Re:Traffic engineers build roads inviting crashes on outdate...
by ip26 on Sunday June 23, 2024 @12:29PM
(#40768612)
I think this is the uncomfortable truth. I love tiny sports cars, but even I have steadily shifted my attention to larger & larger vehicles. (A family of tall bicyclists has an objectively easier time in an Outback than a Samurai)
The only real downsides to larger vehicles are cost and exterior size, but with subsidy, wide lanes, and big parking spots those pains are removed. Small cars mostly are mostly popular where lanes are narrow, parking spots are tiny, costs are high, and so forth.
Happily, this is mostly orthogonal to safe road design (aside from the towering height of today’s truck grilles)
Re:Traffic engineers build roads inviting crashes on outdate...
by Der_Einzige on Sunday June 23, 2024 @12:41PM
(#40768710)
Plus those giant vehicles have additional features not as often found on the small ones like 360 cameras and auto parallel park systems, so don’t expect crappy parking situations to stop these drivers from taking up every square inch of your cities parking infrastructure.
The “big vehicle = more features” thing is also an independent reason for the success and popularity of big vehicles in America.
Re:Traffic engineers build roads inviting crashes on outdate...
by bluecalm on Sunday June 23, 2024 @01:35PM
(#40769088)
Good summary. No idea why it gets downvoted. People want big cars for selfish and arm-race reasons. They don't pay for the consequences so it's rational as well. When it's rational to engage in an arm race we need regulation but we are not getting any.
Plus, larger vehicles are known to be safer so every soccer mom in America wants an Escalade so that lil Timmy survives and the other families kid dies when she hits a car she couldn’t even see due to the height differential.
Some of the price differences are due to emissions as you mention, but the lion share of the price difference is due to economics of scale which kick in for the huge amounts of giant trucks and SUVs that Americans buy, showing that we fking love our gas guzzlers and bro-dozers.