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Part of that is by design and is crumple zones. EVERYONE makes fun of “whiplash” but people really do underestimate the kind of injuries caused by even a simple rear ending. And if your car got that fucked, it was probably for a good reason.

Of course, then we also have assholes who want cars without crumple zones to drastically increase damage to other vehicles. But… yeah.

Extremely few Americans live in a place where that is even possible. Few can afford to move to a place like that because they are so rare and desirable. Your comment is not helpful.

Agreed.

But also? I care a lot more about me and my loved ones than a nebulous “society”. And I am not going to drastically increase risk to me and my partner in the interest of standing on principle*. Especially when “society” continues to get giant pickup trucks on lift kits with fucking spikes for bumpers.

*: Although, I WILL be one of those weirdos who does a LOT of research on fuel economy and efficiency so that I can feel better about technically driving an SUV.

I think that more has to do with the cabin design.

I personally drive a Subaru Crosstrek which is literally a Subaru Imprezza on a lift kit. So I have good visibility and have gotten used to the blind spots that my frame creates and know to lean forward a bit when approach a roundabout or intersection to make sure a car isn’t coming in from the left at approximately the same speed as me. Same with changing lanes on the highway (and knowing that the headrests on my back seat completely block vehicles in my rearview mirror…).

That said, my rental a few months back (it might have been a Camry? I forget) had a HORRIBLE interior and my blindspots felt massive because so much of the frame obstructed my view. Some of it was that I only had two or three days to “get used to it” but the frame genuinely meant I could not see traffic when I was doing tighter merges on the highway. Again, I know that means I physically move in my seat but a lot of people never learn that or are used to “check your blindspot” just meaning looking slightly farther back when glancing at a mirror. So they kind of just start changing lanes and get honked at or suddenly see the vehicle they are about to pit maneuver and need to quickly swerve back.

Cunt Utility Vehicle???

I mean… good luck dodging someone who completely ignores a stale red and just floors it through an intersection (almost got jackknifed by one of those dumbasses just last week…) or someone who decides they want to merge into your lane and don’t care that it is “bumper to bumper” on the highway.

Defensive driving is about minimizing the likelihood of a crash while acknowledging some are just unavoidable. Hollywood stunt driving is the idea of being able to swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid getting pti maneuver’d.

Yes, but you brought up other heavy vehicles not me.

They pay more but not 80% of the total cost of maintenance. That’s what the distribution would need to be in order to cancel out the outsized influence they have on infrastructure degradation.

I don’t think they are saying that the drivers are fat. Or at least it would be insane to say that society shouldn’t care about the safety of fat people.

It’s more likely that they said that the cars are fat which they are.

Trucks and SUVs are getting heavier to skirt emissions controls.

In 2010 the Obama administration passed laws tightening emissions control requirements for new vehicles. But the laws were written to allow emissions as a factor of vehicle size, larger vehicles were allowed to have more emissions.

Unfortunately, the plan backfired. Instead of reducing emissions, vehicle manufacturers just started making vehicles bigger.

It isn’t primarily the fragile egos that are driving sales of these vehicular monstrosities. It’s corporate profits and greed. Manufacturers aren’t making smaller models because they don’t make as much money on them, not because there isn’t a market for them.

The F150 lightening weighs about 6,893 lbs. That’s before you put a load in it. I’d guess a load of pea gravel or similar would push it over that max weight of a guard rail. Hook up a horse trailer to it? Definitely. For the record, the F150 is the best selling consumer vehicle in the US and I doubt that’s going to change too much. I appreciate the people in here saying “not all electric cars”, but there’s absolutely electric vehicles already on the road pretty dangerously close to this max weight. The Rivian truck weighs in at over 7K lbs (7,148 lbs). The Tesla cyber truck weighs in at 6,603 lbs. These vehicles have load space that can accommodate heavy loads. Their curb weight is dangerously close to (or in the case of the Rivian over) the limit that our guard rails can safety buffer.

America has a lot of problems with things like the “Chicken Tax”, and the NHTSA regulating automakers for the purposes of higher mile per gallon vehicles, which has started and continues a trend of making larger and larger vehicles with intent to circumvent those regs and make more profit. The whole system is a bit broken, honestly.

And now you starve. None of the stores will stay open long without them.

What I’m suggesting is to ramp up the tax on roads over several years in order to pay for the initial outlay on new train infrastructure. Then you don’t need 90% of the trucking industry at all.

Which would be great for many other reasons.

What if it’s not a larger vehicle, but transitioning from a petrol burning vehicle to an electric vehicle?

We don’t want to give people reasons to hold on to old combustion vehicles any longer than they have to, but the roads of course need to be made safe for passengers and pedestrians and wildlife, I agree.

As a truck driver, I would like to ask, how would you acquire all the “stuff” you have bought over the years? I am reasonably sure most of it was not produced locally to you. And the raw materials almost certainly aren’t locally sourced. Trucking and logistics generally has its issues, and you only have glimpsed a fraction of them, but it is absolutely necessary for modern society. Unless you’re proposing we kill off 2/3rds of humanity and go back to hunter-gatherer. Not a fan of that idea.

Neither should lots of short haul trucking, more specifically drayage trucking, that industry sucks. We probably need to move more towards vans and stuff.

