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.
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.
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.
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.
Put concrete barriers between the road and the bike path. And raise the bike path to top-of-the-barrier level with a sheet of perspex between them and the road. I thought of installing device to damage cars at roughly head height for motorists, but that’d move into the satirical and unserious domain. But the first two parts are pretty serious.
i have a truck for towing my travel trailer and doing other truck tasks like hauling stuff around in the bed (we take the small coupe or bikes everywhere else), and i love this idea!
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.
Yeah, I tried to stay away from the specifics of how to consider size. I was thinking weight more than anything since it factors into how much force is imparted. But I also think more than length, ride height should be considered in addition to mass. Fuckin bumper to the face is way less survivable than to the waist.
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.
Require a commercial license to drive large and/or heavy vehicles. Take it away when a driver gets caught driving unsafely.
This is already a thing. In my state anything weighing over 10,000 pounds and used in interstate commerce requires a medical card. 17,000 and used intrastate is the same medical card. Towing anything for commercial reasons above 10,000 pounds requires a special license. Driving a vehicle weighing over 26,000 pounds requires a special license.
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.
We definitely should change emissions, yes, but I think a good “foot in the door” tactic would be to lobby your local city to make street parking require a permit that is priced based on the length of your car. It makes ZERO sense that minis and F350s pay the same for parking.
And/or make car registration costs scale reflect the true damage of additional vehicle weight.
Safety standards are also different in the US for “light trucks”. So it’s probably still cheaper to make pickups because they don’t have to design it to not be a death machine.
Other responder is on the money for established brands.
For new car makes, they are forced to play it safe.
For example Rivian, let’s assume there is no technical constraint. They need to decide how much they are willing to risk before introducing a new product. When you invest billions before the first customer buys anything, your investors who are fronting all that capital want you to use the formula that is proven to work in every respect apart from whatever dimension you’re innovating on.
Cars going on sale this year were designed multiple years ago. They were tested. Tooling and whole new production facilities needed to be designed and built and supply chain set up for all the new parts. Test batches evaluated. It’s not like how you patch shit software almost on the fly in today’s beta culture.
If someone like Rivian got the shape wrong because in the meantime everyone decided the porsche 356 was the prettiest car ever made and every new car was round and curvy, they’d lose what’s called product market fit, which is the death sentence for every failed company. As a car maker they can recoup some money by slashing prices but this whole product cycle would be a huge cash loss they cannot afford to miss.
So everyone plays it safe. Everyone copies apple. Everyone emulates the design direction of Ford’s F150, Toyota’s Prius, etc.
Because why would you design it from the ground up? The beauty of buying a Ford etc, is the supply chain. If the bumper on “my” F150 or F150 Lightning breaks. I can get a new one from Ford in no time . I don’t agree with it, but that’s why electric trucks etc are the same as the ICE versions
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.
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.
The lift prevented “see and avoid”. No, it’s not the truck’s fault that the sedan drifted, but the concept is the same. The height prevents the truck from seeing a problem.
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.
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.
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
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.
Yes, no one who owns a truck uses it to move furniture, trash, dirt, mulch, or an old transmission they pulled at the auto lot. None of them go fishing or hunting, obviously, so fishing rods, camping gear and coolers won’t be necessary in the back. Also, no one who owns a truck has ever done home repair and would never carry wood or power tools in the back of, do you get how stupid your strawman is yet?
I work in industrial construction on massive unionized projects with tradespeople coming from all over the US and Canada and I can tell you for an objective fact that the number of guys --it’s almost always guys, which should tell you something-- who drive giant lifted obnoxious trucks as their daily driver vs the number who actually really and truly need them on a regular basis is like 100 to 1.
But even if it were only 10 to 1, that means we have 10 times as many of these giant gas guzzling dangerous trucks out on the road.
The industry has done such a good job at selling these trucks as part of a self-image, that a lot of guys are incapable of admitting that the only reason they drive one is because they think it looks cool.
In other words, for the most part, these gas guzzling monstrosities are rarely used for hauling shit. Maybe they should just rent a truck when they need one?
That doesn’t invalidate trucks used for commercial or professional use, or the fact I’ll still stand on… hauling and outdoor use. It being rare doesn’t make it non-existent.
I’m sure some idiot is hauling refrigerators with a Civic, it doesn’t make them progressive.
That doesn’t invalidate trucks used for commercial or professional use
In that case they need a commercial license and/or it's business property for taxes and the company should own it (if not a sole proprietorship). And you can't use company property for personal use most places.
Then how do you stop the spread of these monstrosities to suburbs where the driver never uses it for that function? All I’m seeing from you is calling us silly for now wanting something the size of a fleet vehicle used on streets not designed for it and killing pedestrians they cant see. Atleast requiring some sort of inbetween grade of license besides passenger cars and everything else could curtail people who are not skilled enough to drive those vehicles or not motivated enough for a status symbol purchase. Rather than say we don’t understand that people have some legit need and poo-poo us, couldn’t you try and be helpful with ideas?
I can easily do all of that and more with my non-lifted mid-sized long-bed pickup. It’s just a fact my dude; they are selling a self-image, not actual utility. Or what about a van with a roof-rack. In my professional experience that’s a lot more utilitarian if you’re a tradesman.
Again, it’s all about an image that’s been meticulously and brilliantly marketed and sold to very specific demographics.
We don’t have this kind of trucks in the Europe AT ALL and people still go fishing, do home repairs, carry heavy or large loads. This is all American lifestyle.
Excuse me in which car-free paradise do you live? While Europe might not reach American-level exuberance in car volume, we have seen a very anger-inducing increase in the number of SUVs. Every second car I saw in Germany this summer was way wider and longer than it needed to be. I want these cars regulated the fuck out of Europe rather sooner than later, but right now every arsehole happily buys one on the promise that their own kids are safe inside the moron-family-sized tank while their parent mows down other people’s children.
Almost no one uses trucks daily for those activities. It's an occasional thing. In which case renting is cheaper. Hunting, too since the vast, vast majority of hunters aren't even hunting weekly.
Fishing? Collapsible poles or strap them to the top. It's not like the rest of the world has trucks and they do these things.
Also, coolers and camping gear? My brother in gaia get a hatchback.
It’s not like there’s any evidence whatsoever these giant pieces of shit are more dangerous. The referenced news story definitely doesn’t talk about the science behind why they’re more dangerous. It’s just people don’t like it! /s
Band-aids like cameras that do fuck all? Cameras are a very quick, simple, and obvious solution to this specific problem. There’s a reason that all new cars have backup cameras nowadays. Perfection is the enemy of good and all that.
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.
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.
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’m not sure if American consumers “liked” them so much as they were pushed heavily by auto makers while they quietly phased out more practically sized vehicles like hatchbacks, station wagons, and a lot of sedans (other than those sedans that fetch a high price for their performance and appeal to an entirely different market; your corvettes, mustangs, etc.) That ‘light truck’ designation brings with it larger profit margins; the vehicle itself is bigger so the manufacturer can charge more for it, and then they have to obey fewer environmental regulations so development/manufacturing is cheaper in comparison to trying to meet the regulations for smaller vehicles.
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