I hate the mentality of "bigger car is safer for me and my family". It is safer because you will have more mass and in the event of a collision likely do more damage to the other vehicle. It is a mass/kinetic force arms race when people are using that as a reason for vehicle purchase. Similar logic can be applied to why many US citizens buy guns.

This implies that it’s moral to make a conscious decision to lower the chances of survival for your family in case of crash?

Morally culpable, but also defensible since you’re defending yourself from others in large cars.

Don’t hate the player. Hate the game. The real moral culpability is in the people that created and support the policies enabling the SUV Arma race.

People in this thread almost make it sound like people don't want SUVs, its a decision being forced on them by others.

A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things. They prefer the more upright seating (higher h-point). They prefer the higher entry/exit point. They feel they need all the cargo space. Lots of people which I agree would probably be just as well served by a sedan or a hatchback just don't care for those car styles these days. Even if the sedan was a few grand less than the SUV (they often were when they were still sold), these people probably still go for the SUV if they could afford it. People didn't generally like them in the past because 1) modern SUVs are kind of a new-ish concept which only really started in the 90s where they absolutely exploded in popularity 2) those 90s body-on-frame SUVs drove like trucks while modern unibody crossovers drive more like cars and 3) it wasn't until about the 2000s that car makers started actually trying to make these vehicles appealing to average drivers as opposed to just work vehicles.

These kinds of people are incredibly common from my experiences.

Don't get me wrong, I do agree things like the chicken tax and CAFE requirements drove sedans and "light trucks" closer to the same price points, but generally speaking a ton of consumers want it this way.

> People in this thread almost make it sound like people don't want SUVs, its a decision being forced on them by others.

> A lot of people I've talked to about car buying decisions like buying these SUV/crossover things.

Classic.

City-dwelling non-car owners projecting their understanding of the world onto the rest of the country. (Or in the case of Europeans, onto Americans.)

American suburbia and rural life is car-centric, and that's not going to change. People are not going to want to move to densify or live in the city because that's what "everyone should want". They enjoy their private cabins, their tall all-wheel drive vehicles, not shared transit and subway.

If you try to force these people to move to cities through taxation or a lack of support for their infrastructure, they'll vote out your political candidates.

There are a lot of people from SF and NYC here. As is the case with /r/fuckcars and their advocating for bikes and "strong cities", these are not the views shared by the rest of the country. If they were, you'd see policies changing overnight.

You're getting downvotes probably because your comment comes across as combative, but I do largely agree with your main points. I think a lot of people here aren't in touch with a lot of suburban people.

I've watched the local town halls in my area filled with people raging about apartment complexes or even owner-occupied townhouses getting built. Voting out the city hall members who approved those developments. The hate for even zero lot line houses as being "too crowded". People questioning why I'd ever even think about taking the light rail into town instead of just driving. Voting against expanding transit access because "the wrong people" would be coming into their town, arguing that having busses run every 10 minutes instead of 20-30 minutes would lead to higher crime rates and make it less safe.

There's tons of Americans who furiously don't want the density. Who don't want transit. Who push to have their lifted trucks with offroad wheels to drop their kids off at daycare and make a 20mi commute to an office job and wouldn't have it any other way. Lots of people here act like these people just don't exist or aren't a significant percentage of the population, but remember, Trump carried 46% of the popular vote. The percentage of these kinds of people is absolutely not a small number.

People act like these zoning laws just appeared on their own. They're made by local governments, some of the easiest people to replace in the end. The zoning laws reflect the popular priorities of the people living there. If the majority of people really wanted dense housing, they'd be voting to change their zoning laws to allow it. But, from what I've seen, a lot of those candidates don't tend to stay in office very long.

I'm reminded of a recent proposed development near me. A developer bought up the remains of an old farm and a cleaned up meat packing plant lot (torn down, cleaned up, empty field at the time). The developer wanted to build a few zero lot line SFHs and a few 3-4 unit townhouses, and then finally a small little commercial spot for potentially like a doughnut shop or cafe or bodega kind of thing. The close neighborhoods instantly fought against it bringing up loads of arguments about increased traffic (the location actually had a couple useful bus lines serving it...needs more frequency) and building too close to the creek (despite the most vocal neighborhood having structures just as close!). The development company tried to make a number of concessions, increasing some of the lot sizes of the SFHs, eliminating some of the construction closer to the creek and instead having a linear park/dog park there, redoing the entry and exit points of the development to adjust traffic patterns, etc. The NIMBYs would never accept any proposal. Eventually the developer gave up as city hall wouldn't risk approving something that so many virulently hated.

