I'll just throw out there that I have 3 small children, and we had to upsize our vehicle to accompany them, so now I drive me small sub-compact, but to haul our kids we had to upgrade to a minivan. In a lot of discussions I see around transport it often feels as though people like to pretend that those with small children don't exist.

Like no matter how great public transit is trying to transport 3 rambunctious under 6's isn't going to work for our family or anyone else on the public transit for any meaningful trip.

I have two kids, not three, but we have never had a car, always taken the kids everywhere on public transport. I’m not going to say every trip was a joyful experience, but imho you are making a way bigger deal out of this than the reality. Although to be fair it depends a lot on the quality of the public options in your metro region.

Downside of kids that always travel by public transport: on the rare occasions that they do travel by car, they puke nearly every time. For us public transport is a lot less stressful than traveling by car.

I applaud your efforts my friend, part of our problem is we've never lived anywhere with good public transit. I will also just throw out the world changes quite dramatically from 2 kids to 3 kids, once those little buggers outnumber you things get a lot more exciting in parenting.

I don’t fault folks who have three kids, but with fertility rates plummeting, it’s not something that should be optimized for. Families are getting smaller over time.

The question is if families are getting smaller because parents don’t want more kids or because of regulation[0]. Maybe requiring people to have smaller cars or use public transport would further cut the birth rate.

I’m only half-serious. I know there is good reason for public transport or having smaller cars in urban environments.

0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3665046

Generally the deciding factor has been birth control. The more birth control is available and accepted as a choice, the more women choose to postpone their first child, which automatically leads to having fewer children.

> Maybe requiring people to have smaller cars or use public transport would further cut the birth rate.

This should be easy enough to test by comparing against cohorts in Europe and Asia.

Fertility rates plummeting is not necessarily a good thing in the long run, so maybe having kids should be incentivized.

Yay for you, but the public transit in my area is useless for getting to the stores or destinations. It's better for commuting into the dense urban area for work hours, but not gonna fly for taking my kids shoe-shopping.

That said, glad you have the option for public transit. I'd be happy if my city decided to beef up public transit, but the NIMBYs keep shooting down the public transit overhaul bills.

Minivans aren't the problem. That's a sensible design for moving a lot of people around.

It's those lifted trucks that have a hood taller than some shorter adults, to say nothing of children. New pickups in general are just ridiculous compared to the same models from 30 years ago, which were just fine for, say, actual ranch work.

A minivan is practical especially with 2 or more kids. In my area vast majority of people have SUVs and pickups and it’s normally one person in it. People have to have that GMC Denali or other equivalent giant vehicle to show off I guess. It’s those big SUVs and pickups that make no sense, people lean towards the “why not?” Instead of “why?”.

So how was it working before all these SUV? We had a “Fiat Panda” as kids and we were five people and never had problems carrying stuff.

Why did you need a minivan when a camry or equivalent can easily and now comfortably seat 5?

In response to that I will take quote "Only Dead on the Inside" by Author James Breakwell

"A minivan has room for luggage. It has room for air. And it has room liquids. That's right: It has space for THREE states of matter. Kids shoot liquid out of every orifice, and it constantly needs to be replenished. The minivan knows that it knows everything. Each minivan has at least twelve state-of-the-art liquid stabilization chambers, known to commoners as cup holders. That's way more than any other vehicle. It's basically a cup holder collection with an engine attached. If you want to you can haul a dozen slushies at once. Can't find slushies at the end of the world, not my problem. I don't have problems. I drive a minivan."

More seriously, when we go to visit family you can't fit luggage for a family of 5 and that family in a Camry, also when you have to grocery shop with 3 small children you have to be able to fit both the groceries and the children in the car at the end.

I agree that 3 children is way different than 2 depending on age. Just think child seats (i.e. trying to fit 3 in the back seat of a regular sedan will be a challenge, while it's completely possible for 2. Been there, lived that without any issues.

For luggage (even with 3 I would think) a hatch back does wonders. My larger limousine cannot fit the same amount of luggage or larger packaged purchases, simply because it doesn't fit through the trunk door at all, gets stuck because it's too long or too high and gets caught by stuff that sticks down into the trunk space (why they designed things that way, do not ask me). All of those things fit into the smaller hatchback we have without any trouble at all.

