America is trapped in a tragedy of the commons that states stopped regulating vehicle size and marketers capitalized on selling "bigger vehicle size = safer" despite that being a tautology caused by that very tragedy of the commons: bigger vehicle size is less safe to other vehicles on the road (and pedestrians/bicyclists!) therefore to compete for relative safety more people feel the need for bigger vehicle sizes to improve their safety with respect to others' big vehicle purchases. It's gross on so many levels.

One of my favorite philosophy papers: Vehicles and Crashes: Why is this Moral Issue Overlooked? by Douglas Husak. Author argues that because of the high crash incompatibility of SUVs, they are immoral - imposing needless harm on others (and based on data, ironically, with on average no benefit to those who drive them -- because of higher rollover risks).

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23562447

The position "it is better to be harmed than to harm, if you have to choose between the two" is certainly worth discussing, but it would be such an uphill battle that Sisyphus would probably prefer to return to his boulder.

Ironic, given that it's one of the oldest philosophical positions. E.g. Socrates in Plato's Gorgias:

"We must either refute this argument and show that it’s not the possession of justice and self-control that makes happy people happy and the possession of badness that makes miserable people miserable, or else, if this is true, we must consider what the consequences are. These consequences are all those previous things, Callicles, the ones about which you asked me whether I was speaking in earnest when I said that a man should be his own accuser, or his son’s or his friend’s, if he’s done anything unjust, and should use oratory for that purpose. ... I deny, Callicles, that being knocked on the jaw unjustly is the most shameful thing, or that having my body or my purse cut is, and I affirm that to knock or cut me or my possessions unjustly is both more shameful and worse, and at the same time that to rob or enslave me or to break into my house or, to sum up, to commit any unjust act at all against me and my possessions is both worse and more shameful for the one who does these unjust acts than it is for me, the one who suffers them."

I'm picturing a bruised and bloodied mugging victim at the police station filing a report, and a detective reassures him, "Could be worse! Spare a thought for the vastly worse-off mugger, who had to actually do all those horrible things to you!"

The view is a bit more complicated than that, but you gave me a laugh. Thanks!

Except there are so many commercial vehicles on the road that actually require substantial size (package delivery, carpenters, etc.), not to mention all the 18-wheel trucks.

Given that situation, it makes sense that families would want larger (safer) vehicles.

Most of America doesn't live in a 2-person highrise apartment.

18-wheel trucks require Commercial Driver's Licenses (CDLs) with stricter requirements, enforced regulation, and stricter safety oversight. Originally, so did package delivery vans and trucks in many states. It was deregulated by most states so that CDLs were no longer required for several classes of large trucks and vans, and it is those same deregulations that have allowed many "residential" vehicles to grow in size to fit those older categories that used to be classed solely for commercial vehicles (with stricter licensing standards and safety oversight).

The safety problem isn't and never has been commercial vehicles, it has been that America has let the definition of commercial vehicle erode to the point that many Americans believe that exorbitantly sized commercial vehicles make decent residential vehicles.

Yes, those commercial vehicles are on the road but they don't have to be on the road at the same time most people are on the road.

The idea that most Americans live in some sort of farm is actually wrong. Over 80% of Americans live somewhere urban. And yes, trucks, deliveries, etc should not be allowed to drive in urban areas except at night and in the early morning: for traffic and safety.

This should be regulated in Manhattan as well as Des Moines, and even in cities like Houston where the interstate is used for local trips. Driving a truck? Take the detour that skips Houston entirely during the day.

Thing is you don't see many commercial vehicles (eg delivery/repair vans) being involved in crashes on urban or suburban streets because they either have a class B license or are carefully screened. This is not to say it never happens of course, but in my experience commercial drivers are alert because driving is key to their ability to make a living, and patient because they want to get to their next job safely. They generally mindful of rules of the road and give way at pedestrian crossing or wherever. On freeways, most semi-truck drivers are similarly responsible.

The drivers who make me nervous tend to be in SUVs or lifted pickups/crossovers, followed by sports cars. IME people who pick a big car to feel safe tend to be poor drivers. I went from liking Volvos to ride in to being scared of them when I got a motorcycle.

