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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

#481

Post by creaturemachine »

tinfoilhatter wrote: post #340
NDlurker wrote: post #324

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?

You should leave the continent and gain some context. Every summer the whole of Europe is full of campers towed by humble family sedans and wagons. Not just cheesy tent pop-ups, full-on campers with a family's worth of bikes hanging off the back. But the ads on TV said you'd be a lesser man without a truck, so I guess we can't blame you.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#482

Post by tzs »

rayiner wrote: post #221
pm90 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the issue is distracted drivers, I don’t see how heavier trucks is still not the issue. With lighter vehicles you would likely have a higher chance of surviving.

Yes, but on the whole we got much heavier trucks from 1980 to 2009 while pedestrian deaths went down. There’s also the issue that heavier vehicles are inevitable due to EVs. Our bz4x won’t get tagged as a “big evil truck,” but it’s about the same weight as a base model Ford F150. And heavier than a Toyota Tacoma double cab.

Pedestrians will be a lot safer getting hit by you than by an F-150 because of this: https://www.carsized.com/en/cars/compare/toyota-bz4x-2022-su...

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#483

Post by Marsymars »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #458
mikepurvis wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too. Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is. I also…

I think you're romanticizing that era a bit. The most commonly sold CUV's today are smaller length and width wise then station wagons or sedans way back when. The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day and it's as long as a crew cab F150. The land yachts easily match the footprint of the super cab F150 with shorter beds today, they just seem smaller because they're lower.

> The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day [...]

Are you sure about that? In North America, other than the Crown Vic in its heyday, Ford also had the Escort, the Festiva, the Tempo and the Taurus for sedans, all of which were smaller than the Crown Vic, which was the largest car they sold.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#484

Post by asdff »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #425
jounker wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My minivan seats seven. It has the footprint as a toyota camry. It’s only marginally heavier than a camry. Can you please explain to me again why you need a lincoln navigator or the like?

Toyota Camry curb weight is ~3300 pounds. The minivan based on the Camry is the Sienna, curb weight ~4600 lbs. Lincoln Navigator curb weight ~5600 lbs. If the difference between the first two is marginal (~30%), the difference between the second two is less (~20%). By comparison, actual CDL-requiring commercial trucks weigh up to 80,000 pounds.

Now look at the front end of a toyota sienna vs a lincoln navigator. One slopes down so that you might actually see what is in front of you and allows for pedestrians to impact and roll up and off. The other is effectively a brick notorious for making it difficult to see obstructions in front of you as well as creating an impact that would sooner see the pedestrian explode into a bloody mess over just rolling up and off.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#485

Post by retired »

baq wrote: post #412
retired wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In most of Europe you can drive a 4250kg EV with a simple drivers license you got after taking six lessons in 1972. Madness. Anything over 2000kg should require a truck license including retesting every five years imho.

A reasonable range small EV weighs more than that. 3500kg is reasonable. Regenerative braking and brakes in general are much better than when those weight limits were imposed.

A Tesla Model 3 is under 2000kg. Anything above that is either an SUV or a poorly designed car. 2000kg+ is a lot of weight if it plows into a group of people or the back of a car. There should absolutely be an incentive for manufacturers to produce lighter cars.

The EU is working on the M1e car class that has a weight cap of 1500kg. It would be great if cities would only allow cars under M1e to enter.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#486

Post by asdff »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #458
mikepurvis wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too. Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is. I also…

I think you're romanticizing that era a bit. The most commonly sold CUV's today are smaller length and width wise then station wagons or sedans way back when. The Crown Victoria was considered a regular sized sedan for it's day and it's as long as a crew cab F150. The land yachts easily match the footprint of the super cab F150 with shorter beds today, they just seem smaller because they're lower.

Would you rather be hit by a crown vic or an f150?

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#487

Post by progmetaldev »

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…

I'm definitely not arguing that SUVs and trucks are killing people, and as someone that drives a Ford F-150, I wouldn't mind having to be licensed for a commercial drivers license (although would like that to be based on skill, rather than charging more for that license).

I am constantly having to dodge these e-bikes in the streets, mostly driven by children/teenagers, who do not follow traffic laws (I'm in upstate NY). They don't even follow standard bicycle traffic laws. Driving in the city, I regularly have e-bikes coming at me against traffic in my lane. I would be absolutely devastated if I hit someone with my truck, and I honestly usually drive lower than the speed limit in these areas. It's even worse in the suburbs, because these people don't have the same survival instincts when riding these e-bikes as those in higher traffic areas. It's constantly on my mind that if I hit one of these children, not only will my conscious be filled with guilt, but I will probably be charged with manslaughter charges.

Upstate NY is starting to create laws and restrictions around e-bikes, but that is not stopping parents from being uninvolved. In the cities, there are rentable e-bikes being used everywhere, and it only requires the ability to pay to use it. I'm all for making transportation easier for those of lower income, or that prefer to use something that doesn't spew emissions like a gas-powered vehicle, but beyond being able to pay for the e-bike there is little being done to regulate or enforce how they are used.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#488

Post by marcyb5st »

decimalenough wrote: post #477
simplyluke wrote: post #262

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).

It is not just the big cities. You go downtown even in small towns and the roads tend to be so narrow that a big SUV becomes a liability more than a vehicle. Without mentioning that I'm not even sure parking stalls fit big US cars lengthwise and they barely do widthwise

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#489

Post by coffeemug »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #90
hackingonempty wrote: post #64

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_...

We never invest effort in things that provide the most value; we invest in what we're the most emotional about. The number of people killed in 9/11 and every plane hijacking is dwarfed by any single year of deaths due to either vehicle accidents or gun shootings. But we do nothing about either of those things, and instead spend $180B on TSA, to save zero lives. We then roll back things like vaccine mandates, to kill…

That’s a very uncharitable way to interpret public opinion. A more charitable way is that people have different ethical intuitions. Some of us lean more utilitarian than others, and almost no one is a pure utilitarian. It isn’t merely a matter of being more emotional; people very reasonably have different views on this stuff.

Re: The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

#490

Post by michael1999 »

Aurornis wrote: post #360
bootlooped wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it does ban them, effectively. There is what some people say is a gray zone (I don't actually think it's that gray) where a device is too fast or powerful to be a legal e-bike, but also doesn't meet the requirements to be a road legal motorcycle. Will Progressive give me motorcycle insurance on my DIY e-bike without a VIN? Will the DVM register it? I don't think so. In most states there is no path to legality…

> 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…

Hard to get a plate if there's no VIN.
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