In the end, that property was acquired by a different group. Since the property was already zoned industrial, it was quick and easy to get the permits for their tilt wall warehouses to be built. Now instead of reducing the high housing demand and adding a small corner commercial space on a popular bus route, we're going to have loads of semis driving through this overall pretty highly residential/office area. I wonder which was worse for those neighborhood's property values.

It seemed like they were talking about large vs. small vehicles - not have vs. don't have a vehicle at all. And that's a lot different. The US could pass legislation making large vehicles more expensive and fuel efficient vehicles less expensive, but if I understand the situation correctly, it's the opposite. Which seems pretty stupid considering climate change.

As I understand it, they tightened emission regulations for cars and trucks. Which I consider to be a good thing. Problem is, the truck regulations were far more lax, and SUVs over a certain size were considered trucks. It was immediately more economical to make trucks and SUVs which didn't require as much R&D to meet the emission targets.

And so here we are, at a point where most car models have been canceled by the big auto builders while their SUV offerings have exploded.

Those big auto manufacturers didn't cancel small cars because they couldn't R&D the emissions requirements. Sure, those higher emissions requirements did drive up some of the cost to come closer to the SUVs, but the small cars were practically universally still cheaper than SUVs.

The big automakers stopped making small cars because people largely stopped buying them.

It is also fair to hate the player, as often they are making the decisions consciously. They are supporting the game, which would die if there was no demand. Same as the meat industry for example. It's too easy to always put the fault on some higher instance.

No demand for vehicles? Not going to happen in the forseeable future.

No demand for SUVs? That's possible, but hard. Most auto makers have killed most (if not all) of their cars, meaning if you have a family, you're in a sardine can, a muscle car, or an SUV.

I own a Prius, because I don't have a kid. I loaned it out to family who had a kid, and it was a veritable clown car routine anywhere they wanted to go.

The game can't continue if there isn't a steady supply of new players. As a pedestrian, involuntary non-cyclist, and someone who prefers normal vehicles, your excuse is paper thin.

Some people also actually need a large car. If you have a 6 person household, the only thing everyone will fit in is an SUV, a minivan, or a full size van.

You just listed 3 choices, which range in size, weight and likelyhood of killing pedestrians. I.e. a minivan fits more people, but is smaller than some of the massive trucks I see driving around.

I knew a family growing up that had six kids, so 8 person household, they had a minivan (Toyota Tarago).

A modern SUV would likely be a) heavier b) have worse blind spots, and c) has a higher front bumper, so worse impact if you hit a pedestrian.

The "I didn't have a choice" argument is almost always a logical fallacy.

> You just listed 3 choices, which range in size, weight and likelyhood of killing pedestrians

One answer is to not have pedestrians. As the suburbs do.

Not everybody wants to live in a city or can live in a city.

> I knew a family growing up that had six kids, so 8 person household, they had a minivan (Toyota Tarago).

Unlike pickup trucks, SUVs are fantastic for hauling both children and assorted cargo. Unlike minivans, they're great at handling a variety of driving conditions: gravel, dirt, ice/snow, inclines. They're also fun to drive and don't make it feel like the next sixteen years of your family's life is just dedicated to the brood.

> One answer is to not have pedestrians. As the suburbs do.

That's such and absurd suggestion I'm surprised you felt it worth writing, not to mention there are still plenty of pedestrians even in the suburbs.

It’s no more absurd than the suggestions in this thread that people only need small vehicles while ignoring the realities of why many people actually do need large vehicles.

> That's such and absurd suggestion

It's not absurd at all, which is why it's interesting to watch people who have never fathomed this try to come to grips with it.

There is so much of this country completely unserved by sidewalks, busses, or cycling infrastructure. And it's fine. It works.

Many people move to the suburbs nominally so that their kids can safely walk, bike, and play in the streets. Obviously the actual built environment of the suburbs doesn't remotely support this supposed goal, but the idea that suburbs "don't have pedestrians" is not true or even desired.

Minivans often have AWD varieties these days and its not like all SUVs have it. Other than "inclines" which I doubt most family cars ever see challenging ones, a minivan probably performs similarly to most SUVs on the market when it comes to gravel, dirt, ice/snow when equipped with the right tires.

I own both a minivan and an SUV, the minivan handles horribly in poor weather conditions, even with the proper tires. Our SUV handles much better in all weather even without switching to 4 wheel drive.

