax costs onto users. Massive increase in the cost of freight shipping, which would be passed on to consumers, i.e. everybody, since virtually every part of the economy depends indirectly on freight transport. It would amount to everybody paying, and thus being more or less equivalent to public funding o…

Intended consequence would be: cars pay for the damages they do to the road. Even buses. What is wrong with that?

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#154

Post by LUmBULtERA »

hmottestad wrote: post #53
OutOfHere wrote: post #39

It's not just the kill rate. It's also how much more toxic tire dust pollution the heavier vehicles put out.

Tires today contain a large amount of plastics. So what you are breathing while walking next to a road with a bunch of Teslas driving down it is basically a cloud of microplastics.

Can you imagine being next to a bunch of Toyota Sienna driving parents? Those things are even heavier!

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#155

Post by Kiro »

LUmBULtERA wrote: post #139
globular-toast wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment shows how bad car culture is. You think you're the enlightened one, but you want an electric sports car for getting "around town"? People should be walking or cycling around town. Cars are actively harmful to towns. Cars have led to generations of people who don't realise they are capable of walking further than a few steps between car and building. A kind of learned helplessness. When you step outside o…

Except in a lot of places where it’s easy to use public transportation and bikes, it’s still useful to own a car for around town to places a bit further away. Or when it would take you 1.5 hours by public transit (even in areas with good public transit!) vs 0.5 hours by car, on a 110 F day. This thread is about car choice, which doesn’t mean people don’t use other options when they make sense.

You should at least admit that this is an American problem. No-one in my family has a driver's license and it's not an issue whatsoever. There's very little reason to own a car in a society with a functioning public transport system.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#156

Post by Tanoc »

ericjmorey wrote: post #100
loeg wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [Ford] killed all their cars in favour of CUVs and SUVs. They still sell one car -- the Mustang.

The mustang also comes in an SUV format now in addition to the sports car format.

They're spinning Mustang off into a sub-brand, like Chrysler did for Imperial. We're set to get a Mustang "offroader" sometime in 2027, and there's rumblings of a mid-size CUV to slot below the full-size Mach-E. Marketing loves these rub-off schemes meant to give inferior or fledgling products some of the shine of a halo product. They almost always end up failing, and even when they don't they damage the halo products after the first round of releases using the shared name.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#158

Post by coliveira »

bradley13 wrote: post #95

Easy fix: If you want less of something, tax it. The race to ever bigger vehicles has many costs, from road wear to (now we know) human lives. You pay an annual registration fee for your vehicle. Make that fee go up dramatically for heavier vehicles. If you pay, say, $100 for a car under a ton, make it $1k for up to two tons, $10k for 3 tons, etc..

They know how to avoid this, because heavy autos are considered utility vehicles. They'll claim this is bad for the economy because small companies need access to utility vehicles.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#159

Post by creer »

toddmorey wrote: post #57

Germany has a ratio of 3.9 deaths per 100,000 people, while America's ratio is 12.4 per 100,000—essentially 4x higher. And they have the autobahn. Not like they are driving slower.

They drive with a discipline / care that Americans refuse to even consider. Perhaps Americans should.

Re: Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

#160

Post by AdrianB1 »

thot_experiment wrote: post #54
xwall wrote: post #15

Key Ideas: Heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants but more dangerous for others: The weight of a vehicle is a critical factor in car crashes, with heavier vehicles causing more fatalities in other cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. The heaviest vehicles kill more people than they save: Analysis of crash data shows that for every life saved by the heaviest 1% of SUVs and trucks, more than a dozen lives are lost…

Cars damage infrastructure in proportion to the fourth power of axle load. Not only are people in big cars killing people in little cars, they're also HEAVILY subsidized by the people they kill. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

We do it different in Europe: pay disproportionate by engine displacement. My father's car has 10x the taxes as my mother's car just because the engine is 1.6 times larger (2.5 liters, nothing outrageous). At the same time my mother pays for that car quite close to what I pay for each of my bikes that are 8-10 times lighter and have way smaller engines (300cc and 600cc).
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