> Given that situation, it makes sense that families would want larger (safer) vehicles.

This will protect them from the large, dangerous vehicles out there.

It starts to look like an arms race quite quickly.

This applies to mostly any other country in the world as I can't think of anywere where they regulate vehicle sizes. Yet you don't see nearly the same ammount of SUV in the roads. And in fact I think an SUV makes more sense in the third world: road maintenance is generally much worse with potholes everywhere; traffic enforcent much less effective, so speed bump everywhere too; a big truck is probably safer than a small car if you're about to get robbed in the street... the real "tragedy" of the US is people being too rich and things people worry about in other places like gas and financing being so cheap.

In addition, EPA rules made it impossible to build sedans and wagons with the performance desired by consumers, which is what caused the death of the station wagon and the birth of the SUV, which according to the EPA is a light truck and is subject to different emissions rules.

Now everybody with three or more kids is practically required to buy a van or SUV because you can almost never fit three car seats in the backseat of an EPA approved sedan.

So families buy larger vehicles, which have the problem described above, and the EPA doesn't even succeed at regulating the market

> In addition, EPA rules made it impossible to build sedans and wagons with the performance desired by consumers,

To elaborate, current CAFE standards have a gap where station wagons used to be, that basically makes it impossible to make a modern station wagon. By declaring SUVs as light trucks, they aren't impacted by the same rules as a station wagon would be.

tl;dr light weight high volume cars are literally not legal to make[0] and [1] unless tiny little baby engines are put in which would put these cars down market.

I'm hoping moving to EVs resolve this entire issue.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...)

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...)

I'm also hoping that EVs encourage a bigger reinvestment in alternative form factors like the station wagon/estate car/shooting brake. So far most of the manufacturers of EVs are sticking to existing truck/SUV trends playing it safe, but now that enough of the major manufacturers are using standardized platforms where they can easily play with the form factor above the "skateboard" core we'll start seeing more EV diversity than ever before sooner rather than later.

(VW Group has an EV station wagon Porsche now [a variant of the Taycan EV], and that's probably wildly out of most family's budgets, but if VW Group is playing with that on the MEB at the luxury end, hopefully that means they are already considering how to play with that on the low end as well.)

90% of the people I know with big cars use them because they have jobs, hobbies, or interests that require the transportation of materials and equipment that would be difficult or impossible to transport in a small car, or because they live somewhere that requires a vehicle robust against difficult driving conditions. I don’t think “big=safe” is a super popular reason to get a big car, especially given the cost difference vs a commuter car or whatever.

Anecdata for anecdata, I've never seen 90% of big cars on the roads around ever regularly carry more than one passenger at a time to/from a desk job (or a meal commute) that doesn't need any large hauling ever.

"Big=safe" may not be smart reason to get a big car, but it's absolutely a common ("popular") one in the US today. Just looking at how cars are advertised, there's basically two main marketing pushes "just look how safe it keeps your family" and "just look at the hobbies it could let you do that you probably won't actually do but think you will", and yes that second one is a pretty equally common reason people buy them, but both messages get about equal air time in the US and seem common in reasons people buy them.

I realize I'm very dismissive of people buying them for "hobbies/interests", but over-buying capacity based on "perceived need that doesn't actually exist" is a trap that also makes the roads less safe and should be regulated.

> but over-buying capacity based on "perceived need that doesn't actually exist" is a trap that also makes the roads less safe and should be regulated

This kind of thinking (all expenditures to account for tail-risk demand scenarios is an evil source of inefficiency that must be eliminated) is making society perilously fragile.

Buying optionality is a great idea and people don’t do it enough.

You buy for the times you will need the capacity?

Am I hauling crap from Home Depot every day? No. But two or three times a month I need to move a bunch of stuff, be it lumber, mulch, or doors. So I have a vehicle that can do that, because not having that capability would cost more per month in rental or delivery fees than having that capability costs me.