The minivan also has horrible clearance that bottoms out frequently when you drive on dirt trails trying to get to hiking trails and primitive campgrounds.

They each serve their purpose. The minivan is by far the best suburban people carrier we could’ve bought, and it has incredible storage capacity when you stow the seats, but it definitely has its limitations.

I'm trying to understand why the minivan would handle so much worse than a comparable SUV/crossover. Could you clue me into the reasons why? Is it actually something innate with the geometry/weight distribution or potentially more like "this particular van has poor handling"?

The biggest things I notice are less ground clearance, which becomes a problem in heavy snow and the less powerful engine which makes it harder to get traction in snow and ice, particularly when trying to get up an incline, such as a hill or ramp.

I can accept the lack of ground clearance but lack of power is not your problem on snow. I would bet that this is traction control related. Modern traction control are for the road and they suck big time in the snow because they don't allow any slippeage. I currently drive an electric RWD car and live at the end of a 2km mountain road with +20% slopes that can get snowed in for a few days before being plowed. On normal traction control, I don't get anywhere but using sports mode made it work like god damn magic.

A modern van versus that older Tarago would also at least be a) heavier b) have worse blind spots c) probably have a higher front bumper.

If one could only buy minivans these times. If you're in Europe, you're out of luck. There is an outdated Sharan/Alhambra with tech from 2015 and tiny TSI engine with whopping 14s 0-100 km/h acceleration. And a bit more modern Ford Galaxy. Or you can buy a minivan from USA, but 99% of them are after huge accidents. And that's basically it. So people buy SUVs.

I drive a van that isn’t labeled as “mini” but is about the same size as a Toyota Sienna. It’s also almost identical in footprint to a Toyota Tacoma, but shorter. 1000kg/2200lb load capacity, 2350kg/5000lb towing, seats 7, gets 30MPG US on the highway.

Mercedes Vito for Europeans, Metris for the US market. My friends and family borrow it ALL THE TIME for things, but say they could never drive it over their F250 that they tow once a year with, or the Tacoma they’ve never taken offroad.

Minivans are far more efficient at storing stuff and people than SUVs. SUVs lose so much interior space by being higher off the ground.

The idea that SUVs have good storage space is a marketing myth.

People like to use "what if I need to buy 4x8 sheet goods" as a justification for needing a truck, but once every three years when they actually need to buy a sheet of plywood or drywall they could take the back seats out of a Chrysler Pacifica and fit that entirely inside the van.

They don't even need to take the seats out, stow and go!

Oh wow, I’d just seen photos of the plywood at floor level and assumed the seats were out. That’s some good Honda Fit tier stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=683KzPW4eRU

Yep, and some people actually need a truck bed or towing capacity, but most don't.

Out of these choices, the minivan is the safest and most efficient. Generally has more cargo space than the SUV, too. In olden days, this need could have also been met by some station wagons.

Don't worry, I can hate the players and the game at the same time!

> Morally culpable, but also defensible since you’re defending yourself from others in large cars. Don’t hate the player. Hate the game.

This might be morally defensible for players making equal trades between protection for themselves and protection for others, but at some point this is clearly no longer the case. For example, most people would agree that killing 1000 people to save your own life is bad. If players aren't even bothering with this calculating the tradeoff between more protection for themselves and less protection for others -- and I think most people who protect themselves with large cars have not done this calculation -- then yes, it's fine to cast aspersions.

According to this post from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety [1] (which I think is reliable?), going from a 2023 Prius (~88 square feet) to a 2023 Toyota Sequoia (~116 square feet) reduces car driver deaths from 47 per million vehicle years to 26. This seems, uh, fairly low down on the list of interventions your median SUV-driver could take to reduce their mortality, and it's made at a cost to other people, since "light trucks" (like SUVs, trucks, and vans) increase pedestrian fatalities by somewhere north of 50% [2, third page].

At some point, you're just being lazy, which you have a right to do, but I don't think it's particularly defensible.

[1] https://www.iihs.org/topics/vehicle-size-and-weight

[2] https://trforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/138.pdf

Actually the safest cars are full size saloons. Trucks and SUVs rollover in accidents so your head changes from going straight ahead at 60mph to tumbling at 60mph breaking your neck.

see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

I do not blame 60 year old laws. At some point before 60 years, voters and their representatives become responsible for not changing the law.

Detroit appreciates not having the competition so the law stays.

See also

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jonesact.asp

The politicians making these decisions are also just playing a game. "Don't hate the player. Hate the game."

