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The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

nytimes.com

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Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#191

Post by jofla_net »

drnick1 wrote: post #106
californical wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normalizing by miles driven will take you to the wrong conclusions. It underestimates the extra deaths directly caused by the fact that we’ve built exurbs farther and farther away from where people work over the last 20-30 years. So maybe deaths per mile would be similar, but we’ve pushed people further and further so they have to drive more miles, increasing the deaths due to poor design. Building society in a way t…

> Building society in a way that we increase deaths due to poor planning, like making driving the only option for the majority of people It's not poor planning, it's what Americans want. Americans, by and large, do not want to live in dense neighborhoods or tiny homes like in many parts of Europe. You get that in places like NYC and quality of life in those places is atrocious.

Quality of life is very subjective though. Americans by and large are anti-social, so these sparse layouts/nimbyism are a result of that. This in turn reinforces living patterns which may or may not be optimal for any given person. Again, they may be social enough on their own terms, but insufficient to want to live closer to others for a variety of factors, manifesting in very real differences in civic planning. I would look to this behavior need to change before any substantive zoning/transportation changes are really adopted.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#192

Post by Aerroon »

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #145
epistasis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the particulars, but if what's going on in WA is like what's going on in my California town, I don't think it's reasonable. I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell. Same thing happens on NextDoor, a few kids hangi…

Stepped out of a coffee shop, got text from wife, grabbed my phone and got missed by inches by a kid on a scooter easily doing 25mph on the sidewalk. The text possibly saved my ability to walk in future by having me to pause just for a moment.

The problem is with bicycles being relegated to either the sidewalk or the main road with cars. I'm really not a fan of how cities create bikelanes by putting a line through the sidewalk and then nobody respects it.

I see the appeal in trying to ride fast, but it gets kind of scary. When I rode a bike I went fast outside the city specifically to avoid pedestrians.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#193

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

unixuser7104 wrote: post #89
TulliusCicero wrote: post #59

WA state recently passed a law about e-bikes/e-motorcycles to deal with the issue of younger teens on these kinda moped-style e-bikes going very fast around town (and often riding quite recklessly). The law is reasonable, but it strikes me what a double standard there is for biking vs driving. For biking, there's a danger that's noticed, and we quickly pass a law that straight up bans that type of bike for those ride…

How would you react if told you could no longer drive your primary mode of transportation?

My primary mode of transportation is an e-bike; how should I react?

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#194

Post by giantg2 »

jmward01 wrote: post #113

I have long held that larger vehicles should have higher licensing requirements purely based on stats. We see it in the stats that large vehicles are disproportionately dangerous to other vehicles and people so licensing should catch up. We have motorcycle licenses, why don't we have SUV licenses? Similarly, the penalties and limits should be higher. BAC should be lower. Fines higher. Etc etc. You want to drive a big…

Licensing is mostly based vehicle operating characteristics. We already have large vehicle licenses like class B and A for heavy vehicles. Motorcycles have a separate license due to different operating concerns.

If you're actually following the stats you will see that vehicle size only accounted for 10% of the increase. You would want to focus on the other 90% to make the biggest difference. And using that logic, you should increase the education and testing requirements for all drivers because that will provide gains over the whole driving population instead of a single segment.

Penalties should remain the same for whatever the outcome is - doesn't matter if a bicyclist kills me or a semi truck.

Lower BAC limits are opposed even by groups like MADD. The data shows the current level is good and lowering it further will result in more people ignoring it.

Nobody is asking you to pay for others' decisions (unless we want to go down the rabbit hole of insurance, for which sports cars and high priced electrics are costing all drivers more). Nor is a large vehicle an infringement on anyone's right to life (someone's recklessness could be).

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#195

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

echelon wrote: post #186
__float wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways. Ok, and what fraction of investment has it gotten? We've underfunded rail/bike infrastructure for decades, of course money is going to flow on the cheapest route. Roads are cheap because we've subsidized the shit out of them.