Maybe it’s because I don’t really know anyone passionate on either side of this issue, but I’ve never heard of this argument. I know you said it’s a bad faith argument, but I can’t really imagine what a cyclist’s fair share would be aside from maybe widening a road to add a bike lane lol

Only if rail can figure out their shit and hire enough workers and give them all time off. Too many train derailments from precision scheduled railroading.

True but unfettered capitalism is a terrible model.

If you look down further, I’m just saying you can’t deal with the problem in this specific way.

They are taxed a lot. Are they taxed to the fourth power of axel weight? Not even close.

It’s a good rule not to make essential safety items more expensive. Because consumers in general will always choose a cheaper, less safe option.

They’ll still have to replace them more often or won’t be able to drive their vehicles or pass a state inspection to get their annual registration completed unless their car is road-worthy, thus costing them more money in tickets and remedies of said ticket.

I think he is close though with his initial train of thought. I remember doing some research on this many years ago and road wear does not scale linearly with weight. All other variables being equal a 1,000lb load going across a stretch of road 10 times does less damage than a 10,000 pounds load going across the same stretch once. So what we should really be doing is looking at semi trucks and the heaviest of consumer vehicles. It would theoretically make consumer goods go up in price a little, but it’s not like that cost isn’t already being paid/subsidized by consumers in other ways.

Maybe it would even push the use of railroads for goods even more than it is used now.

Why is it a terrible idea?

Not than an equivalent ICE car. Sure you can make a subcompact EV, but it’s either gonna have no range, or weigh more than a Nissan Versa.

Sure the R1s are large, but R2 and R3 are much more reasonably sized and are planned to be lower priced. It seems that these new EV companies like to go with fewer of their higher end cars in the beginning to fund the production of the larger volume, more economic models later.

That’d be the percent who should be exempt from the guard rails.

That’s because the USA subsidizes bigger trucks as “work vehicles”.

Can you cite this? Don’t get me wrong, I understand that if it’s actually a work vehicle you probably get some tax credits/breaks, but I highly doubt many consumers are getting these breaks for buying large vehicles.

State vehicle registration where I’m at is based on vehicle weight. Costs about $400 to renew the registration on my daily driver and $600 to renew for a larger truck. Motorcycles are only like $80 to renew.

Consumers are being taxed more for larger vehicles, it’s the manufacturers trying to avoid safety regulations that are seeing the cost benefits.

I’m guessing you don’t actually pay attention to the tax law, then. Annual vehicle registration (aka, a vehicle ownership tax) is more expensive as the weight on the vehicle goes up. Vehicles over a certain weight limit require more complex and strict drivers license classes (granted, class B starts at 26,001 lbs which is way higher than even today’s heaviest consumer cars), and any vehicle used for work has higher insurance and regulatory costs, regardless of the size.

Buying an F350 (a truck that really only has a place in very specific situations anyway) requires so much extra work and almost always requires a class B license because of the kind of work being done with it. People who choose to get something like that because of small-dick syndrome are idiots. And that’s coming from a person who used to drive 18-wheelers and still has a compact SUV as my daily driver.

I would pay money to have this physically mailed to everyone. I have money because I have an economy car.

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Many people live halfway across the state from their family.

Could be a student or military or live in an apartment.

Not sure any of those establishments are going to be thrilled with you running an extension cable across the parking lot or sidewalk to charge your car.

Also pretty sure they meant their family lives outside of the range of a single EV charge and there’s no charging infrastructure on the way. What would be an 8 hour drive to visit family for the holidays turns into a multi-day trip with a stay at a motel/hotel to wait for your car to charge.

I live in Wyoming, people not from here have a hard time understanding how desolate it is here. If I were to switch to an EV I’d have to take a plane everytime I wanted to visit my elderly mother, who would send a cousin in her ancient f-250 to drive me around, because there isn’t a single electric charger in that QUARTER of the state

I live in Wyoming, having been to Maine, yall have an amazing and beautiful state but your definition of bumfuck no where is lacking. I checked the EV map again the ENTIRE QUATER of the state I live in that doesn’t have a single charger is where my family lives. I down south near Colorado for reasons I don’t want to get into right now but I want to be able to actually visit my family without having to take a plane between the two airports in Wyoming.

Yeah the current weight/range/battery combo for me in my almost entirely rural state is an ICE vehicle as much as I like EVs they just can’t get me where I need to be with the current infrastructure. Unfortunately my attempts is also revoking its green energy tax stuff, got to love Republicans. But at least we got rare earth metals now, so that means nothing has to change! (God I love my state but hate the people running it)

Nearest one to my hometown is about 3-4 hours out. I would have to take a plane and have a cousin come get me in her truck whenever I visited my family if I used an EV the tech has come a long way but the infrastructure just isn’t always there as much as I hate that

This reminds me of a recent news story where the government is unable to handle all of the new fraud claims that are originating out of Meta’s services. Coincidentally (read suspiciously) the increase in fraud claims began at the same time as the layoffs.

I think it was the New York attorney general that said directly “We refuse to operate as the customer service representatives of your company,” or something to that effect. [Sauce]

Companies really love foisting the responsibility that they rightfully own onto the government in this case I would say it’s the car manufacturers. They certainly have plenty of practice doing it

I really like where your head’s at.

Weight should absolutely be a factor in registration fees. Between road damage, their environmental cost, and danger they pose it’s a no brainer.

I’ve never seen one of those, but I believe it! I bet they’re comfy to drive, too.