This has always been a cop out. When people CHOOSE to play the game because it enriches themselves at the expense of others, they are 100% at fault.

Hate the player. You can hate the game too but if nobody played it there would be no problems.

That's my point. If you take "Hate the player. Hate the game." as a morally valid defense when it comes to driving big cars, it also is a valid defense for politicians regulating the big cars.

My point it is an invalid moral defense in both instances.

The question for me is, what is safer for my family? A huge proportion of the cars I see day to day are full-size SUVs like Tahoes, Yukons, and that QX80 monstrosity from Infiniti. There's a decent chance if I'm involved in an accident it will be with one of those cars.

You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.

If you want to ban vehicles above a certain weight or a certain displacement, fine let's talk about that. But until that happens I'm not going to intentionally make my kids less safe to reduce some wishy-washy definition of my "moral culpability" for accidents and deaths I've played no part in.

These cars are more likely to kill your children by running over them as they cross the street. You are more likely to kill your neighbor's kids by running over them because you don't have visibility 6+ feet in front of you. This isn't some sort of wish-washy definition. These are hard to swallow facts.

I haven't killed anyone by any means, so I'm not morally culpable of anything. But my moral obligation to protecting my family supersedes any moral obligation I have to protecting strangers.

By this logic, because I haven't killed anyone drunk driving, I should be allowed to drive drunk.

No, it's important to point out hard facts here: by driving a car with less visibility, you become more dangerous to your family and your neighborhood. You don't even protect your family, because you've now entered a vehicle significantly more likely to flip over in an accident-- which you are now more likely to have because you bought a vehicle with reduced capacity to see what is in front of you.

Your choice is your choice-- but it's important not to lie to yourself or others about what that choice entails.

> By this logic, because I haven't killed anyone drunk driving, I should be allowed to drive drunk.

Drunk driving is illegal, having a large vehicle isn't. If it's illegal, I won't do it.

And even ignoring that, this isn't what I'm saying. I'm saying that because you haven't killed anyone drunk driving, you're not morally culpable for drunk driving deaths. Which you're not.

I'm noticing you are mixing up "legal" and "moral" a lot in this thread. They are separate concepts. Just because something is legal doesn't mean it is morally right. Morals are something that someone can chose to live by to help them pick between right and wrong. Laws are literally the absolute bare minimum to participate in society without have your rights to property or freedom revoked. Ideally a common societal agreement of morals and ethics should play in laws, but that doesn't always happen.

> I'm saying that because you haven't killed anyone drunk driving, you're not morally culpable for drunk driving deaths

This is a weird statement... which I guess is true in the narrowest possible meaning. It's true in the way that it is written, but not in a way that matters.

If you drive drunk but haven't killed anyone yet you aren't directly culpable for drunk driving deaths.... but it is still an immoral action. Just because it hasn't caused the worst possible results yet doesn't mean it doesn't significantly raise the risk.

If you drive a larger vehicle, you are taking on the increased risk of hitting other children or your own children. Whether or not you've actually hit a child doesn't change that fact and trying to wiggle out of it through that logic is the same as arguing just because an irresponsible driver hasn't killed anyone means they're actually safer than an irresponsible driver who has. The fundamental attribution is their irresponsibility, not whether or not their irresponsibility has resulted in a consequence for them.

similarly, regardless of whether or not you've killed anyone with a larger vehicle, the fact is that larger vehicles pose a greater danger of running over children.

> Drunk driving is illegal, having a large vehicle isn't.

Legality and morality are not the same things.

Big trucks, big SUVs, and minivans do in fact have a significantly lower death rate for people in the vehicle than do smaller vehicles [1] so if his goal is to lower the chances of his family dying in a car accident he is achieving it.

[1] https://www.motortrend.com/news/are-bigger-cars-safer/

>my moral obligation to protecting my family supersedes any moral obligation I have to protecting strangers

Surely it doesn’t supersede any obligation you have to protecting strangers. If you’d greatly increase the likelihood that you end up killing a pedestrian to only slightly increase the safety of your own family, I think that is morally wrong.

This is the dictionary definition of a tragedy of the commons. You must recognize that regardless of your individual decision making, the fact that vehicle sizes have ballooned has made everyone on the road, your family included, much less safe.

You're rewriting the GP's argument and then responding to that instead of what the person actually wrote. Try again.

Maybe you should read my comment they're replying to.

I did. They pointed out a fundamental flaw in that argument which you have declined to address - specifically, the increased risk factors to your own family members from accidents that do not involve collisions with other vehicles.