Bikes are not going to deliver your packages and food and medical services. They're not going to take you on vacation, haul your gear, or provide shelter. There's a meme that bikes will solve everything and that cars suck, but it's dismissive of the orders of magnitude more value that road infra can and will always provide.

Yes, they are, and they do.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#196

Post by hamdingers »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #92
trollbridge wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This study didn’t nearly enough to disambiguate for widespread phone use while driving, which IMO is the biggest factor. Self driving AI is the answer.

Would've been trivial to just run the same calculations on 1990s numbers when SUVs first became popular but long before smartphones. I think it speaks volumes that they didn't.

1990s SUVs were different vehicles than 2026 SUVs. A 2026 4Runner Hybrid weighs 1500lbs more than a 1996 and is 19 inches longer, 12 inches wider, and 6 inches taller. This is significant.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#197

Post by paddy_m »

epistasis wrote: post #154
infecto wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My anecdote only but the contraptions being sold as “e-bikes” are actually motorcycles. Like all things a few bad apples ruin it for everyone but in what I have seen it’s more than just a few bad apples. From maintained mountain bike trails, to riding at speed on walking paths. They are far more than just some kids being kids. It is ultimately a lack of parenting these days but I don’t believe the new laws coming int…

Your description is not accurate for my state, California, there are clear tiers of ebikes with regulations on when and where they can go, with very clear explanation at purchase, and no weird marketing like you're talking about. I've tried to go buy them, I have experienced the lectures! Perhaps we can let the few bad apples killing lots of people with their massive hood height lead to better regulation of such hood…

I'm as anti-car and pro-bike as they come. Cars and trucks are a much bigger danger than e-bikes...

But California's clear tiers of ebike regulations are meaningless without enforcement. Over the past half decade blue states have become unwilling to enforce almost any laws. when they do enforce the laws it is sporadically. This matters for ebikes, it matters more for cars. Running a stop sign is absolutely not enforced any more.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#198

Post by petcat »

> Pop quiz: You’re going to get hit by something coming at you at 50 miles per hour; given equal mass, would you rather that be a small object, or a large object?

> Whap! Time’s up. What did you get hit by? If you picked small, you might be dead. If you said “large,” your odds are lower. Why? Two reasons. First, F=ma and second, P = F/A. OK, I suppose that’s really just one reason, and it’s called “physics.”

I drive a big SUV because I have a better chance of surviving if something hits me. That has to be a significant statistic somewhere too, right? How many lives were saved because of big cars?

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#199

Post by hombre_fatal »

fullstop wrote: post #177
epistasis wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know the particulars, but if what's going on in WA is like what's going on in my California town, I don't think it's reasonable. I see teens going around on ebikes, and people freak out over them in ways that seem completely inappropriate to the kids scooting around. I think it's mostly a reaction to seeing young people being young people, as far as I can tell. Same thing happens on NextDoor, a few kids hangi…

There's kids who go around on ebikes in my neighborhood, and it's only a matter of time until one of them is hit. I don't mind kids on bikes, and encourage it. I do, however, encourage them to stop at stop signs and to actually look for traffic at intersections, and that's something that these kids are not doing. To be fair, most cars go too fast in residential areas. I drive like a grandma in them and there's a good…

> there's a good chance that someone is up my ass and annoyed that I'm not exceeding the speed limit.

Same with not going right on red when it's impossible to see if anybody is coming without pulling way past the crosswalk.

Sometimes the car behind me honks to show their support.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#200

Post by echelon »

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #195
echelon wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bikes are not going to deliver your packages and food and medical services. They're not going to take you on vacation, haul your gear, or provide shelter. There's a meme that bikes will solve everything and that cars suck, but it's dismissive of the orders of magnitude more value that road infra can and will always provide.

Yes, they are, and they do.

The bike meme is unrealistic, and you're dismissing all of my arguments.

You're ripping up infrastructure for yuppie pickleball.

How do you transmit tons of material on bikes? How do people move in the rain or when they're on their period? How do they move multiple small children or being home furniture? What do old and sick people do?

Every lane taken away is centuries of economic activity destroyed.

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