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All these children are invisible to the driver...
Fuck all those cars!!! Put them away to hell, not to earth. They are too big for all - except for small egos. But for small egos is therapy much better.
Or we could, you know, follow previously established methods of building vehicles that make pedestrian death and dismemberment less likely.
No, no, no. Americans need them this way apparently for some inexplicable fucking reason.
So instead of just designing them with pedestrian safety in mind to begin with, we are just gonna slap on more fucking band-aids (like cameras) that do fuck-all.
Americans never asked for this, it's the classification system for light trucks implemented following the Yom Kippur War that left too much leeway in the definition for "light trucks" that has been driving auto makers in this direction.
Of course there have been knock-on cultural issues where certain people make it part of their ego and the market effect becomes self reinforcing, but that's how we got into this mess. History is a series of unintended consequences, again.
Agreed. The industry is invested in avoiding regulation that could impede their profits at all costs. This means they will invest in advertising pushing the idea that these vehicles are needed.
It's almost like our enemies are rich people! Crazy thought, right?
I'd argue that they have asked for trucks to get so big because they seemingly sell better that way. It's admittedly an imperfect thing to look at since there's few alternatives and many other factors, but these big trucks didn't immediately take over the market. At some point they were introduced and consumers liked them.
This is why I said it became an ego thing. Automakers didn't set out to kill the most kids possible and ask "how do we design towards that", they exploited a regulatory loophole which then cracked open a wider market niche based on people's egocentrism, brutality, and myopic attitudes toward transit (e.g. carbrain).
I saw a YouTube explaining the giant cars in the US have to do with the government making a big equation that car manufacturers have to follow.
The equation calculated the weight, size, gas mileage, etc, and the only way they can make the cars pass the equation is to make them giant. The equation backfired and now we have giant cars.
It didn't backfire. They designed a law that looks good at first glance but actually makes auto manufacturers richer. This happens all the time and it's on purpose, because they know voters don't have the analysis resources of lobbyists.
Yep, the manufacturers get massive tax breaks on this class of vehicle, which means they can make and sell them at the same or better price than a small, fuel efficient car. If a family with kids has to choose between a mid size crossover or an F150 at similar price points, why would you get the crossover? The USA needs to fix the way it taxes cars to disincentivise these fuel inefficient giant cars. No other country has these problems so it's not a selfish person problem, it's an entirely logical choice to make given the circumstances.
Ban lifted trucks!!
That truck isn't even lifted. Looks like stock.
Yeah, more like "Ban trucks that are built so high off the ground that they can't see pedestrians." That would easily include lifted trucks as well as general monstrosities.
I mean, it's not like any of these motherfuckers uses these things to haul anything other than their kids and fucking groceries anyway.
Too much of a pussy to just own it and just drive a fucking minivan, which can easily carry kids and groceries. Has to buy the big dick extender instead.
But it's even worse than that. The front of the car being so big and high is PURELY aesthetics. All of the machinery that's in current trucks would just as easily fit under a hood that was lower and sloped downward for better visibility, but trucks with a high squared off hood and grille sell more because many truck buyers care more about it having a tough appearance rather then it being an actually better vehicle.
They use them to haul their over-inflated self worth.
Car manufacturers have been making trucks taller and boxier because their studies show that their owners do that to their trucks after buying them so they want to be more appealing to the average pickup truck buyer... and yes that thought makes my brain hurt
Definitely stock cause it doesn't even look leveled, and no one lifts without leveling.
no one lifts without leveling.
Can I introduce you to the world of hack job block kits prolific in rural Canada?
Require vehicle safety standards to test for pedestrian and cyclist survivability first and foremost.
Require a commercial license to drive large and/or heavy vehicles such as pickup trucks. Take it away when a driver gets caught driving unsafely.
Require vehicles to provide better visibility through the windshield, like Europe does.
Design street lanes to be narrow and winding, so that drivers intuitively choose to drive at speeds that are safe for people outside the vehicle. Raise pedestrian crossings at the same level as the sidewalk so that drivers habitually slow down when they see a crossing.