Where does it stop though? Are you fine putting everyone else in danger so you feel safe? Are you buying a tank next?

I'm sure he would if it were legal.

On a statistical macro sense, yes you have.

This is untrue. You have a moral obligation to protect strangers from your car. And a legal one.

Not at the expense of my family, I don't.

It's not moral when all public good is sacrificed for familial benefit.

You are intentionally endangering others to give yourself the "feeling" of protecting your family. That is selfish and immoral.

Actually, most of the time it's the parents running over their own children, in their own driveway.

Every meaningful action carries some risk to ourselves and others.

In and of itself it is not an excuse to curtail freedoms because nothing would get done. There needs to be an acceptable risk level for things. We need to talk about "unreasonable risks" that are based on evidence and not what might or could happen.

I'm okay with discussing reasonable risks people are taking. I'm just arguing not to bullshit me with what the risks are. I'm okay with motorcyclists on the road. I'm not okay with a motorcyclist trying to say "no, cycling actually makes me safer because I'm more agile and can drive between the lanes, so I'm totally out of the way of cars now!"

Motorcyclist here. A lot of the danger of motorcycles is the rider. The level of danger to a 20 year old man on a sports bike is orders of magnitude higher than that of a 50 year old on touring bike.

Same story with guns: the danger of guns is entirely correlated with demographics. People outside of certain demographics and locales face very little risk from guns.

You're arguing besides my point. My point is that I don't buy bullshit reasons how a riskier behavior is actually safer. A 50 year old motorcyclist trying to tell me "my age actually makes me safer on a motorcycle than if I was in a car" would get a similar wtf.

Motorcyclist here who's in their 50's - you'd better sit down. I have some sobering facts for you.

The fatalities per 100 million miles driven are as follows (NHTSA data):

- 1.1 for car and truck drivers

- 2.3 for all motorcyclists

- 21.8 for motorcyclists over 50

Why is a 50 year old 20 times more likely to die on a motorcycle than a 20 year old? Here are some reasons given by the MSF:

- Decline is physical and cognitive abilities

- Increased risk-taking behavior (20 year olds don't typically do poker runs from bar to bar, for example)

- Riding bigger, faster bikes (as you know, tourers cost a lot of money, money that a 20 year old simply doesn't have)

Now I know neither you nor I are going to park our bikes, but it behooves us both to recognize the dangers in riding at our age and doing what we can to mitigate those risks.

Also, remember this: when those 20 year olds do something stupid on their sport bikes and crash they're pretty much good to go due to the resilience of their young bodies. Us? We're going to the hospital or the morgue. Those are just life's realities.

Keep the rubber down!

I wonder what the break down is on over 50 doing dumb shit/not dumb shit?

I remember how fun riding was after a few beers when I was young, and that's why I don't do that now, but biker gang culture, which is older doesn't care.

I suspect you're a lot like me and wondering how can it be that riding is so dangerous for us. I'm suspecting it's alcohol. They have poker runs all the time where each of the stations is at a bar - and people are drinking up. They end up riding bar to bar to bar to bar, drinking all the way. And they're riding in groups which tends to get things bunched up. I stay away from these events. They're just not my thing.

I don't know a lot of people who've died while riding, but for the couple I do they were riding late at night (wee hours of the morning) and were well over the legal limit for a DUI. One was a buddy of mine who was having a bit of problems in his personal life and went to the bar and got shit faced and left around 2:30 AM. Went riding home on a 4 lane rd here that has a 50 MPH speed limit and winding curves. He failed to negotiate a curve.

So stay sober and enjoy your ride!

Kids need to be taught not to play behind a moving vehicle, the same as they need to be taught not to stick their fingers in an electric socket. "Someone else's kids" who aren't being raised properly isn't enough of a reason to force people to own a particular kind of automobile (At least this was the predominant thinking before we lived in a nanny state).

A plan which makes small children responsible for preventing their own deaths at the hands of adults driving vehicles they personally chose seems at the very least unlikely to produce good results, assuming you are trying to keep children from dying. I suppose if your metric is “nanny state impositions prevented” rather than “children being crushed to death” then it could be considered a success.

Why does an suv not have visibility in front of it?

This should help you understand the problem of higher vehicles limiting visibility of what's in front of them: https://imgur.com/a/aYbCbyg

Modern vehicles beep like crazy with sensors when something is in front of the car like that though. It is impossible not to know.

To add to this, an M1 Abrams tank and a Peterbilt 857 semi have better visibility than some SUVs and pick-up trucks:

* https://ifunny.co/picture/a-semi-truck-has-better-visibility...

