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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

#241

Post by Xenoamorphous »

creer wrote: post #159
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.

It’s funny, because my very anecdotal experience is very different.

I’ve been to the US and Germany only once. In Berlin I didn’t drive, but saw the weirdest thing multiple times: when the traffic lights turned green sometimes the drivers of the cars up front would just go flat out, tyre screching and all, only to stop at the next traffic light 100 meters away. Really odd.

On the other hand I had to drive many kilometers (sorry, miles) in the US and thought everyone was well behaved, didn’t experience any tailgating, reckless driving etc.

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

#242

Post by nradov »

PaulHoule wrote: post #175
tootie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any politician saying we should limit motor vehicle size would committing career suicide. That would be a slam dunk wedge issue for Republicans.

Could be the opposite. Part of the problem is that carmakers refuse to sell small cars. If you don’t believe me try to buy a small car at a car dealership in America. Consumers are angry about rising costs, particularly for automobiles, and having a choice to buy an affordable vehicle could be surprisingly popular. For instance I think electric vehicle adoption is stalled because there aren’t many people who can affo…

There are Nissan Leafs available for consumers who want a relatively cheap small BEV. But the average new car transaction price is now about $47K so it seems most buyers are willing to pay more for something larger and nicer.

There's no way that BYD will be allowed to sell many cars in the USA regardless of potential benefits to consumers. It's too risky to increase our economic dependence on a country which is at best a strategic competitor and at worst perhaps an adversary. Both of our main political parties are now generally aligned to that viewpoint and it won't change at least as long as Chairman Xi remains in power.

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

#243

Post by Forge36 »

smolder wrote: post #121
Tanoc wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true to a ridiculous extent. Ford has no compact hatchback or sedan in the U.S., only the Brazilian built EcoSport. They killed all their cars in favour of CUVs and SUVs. Chevrolet no longer has the Sonic, having nixed those in 2022. Honda no longer has the Fit as of two years ago. Mitsubishi no longer sells the Mirage as of last month. Dodge hasn't had anything since the Dart died in 2016. The Jeep Renegade'…

I have heard people lamenting the loss of small trucks for 20 years. There has never been another one as small or as light as a Ford Ranger or Toyota RN Pickup from the 90s. Rangers stopped being made and the Tacoma that replaced the Pickup got larger every model year until it was bigger and heavier than the original Tundra. It really is ridiculous because people love the utility of those smaller, more efficient old…

I grew up with my father's 84' Ranger. 2 seater. Everything else looked big by comparison. And many had a smaller bed!

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

#244

Post by PaulHoule »

gruez wrote: post #226
PaulHoule wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try buying a sedan. Most of them have been discontinued by the manufacturer as of 2024 or the dealer won’t have one in stock or if they do have one in stock it won’t have power windows or they’ll have some excuse why they can’t sell you one. They did it to my dad when he tried to buy a small car in he 1970s and it was a policy of American car dealers except around a short period after he 2008 financial crisis. What i…

>Try buying a sedan. Most of them have been discontinued by the manufacturer as of 2024 or the dealer won’t have one in stock or if they do have one in stock it won’t have power windows or they’ll have some excuse why they can’t sell you one. >They did it to my dad when he tried to buy a small car in he 1970s and it was a policy of American car dealers except around a short period after he 2008 financial crisis. What…

The problem in the 1970s were bloated FR sedans that had a huge engine compartment but a relatively cramped passenger compartment partitioned by the transmission and driveshaft. Got 12mpg under good conditions, the more you spent the more likely you blew the head gaskets at 20k miles or had intermittent problems with the automatic transmission that no amount of rebuilding would fix.

Japanese FF sedans and hatchbacks were a breath of fresh air because they fixed all those problems. Volkswagen also made RR vehicles like the bug that were radically simple, affordable and reliable but never made the investment to make the comply with new emissions regulation and instead they came out with the Rabbit which was initially OK but the price went up and quality went down and now you have the Golf which appeals to people hypnotized by the German nameplate.

Myself it’s not a sedan that I want but a hatchback. I currently drive a Fit, but since they quit making it I will think more than twice before getting another Honda.