In other words, value the safety of the people outside the vehicle above the speed and convenience of the drivers.
Require a commercial license to drive large and/or heavy vehicles. Take away such commercial license when a driver gets caught driving unsafely.
This is my favorite type of suggestion because it puts the responsibility on the person driving and makes it clear that hauling heavy loads or large trailers is a bigger deal than driving a sedan. We have different licenses for motorcycles, the same makes sense for any light truck and above. This would also promote the use of compact sized trucks that are basically cars with beds and minivans instead of people getting full sized vans and massive trucks.
My personal favorite: the fines for moving violations should scale with vehicle size. It's total BS an F150 and a Miata get the same ticket for running a red light.
@blandy @frostbiker
In Victoria (Australia), the fine for using your mobile phone while riding a bicycle is the same as when driving a 2.6 tonne ute.
That's stupid.
Killing/hurting others vs killing/hurting yourself.
Design our streets to be narrow and winding
I drive to several places that have traffic flow designs. The road narrows near crosswalk to just enough for 2 cars to pass, no shoulder. It definitely makes me slow down even when alone. These can do a lot to impact drivers speed and safety.
Design our streets to be narrow and winding
And with separate, protected walking and cycling infrastructure.
and don't take out the bike lane because " no one uses it" and/or "we used to be able to go murder speed along there".
If the street is sufficiently hostile to fast moving cars, at some point dedicated infra space for cyclists becomes unnecessary. As soon as it becomes reasonable for a nutjob to speed past 30 kph though, cycling infra becomes quite necessary.
I guess this was in reaction to our city in particular, where they have made the new 3 lanes each way major arteries much more curvy to help control traffic speds but still have a bike lane separated only by white paint (on a 35mph street where everyone travels 50mph). The winding aspect has just made it more likely that drivers cutting the corners clip into the bike lane more basically.
The other day i saw a pickup truck trying to switch lane, they just put on the signal and attempted to switch, didn't realise there's a sedan just beside them. Dude couldn't even see who's honking them telling them not to switch.
That's called failure to check your blind spot. I've driven a pickup for over a decade and never not been able to see when a vehicle is next to me if I physically turn and check my blind spot. Though we are promoting people becoming more lazy with this as most new cars just do this for you. In my newer work vehicle, the side mirrors have an orange indicator turn on when someone's hanging in your blind spot.
If the car isn't that big the blindspot wouldn't be that terrible. You might be able to drive a tank without destroying any bush, but the issue here is other people who failed to do so.
Totally agree. My theory is that many drivers don't register that a vehicle is present unless it's the same size as the one they're driving or bigger. I think that's why so many people seem to be blind to motorcycles.
"might makes right" road rules
Its been my motorcycle-riding experience that cameras or even designing the trucks better woukdn't help a lot, as the people who drive these things don't care if someone is in their way.
As a cyclist, I can confidently say you probably still get more consideration than myself
Or make kids wear football gear and helmets. Maybe they can even combine it with body armor for the occasional school shooting.
/s
Back to school kevlar sales! Keep your child safe and fashionable!
But more seriously, it is so past time to actually regulate trucks and SUVs. We are here because congress left a "light truck" loophole in their legislation decades ago and never closed it. No other country in the world uses almost exclusively gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs instead of smaller, more efficient cars to the extreme extent we do.
Make them even higher so that kids fit below them /s
Or, you know, change emissions regulations so that cars can be made smaller again.
Hate to tell you there's no singular villain trying to kill kids with cars.
Literally the only reason cars got this big is because minimum efficiency is the result of dividing mpg by square footage, and by law the number has to go down every year. I do not blame auto makers for simply making the same popular models a little bigger with each refresh so as not to have to redesign from scratch the things that took 100 years of engineering effort to get to the present level of function.
But then they also have to add a wiper to those cameras, they will get bloody from all those massacred bodies run over...
Yes... this will certainly stem the number of deaths caused by these rolling aircraft carriers... in the year 2040.
If the children were driving their own SUVs this wouldn't be a problem.