If more people had to rely on rentals for those types of projects the demand would be higher and the rental costs/delivery fees cheaper. It's a different but related tragedy of the commons that many "common services" such as delivery services from hardware stores got worse as more people did it themselves.

Obviously everyone's needs are different and everyone thinks their own needs are special, so there's not an easy immediate fix and it would need to be a culture change.

> I don’t think “big=safe” is a super popular reason to get a big car, especially given the cost difference vs a commuter car or whatever.

Counter-anecdote: that's exactly the reason given by a lot of people I know who like SUVs, especially. Maybe alongside "it can carry lots of stuff", but sometimes all on its own.

Is it their reason or is it their way of telling you to screw off because it's their money and they do what they want with it?

"hurr durr muh safety" is one of the easiest ways to shut down discussion these days.

Nah, they mean it. FWIW (maybe nothing?) I'm pretty sure it's only ever been women who've told me this—but then, men I know all drive trucks if they are into that kind of thing, and I've never heard one name safety as what sold them on trucks. Maybe if I knew men who drove SUVs they'd say the same thing.

Maybe rent a big vehicle when you need it and use a regular size on when you don't. I'm tired of being menaced by extremely clean and pristine pickups that never seem to be loaded with anything more challenging than laundry or groceries.

Now and again I spot an old style pickup (when they were a similar height to a sedan) and they're conspicuous by how petite they look relative to the current offerings (while still having abundant bed space).

> Maybe rent a big vehicle when you need it and use a regular size on when you don't.

I buy things specifically so I don’t have to compete with other people during times of scarcity, such as the last 18 months that just happened.

Renting sucks if you do anything regularly or like to put work into improving anything (like your car or house).

I don’t want to live a life of peonage where I don’t own anything and am at the mercy of other people’s resource allocation decisions whenever I want to do anything.

You're taking this weirdly personally, and ignoring the contextual point about large numbers of pickups that are never used for any kind of work, as well as the other point about older pickups having equivalent amounts of bed space without being so massive.

I’m speaking from the first person, not taking it personally. I’m just explaining why ownership is often superior to rentership. Otoh, your comment seemed very personal and emotive:

> Maybe rent a big vehicle when you need it and use a regular size on when you don't. I'm tired of being menaced by extremely clean and pristine pickups

This sounds like you feel persecuted by truck drivers.

I’m not sure the observation about bed space is really true, except maybe insofar as modern safety regulations require more empty crumple space in the front of the car.

I don't feel persecuted by truck drivers, I just have an unpleasant number of close encounters with such vehicles as a pedestrian. Far from thinking they're persecuting me, I think they are simply not paying attention.

Is this unique to truck drivers? In my experience, the worst and most unsafe drivers usually drive cheap commuters, not pickups.

Also, to preempt a repeat, last time there was a thread on HN about saving pedestrians by banning pickup trucks, I ran the numbers and a very optimistic estimate for number of pedestrian lives saved by replacing every single pickup with a commuter car was like 200 people per year.

By no means, SUV drivers and boy racers are also serial hazards where I live. What's a bit different with those is it's easier to make eye contact with drivers in SUVs and sedans. Many modern pickups tend to be elevated to the same height as vans (especially if the suspension is lifted), but unlike vans and minibuses they still have a long front hood, which offsets any benefit from the increased elevation while still making it hard for pedestrians to make eye contact with the driver.

This is a worry factor for people with kids, walking a dog etc., because while the pickup driver may well notice people of adult height, anything below shoulder level is effectively invisible in close-up situations. Most unpleasant close encounters don't come from a speeding vehicle but going in a straight line, but drivers turning right on red or at a stop sign and focused on traffic coming to their left, while ignoring the existence of people trying to cross the street to their right (and sometimes to their left too, because they're gazing into the middle distance and literally overlooking people nearby even though the pedestrians have the right of way).

200 pedestrian lives a year seems like a lot to me, even 100 seems like an excess loss. If you factor in cyclists (though many cyclists are their own worst enemies) I think the number might swell.

> 200 pedestrian lives a year seems like a lot to me

Not if you do a population-normalized utilitarian comparison. 200 people is vanishingly small. There are a million other things to focus on first.

