Low emission zone are becoming more ubiquitous, which combats the issue to some regards, but I question why anyone but a farmer needs to own anything that large anywhere. This isn't the US, where pavements/sidewalks are a pipedream for anyone outside of New York. Nobody should be solo operating tanks just 5m away from someone walking their dog or on their way to school.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wimbledon-ca...
A brand which had it's origins in the military and farming, which has now been repurposed to drop kids off at a school.
It's also the most frequent car I see which is sped around and overtakes with zero concern for other road users. The people driving them seem to not understand the size of their car and either pass over-cautiously or tunnel through everybody else whenever the road is partially obstructed (parked cars in towns and villages).
The modern Range Rovers no longer even work for their original purpose. They're not sturdy enough to last on a farm, just fashion symbols.
When I question if humanity will tame itself and step down from destroying our world in the pursuit of comfort and consumerism at all costs, the first thing I think of is a white Range Rover Discovery.
Literally just more weight and waste, zero function other than satisfying the buyers reptilian brain.
This is without getting into the actual instances of hatchbacks and SUVs on the market. There is more choice and variety in SUVs.
1. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/toyota/prius-4-door-hat...
2. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/vehicle/toyota/rav4-4-door-suv/...
It's simple geometry - headlights at the same angle will intersect with the ground farther when they are higher off the ground.
I have a 4x2 F-150 as my daily driver that is also my tow rig and work truck. I drive like a grandpa because I dont want people/pedestrians to be threatened by my vehicle. Nor do I want to hit anyone or anything.
You would not believe how popular it is to make the truck even bigger. People are obsessively doing 3" lift kits with aggressive stance rims and 40" tires. It costs yet another fortune to do this and causes otherwise fuel efficient trucks to suck gas like a 1977 Dodge 3/4 ton.
I'm in a truck and I have to dodge these fucks.
Edit: Part of this is due to the tax code. People can form an LLC and write off the truck and any "expenses" (cough... lift kits and superchargers) and still use the thing as their daily driver.
Something like an F-150 in Dutch cities is (in my view) an unacceptable risk for any child on a fietspad or a pedestrian. The visibility is shit, and the chances of survival on impact are close to nothing. A lorry is literally safer than that non-sense.
A completely factual statement like “my daily observations support the theory that sales of large pick-up trucks in The Netherlands have grown, while I can not observe a matching growth in business development that could explain the increased need for such vehicles” would be read by exactly no one.
A joke based in truth catches people’s attention and draws them to read essentially the same thing I said above.
A rhetorical device, sure. But we are on a discussion forum here, not in an economics paper.
Have you measured the penis size of every large vehicle owner, published your findings, and had them peer reviewed?
I know a family where every man is built like a brick shithouse and ain’t compensating for shit and every man has owned at least one truck. Big vehicles fit big people and carry big things that big people lift into them.
The difference is that such men are just entitled to use such things without being mocked. Whereas a man with a small dick using such things, or a man with any sort of socially contemptible trait using such things, is mockable. Don’t they know their place?
I’m pretty sure you do, because the poster is pretty specific. You make statements around micropenises and the required compensation for them that are incredibly toxic. The whole meme is dead, yet you persist in continuing with it. The poster is not questioning your assessment of the suitability of owning these vehicles, as you are no doubt aware, they are questioning your use of toxic language to make your point.
There are better and more eloquent ways of making your point. There is no need to shame a bunch of people that are born a certain way. Do you also make blanket statements about people of colour? LGBTQ+ folk?
Be a better human.
Saying that men with large cars are bad because they destroy our climate and risk our children's life is a wholesome and agreeable notion. It shames people for their actions regardless of what bodies they have.
I need to tow shit and haul building supplies. The base model tows more, gets better milage, and handles better...and costs a hell of a lot less.
It's possible to have small electrics but those often have short ranges and most of the big ugly things you see on the roads in DK is kinda hybrids or follows the trend set by the hybrids.
The real way to deal with the SUV nonsense and not hurt the rural areas where you might need range is to just charge double for parking for large cars and cap the speed of large almost trucks to the same as lorries.
Electric is a non-factor here; in fact, one of the fundamental things that Tesla gets right, which other manufacturers of electric vehicles studiously ignore, is aerodynamics (not all, clearly). The very worst size and shape for an electric vehicle is "huge and brick-like" as it is for all vehicles - it's much more apparent with EVs, though, where the range is so easily comparable.
(N.B. I got it before Musk went so spectacularly off the deep end, it was a motoring choice not a political/fandom one).
I have an i4 now, and I really feel the extra 2 inches in width it has over my previous Acura ILX (basically a fancy Honda civic). None of the sub compact EVs have very good range yet.
Some people lead active lifestyles that entails transporting large amounts of things, including but not limited to kids, their kids friends, dog, toys, equipment
we also lived with computers of the 90ies, 00s, did mostly same things, Wanna go back? You want them to limit themselves to the equivelant in car tech
Many people use Range Rovers to simply drop their kids off at school, to drive to work, or to transport groceries.
If you're really for people leading active lifestyles, maybe those such people should get their kid to walk to school.
