Nickel Hydrogen Batteries by NASA

> "The U.S. has a bunch of extra safety standards that the Europeans don't. For instance, in America, car makers have to design airbags to protect people who are not wearing their seatbelt. In Europe, they just assume that everyone's buckled up."[2]

Even if it's not mandatory, basically all cars have airbags in Europe nowadays, including tiny cars.

> [1]https://www.jdpower.com/cars/shopping-guides/why-are-modern-....)

Come on: “By law, modern vehicles are required to be fitted with a variety of safety-oriented technology (anti-lock brakes, stability control and tire-pressure-monitoring systems, etc.) and equipment (air bags,laminated glass, door intrusion beams, etc.)” not only these things are also mandatory in Europe, all the given examples aren't even heavy to begin with!

> The market for those vehicles in the U.S. is extremely niche, generally relegated to ATVs. So much of the U.S. is connected by highways that there's very few people who a) want/need to own a car and b) also have no need to travel on the highways. People who only want a small urban commuter will often just get a scooter or motorcycle.

Yet American only commute 20 miles per day on average (at an average 30mph). The fact that highways in cities are “technically highways” is only a cultural (and political) decision: the same kinds of roads in Europe are in fact not highways and speed is often limited to 70km/h for instance in France.

Anyway there are highway-ready cars (with airbags, ABS and all) that weight less than 900kg in Europe (Renault Twingo, Fiat 500, etc.).

No offense, but I get the impression you’re speaking from a place of ignorance which makes it easy to latch onto pieces that confirm a preconceived bias.

Even if the cars all have airbags, it doesn’t mean they can pass US crash tests. That means they can’t nearly even be offered in the US. For example, EU frontal crash tests use a deformable barrier while the US does not. Relating to the study received for your safety assessment, it says the distribution of differences overlaps with zero. That’s a red flag that you can’t make a claim that they are any didn’t different.

Your claim about US commits is incorrect and less than half of the actual value in both distance and speed. Avg. speed is also not an appropriate metric.

I could go on, but there’s a lot to unpack. The latter point is that I’m not convinced you actually understand the differences between US or EU car manufacturing or parts of US culture that drive some of those decisions. There’s certainly an overrepresentation of SUV and trucks as commuter vehicles but there’s also a huge portion of the population, especially in the vast rural population, who have legitimate and pragmatic reasons to these vehicles. (And that’s coming from someone who drives a small hatchback)

>Bruh, if you're gonna make statements like this, your argument needs to be stellar to back it up.

Well, for starters, did you actually look into the studies you cited or did you just take the first parts that confirmed your bias? For instance, the study that claimed European cars are safer in front/side crash tests admitted that the distribution of safety differences contains zero. It's important to understand the limitations of null-hypothesis testing. This means you can't discount that there is no actual difference between safety. This is why data literacy is important rather than just reading the abstract or conclusion and running with it.

>The US rural population is tiny, it's less than 20%

Again, this belies ignorance. Did you just grab the first Google result that confirmed your stance, or did you actually take time to understand the nuance? There is a massive disparity between what the census defines as rural vs. what is colloquially understood as rural. The census considers any population over 2500 people as an "urban cluster". That means US urban areas range from 2500-19.5MM. With that level of variance, you have to acknowledge large variance of “normal” use cases.

>Your focus on safety as the root cause is also pretty dumb

Please point to where I said it's the "root cause." I've only been advocating a more nuanced perspective. Also, see the HN guidelines for appropriate comments.

>Please provide your sources

The average round-trip commute as 55.2 minutes according to the US census and over 40 miles. Maybe you misspoke when you said "20 miles per day" and meant one-way?

>Yes it is indeed.

No, it's misguided and lacking nuance at best. Have you ever driven in southern California during rush hour? Your average speed is easily 30mph or less because you are essentially in a parking lot for huge periods. But that doesn't negate the need for a car to be able to reach highway speeds. Remember, the context was about safety of cars that are capped at 50km/hr, but now you're moving the goalposts and acknowledging the need for faster speeds just to maintain your position.

It's pretty clear you have your mind made up and prefer to argue rather than have a substantive and nuanced conversation.

Saying someone is ignorant is not saying someone is dumb. Ignorance can be remedied with information, being dumb cannot. One is meant as a personal indictment of intelligence, the other is just saying you may not have the right perspective. If you took personal slight from the phrasing, it wasn’t intended.

There is no root cause claim there so you’re not saying much, other than strawmanning. If you look at a modern economy car, it weighs more than economy cars of the past or non-approved models for the US, despite using lighter weight materials for comparable components. So where does the extra weight come from? Mandatory safety features and options. That’s all the “disproportionate” statement is saying. It also wasn’t a comment to you, so a bit cringey that you try to search for any weak handhold to make your point.

You also picked a different comment to illustrate the context rather than your actual post, so I’m not sure your point. But it certainly lends credence to the idea of you moving the goalposts just to avoid being wrong.

I’ll give you more perspective since you missed the point. If the data contains zero it means it ranges from saying the US cars are safer to saying they are less safe. Zero is contained because it’s within this range. In other words, you can’t make strong claims at all. Again, data literacy is important.

Maybe the 4th power is relationship is not mathematically proven but its certainty really fucking bad in a practical sense.