Because we can safely assume that under normal atmospheric conditions and within the distances we are talking about, light travels in straight lines and the SUV is too high thus blocking some of it from reaching the drivers eyes. I can't pull the sources now, but there was a study discussed here on HN a couple months ago showing an analysis of how this plays out.

Becauase they are high and tend to have long flat front hoods, creating an extended blind spot for short objects (like children) in front.

Newer models have forward collision sensors that partially mitigate that. (And backup cameras that do an even better job of mitigating the rear low-height blind spot, as long as people use them instead of direct vision when backing up.)

Consider the larger vehicle shown in the picture at the top of the linked article; now imagine a child before the adolescent growth spurt standing in front of it — how far away does the child have to be, for any part of them to be visible to a driver sitting in the driver's seat?

It takes would take some strong avoidance of reality and logic to clamp down on people's individual safety (by mandating smaller vehicles) to 'help save' the ~ < 50 children that get run over (BY ALL VEHICLES, incidentally) every year.

The stats I found put it at around 200 per year in the US for children under 13, probably thousands globally. That was from 2021, and since pedestrian deaths in general have gone up a lot since then, I wouldn't be surprised if the number is greater now. Plus some trucks and SUVs have hoods that are so tall now that even 13+ children are occluded.

I'm not saying any of this data is wrong but I'm not sure there's any correlation between pedestrian deaths generally and deaths of children in this way. Most of the children hurt/killed in this manner are probably in driveways, parking lots, subdivisions etc. while I would expect most pedestrian deaths to be in more business district type areas, crossing the street, that sort of thing. I would also expect most child deaths to be a result of not seeing them, and most pedestrian deaths to be a result of speed - hence much fewer [adult] pedestrian deaths in driveways.

So I wouldn't expect a rise in pedestrian deaths (particularly over a very short 2 year period which could just be an aberration in the data) to necessarily mean there was a similar rise in child deaths if they happen in fundamentally different circumstances for different reasons.

Not sure where your number is coming from. A quick search[0] led me to 181 pedestrian and 40 cyclist child fatalities in 2019.

[0] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

I suppose this article is lampooning you, then: https://www.theonion.com/conscientious-suv-shopper-just-want...

It's The Onion, so you don't need to read the article to get the point. Its title is "Conscientious SUV Shopper Just Wants Something That Will Kill Family In Other Car In Case Of Accident."

If the vehicle weights are equal, both families will probably survive. But if they're unequal, the smaller vehicle will suffer more damage.

A sucky arms race.

You'll have to look at individual crash safety ratings; but, if memory serves me, large SUVs have worse ratings than smaller cars, in general. That could have changed or I could be wrong, though.

Also, large SUVs are waaay more likely to roll in the event of a "dodge to not die" scenario.

> You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.

I don't mean to be snarky, but most moral dilemmas boil down to some trade off between what is best for yourself and whats best for society. In an evolutionary sense, our monkey brains see our children as an extension of our self. It seems to fit well.

You might decide that trade off is well worth it, which is a fair conclusion, but you can't deny that moral calculus is there to some degree.

Don't SUV have less safety features than normal cars? They are classified as light trucks to avoid safety regulations. Does the increased mass make up less safe vehicle?

Intentionally putting others in danger is immoral to many. But morality is subjective. Putting the whole community at net negative risk so you can squeak out personal advantage is perfectly acceptable behavior to some.

A similar argument can be made about gun ownership: in an armed society, is it rational not to own a firearm?

Considering how gun ownership makes you more likely to be killed by a firearm, I'd say yes, it's very rational to not own one.

The largest threat to gun owners is their own gun.

Considering how car ownership makes you more likely to be killed by a car, I'd say yes, it's very rational to not own one.

Why isn't Japan famous for rudeness then? Don't introduce new arguments in your response.

Unsure how this whataboutism has anything to do w/ what I said.

No you're not. Japan is famously not a 'well armed society', but does have a reputation for politeness. This is directly at variance with your evidence-free claim.

I did not claim a polite society can't exist without weapons.

I could equally ask why any of many heavily armed societies are not oases of peace and tranquility. The USA should be the most polite nation on earth, by your metric. It obviously isn't, though.

The Nanjing Massacre and Bataan Death March are pretty famous examples of rudeness. Couldn't it be argued that the USSR declaring war on them at the same time as the US dropped two atomic bombs on them are examples of arms curtailing rudeness?

Also TIL about the massacres of Korean civilians after the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1923_Great_Kantō_earthquake#En...

