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The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

nytimes.com

401–410 of 816 posts

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think so. In most states there is no path to legality, at least as far as operating the thing on public streets goes. Not true. It's common to convert dirt bikes into street legal vehicles with conversion kits that add the required pieces. Depending on the state, that means turn signals, a mirror, headlight, and tail light. I think it's completely reasonable if we tell people that their Sur-Ron is for priva…

>I think it's completely reasonable if we tell people that their Sur-Ron is for private property use If only that were actually the law. My roads are 100% private with absolutely zero tax payer funding yet the dumbass registration laws and requirement to display a plate even apply on my private road (only exempt if the owner white-lists traffic, which cannot be done under my easement rules which at best would only mi…

>If only that were actually the law. My roads are 100% private with absolutely zero tax payer funding yet the dumbass registration laws and requirement to display a plate even apply on my private road (only exempt if the owner white-lists traffic, which cannot be done under my easement rules which at best would only might allow me to black-list abusers). In fact pretty much all the roads in my town are completely privately funded and privately owned yet you still need registration/plate along with the legal mumbo jumbo to obtain it.

It sounds like your roads are accessible by the public though, which means unregulated public traffic, which means all of the tools necessary to ensure a basic level of safety and accountability need to be followed. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, does it not to you?

Like, you still have to follow building codes, pay property taxes, and not murder people on your private property and that doesn't seem outrageous.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#402

It is worth reading the interactive Times article. Amazing piece of work https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/06/21/us/trucks-suv...

The animations and comparisons of current vehicles with two-three decades ago are extremely informative indeed.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#403
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law doesn't ban them. It classifies fast e-bikes as motorcycles (which require registration, insurance, and a motorcycle endorsement).[1] This seems reasonable to me. The previous laws for e-bikes were based on outdated assumptions about battery & motor technology. I do think it would make more sense to simplify (and future-proof) the law to just say, "If it can go >30mph on level ground and has a motor, it's a m…

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.

omfg I would love that. Like literally force manufacturers to put air brakes on anything above a certain weight limit and demand additional certification to operate one. Full Disclosure: I own four vehicles that would trigger this requirement, each for different reasons, and would be whistling and smirking in the DMV line to take the commercial test.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#404
post #399

In the USA, an order of magnitude more people on foot are killed each year by people driving cars and trucks than are killed in mass shootings. [0][1] It is a massive problem that receives a disproportionate amount of attention. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/pedestrian-bike-safety/about/pedestrian-... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_shootings_in_the_...

Wait...is the massive problem that it should be more than an order of magnitude more people killed than those killed in mass shootings, or is it that it should be less than an order of magnitude more? They are such completely different categories of ways to die I'm having trouble understand how to compare them in any sensible way.

That I guess is the problem they are highlighting. It is more complicated still when comparing to ill health, war, poverty, terrorism. But OTOH we should strive to make transport safer like we do with commercial flight.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minivans and station wagons are just as good as a Tahoe for transporting a family.

Not if you need to tow a trailer / camper. Maybe there's a reason different kinds of vehicles exist? To fulfill different requirements of their drivers?

I see lifted trucks and massive SUVs in neighborhoods and grocery stores. I very rarely see them using their towing capacity.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#406
We all know how much local PDs like collecting traffic fines, but I wish they would enforce the laws around yielding to pedestrians with the same enthusiasm as speed limits. I walk a lot and pretty much every day someone blows by in front of me while I'm in the crosswalk or takes a right on red into me because they're not looking. It'd be trivial to set up a sting for this sort of driving, just have one plain clothes officer cross back and forth with another cop parked on a side street ready to flash their lights.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#407

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…

Cars >>> Bikes + Rail + Pedestrian infrastructure More money flows atop highway and road infrastructure than on biking, rail, and scooter infrastructure. By orders of magnitude. Commuter rail has 1/200th the economic impact of interstate highways. Biking infrastructure is actually deleterious as it doesn't serve the pregnant, elderly, sick, frail, doesn't work well for rain/snow/high heat/weather, doesn't transport h…

Wow there is so much wrong with this post I don't even know where to start.

Widespread car usage has caused an enormous amount of harm. It has destroyed American cities, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands more with sedentary lifestyle diseases, and burned a truly enormous amount of fossil fuels into CO2, and locked in the infrastructure to continue to do so for decades. It's an absolutely enormous tragedy.

Cars are also useful and have helped a lot of things, but they should not be the default choice of transportation.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your point that taller trucks and SUVs provide considerable benefits over shorter ones? What are those benefits? Or do you mean simply that trucks and SUVs, regardless of their height, provide benefits? I don't doubt that and do not mean to imply otherwise.

> Is your point that taller trucks and SUVs provide considerable benefits over shorter ones? What are those benefits? Ground clearance. In some parts of the US and for some use cases this is non-negotiable. It would be like buying a car in Texas without an air conditioner. There is a Japanese automaker (Subaru) that traditionally caters to this market almost exclusively in the US. I won't buy a vehicle with less than…

Sorry if I'm being dense, but what parts of the USA? Or, I guess more specifically, what is it that you are needing to clear?

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#409

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…

Where I live you don't touch a phone while driving. Heavy fines and both human and camera based survellience. I think it is excellent and has surely saved lives. Driving is the thing you don't need to multitask.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#410

Data shows that introduction of iPhones in 2007 is a better explanation for the increase in pedestrian deaths than heavier trucks and SUVs: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1ubbfrv/oc... (All the credit for this analysis goes to the reddit user, I’m just summarizing.) Trucks and SUVs have been getting heavier consistently since 1980 while pedestrian deaths consistently decreased from 1980 to 2009. Tr…

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…

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