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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

#301

Post by tim333 »

snakeyjake wrote: post #262
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…

They make all of the cars you want except for the electric Miata which would sell in such low quantities that it would have to be priced higher than the Taycan to be viable. Nobody's spending $180k on a Mazda. You just don't want them. I have a Fiat Spider for fun, and a Volvo V60 wagon for utility. My wife is 5'3" and is taller, barely, than the V60. The Spider is dead and the Miata is dying because global sales hav…

The original Tesla roadster of the type orbiting near Mars was basically an electric Miata. I guess they didn't sell enough although the price was a lot less than $180k.

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

#302

Post by AnthonyMouse »

Groxx wrote: post #148
dataflow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Is a near ideal example of why free markets can lead to a worse overall result, yeah. Everyone wants to be individually safer, this is all a reasonable trajectory brought on by incremental steps in that direction. We desperately need regulation. The market won't turn itself around, it'll just ensure the ones that are helping are killed the quickest.

The question is, what regulation? If you just try to ban or heavily tax larger vehicles, well, there are legitimate reasons to have those sometimes. Businesses need trucks and you don't want heavy taxes on innocent small businesses. Parents involved in school activities are regularly transporting entire sports teams etc. and putting a dozen kids in two vehicles is safer and more efficient than three or four vehicles.

So you need some way to distinguish the people buying large SUVs for these reasons from the people buying them out of schlong insufficiency, but nobody seems to have a good way to do that.

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

#303

Post by gruez »

ncruces wrote: post #248
Retric wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That statement is only true in aggregate. If you you're taxing individual vehicle owners SUVs will still get taxed way less than trucks.

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

#304

Post by hintymad »

I was wondering if real investment into public transportation and the associated infra will help solve this issue. When I travel in some Asian and European countries, I really don't feel the need for a big car (a small one can still help). But in the US, a big SUV or a van is a godsend. Kids are happier. The wife is happier. Trips are easier. There are just so many benefits to have a big car...

And the key word is "real investment". not the ones for California to build its high-speed railway, 7 EV charge stations for 7.5 billion dollars, or $300M for high-speed internet yet no family has got it

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

#305

Post by AnthonyMouse »

lofaszvanitt wrote: post #286
nradov wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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....

It's not "heavier vehicles", it's trucks. A lot of pickup trucks (and the SUVs based on them) were designed to prioritize load carrying capacity over occupant safety and have worse safety features than other passenger vehicles despite being heavier, and it turns out that matters.

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

#306

Post by AnthonyMouse »

gruez wrote: post #199
PaulHoule wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Consumers may claim they care about rising costs, but the fact that more expensive SUVs are outselling sedans makes me think…

This is an aspect of the car market.

Poor people would like smaller cars, but they buy used cars, not new cars. Affluent people buy new cars and want big SUVs. Of course, then that's what ends up on the used market after a few years.

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

#307

Post by darkteflon »

Australia’s changed for the worse over the past 30 years as well. SUVs used to be the exception in urban areas, now they’re everywhere - usually with a single occupant.

I saw an old Hummer H2 on the road the other day. They used to appear gargantuan to me. This time, what struck me was that it no longer looks shockingly larger than anything else on the road.

There’s a real boiling frog vibe to inner city traffic. It’s so bad - so jammed up and so dirty - but we’re completely inured to it. It’s my fervent hope that the next generation - or perhaps the one after that - will think it very weird indeed to live and work alongside the byproduct of hydrocarbon combustion.

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

#308

Post by galkk »

notdang wrote: post #252
galkk wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Carry less of what? It's the same number of people inside.

Cargo

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

#309

Post by brailsafe »

WheatMillington wrote: post #287
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.

Personal automobile ownership is the source of more tragedies of the commons than anything else I can think of.

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

#310

Post by brailsafe »

WheatMillington wrote: post #287
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.

Personal automobile ownership is the source of more tragedies of the commons than anything else I can think of. The only personally incurred negative externality that comes to mind at the moment would be the decreased likelihood of having a healthy lifestyle based on decreased need to walk anywhere.
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