Parallel > serial

You should come and see my kid's school during drop off and pick up.

The number of soccer moms driving Escalades and other oversized SUVs in their high heels would heal your misconceptions about large car ownership in the US.

It's not big as much as tall. Going from my truck to a rental car is a vulnerable change! My truck is inefficient and big, but we keep it because it can carry both our kids and our dog.

I've lived in areas with serious snowfall and icy road conditions that you have to deal with 4-5 months out of the year, most of my life. These small, lightweight, weak EVs are a bad joke in that context, they'd be useless.

NYC, Chicago, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Detroit, etc. have some terrible Winter weather for example. You can't safely, effectively navigate Winter weather in NYC in a vehicle like the Chery QQ Ice Cream. At best it'd be good ~2/3 of the year.

> These small, lightweight, weak EVs are a bad joke in that context, they'd be useless.

[citation needed]

Power is not the limiting factor in icy road conditions, traction is. While a heavier car is easier to get moving due to increased normal force, it's equally harder to stop. The actual difference makers are snow tires so you have more traction, and electronic stability control/antilock brakes so you never lose traction.

From what I understand, upgrading a 2 wheel drive EV to a 4 wheel EV isn't a horribly hard thing to do.

Driving on snow/iced doesn't require power, it requires good tires and an understanding of how to drive on snow and ice.

I do wonder if the engine in it could get up Seattle hills though, my family's old Geo Metro had problems, so something with a fraction of the power could prove problematic.

You do have to wonder how people drove around when scarcely any vehicle was AWD/4WD.

Having said that, good snow tires are magic.

This. Regulating seasonal snow tire/chain usage in areas with lots of snow/ice is imperative to reducing collisions and improving safety. That and decent infrastructure for clearing snow in a fairly timely manner.

All seasons can't and _wont_ cut it in some areas, and having tires that only work 3/4s of the year for traction is dicey at best.

Source: I drive a Miata in winter up in Saskatchewan

'round these parts (which is hilly and has wet snow), the limiting factor (given decent snow tires) doesn't tend to be traction, it's high centering.

It would be interesting to know just how many cars ever have their back seats used.

You can argue that the average car should either be a 2wd Tacoma or a Miata.

Even with back-seats being used, bring back the station-wagon:

The 90s Buick Estate (a behemoth of a wagon) was 9 inches shorter than the Kia Telluride (one of the smaller 3-row vehicles in the US) and seated 8 (though it would be 7 today because front-row bench seats appear to be disallowed except in pickups).

The Estate's contemporary Ford Taurus Wagon could also seat 7 (though two adults in the 3rd row is not comfortable, it worked for short drives in a pinch) was almost 20 inches!! shorter than a Suburban/Escalade.

Ooh. Maybe a sedan delivery wagon (two door, front seat only). I think there may have been some Chevelles like that.

> America needs to embrace more cars like these and lower speeds in cities. Lower speeds==less safety measures needed. Not only that but less noise, less pollution, safer for everyone around.

I don't think these cars are very safe even in, or actually especially in, China. It is just that China tolerates a lot more auto accident related deaths than the USA does.

I took a look at the statistics on Wikipedia and they're pretty staggering... per-capita road accidents are roughly 1.5x the US, but per-vehicle is almost 10x.

From a US perspective it would be truly insane to drive one of these on a Chinese highway but you go there and see little three wheeled trucks hauling a dining table zipping alongside 18-wheelers. Truly a different standard.

Ya, the motor trike carrying a mountain of recycling is still a thing in some cities.

Most US cities currently have highways that go through them, and the majority of people who drive in those cities live in the suburbs. For those living in cities, the public transit is a much better solution nearly in every way, compared to personal transportation devices that evade safety regulations.

We need more light rail options instead of lower speeds. It’s hard to go fast in most city centers anyway.

This. The answer to congestion isn't more cars that are smaller and slower, it's better public transit.

Instead of more cars, why not optimize for more public transport, bicycles and pedestrians? Cars suck in cities.

Yep. It would be fine to ban them on controlled-access highways, but this would be great for in-town driving.