> A well armed society is a polite society.

That slogan has always been bullshit. Plenty of road rage and similar impulsive shootings happen in the most heavily armed states. A well armed society has more guns is really the only takeaway.

Texas has considerably more gun violence than, for example, Chicago. You may want to reconsider.

By what metric? It looks like the per capita murder rate in Chicago is almost 5x higher

I would suspect an area of 250,000 sq miles and 30,000,000 people would have considerably more gun violence than one with 230 sq miles and 3,000,000 people. Now do per capita.

sadly yeah

> You can't seriously tell someone they have a moral obligation to buy a smaller vehicle when doing so puts their family and themselves at increased harm.

You certainly can what the hell. Nowhere is it guaranteed that moral necessities align with comfort or safety.

"Make your family less safe to make strangers more safe" is certainly a hard to sell to approximately 99% of the world.

Would you rather raise your family in:

(0) a place where nobody else can have an SUV whose extra size directly increases the danger to your kids, but you also can't own one to keep your kids slightly safer while you drive them; or

(1) a place where you can have an SUV that keeps your family slightly safer while they're in it, but everyone else can also own one and they make your family less safe whenever they're not in an SUV themselves?

Social rules are, at least at their best, a way to do better than a Nash equilibrium of mutual defection.

Since (0) is impossible, the answer is the one already proposed.

Why do you think (0) is impossible? Do laws not exist where you are? Are you not able to change them?

To make (0) happen you have to force 10s or 100s of millions of people to give up their current vehicle and buy a new one. To some people that sounds feasible, but they're a good bit more authoritarian than the average politician in the US.

It doesn't need to be a Fox news black and white argument about personal freedoms. Impose safety regulations that accounts for the people outside the vehicle, and the overall safety of the streets. You don't need to wipe out current SUVs and trucks overnight.

If they took away gas guzzling V8 engines, they can take away unwieldy oversized light pickups and SUVs.

Most people don’t own SUVs, even in the USA; and even if they did, laws can be local, so it would be your city or whatever rather than everyone everywhere.

But in this case if everyone thinks that way and buys an SUV the world in general is less safe for your family and you're in fact to safer from having a bigger car, if you ever were which seems to be debatable.

False premise

Not to 99% of the world, but to 99% of the people in an egocentric society.

"Make your passengers more safe, by making your community less safe" is also a not an easy sell, but Americans are paying the big bucks to do it.

At some point your family is going to be on the receiving end. We don't have to be so shortsighted.

I completely disagree. Your moral obligation to your own family trumps that of your obligation to society at large. Even if you could argue that it should not be so, it is in practice.

The harm/benefit to society would have to be much larger for even the most altruistic people to give it more weight than the harm/benefit to their own family.

That’s not the case here.

Why is protecting strangers a moral necessity but protecting your own family is not?

I'm not even making that claim here, come on.

If being in traffic is so dangerous to your family then your protective response should be to reduce their exposure to it as much as possible.

People in this thread are jumping straight to their right to increase the overall danger of driving, and put more of that danger outside their personal sphere, before taking any other actions to reduce or mitigate it.

They certainly have that right under the current arrangement. And I'm not saying all evaluations or decisions along these lines are immoral, I can approach this with understanding of real conditions and nuance. But along with that right comes being considered morally culpable or even cowardly for exercising it.

Let's take as a given that heavier cars are more dangerous to be around.

An individual who needs to commute by car has two options:

1) put themselves and their family in greater danger by driving a lighter car.

2) protect themselves and their family but increase total danger to society by driving a heavier car.

I am unconvinced that there is an obvious morally correct answer. What are one's moral obligations to themselves, their families, and their society? How are these prioritized?

You can't just say "don't drive lul". It's literally not an option. We should have better public transportation, but we don't.

For example, it's the only way that some means of disease prevention work.

What means of disease prevention require not protecting your own family?

You have a moral obligation to your own family though. I think that is the point that OP is making.

Do you have any actual safety numbers? Or are you just going on your gut instinct of "bigger must be better just because"? There was a time when those big SUV vehicles were more likely to kill your family than a mini-van or sedan because the high center of gravity + no rollbar (and other such protection) made it both more likely to roll and more devastating when it did so.

The IIHS has stats on this and it does seem that larger vehicles have lower average death rates[1].