I can count the number of times I have had to put something in the rear seats for groceries on one hand and that was w/ the "large" car where I combined toilet paper, kitchen paper and a 'large' Costco run and the trunk space itself could've fit everything if it hadn't been for the above mentioned problems that would have been solved w/ the hatchback. 3 children on the backseat would've been no issue in the hatchback in that situation. Now going through a Costco on a busy Saturday morning w/ 3 small children would've been another story ;)

Have you ever tried installing 3 car seats into a compact car?

There are some expensive car seats designed to cram all three kids into a back seat, but buying a larger car instead is cheaper. They also tend to be designed for triplets, if all three kids are different sizes it becomes a lot more complicated.

Most cars only have attachments for two car seats in the rear, so even if you did have space the middle seat would have to use the generally discouraged seat belt install instead.

Right, that's my point in responding to the parent comment about fitting 5 people in a Camry; it's not so simple when 3 of them require car seats.

We have a 7-seater for extended family. My nephews come over a lot, so that allows us to transport all four children, two to three adults, and a small amount of shopping bags or picnic supplies.

The fuel efficiency isn't great, but that's why our primary vehicle is a sedan that seats four (plug-in hybrid). Generally we use the sedan, except for large shopping trips or when needing the larger seating capacity.

I concur, and try fitting three car seats next to each other in the back of anything but a very large truck or SUV. Never mind the fact that often one parent usually needs to sit next to really young babies for the first year or so.

I grew up in the 80s and 90s. My recollection is that the family vehicle of choice for my parents and those of most of my friends was what you'd call the "generic midsized family sedan" - Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, etc.

All of us managed just fine. Even taking extended multiday family roadtrips.

Plus, the Accord of the late 80s and early 90s was closer in size to a 2022 Civic than 2022 Accord.

Nowadays people insist that they need at minimum a Honda Pilot, Toyota Highlander, or the current fave - Kia Telluride, to transport a single kid.

While this is true, not all of the exterior volume increase resulted in more passenger space. Crumple zones and other crash protection force automakers to add what is effectively a lot of dead space in the frame and body, and since shrinking the interior is generally frowned upon that extra volume instead causes the exterior to balloon outward.

Yes, but I'd say the old Accord is still closer to a new Civic than a new Accord. For example:

1990 Accord (source: https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-automobiles/releases/relea...)

Legroom 42.6/34.3 Hiproom 52.4/52.4 Shoulder: 54.8/54.8 Passenger volume: 93 cu ft Cargo volume: 14.4 cu ft

2022 Civic (source: https://owners.honda.com/vehicles/information/2002/Civic-Sed...)

Legroom: 42.2/36 Hiproom: 51.2/49.8 Shoulder: 52.6/52 Passenger volume: 91.4 cu ft Cargo volume: 12.9 cu ft

2021 Honda Accord (source: ) Legroom: 42.3/40.4 Hiproom: 55.3/55 Shoulder: 58.3/56.5 Passenger volume: 102.7 cu ft Cargo volume: 16.7 cu ft

Though granted - too lazy to do the calculations right now, but I imagine a 1990 Honda Accord might be priced closer to a 2002 Honda Civic than Accord too.

I feel like this is the same argument on HN regarding memory in laptops. Every argument insists that 8GB is useless, and shame on a company for selling that config (or not offering 32GB).

And how many child seats did you fit in your 80s and 90s cars?

Oversized vehicles also feed their owners' egos. And display wealth. Practicality as a factor is in the rear-view mirror, so-to-speak

then let's play into this and charge for oversized parking spots

Money won’t give land back, sadly.

>Part of the reason modern lots are so big and why parking covers so much area is simply because cars are too big!

Spaces are typically 9' apart. I've seen some new ones that have moved to 10'. But part of the reason for "large parking lots" is the building code requires a minimum number of spaces for a building of a certain occupancy.

>There is zero reason a person needs to own a 7 seat SUV to transport 3 people or five 2x4s twice a year.

While I agree, people do this because everybody else does it. If you're in a Mini, surrounded by Escalades, the Escalade starts to look a lot more attractive.

We went through all this in the 90s. The SUV explosion was because women like it. They like feeling safe; they like being up high; the car companies discovered this, and made the SUV a really comfy place.

