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Smartphone use is a compelling case: https://old.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ubbfrv/oc...
Nah thats the same everywhere. Stroads and piss poor urban design, largely due to objections from stubborn fire departments chasing the wrong metrics and refusing to downsize, are a compelling case.
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Which is strange to me. I hate the big and boxy look. A sedan is the perfect shaped car in my opinion. Wagons are nice too.
As elsewhere in the thread, I drive a V60, and r/sportwagons host regular threads bemoaning the lack of good wagon options stateside. With the death of the focus and golf wagons, it's basically just luxury cars left, and not everyone wants to have a Mercedes, BMW, or Audi as their canoe trip vehicle, much less a freaking Porsche Panamera Turismo. And nevermind that often these cars come with other compromises that si…
https://www.volvocars.com/us/media/press-releases/3C9B9B3A25...
It seems people buying new cars mostly want big cars.
The problem is that other countries have seen nearly identical trends in vehicle market share trending towards larger vehicles and have seen sustained declines in pedestrian fatalities. John Burn-Murdoch went deep on this in the FT a couple of years ago (archive link at bottom). > Most of the explanations commonly put forward for why US roads remain so deadly focus on broad structural factors such as vehicle size or…
While vehicle sizes are indeed trending upward in Australia and Europe, giant SUV and especially giant truck penetration in both countries is still far behind US levels, and particularly in Europe are unlikely to ever reach the same figures (good luck parking your Ford F-9000 Testosteroneo in Rome or Paris).
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The times article hand-waves away distracted driving by saying that other countries haven't seen a similarly large increase. The problem with that is that vehicle sizes in all other countries have also been increasing, and other countries like Canada and Australia have seen almost identical market shares of those large vehicles without the surge in pedestrian fatalities . The large factors are phone use (more prevale…
> Getting hit by a 4000lb car or an 8000lb truck matters much less It's not the weight of the vehicle but that the front of a US truck is a big flat brick wall, whereas vehicles more common in Europe have a lower-shaped hood you fall on which is engineered to dent (some even having an actuator to pop up and increase the distance to the engine) and save the life of the pedestrian (as tested by Euro NCAP)
Getting hit by any vehicle over 20mph is going to be a very bad time, it is going to be somewhat worse if it's a large vehicle with a high bumper.
Americans are twice as likely to think it's fine to use a cell phone while driving than Canadians or Europeans, and while illegal in most places it's effectively unenforced - our cops spend half their shifts driving around messing around on a mounted laptop. If you want to improve outcomes, start holding American drivers to the standards that peer nations do.
A major aspect of this are side effects of "safety-first" obsession over the occupants of the vehicles themselves . Mandatory airbags in the A-pillars is probably the single biggest killer out of everything. The blind spots are massive compared to cars before these regulations. I've seen some models where it seems bad on purpose. Why don't federal regulators want the drivers of these gigantic vehicles to be able to s…
With many new vehicles on the road with their low beams on coming at me head-on I have no chance of seeing a pedestrian for hundreds of yards because I'm so blinded.
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> As far as I was aware the others didn't sell in any close to the same numbers. Per wiki, Crown Vic sales peaked at 114k in 1999. In the same year, the Taurus sold 368k and the Escort sold 260k. (The Tempo was discontinued by then, but was typically moving 200k+ per year.)
Hmm, curious, I remember seeing way more Crown Vics and other Panther platform vehicles from the 90's onward then Tauruses, even into the late 2000's. Wonder if it was just a regional thing where I lived...
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Well, probably the right thing to do for large trucks and suvs is to reclassify them so that you need a commercial license to drive them.
You know you can go buy a 45’ motorhome that weighs multiples of the heaviest SUV, and drive it home on a standard driver’s license? Last time I renewed my WA license, it was online and the eye test for my retirement-aged eyes consisted of a checkbox that asks, “your eyes aren’t shit, are they?” I’m not arguing, but more pointing out that what you want will never happen.
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Or you know you could just veer entirely off-topic and turn this into some kind of ageist food fight. That's an option too I suppose.
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Change the culture around freedom of movement, and I guarantee the olds will give up their keys before they're even old.
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> no functional utility Air cooling while towing (allegedly), but it must be a tiny percentage of owners that tow at all.
You mean cooling a 700lb-ft engine. Which is totally unnecessary. You don't need to do 80mph up the steepest hill in the world while towing 20,000lbs.
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You can thank the CAFE standards for setting emission limits of small vehicles below what was technically possible, driving manufacturers to the larger sizes.
Well maybe we'll get small cars again because the fine for violating CAFE is now... $0. https://environmentalhealthsafetybrief.sidley.com/2025/07/08...
But to move back, the best thing would be to loosen regulation on the smaller class and tighten + enforce for the larger class. Too much time has passed with everyone getting in the larger vehicle arms race for it just to flip back. The manufacturing would also have to gear back up and as we are discovering with the attempt to re-shore, it take time and isn't easy.
Also an additional thought for some of the comments that are talking about the selfishness of those who drive larger vehicles. On one hand it is personally selfish and makes it less safe for pedestrians, bicycles and motorcycles. On the other hand, those people have families and friends. My wife wants me to get a larger car because she is worried I will be killed if there is a traffic accident. I have a duty to help provide for my family and I certainly don't want to die, so doing so would not be an irrational choice.
Similarly to the choice of driving a pickup truck, often it is not needed most of the time. I have a family member who doesn't own a car, which is great! They always talk about the options available (Uber, Rental, etc) but anytime they have to travel to the airport for a business trip, they borrow a car from us or another family member to get there and use the airport parking. Which is fine because collectively we have it available but it can also be a slight inconvenience as well but it is less then them having to deal with Uber/Rental/Public Transit.