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

#245

Post by sarchertech »

skhunted wrote: post #218
sarchertech wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are very very few paved roads where the largest vehicles on them are large SUVs. I live on a mountain near a road where commercial vehicles are banned and we still get a few large commercial vehicles per day. One of the roads up the mountain has switchbacks near the top that are so tight that nothing longer than 18 feet is allowed up, but at least 2x a week a box truck gets stuck. Heavy cars have many negative…

There are vehicles that do more damage to roads than large pickup trucks. It's still the case that large pickup trucks do more damage to the road than small cars. Owners of pickup trucks are being subsidized by pedestrians and small car owners. They do not pay enough for the privilege of driving their vehicles in relation to the damage they cause.

Road damage isn’t like hit points. If a road has regular large vehicle traffic, it doesn’t really matter how many smaller passenger vehicles are driving on it—even if they are pickup trucks. Passenger vehicles aren’t going to change how frequently the road needs to be repaved.

At the extreme end, imagine a railroad bridge. We don’t care about how fat the mice that regularly cross it are.

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

#246

Post by brendoelfrendo »

cranekam wrote: post #35
croes wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the market isn't working.

It clearly is. As the article makes out, the tax code and regulation favours large vehicles. Gas is cheap. Acting alone, there are few reasons to buy a smaller car if you can afford a bigger one. This is exactly the market “working” and why regulation is necessary to change it.

Only if you think that the market should encourage everyone to buy the most expensive thing they can afford. Larger cars are popular with manufacturers and dealers because of higher profit margins. A consumer should be able to pick a smaller, cheaper vehicle if they want it, but this makes their business less desirable. Just because there are few reasons to buy a smaller car does not mean there are no reasons, nor does it make it illogical to prefer one.

I don't know if this is an economic concept that exists, but I'd call it an "accidental cartel." Corporations noticed that serving a particular customer base was less profitable than giving customers fewer, more expensive choices, so the market participants aligned themselves around this strategy until there are no cheaper, lower margin options left. In theory, that leaves an open market for a competitor, but to occupy that niche would be to spend resources on attracting a lower-quality customer (one who is less able to pay more, less interested in paying more, less susceptible to marketing, etc).

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

#247

Post by kwhitefoot »

nradov wrote: post #207
AdrianB1 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

The notion of charging different fees or taxes by engine displacement is idiotic. It has nothing particularly to do with road wear, emissions, or safety hazards.

Larger displacement engines are almost invariably in larger, heavier, vehicles. Axle weight determines road wear. I agree that using the axle weight would be better but displacement taxes were also a luxury tax.

Some of my cars over the years:

Mini: 600 kg, 850 cc

Rover 75: 1 700 kg, 2 500 cc

Chevy Van: 2500 kg, 5 000 cc

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

#248

Post by ncruces »

Retric wrote: post #209
simongr3dal wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those vehicles typically have many more axles and double-wide wheels to distribute the load.

It doesn’t help that much. Each tire of a fully loaded 18 wheeler carries 4.4x the weight of a typical car tire. 4.4 ^ 4 = 378x the damage per tire but there are also 4.5x the tires so your at 1,700x the damage. That’s an oversimplification, but it doesn’t really matter if it’s 99.9% or 95% of the damage ware is still absolutely dominated by heavy vehicles.

And how many more SUVs go through that road? If there's a few hundred SUVs for every 18 wheeler, it's no longer negligible: it's 10 or 30% of the damage.

And it could be a lot more negligible, if that mostly drive alone, drove a car with half the weight.

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

#249

Post by hermitcrab »

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…

>For a pedestrian or cyclist, though, getting hit by a large truck or SUV is a different story, primarily because the shape and frontal area are so much larger,

Especially if they have raised it, which seems very common in places like Florida.

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

#250

Post by orwin »

dataflow wrote: post #47
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…

> Carmakers prioritize consumer preferences over safety: Manufacturers are producing increasingly heavier vehicles, driven by consumer demand for larger, more powerful cars, despite the safety risks to others. That is prioritizing safety - of the very customers themselves, whose preferences very much do include safety! Sounds like the market functioning exactly as designed. And sounds like we need regulation here.

Accident where two car ram into each other, where the weight is useful, are the minority, the vast majority is a single vehicle hitting a stationary obstacle.

US cars high clearance (and I don't want to be inflammatory, but poor average driver skills) do not help them stay on the road. I'm not sure safety is increased overall Tbf.

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