They also need to regulate and enforce the height of bumpers. Your bumper is useless and deadly if it is at face level of the other driver.

Anonymous wrote: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.

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).

Anonymous wrote: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.

Using that kinda logic, every country on Earth should have nuclear weapons. Aren’t we all, so, soooo, much safer with more nukes in the world?

SUVs only exist because of stupid govt loopholes classifying them as light trucks. The govt needs to discourage asinine practices when it results in tremendous wastes of fuels, causes more damage to our roads, and results in deadlier accidents for other people and pedestrians. SUV ownership is also making car insurance more expensive for everyone.

I used to feel this way about SUVs but it turns out SUVs have gotten shorter and lighter as the market has shifted to "cross over vehicles" that have more headroom and overall capacity and slightly higher entries than sedans, but are only slightly heavier. A lot of the growth in the SUV market is in the "small SUV" sector-- RAV4, Outback, Macan, etc. These vehicles are only slightly larger than a station wagon and often smaller than a minivan (though minivans tend to be safer for pedestrians due to their low clearance).

But disturbingly, as SUVs have gotten smaller and lighter, pickup trucks have gotten huge and way more dangerous. This is where I actually think we should focus any public policy. The pickup truck market keeps churning out taller, more deadly trucks for no particular reason (the average pickup truck driver hauls nothing in their truck yet the vehicles endlessly tout stuff like "towing capacity" in advertising). Trucks have gotten so tall that children and even small adults in a crosswalk are invisible to drivers. And tall vehicles are more deadly in collisions with pedestrians because they will strike people in the head and chest and then pull them under the vehicle (shorter vehicles strike people in the legs and are more likely to throw people clear of the vehicle resulting in fewer deaths).

Worst of all, the largest pickup trucks have none of the safety features that are becoming increasingly standard on cars and SUVs, including features like auto-braking when a pedestrian is detected and blind spot assist (and pickups have HUGE blindspots).

There are also some bizarre incentives to buy these big, heavy pickups including the ability for business owners to get a tax deduction for them even if their business does not require them to haul anything (something pickup salesmen tout in their sales pitch when trying to encourage a buyer to get a bigger and more expensive truck).

Anyway, you can read about deadly pickups are here: https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-safety/the-hidden-danger-of-big-pickup-trucks-a9662450602/?srsltid=AfmBOoo59CO7WRy_osl9yxQEVPinlNfEtp-IyEUHmcjGnaRqBunNYwOi

Anonymous wrote: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.

It’s a prisoners dilemma. It does me no good to buy a smaller car if most other people are not. We even bought our teens an SUV instead of a small sedan for this exact reason. Not a suburban or anything close, but hoping it still gives them a fighting chance.

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.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People claim they have the right to choose to drive a big SUV or vehicle but then expect the rest of society to bear the cost of the negative externalities. They disproportionately increase emissions, drive up the cost of fuel, cause excess wear and tear on roads and infrastructure, and kill and badly injure more people. These costs should be passed onto the buyers of those vehicles.

Pawning off the downsides of your choices onto other people is the American way.

Lack of responsibility to other people is literally the American Dream.

Exactly, like that redneck moron in the the thrid post who stated "I don't want to live in a carless 15 minute city so the government and all of neighbors can keep an eye on me for the sake of "community". It's always about himself and his selfishness and oh you can't tell me what to do...what a moron, rather than seeing the bigger picture of "oh, my poor choices have negative consequences for others".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We would have been T-boned by an Escalade last night if my DH hadn’t lingered longer at a 4-way stop. I think it could have easily killed me and my son if it had hit us.

Lots of "would" and "I think" and "if" in your post. So a non event. The mere existence of the Escalade bothered you.

Yes, thankfully a non-event. And yes, the existence of a speeding, stop sign-running Escalade bothers me.

Anonymous wrote:We would have been T-boned by an Escalade last night if my DH hadn’t lingered longer at a 4-way stop. I think it could have easily killed me and my son if it had hit us.

Lots of "would" and "I think" and "if" in your post. So a non event. The mere existence of the Escalade bothered you.

It's basic physics

We would have been T-boned by an Escalade last night if my DH hadn’t lingered longer at a 4-way stop. I think it could have easily killed me and my son if it had hit us.

Anonymous wrote:People claim they have the right to choose to drive a big SUV or vehicle but then expect the rest of society to bear the cost of the negative externalities. They disproportionately increase emissions, drive up the cost of fuel, cause excess wear and tear on roads and infrastructure, and kill and badly injure more people. These costs should be passed onto the buyers of those vehicles.

Pawning off the downsides of your choices onto other people is the American way.

Lack of responsibility to other people is literally the American Dream.

Anonymous wrote:This made me think of poor old Johnny Gaudreau and his brother. Killed by a drunk driver while biking last Thursday, and supposed to attend their sister’s wedding the next day. Dude was driving an SUV.

Do you honestly think they would have survived if hit by a car?

People claim they have the right to choose to drive a big SUV or vehicle but then expect the rest of society to bear the cost of the negative externalities. They disproportionately increase emissions, drive up the cost of fuel, cause excess wear and tear on roads and infrastructure, and kill and badly injure more people. These costs should be passed onto the buyers of those vehicles.

Time for self-driving cars.