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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

#161

Post by LUmBULtERA »

Kiro wrote: post #155
LUmBULtERA wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s funny, a couple decades ago I studied in Vienna. I was amazed at how great their public transit was! I didn’t need a car to get around. But I made a local friend there, and at first I was surprised she had a car there. Then, yeah it made sense if you still live somewhere other than city center. Buses to metro to something on the other side of the city could still take a long time. Add cargo, a kid? No, this isn’t an American thing. Go look at how many people own cars across Europe. Plenty of people do.

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

#162

Post by wtetzner »

globular-toast wrote: post #66
imglorp wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us actively hate big cars for daily use and are angered at the "SUV" (usually neither sport nor utility) unithink forced on us, and are frustrated how hard it is to find anything different. I want basically an electric Miata for around town, can't get one. I also want an actual utility vehicle with a long, solid, roof rack to haul a canoe or sheet of plywood. SUV roof racks are usually token, if at all. A pla…

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…

This us making some pretty big assumptions about what the town in question looks like.

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

#163

Post by Zigurd »

Big heavy pedestrian-killing trucks are just one facet among many of popularizing selfish, oafish, violent, thoughtless individualism as a culture underlying political beliefs that otherwise lack a connection to culture. Anti-vaxx, and other quack medicine is another such phenomenon. You only need to consider the 12 lives lost for every life preserved to see how shortsighted this is: unless you plan to live in your giant truck 24/7, you could be one of those 12.

It's disturbing to see comments that celebrate and excuse wallowing in that subculture.

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

#164

Post by AnarchismIsCool »

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.

Bigger cars need more fuel -> bigger fuel trucks They use more materials to make, require bigger places to store/maintain them and go through bigger consumables ie tires -> bigger lorries.

It's not like they're the sum of all evil, they have a small impact on the size of these things, but bringing the sizes down will help on the pathway to lowering the size of everything.

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

#165

Post by AdrianB1 »

roughly wrote: post #75
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…

> 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. I'm actually curious how much of this danger is primarily to pedestrians and cyclists. On the margins, I'd expect in a crash a 6000lb vehicle with modern safety equipment to be saf…

Honestly, I don't think the weight of the car matters too much in an accident with a bicycle or pedestrian. I was hit a few times by cars at low speed (10-20 km/h) while riding my motorcycle and the weight of the car did not matter, when I was rear ended if the car was 20% (300 kg) lighter it would still be 4 times the mass of (me + bike), so the impact would be similar. A car versus a pedestrian is almost identical if the car is 1000 kg or 2000 kg.

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

#166

Post by tinyhouse »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #80
tinyhouse wrote: post #25

It's not a love affair. Once there are large vehicles on the road, you cannot afford putting yourself at greater risk by not having a large vehicle yourself.

Is that necessarily true? There are no smaller vehicles with overbuilt frames, more airbags, and better test rating? I look under the hood of "large" trucks and sometimes it's a lot of empty space. It looks like a paper tiger- it's fake big. I've also read somewhere that taller vehicles have a higher chance of rollover which could make them less safe than advertised.

That's fair. However, if my car is twice heavier and larger than yours, even if your car is well engineered and has great safety features and rating, you're likely to end up worse than me in an accident. Even if my chances of rollover are higher than yours.

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

#167

Post by Zigurd »

dnadler wrote: post #103
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…

People in US suburbs frequently live several miles from their town center, if they even have a town center at all. Cycling simply isn’t viable to large swaths of the US. There isn’t an easy answer to this either, given that you’d probably need to tear down entire neighborhoods and rebuild a more dense town

E-bikes fix most of those problems. A 10 mile trip, out and back, at 20mph, with no concern for loss of momentum at stop signs and lights is easily do-able by anyone who doesn't need mobility aids.

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

#168

Post by brendoelfrendo »

dionian wrote: post #34
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…

Sounds like a heavier car is actually safer to put me and my loved ones inside, at least for now.

So you've never been a pedestrian before ever? What do you want driving down the street when your kid chases a ball into the road?

Or do you not allow your kids outside either, because you bought a big house with a small yard because that is optimally safe?

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

#169

Post by globular-toast »

dgfitz wrote: post #140
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…

> People should be walking or cycling around town. This. Is a very out of touch opinion. I could write 20 paragraphs disagreeing, but I doubt it is worth my time to write or anyone else’s to read. Not every person is able-bodied enough to walk and bike. Also, people happen to need to get from A to B when it is cold, dark, raining, extremely hot, snowing, or just some kind of shitty outside. People need to drive to a…

So you think most people are incapable of walking or cycling? And you're saying I'm out of touch?!

As for cold, dark, raining. Boo fucking hoo. If you had to go somewhere you'd deal with it. Cars have made people into weak, incapable little creatures. It's honestly pathetic.

I cycle with food and supplies in my panniers all the time. What exactly are you buying every week that can't be transported back without fossil fuel assistance?

You don't think children can walk or bike? Are you crazy? A healthy child doesn't want to sit still. They're capable of locomotion from about age 3.

Old people can get around too. Sure there are some who can't but it's not a majority. Again, cars have taught us this helplessness.

I just wish I could take car people outside of their reality for just a week or so. Once you see it from the outside it's so apparent. But I guess some people aren't ready to leave the Matrix. And some will fight to protect it.

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

#170

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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