There is no regulation that will fix this. You want to fix it? Make cities and public transportation livable again. It's really not that difficult. A safe, affordable, well-managed city with good schools would be attractive. The problem is achieving this will make certain people unhappy. Pick which one you want more.

>Part of the reason modern lots are so big and why parking covers so much area is simply because cars are too big! There is zero reason a person needs to own a 7 seat SUV to transport 3 people or five 2x4s twice a year. The proliferation of oversized vehicles continues to exacerbate a significant number of local and global issues and I'm of the belief that we need strong regulation to limit the size of vehicles.

I'll ignore for a second that I completely disagree the size of cars are the issue with parking lots. As someone who has a large truck, the spots are not designed for it, they're designed for a mid-size sedan. So, you aren't shrinking parking spots unless you're planning on massively increasing insurance costs due to all the door dings and bumper scrapes that will follow by making parking spaces smaller.

Who decides what is "large enough"? The family with 3 or 4 kids who has to take them to sporting events on the weekend like football or hockey and ALL of the requisite gear just have to take multiple cars now to fit everything? And that's going to be better for the environment or society? What about a weekend trip to the cabin, they need to buy and store a trailer now to have enough room for their stuff? Because unless you've got a solution to those among dozens of other issues, no legislator in their right mind is going to back significantly decreasing the size of cars. If you want to find an issue opposed from both sides of the aisle, try telling people they are going to have to start towing a trailer everywhere to get their kids to sports on the weekend.

The tax code already makes plenty of allowances for number of children and/ro dependents so I'm not sure why you think it'd be some herculean effort for a car size regulation to allow people with kids to have more cars. There's no reason for a childless couple to be driving a 7-seater SUV around everywhere. If they need a separate trailer for that one trip a year where they need to haul a kayak or something, that's fine, that still means they aren't burning all that extra energy the other 364 days a year.

OP wants to eliminate large vehicles full stop. There's no allowance for a large family. I guess we're also banning anything larger than a small fishing boat as well since there will be no way to trailer it anywhere if we're banning full-size pickup trucks and SUVs.

Average vehicle sizes in the US have gotten larger in the US over the last 20 years. Are you telling me it was impossible to have 3-4 children in a vehicle 20 years ago, despite birth rates falling in the meantime?

20 years ago was 2002... yes in 2002 people who had 3-4 kid drove an SUV, a van or a mini-van, just like they do today. The argument isn't about average vehicle size, the argument OP made was to eliminate ALL large vehicles.

Average SUV size in the US has gone up in the last 20 years. You're engaging the argument in the weakest way possible (ALL large vehicles, which has to mean anything other than a subcompact right?!) instead of trying to Steelman it. I'm not sure that larger vehicles are doing anything to parking lot sizes (it should be trivial to look this up in revisions to your city code though), but they do pose a large risk to road safety (which is most obvious by seeing the increasing number of pedestrian and cycling injuries and fatalities in US statistics) and contribute heavily to road wear which results in increased tax burden to support the paving of roads.

>Average SUV size in the US has gone up in the last 20 years. You're engaging the argument in the weakest way possible (ALL large vehicles, which has to mean anything other than a subcompact right?!) instead of trying to Steelman it.

The AVERAGE size of a vehicle is literally irrelevant to the discussion. You asked what people with 3-4 kids did 20 years ago: My response was they bought the same Tahoe they buy now. Which was nearly identical in size. You keep saying "The average size" when it has little to no bearing on OPs complaint: which is he wants to eliminate full-size SUVs and trucks.

YOU implied that full size SUVs and trucks weren't a thing 20 years ago by asking what people did. Now you're moving the goal posts because I pointed out how silly your implication was. The Tahoe having its wheelbase grow 4" in 20 years isn't what OP is complaining about and you know it.

> YOU implied that full size SUVs and trucks weren't a thing 20 years ago by asking what people did. Now you're moving the goal posts because I pointed out how silly your implication was. The Tahoe having its wheelbase grow 4" in 20 years isn't what OP is complaining about and you know it.

Let's quote what GP said: "There is zero reason a person needs to own a 7 seat SUV to transport 3 people or five 2x4s twice a year. The proliferation of oversized vehicles continues to exacerbate a significant number of local and global issues and I'm of the belief that we need strong regulation to limit the size of vehicles.". You chose to interpret "proliferation of oversized vehicles" and "strong regulation to limit the size of vehicles" as "eliminate full-size SUVs and trucks". I have no idea how you got there and what your definition of "large" here and how it follows from what GP said. That's what I mean by you creating a strawman. If you steelman the argument, you wouldn't get "eliminate full-size SUVs and trucks" from it.

