Bruh, if you're gonna make statements like this, your argument needs to be stellar to back it up. And then you go:
> especially in the vast rural population
The US rural population is tiny, it's less than 20%, it's the same kind of argument as “people have families” when barely any household is more than 4 people.
The reason why almost 70% of people are driving an SUV or a truck has nothing to to with families (90% of which fit in a four-sitter) or the needs of rural life (that's also why pickup truck's bed has shrank so much over the past 5 decades). In fact, the growth in usage of these cars happened coincidentally to the decline of rural population and large families.
Your focus on safety as the root cause is also pretty dumb, since any SUV from the 90s would fail European current safety tests anyway, despite being enormous already.
> Your claim about US commits is incorrect and less than half of the actual value in both distance and speed.
Please provide your sources, because it doesn't match with what I could find online. (I realize that I made a calculation mistake: it's 20 miles and an hour in average so 20mph).
> Avg. speed is also not an appropriate metric.
Yes it is indeed. It's not perfect, but it's still appropriate, because it means that the commute time is driven by traffic congestion, and even your car going up to max speed for a small part of your trip isn't going to save you much time.
Well, for starters, did you actually look into the studies you cited or did you just take the first parts that confirmed your bias? For instance, the study that claimed European cars are safer in front/side crash tests admitted that the distribution of safety differences contains zero. It's important to understand the limitations of null-hypothesis testing. This means you can't discount that there is no actual difference between safety. This is why data literacy is important rather than just reading the abstract or conclusion and running with it.
>The US rural population is tiny, it's less than 20%
Again, this belies ignorance. There is a massive disparity between what the census defines as rural vs. what is colloquially understood as rural. The census considers any population over 2500 people as an "urban cluster". This seems like another area where you quickly ran with a Google answer instead of taking the time to understand the nuance.
>Your focus on safety as the root cause is also pretty dumb
Please point to where I said it's the "root cause." I've only been advocating a more nuanced perspective. Also, see the HN guidelines for appropriate comments.
>Please provide your sources
The US census lists the average round-trip commute as 55.2 miles.
>Yes it is indeed.
No, it's misguided an lacking nuance at best. Have you ever driven in southern California during rush hour? Your average speed is easily 30mph or less because you are essentially in a parking lot for huge periods. But that doesn't negate the need for a car to be able to reach highway speeds. Remember, the context was about safety of cars that are capped at 50km/hr, but now you're moving the goalposts to maintain your position and admitting the need for faster speeds.
It's pretty clear you have your mind made up and prefer to argue rather than have a substantive and nuanced conversation.
Coming from the author of “you’re speaking from a place of ignorance” (+ other variations), I can only hope you're trolling at this point.
> This means you can't discount that there is no actual difference between safety. This is why data literacy is important rather than just reading the abstract or conclusion and running with it.
Given that the argument being refuted was “US cars are safer” the “no actual difference” case still counts as a refutation. How good is data literacy if you lack logical reasoning abilities…
> The census considers any population over 2500 people as an "urban cluster"
In an area were more than 2500 people live you'll most likely have actual roads and bridges, and don't need a truck to cross rivers or to drive on unpaved roads, so the definition is pretty much on point when we're talking about cars! And then 71% of the US population live in urban areas of more than 50k inhabitants so the smallest urban areas are in fact a small fraction of the total urban population (Edit: In any case, urban population living in areas with less than 10k is just 7M[1] so it's not these 2% of the US pop who make the car market either…). But yeah, I'm the one suffering from confirmation bias…
> Please point to where I said it's the "root cause."
Sure, here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37674080 you're welcome.
> But that doesn't negate the need for a car to be able to reach highway speeds.
Sure, one car able to go to highway speed for vacations and all. But must households don't need two of such cars!
> Remember, the context was about safety of cars that are capped at 50km/hr, but now you're moving the goalposts and acknowledging the need for faster speeds just to maintain your position.
Nope, the context is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37658823 and I'm talking about both the Ami and the Sandero.
> It's pretty clear you have your mind made up and prefer to argue rather than have a substantive and nuanced conversation.
Cause you don't lack nuance at all ;).
[1]: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/12/29/2022-28...
There is no root cause claim there so you’re not saying much, other than strawmanning. If you look at a modern economy car, it weighs more than economy cars of the past or non-approved models for the US, despite using lighter weight materials for comparable components. So where does the extra weight come from? Mandatory safety features and options. That’s all the “disproportionate” statement is saying. It also wasn’t a comment to you, so a bit cringey that you try to search for any weak handhold to make your point.
You also picked a different comment to illustrate the context rather than your actual post, so I’m not sure your point. But it certainly lends credence to the idea of you moving the goalposts just to avoid being wrong.
I’ll give you more perspective since you missed the point. If the data contains zero it means it ranges from saying the US cars are safer to saying they are less safe. Zero is contained because it’s within this range. In other words, you can’t make strong claims at all. Again, data literacy is important.
> If you look at a modern economy car, it weighs more than economy cars of the past or non-approved models for the US, despite using lighter weight materials for comparable components. So where does the extra weight come from?
Ah yes, because your old car also had AC, electric window, and all the comfort a modern car has (including the car's form factor, giving more room for arms and legs, and less effort to get out of the car), and then the only difference must be safety…
> You also picked a different comment to illustrate the context rather than your actual post
Yes I took an adjacent comment in the same thread that you posted 5 minutes before your response to mine. So that must count as a completely different context, right? No, and you know it as well.
> If the data contains zero it means it ranges from saying the US cars are safer to saying they are less safe. Zero is contained because it’s within this range. In other words, you can’t make strong claims at all.
Of course you can make strong claims, and you're even making a strong claim yourself right now! The claim I make (which is ironically the same as the one you're making right now) is that the study shows that you can't make a strong claim about the US safety being higher than the one in the EU. Which was your argument!
Even if the cars all have airbags, it doesn’t mean they can pass US crash tests. That means they can’t nearly even be offered in the US. For example, EU frontal crash tests use a deformable barrier while the US does not. Relating to the study received for your safety assessment, it says the distribution of differences overlaps with zero. That’s a red flag that you can’t make a claim that they are any didn’t different.
Your claim about US commits is incorrect and less than half of the actual value in both distance and speed. Avg. speed is also not an appropriate metric.
I could go on, but there’s a lot to unpack. The latter point is that I’m not convinced you actually understand the differences between US or EU car manufacturing or parts of US culture that drive some of those decisions. There’s certainly an overrepresentation of SUV and trucks as commuter vehicles but there’s also a huge portion of the population, especially in the vast rural population, who have legitimate and pragmatic reasons to these vehicles. (And that’s coming from someone who drives a small hatchback)