Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 429 posts

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

#281

Post by hermitcrab »

doubled112 wrote: post #8
zug_zug wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally I'm having trouble finding certain small cars in stock (e.g. crown platinum) and suspect there is some self-interest in the dealership to explains this. I think car-buyers are often under an illusion that an suv is "more car" when actually it's exact same components and just a larger frame. They'd much prefer to sell you the high-margin product and pocket the difference.

Sometimes I wonder too. The big thing to me is that I drive a 10+ year old station wagon, and I seem to have more cargo space than many of these MUCH larger vehicles. I only have two kids. I have room for the dog. I put the bikes on the roof. What would a SUV do for me? An extra couple inches of ground clearance. Increased towing capacity. Rarely needed those.

IIRC SUV also more likely to roll over in an accident due to high C of G.

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

#282

Post by AnthonyMouse »

AnarchismIsCool wrote: post #164
spacebanana7 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Bigger cars need more fuel -> bigger fuel trucks

The fuel trucks aren't going to change in size, they're going to come more often. Also, oil is typically distributed in pipelines or on ships rather than trucks until the last mile. Meanwhile a fuel tanker holds some 10,000 gallons of fuel, i.e. enough for "large" 20 MPG SUVs to go 200,000 miles. Meanwhile the tanker is generally transporting the fuel less than 100 miles, so this is diluted by a factor of 2000. Because of the 4th power law, this still causes nearly as much damage as the SUVs themselves, but they're both still negligible compared to all of the other commercial trucks transporting everything else.

Obviously this doesn't even apply to electric vehicles.

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

This is an even smaller effect than the fuel.

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

#283

Post by smeggysmeg »

chaboud wrote: post #49

This is a regulatory incentive problem, plain and simple: 1. CAFE standards use different rules for cars and light trucks. It’s a protectionist move that strongly pushes manufacturers to find ways to get CUV’s on the road instead of hatch backs and sedans. 2. And CAFE uses a “footprint formula” that relaxes standards for larger vehicles. 3. Compound that with a side impact test that started at 3,015 lbs (high) and th…

Eliminate the 'light truck' exception to CAFE. Same standards should apply to truck bodies, retroactively to when CAFE began.

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

#284

Post by hermitcrab »

Bloating wrote: post #234
1986 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an arms race too, I'm in the market for a car now and would prefer something compact for city parking, but given that every _other_ car on the road these days seems to be an enormous SUV, I'm looking at probably at least a crossover so I won't constantly feel like I'm about to get steamrolled by a 4Runner or F150

sounds like you need anxiety meds

If you can drive compact car on a US highway, then you are a braver person than me.

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

#285

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sarchertech wrote: post #245
skhunted wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not only that. Roads have to be resurfaced periodically because of weather damage regardless of how many vehicles drive on them. For any road that sees predominantly/only car traffic, this will be the dominant effect and the cars are irrelevant.

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

#286

Post by lofaszvanitt »

nradov wrote: post #216
lofaszvanitt wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the internal organs of people in big cars? IIRC, a long time ago, after a serious collision, paramedics were at first puzzled as to why the seemingly unharmed person behind the wheel was dead. Later it turned out that their internal organs had been ripped out of their arteries because big cars have/have much worse impact zones than smaller cars.

You have that story confused or backwards. Occasionally vehicle crash victims will suffer such internal injuries, mainly the elderly who already have weak blood vessels. But big cars don't have worse crumple zones, rather the opposite.

Well, it's according to paramedics....

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

#287

Post by WheatMillington »

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…

Is this a tragedy of the commons, or am I misapplying this term? At an individual level it makes complete sense to put your family into the safest car possible - your thoughts are with you and your family, not the strangers around you.

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

#288

Post by AnthonyMouse »

AdrianB1 wrote: post #153
jl6 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It removes the implicit subsidy for buses, but we want to encourage people to use buses over cars and SUVs. Also, the damage from cars/SUVs is so small that the cost of collecting the fee would exceed the amount of the fee.

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

#289

Post by WheatMillington »

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.

You're being downvoted for understanding the issue perfectly. Classic HN.

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

#290

Post by AnimalMuppet »

nradov wrote: post #203
Groxx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only we had other technologies for moving heavy things without using concrete roads

The USA already moves a higher percentage of freight by rail than almost any other country. But rail could never work for time-sensitive loads or last mile delivery.

You would be amazed at how much FedEx, UPS, and Amazon traffic moves by train. BNSF (at least) even has "guaranteed delivery" trains.

Last mile I will give you. Those shippers use trailers and containers on railroad cars, and trucks do the last mile delivery.

Post reply on HN