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?
"Think of the children" or not, it really doesn't matter the size of the vehicle. A SmartCar, or even a motorcycle, at 30 mph is likely to kill your kid too.
Are these trucks are built with cheap chinese steel? Perhaps a tariff on steel would help. Also how can people afford such enormous beasts? People don't seem to realise how much money theor cars cost when paid off via a loan.
I hate sounding like a broken record but my belief is that car makers are more excited about XXXXL cars in American than car buyers are. The media is consistently complicit in covering this up, sounding like the brainwashed soldiers in The Manchurian Candidate It's not to say that we don't like big cars because we do, but walk into a car dealership looking for a small car and they will tell you they are out of stock…
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…
Honestly, Toyota hilux. I'm not a car guy and the utility vehicle I use is not mine and wouldn't be available in the US (it's a 4.5m3, Peugeot I think?), but I've seen Hiluxes everywhere I went, and no matter how old they were, no matter how much miles, dent, missing pieces, they always seems to work. South America, East Africa, Australia but also over Europe, Hilux seems to be a very, very solid light truck, used as one. You should still check reviews, I'm not a car guy, but to me it's the most 'trucky' a light truck can be (unless you want a 2/3 seater).
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'…
Sedans are useless. I consider them car evolution dead end. They take as much road space as their counterparts, but carry less. Hatchback, universal, minivan, suvs are much more practical.
There are actually quite a few reasons why sedans stuck around.
One is separation of the passenger cabin from the cargo area. More than once I've accidentally bonked someone in the head putting something in the hatch or have had a dog escape because they managed to leap over the seat and get out through the open hatch. It's also easier to hide valuables in the trunk, as there's no indication anything's in there unlike the open rear deck of a hatchback you can see through the windows.
Another is lower center of gravity. There's not a large chunk of metal and glass above the beltline. This helps handling characteristics and makes it easier to engineer predictable patterns for the suspension. It also helps tire wear as there's less lateral force on the sidewall from the lowered center of gravity.
There's also the structural rigidity. Sedans have a slightly higher structural rigidity to them than hatchbacks due to the three box shape creating cross bracing. It makes it easier to engineer them to survive a crash without harming the occupants.
And lastly there's aerodynamics. Many hatchback designs in the modern era are extremely rounded for stylistic reasons. This is terrible for aerodynamic efficiency compared to a proper Kammback rear design. A sedan with a properly designed rear windshield and trunk actually has far less parasitic drag because it creates a much smaller area of low pressure air directly at the farthest rear edge of the vehicle. Unless you drive a Ford Fiesta sedan, in which case you're getting the worst of everything. If you've ever seen those monstrosities that BMW calls an "X5 Coupe" this is them trying and failing to apply the Kammback aerodynamics of a modern sedan to an SUV.
They drive with a discipline / care that Americans refuse to even consider. Perhaps Americans should.
Germany is barely the size of New Mexico. Talk about an apples to orange comparison… Broken down by state, I’m sure there are states that are safer than Germany.
> Broken down by state, I’m sure there are states that are safer than Germany
Based on fatalities per 100k persons (not a great statistic but the one quoted in this thread), and 2022 data, then nope. Every single state is worse than Germany.
Even District of Columbia - basically a city with much less reason to drive - manages a worse score than Germany as a whole.
Subaru Impreza and Crosstrek are a good example of that. Same engine, same electronics, same everything except a slightly differently shaped shell on the outside. Even the interior volume is practically the same!
Isn't the Impreza a famous rally car? With a spoiler and an air scoop on the hood? I can think of worse things for a crossover to share an engine with.
The Impreza WRX was the rally platform, kind of like how you can get a fast Civic Type R or a Golf GTI as opposed to the "regular" model. In recent years, the WRX has been spun off into a separate line, dropping the Impreza name. The regular Impreza is separate.
Germany is barely the size of New Mexico. Talk about an apples to orange comparison… Broken down by state, I’m sure there are states that are safer than Germany.
Classic American answer to everything. What does size have to do with anything? Besides well understood economies of scale which clearly would favor the US?
Because when you live in a country as large as the United States, you are on the road a lot more so your chances of dying on the road go up. The quoted statistic is not per unit of distance it’s just per 100,000 people so it’s biased towards places that are smaller.
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.
I don't think it is fair to say that it is an "American problem". Not owning a car could be realistic if you live in a really large city where moving with public transport can potentially be faster than moving with a car. But even then I wonder how a family with kids would carry groceries unless you live right next to a supermarket. Often times in HN you get the impression like americans are the only ones using cars…
If you live in a city, you typically go to a supermarket 3-5 times a week. And if your family is small enough to fit in a normal car, you can easily carry the groceries. Those trips don't take too much time either, because urban supermarkets are smaller than suburban hypermarkets and designed for quick visits.
Germany is barely the size of New Mexico. Talk about an apples to orange comparison… Broken down by state, I’m sure there are states that are safer than Germany.
> Broken down by state, I’m sure there are states that are safer than Germany Based on fatalities per 100k persons (not a great statistic but the one quoted in this thread), and 2022 data, then nope. Every single state is worse than Germany. Even District of Columbia - basically a city with much less reason to drive - manages a worse score than Germany as a whole. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detai…
Pretty ridiculous to not measure deaths per some unit of distance traveled.