It is a classic iterated prisoner's dilemma.
Once enough people (few percent points) start playing the tankification game the only reasonable strategy is to start playing too not to be left behind. But the only winning strategy is not to play (ie to make it illegal for others to play).
SUVs make collisions more common and more deadly. Anyone who doesn't know these facts is so ignorant about road safety they have no business driving. Anyone who knows these facts and buys a giant "car" anyway is so selfish and reckless they have no business driving.
An SUV hitting a pedestrian leads to bigger harm as the impact is higher up on the body. An SUV hitting a car leads to more injuries for the people in the car, as the weight of the SUV easily crushes the car windows and the frame around them.
I wonder if the weight is like the rocket fuel problem for larger vehicles. Famously the battery pack for the electric hummer weighs more than an entire Civic.
That really doesn't take into consideration the negative sum nature of car safety that your sibling comment goes into. The issue is that safety requirements for vehicles are largely about occupants. They don't include sightlines, maximum heights, maximum weights, etc. (things that would make other people safer) thus the incentive is to build tanks.
Parents certainly don't need a huge SUV to fit their kids in but, because there are other SUVs on the road, they do want it for safety. Put the right incentives into your safety regulation and cars will shrink.
That said, yes, high hoods and higher, brighter lights make this a distinction without a difference.
Or, is it people who have become so accustomed to automatic-everything that they don't really know or think about the light controls? This could also explain the reverse problem of people driving around a night with only daytime running lights or parking lights.
Or, is it really just selfish jerks like those who want massive tanks to crush their opponents? They would like to give others sunburn, if possible. This could also explain those turning on fog lights in all conditions or those who attach off-road auxiliary lights to their trucks but use them on the streets.
The VW Passat for example (and most derivatives of it) is straight up dangerous because the camera system doesn't work properly. The only way to make it detect my car is to blast it with my high beams (which are 50W incandescent bulbs, so the other person isn't totally blind).
Having to do that is absolutely ridiculous but unfortunately there won't be a recall if the customers aren't the ones who have to live with the problem.
you look only on vehicle size, but it's only one part. there are technical solution to prevent those problems. my car (circa 2019) has cameras/radars and they enable car functionality of pedestrian detection, small pet detection, kangaroo detection (only in australia?), animal detection. New models have more/better radars just for this i think.
E.g. SUVs are heavier, so they take longer to stop - if a child runs on the road in front of you, it will have less chances to survive if you're not driving an SUV.
if child runs on the road and you do not drive carefully in order to take it into consideration, it will end badly. there is probably better chances that child will survive when i drive my suv for two reasons
- because my seat is higher it easier for me to see from "above" somebody been between cars ahead and running out, compared to somebody who sits in reno clio on the ground and seeing nothing till last moment
- there is a good chance that radars in "last moment scenario" will react faster than human.
otherwise lets ban vans, buses, tracks, etc
There is a good reason we have vans and buses, and no good reason for the huge amount of SUVs. Other than stupid people using them as a stupid status symbol.
you should look into mechanics, breaks, tires, etc. you know, those things that help us to overcome laws of physics as related to inertial movement
>There is a good reason we have vans and buses, and no good reason for the huge amount of SUVs. Other than stupid people
so you call me stupid now ?
>using them as a stupid status symbol.
i personally use it for transportation
Yeap, stupid and selfish.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
You can fit 9 kids in a row in front of an SUV without seeing them:
https://media.nbcwashington.com/2022/07/SUV-Blind-Zone-Demon...
But the real question, did you ever run into situation when 9 kids sitting on road suddenly appeared in front of driving car?
Well that's what happens when you leave safety to capitalism: products compete over safety. Profits dominate collective well-being.
It's similar to what happens with health care, where the American Medical Association opposes public health because of obvious incentives.
Everyone's safety is the Number 1 rule in avionics. How or why is the motor vehicle industry exempted from responsible design?
The best-selling vehicles in the US are trucks: pick-up trucks as urban transport! The motor-vehicle industry is also building trucks as passenger vehicles with more seats. The marketing term is "SUV".
The further absurdity of making large-battery electric truck-passenger vehicles is squandering the opportunity to make smaller, efficient EVs and reduce pollution. Over 1.3 billion litres of petrol are burned in motor vehicles in the US every day.[1]
Of course, any category of product that depends on the petroleum industry is unlikely to be part of an environmental solution, even if we were just hoping to have less pollution in our communities. The annual loss of life due to motor-vehicle accidents is a frightening figure (30K/year in the US, 20K/year in the EU). Double that number for estimated deaths related to pollution from burning petrol.
But don't blame the industry, it's your own fault and personal choice to breathe the atmosphere. /s
The sustainable community response is not to demand that "car park providers [...] think of new ways to accommodate larger cars."
Governments seem afraid to pass crucial legislation and Industrial accounting nationalises this heavy annual loss by merging it in the "personal freedom and incompetence" column.
[1] _ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/use-of-gasoline...
This is not true. Euro NCAP ratings depend on how the car damages pedestrians:
https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
and crash avoidance technology:
https://www.euroncap.com/en/vehicle-safety/the-ratings-expla...
The effect this has on the cars on the market is huge. Jaguar and Mercedes had to remove their iconic badges, pop-up headlights disappeared, the fronts of cars are much higher and rounded to reduce head injuries in a crash, and every modern car has a multitude of crash avoidance technology that defaults to being turned on when the car is started.
A very direct safety cost of large vehicles. Here is the story of the child that had the American law named after them, told by his father (warning: this is truly heartbreaking stuff):
https://www.kidsandcars.org/child-stories/cameron-gulbransen...
My wife has a 2015 Mazda CX-5. Poor visibility out the back but it has a fair backup camera.
In May, 2018 every car was required to have a backup camera. [0] It feels like car manufacturers don't even consider visibility out the back anymore since they can rely on the camera.
For a while I drove a Jaguar, which had the leaping Jaguar hood ornament. Those were prohibited in Europe and manufacturers moved away from them. [1]
Years ago, I read that hoods were required to be higher (which blocks vision in front of the vehicle) to form a crumple zone. The idea was that a pedestrian would be tossed up in the air, land on the hood, and it would give rather than having the solid engine underneath. [2]
So there are definitely some governmental reasons why manufacturers do what they do. Thicker pillars protect passengers but reduce visibility. Etc. And most customers want bigger cars.
[0] https://www.autoinsurance.org/are-backup-cameras-required-on...
[1] https://magazine.northeast.aaa.com/daily/life/cars-trucks/au....
[2] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/12/07/while-other-countries...
As long as the back view lets me see cars while driving and the side mirrors let me see the lane beside me, that's sufficient. I don't care about what I can see when twisted around looking back.
Drive into any UK city today and you'll be sharing the [often quite small] roads with 44 tonne lorries, 18 tonne buses, and LGVs and vans you'd need a ladder to see over. People feel safer in bigger cars in cities because the roads are so unsafe.
To break this spell we have to have hard size limits. No HGVs in cities, permits and height limits for commercial vans in urban residential areas (no vans and trucks as primary vehicles), and nothing bigger than a (wheelchair accessible) Citroën Berlingo on residential streets otherwise.
This won't reduce much traffic but it should make it a lot smaller.
The car does not have to defend itself from projectiles but from decelaration. The human body can whitstand certain forces until things start to break. That's why the cars are bigger. If you look at euroncap.com you will see that cars with small distance between the front of the car and driver's seat score worse than the cars where this distance is bigger. Same thing for side or pole crash.
I think there is a point where we can say that “safety” has gone too far. Maybe we’re there now; maybe not, but I wish that this was a higher priority discussion because it has many downstream effects.