If you applied a modicum of common sense you wouldn’t be bending over backwards to try to make an argument that regulating the max size of a vehicle somehow leaves room for interpretation. There’s literally no reason you would “regulate the max size of a vehicle” unless you’re trying to eliminate a category that currently exists. “Sorry guys, you can’t make the suburban any bigger” would change absolutely nothing and not address his concerns at all. But you keep prattling on about straw man arguments if that makes you feel better. You’ve yet to contribute anything of substance to the discussion and I doubt you’re going to start now.

> Who decides what is "large enough"?

Maybe the market can decide. We could be levying higher prices in taxes on the cars that occupy more space, damage roads more and are more dangerous to pedestrians.

By and large we already do that. The larger vehicles are more expensive, and in most states your tabs are based on the price of the vehicle. If you want to go a step beyond that, I'm sure you'd be able to find some support if it wasn't an outrageous tax. This assumption that because OP doesn't need a large vehicle, nobody has a reason to need one is just silly.

And as I said, it does absolutely nothing to address parking lots.

Let the market decide. Pick a winner in advance and tax the outcome I don't want out of existence. This is about as much market-based policy as your typical politician is maiking science-based policy.

Agree on this point. I have a "compact" pickup and I absolutely will not even try to park it in a garage as the spaces are too small.

I wish the judgement would stop on what people need/use. If they cause a huge impact, add a tax. (lower the gas guzzler MPG requirement, etc)

Any before anyone says anything, I do construction/wood working on the side so yes, I absolutely use it but do not daily drive it.

The judgement exists because construction is happening in economies around the world but only Americans drive this many large vehicles. Unless you think Americans are building _more_ than other economies (which it definitely isn't), you'll quickly come to the conclusion that because parking and large lane widths are mandated by local code and vehicle weight isn't really taxed in any way, that Americans have an incentive to buy as big a car as they can that fits within their government mandated built environment.

You could consider just not participating in sports that require strapping on 20 pounds of plastic equipment for protection.

I don't think it's necessary to change recreational activities to use fewer automobiles. Plenty of folks in Europe and East Asia participate in sports with lots of equipment and still take trains. It's just an American cultural norm. Most people in the US immediately view transit as unsuitable when you have to bring large objects, when places that actually have a culture of using transit don't.

For people who are skeptical of how regulation can help with this, Japan actually used to financially penalize buying large cars relative to small cars. The small ones are called kei cars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kei_car

There's much less of a savings benefit to buying kei cars since 2014, but they remain very popular. The decades of government incentive probably helped normalize them, and they really do seem to fit better in Japan's smaller streets.

I remember discovering Kei cars in Gran Turismo, and then really wishing I could get a Suzuki Cappuccino [0] in the USA. It wasn't a very fast car by any means, but it was incredibly light weight and nimble, being smaller than even a Mazda Miata.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Cappuccino

>> I'm of the belief that we need strong regulation to limit the size of vehicles.

This is wishfull thinking as cars are manufactured globally, have a very long life and it's pretty tough to imagine this sort of wide regulation fitting with the needs of a major urban center and huge parts of rural environments. I'd argue population controls which are plain crazy would still be easier to implement than regulated the size of vehicles.

Just for the record cars are not "manufactured globally" cars are manufactured on specific countries which then have long logistics of acquisition, not all countries make cars and the ones that do can very certainly be pushed through legislation to make "smaller cars", as this problem is specifically poignant on the United States changing united states legislation would have a large footprint by itself in the same manner that air quality standards of California have nearly become international standards for all vehicles

That said there is no political will for this to happen, therefore it won't, which is sad given that is a good idea

US is the biggest market that want bigger cars. I believe US market encourages makes worldwide car model bigger.

It's unclear to me whether democratic governance is capable of reducing consumption. People want to buy bigger cars, for comfort or perceived safety, or for how they make them feel.

The CAFE standards (fuel efficiency requirements by size of vehicle) pushed the car manufacturers towards making bigger cars, and the ridiculously wide early US road building standards helped them. It's a common example of perverse incentives.