In a world of only smaller sized cars, having a larger car would likely be less safe for the reasons you listed. However, with large cars being so popular, it would make sense that being in a smaller car is less safe as you are more likely to be in a collision with a vehicle that has more mass than yours—not to mention you have less room for crumple zones and the larger vehicle would hit you at a higher point on your vehicles, which is known to be more lethal.

[1]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics

Humans can rationalize anything (see untold piles of atrocity), thank you for linking actual data.

We could make it more expensive to think that way for sure.

> The question for me is, what is safer for my family?

picking up and moving to a location on earth which doesn't require you to own a car to live is the safest bet

it's possible; i'm one (of many many millions around me)

You are describing a prisoner's dilemma where one person's decision to buy a bigger, more dangerous vehicle pushes you to do the same.

This can all be priced in. If bigger vehicles are more dangerous, we could make auto insurance premiums a function of weight (and other criteria).

Also related / recently discussed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37028595 (slate.com) 102 points, 18 hours ago, 139 comments

"If You Want a Car This Heavy, You Should Pay Through the Nose" https://slate.com/business/2023/01/electric-cars-hummer-ev-t...

Driving a car makes you more likely to kill or injure somebody than walking or staying home. Is it immoral for anybody to drive a car at all?

We all take on culpability for certain harms to others. It’s just a question of what as a society we are willing to accept.

I don’t think this is an issue of society “overlooking” the morality of this specifically. It’s just that people have a lot of problems to worry about, and the crash safety of large vehicles isn’t high on the list.

Yes, driving a car makes you morally culpable for the harms it does.

If you ranked the harms you are likely to cause, driving a car would be very near the top of the list.

You are exhibiting an aspect of the myopia the article is highlighting.

It's more complicated than that.

Suppose you don't drive a car and that makes you unproductive. Unproductive enough, in fact, that you can no longer contribute your fair share in taxes or donations to the public treasury. Or worse still, you may require society's assistance.

Obviously, that makes you morally culpable for the failing to support our compassionate government's efforts to support the poor and unfortunate. You bear contribution to every death that's been caused by the underfunded social services and the lack of social workers.

I guess what bothers me about this wording of how people are “overlooking moral culpability”, even if it’s accurate, is that it sounds very accusatory. Like “How could you buy an SUV? Don’t you care about the kids you’re bound to run over?”

This particularly stings when a person thinks they are doing something normal like buying a car large enough to meet their family’s needs.

Determining the moral culpability of actions and complaining about it is one thing. And it’s by far the easy part. The harder and more important part is to craft a message that doesn’t sound like an attack on a person’s morality.

Not immoral, just more culpable. Is it immoral not to kill oneself as being alive makes one more likely to kill someone?

Suppose someone constructs a moral code trough the ethical aspects of opinion of editorials in major newspapers and applies it consistently to all aspects of life. Or take take such a morality made from internet blogs and comments.

Would you be surprised, if continuing to live is then deemed immoral?

It's more of a creeping normality [0] problem. Some cars get larger and people get accustomed to it, so it's hard to notice. Someone needs to point it out and from the reaction to this post, it seems that people are interested once it's pointed out to them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creeping_normality

I don't have a log in to read the full paper, but from your description and the preview, I can't help but think that this is just a weird extension of the trolley problem.

You're taking an action that means you're more likely to harm someone else, but that same action also means the people in your car are less likely to be harmed.

> just a weird extension of the trolley problem

Its also subconscious bias of legislators on display, because they typically knock around in said big vehicles. Just look at presidential vehicles or ministerial vehicles, or royal vehicles.

I'd love to see a big wig, knocking around in a Peugeot 106, or mini with a cavalcade. Even better if they can drive it themselves!

Do you think car manufacturers would spend more time making smaller lightweight bullet proof crash proof cars, like you see in Formula 1? Something less likely to kill but bounce its occupants around when it crashes and do less harm, like zorbing.

Nothing against cars per se, I love them, but it would be nice to see more Toyota Yaris GRX's or Polo GTI's which are pocket rockets but with better crash protection. Problem is people now haul around so much guff in their vehicles, they need these bigger vehicles.

Blame it on the complicated consumer based form of capitalism we live in today.

Consumption, consumption, consumption.

When the pope was in the US, he was driven around in a Fiat 500 (!). Granted, it was the four-door version :-)

I didnt know that, was his "pope mobile" vehicle not allowed in the US then?

The photos of the car being dwarfed by the US security vehicles is funny, but a classic example of virtue signalling.

I'd think injuring/killing someone because you hit them would make you morally culpable. The guy driving a semi and never getting in an accident should be able to sleep fine at night.

I doubt this will hold up in court tho