Reply to People with street parking only - why do you keep buying bigger and bigger cars?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]America is one of the wealthiest nations on earth and we can afford to buy massive vehicles, gas prices are only a token annoyance to many and reusable shopping bags are the extent of their actions regarding the environment. They don't care about....well, they just don't care.[/quote]

Yup, this is the crux of it.

You've all been suckered in by marketing, there is no good reason that everyone is buying these large vehicles except that they make car companies more money. They are universally worse for the environment, and more dangerous: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/3/11/21152975/crossover-utility-vehicle-honda-cr-v-suv

[i]On a warming planet, the 21 combined MPG in a Chevy Traverse or 23 in a Nissan Murano is still, well, bad. “The gains that car companies have made in fuel efficiency have completely been undermined by the size and weight of the cars that these efficient engines are now pushing around,” says Doug Gordon, a pedestrian safety advocate and co-host of The War on Cars podcast.[/I]

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[i]Crossover marketing has proven so successful that consumers may not recognize the fallacy of pushing cars for their ability to quietly blend in with nature. In a commercial for the 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid, writes Brock University sociologist Dennis Soron, a young family drives right up to admire a group of deer. Just like the Subaru ads before it, this crossover was meant for the crunchy consumer who is concerned with human impact on our planet.

“Because of the quiet hybrid engine, the otherwise skittish deer remain unperturbed,” Soron continues. “Ironically enough for Ford drivers, not only are deer the large mammal most often killed by auto collisions, but all animals vulnerable to road traffic are likely to be put in greater danger by quieter vehicles that are harder to hear in advance.” Cars kill more than a million vertebrates in the U.S. per day, he points out — so many that cars are second only to animal agriculture (and ahead of hunting) as the largest killer of animals.[/I]

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[i]Perhaps the most dramatic safety risk posed by SUVs is their danger to pedestrians. Between 2009 and 2016, pedestrian deaths increased by 46 percent, and much of that is almost certainly attributable to the rise of SUVs, says Schmitt.

“When a pedestrian is hit by a moving vehicle, the taller that vehicle is, the more dangerous it is,” says Levine. “All other things being equal, the taller the vehicle, the harder it is for the driver to be able to see pedestrians and to stop themselves from hitting pedestrians, and that is a problem that you see day after day.” In a collision with a sedan, a pedestrian can roll onto the hood and get away with serious injuries, but when hit in the chest or higher by an SUV, a person is much more likely to die. Crashes can be mitigated by new technologies like automatic emergency braking and pedestrian detection, but whether these can do enough to neutralize SUVs’ danger to people is unproven.[/i][/quote]

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