Reply to Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them

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Reply to "Americans' love affair with big cars is killing them"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]When you keep talking about how deadly large vehicles are to people in smaller vehicles, who is going to rush out to purchase a smaller vehicles for themselves or their teenage drivers? Also, you’re not going to eliminate semis. [/quote]

Of course you can’t eliminate all heavier vehicles including semis. Nobody is suggesting that. They are an integral part of our supply chain infrastructure. However, frequently (but of course not always) people are simply choosing to buy bigger and heavier vehicles when there is no need.

I’m sure there are many levers that could be used to reduce the purchase if large vehicles. Some examples:

Eliminate the perverse incentive for businesses to buy larger vehicles whereby they can immediately write off the entire cost of a vehicle over 6,000lb but have to depreciate a lighter vehicle over time.

Base a road tax on the weight of a vehicle. This is really passing on the costs of higher wear and tear on infrastructure and increased emission. Not sure how you would deal with the fact that EVs weigh more too but we don’t want to discourage people from buying them.

Ban young drivers from using vehicles over a certain weight. Given they account for 11% of the driving population but are involved in 22% of road accidents, I feel like this is an obvious safeguard.

Maybe controversial but ban vehicles over a certain weight or height from school zones. Or compel large SUVs and pick ups with blind zones to have cameras or detectors. At least one study has shown children are 8 times more likely to die if hit by an SUV. In addition, the proportion of kids being killed by forward moving rather than reversing large vehicles has increased (probably due to the effectiveness of rear view cameras). 
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