Would be the end different if it was another oversized car like X7, G-Klasse or Cayenne?

Edit: I am really curious why there is no real vehicle physical size tax in Germany. Let’s take reference as VW Golf. Smaller cars cost less, bigger more. I agree to pay more, but current insanity with RAMs and vans should be somehow regulated.

It’s possible. Visibility for pedestrians and bicyclists in these trucks is horrendous.

It’s so ridiculously bad that even an M1 Abrams tank has less blind spots: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/140dgn8/many_popu...

Tanks are famously dangerous to be anywhere other than directly in front of. The angular front blind spot isn't terrible, but from the front corners on back they're massive hazards to the point where infantry gets trained on it so they don't get run over.

Speaking or fun over, whoever made that illustration should be run over by a tank. Fix the size of the goddamn kid or fix the distance and change the size of the kid. Having both variables move serves to only add confusion and annoyance.

The kids are the same size - the number above is the distance at which they become visible. It could indeed be a little less confusing.

That makes far more sense.

It seems this could be largely mitigated with relatively simple lidar.

> an M1 Abrams tank has less blind spots

Absolutely not. You can't even turn around in the driver position of a tank.

A lot could probably be done with a simple "a person 1.80m in length must be able to see a 50cm high object 1 metre in front of the car" or something like that. Just making up numbers here and don't know what would be reasonable, but it seems this doesn't need to be that hard?

Weight also matters of course. Hopefully this relatively simple ruling will fix some of that too.

>A lot could probably be done with a simple "a person 1.80m in length must be able to see a 50cm high object 1 metre in front of the car" or something like that. Just making up numbers here and don't know what would be reasonable, but it seems this doesn't need to be that hard?

It's hard because the people pushing for new rules very transparently want rules far beyond what the public wants or considers sensible. If they were simply asking for that it'd probable be done already.

EU Regulation 2019/2144 [1] covers field of vision requirements. This is exactly the kind of regulation the USA wants the EU to drop.

> there shall be no obstruction in the driver's 180° forward direct field of vision below a horizontal plane passing through V1, and above three planes through V2, one being perpendicular to the plane X-Z and declining forward 4° below the horizontal

> For vehicles with high driving positions (driver's eye points more than 1,650 mm above the ground), a 1,200 mm tall cylindrical object with a diameter of 300 mm must be visible when placed 2,000 mm in front of the vehicle

According to Claude a Dodge RAM fails both of these. At 80cm (2-year old, a dog, or someone crouching down), depending on driver position, an object might be obscured by the hood in a comically large 5-8 meter area ahead.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...

G-klasse W465 is shorter than the equivalent medium sized sedan (E-klasse W214, and even shorter than my W212), and the hood is nowhere near as high as those overseas pickup trucks.

The monstrously large (5.8 meters) G63 6x6 is considerably rarer (i have never seen one in person).

> The monstrously large (5.8 meters) G63 6x6 is considerably rarer (i have never seen one in person).

Those kinds of exotic variants are for the Dubais of the world, for rich Arabs to power up and down sand dunes, not for the Autobahn and narrow medieval streets. I’ve only seen it at a motorshow.

Yes. Just take a look at this picture of the accident. You can instantly see where the proportions go wrong. Not survivable, even at low speeds.

https://cldnr.prod.webx.talpa.digital/talpa-network/image/fe...

> Would be the end different if it was another oversized car like X7, G-Klasse or Cayenne?

For one, typical pickup trucks seems to have much worse forward visibility than most SUVs. To the point that even an M1 tank sees forward better:

* https://carbuzz.com/news/the-abrams-m1-tank-has-better-visib...

They are not even in the same ballpark size wise

https://www.carsized.com/en-us/cars/compare/porsche-cayenne-...

But or course you are correct this is not only about American cars. Europeans can build big cars as well.

Cars are taxed by engine displacement in Germany. It's rather low compared to insurance and gas cost though. Indirectly larger cars are taxed through high gas tax.

A lot of German SUVs are heavier than full sized American pickup trucks, even when they look much smaller.

At least you can see the ground ahead of you, weight is not the only thing affecting safety.

Yes, large heavy unibody SUVs like the Q7/Touareg/Cayenne with all of the safety tech of a high end German luxury car are likely the safest cars possible- for the passengers at least.