Many people do purely use these cars for no purpose besides them being a status symbol, or to be more secure on the road (which could be suggestive of a non-confident or bad driver).
The roads are getting more dangerous and the climate is taking a bigger hit as a result of these cars being on the road. I'm sure once in a while they're useful for transporting things, but that point fails to come across when the bulk of the time that isn't the case, and it's just one person in an otherwise empty SUV driving to work.
In the same way me configuring which interfaces to bind to also could be suggestive of a non confident or bad firewall configuration ability.
And sure, most of the time the car gets used for other purposes, because people have to WORK atleast 5 days a week, and government policies (amongst cost of actual car ofc) makes it unfavorable to have a big car for when you need that, and a small car for daily commute.
Most of the time you dont need a big computer, so I now demand, and Demand the government legislates it, that ANY computing purpose you do that could be served with a sub 2W arm device, be done so. Leave those filthy amds and intels to those who run 24/7 workloads. The climate commands you!
On the other hand, SUV drivers directly make my life less safe every single day.
This shouldn’t even be thought of primarily as a climate issue - pedestrian and cyclist fatalities are up simply because of the size of cars on the road today.
It’s simply not worth it, and cities should tax SUV drivers accordingly.
If the SUV rabies won't abate, we need stronger measures.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-...
"toxic, nightmarish lake created by our thirst for smartphones, consumer gadgets and green tech"
Hmm interresting, I dont see "created by thirst of land rovers". Funny how the car manufacture do not create dystopian nightmarish lakes, right? When did this begin to happen? What is it? was it perhaps when everyone wanted the fancy new ipads and smartphones? whats that I hear, a smartwatch? perhaps some IOT crap?
Its so easy to condemn what you do not like yourself, but just remember, when you are pointing one finger out, 3 are pointing back.
*That* is the negative externality that isn’t really discussed (or dealt with by government bodies).
We can talk about the climate some other time. But yes, you’re correct - everyone living in the modern world has comforts with negative environmental impact. There is no middle ground, either I go feral or I start killing Polar Bears.
Every single person that I know that have bought a gigantic car (Like a ford raptor) uses it for commuting to their work that is less than 7 miles away and GROCERY SHOPPING...
While yes, there are definitely people that need to transport large amount of things, they can most of the time do the same thing by buying a wagon or a subcompact car. See Jeep Renegade.
This is a very harsh take for something that is legal and widespread everywhere across the world (at least Western world).
You have to try really hard to pretend you don't understand why this is happening. It's a race to the top of the safety spectrum, and for good reason. Traffic accidents are among the single biggest sources of preventable deaths and grave injuries, and getting a bigger car is one of the single most important aspects you can control in this equation. It's actually super simple.
If this is truly a problem, and I guess it is, then there should be some form of legislative intervention against it. The people buying them are not the problem, the environment which encourages this is.
Occupants of the largest vehicles on the road experience less than 1/10 of the fatalities than those in the smallest. We desperately need new regulations/legislation to address the vehicle size arms race.
https://www.iihs.org/api/datastoredocument/status-report/pdf...
No, he is absolutely right. 99% of all people do not need a bigger car, they need better driving skills. But hey, its capitalism so of course we solve our issues with money
Some people don't even get to make a choice, they just suffer the consequences (e.g. children and others that can't drive for whatever reason). As vehicles have been getting bigger, pedestrian deaths have been going up. I don't think it's mere coincidence.
As long as there is no regulation in a particular area, obviously each actor will look out for their own interest. I wouldn't even call it selfish, it's just the natural order of things and an example of the tragedy of the commons. Nothing more, nothing less.
The fact that people here act as if learning how to drive better and getting an SUV is an either/or choice is ridiculous.
The reality is that large SUVs do make everyone on the road less safe, and that should be impressed upon people buying these things. Buying an SUV might make you the driver safer, but your kids, neighbours, relatives etc. less safe.
People are more communally conscious than you give them credit…
But, obviously, you're wrong. I don't own a car and haven't for many years. I never intend to own a car ever again. But just because I don't want to own a car, that doesn't mean that anyone who does is an idiot.
Hope that settles it.
Soon though, a few car makers will release electric station wagons (e.g. Peugeot e-308). Many danes already drives station wagons, so I hope people will start buying those kind of cars instead of SUV's.
[1] and now the ridiculous XC40, for which they discontinued the "actually a car" V40, three years after also discontinuing the XC/V70 entirely.
Do the people who design and market these things not have families of their own, with kids in the back in rear facing seats whose 9 month old eyes get blasted with straight up stadium-level lighting by some dead eyed balding suburbathug in his lifted FU-150?
I feel it might be time to legislate this, there are perfectly legitimate reasons to drive a very large car, like, you live 100 miles from the nearest town and there are no roads, only swamp, marsh and desert between you and the grocery, or you haul around your pet cow all day.. Good, have your car, you need it.
In every other case. You don't and you're an idiot helping to accelerate the problem as this now becomes a weapons race on the road, nobody with a normal-sized car will want to drive it surrounded by idiot-cars, as they're simply too dangerous to be around in anything besides an idiot car.