feels like the tone of this title is forgetting about the shareholders, which I do not take kindly to
In Japan, there is tax benefits if your car fits certain dimensions. That’s why there are so many small boxy cars in Japan. I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing anywhere else. It has so many benefits: Fuel economy, parking space, pedestrian safety, …
But no, “I can see better if I sit higher” is still the #1 killer argument for these urban tanks.
In Finland, car sales tax and yearly tax are based on the Co2 output, and it worked quite well to keep most cars small, light and efficient. Until hybrid and electric cars arrived on the market, that is…
Canada had a carbon tax. Pickup sales soared, people will eat dog food before giving up their $200 fill-up trucks.
Do you mean the “fuel charge” tax on gas, at 17.6 CAD cents (0.11€) per litre?
Because that’s a rather adorable try.
There really does seem to be a kind of social cohesiveness in other countries. In America it’s dog eat dog and fuck everyone else as long as I get mine.
Very much true in my specific limited experience.
I live in a nice little town here in the US, and I’m a well educated middle aged white guy. It’s safe to say that I get to see a pretty nice version of America even as horrible shit is happening all over the place.
I’ve gotten to spend a few weeks in Sweden of all places over the past few years. Plus I got to see the insides of some airports in other places luke Belgium and Germany.
There’s just something different in the air over there, in a good way. I thought of it as a kind of dignity that came from respect for others as well as oneself, but I like how you call it social cohesiveness.
I think some of the details around food and drink showed it best, and they make good examples because they apply to a mix of the general public.
The food itself is obviously much better over there. Even things like the hotel breakfast or the cafeteria at a workplace had a huge variety of fresh, real foods as opposed to ultraprocessed manufactured branded products.
But the dishes and utensils were some of the most interesting to me as an american. In places like an office cafe at work, or a local restaurant, or I think even an airport, they would have actual GLASSES, plates, and silverware. And on top of that, you would often return your dishes to the kitchen or even put them directly on to the dish washer rack waiting for you.
This breaks my american mind. Fragile non-disposable cups in a public place? Other than coffee mugs on people’s desks or restaurant glasses being dropped off and picked up with at your table, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen that within these borders. If you could use glasses and silverware in public places here, I can’t decide what would happen first: somebody would get cut on one of the immediately broken glasses, or so much of the stuff would get stolen that they’d close it down.
I like to call out their bathrooms too. The way we do it over here is big men’s and women’s restrooms with next to no privacy (it’s one big room with flimsy floating dividers forming the toilet stalls) and stupid culture wars about who should and should not get their genitals inspected or whatever. Over there it’s just several individual doors, each with a small bathroom. Much better privacy, no fodder for the bigots, and much better utilization of the resources.
Not to mention readily available and clean pay toilets. When I was first there I was shocked to learn I had to pay to pee, but now that I’m a gig worker finding a toilet is a pain in the butt
My freedoms>your kids life
-Americans
Dutch road tax is by weight.
It’s at least partially the American emission standards, which loosen the emissions requirements as the size of the vehicle grows.
I’m not buying that. Sure, what you say is absolutely true but we’re talking pedestrian deaths. That’s more of the fault of the high steel wall at the front, and that is purely a style choice.
I can see better if I sit higher
we have a solution for that, actually
I think I can see better on my bicycle than in a car, nothing blocking my view and you also sit relatively high compared to cars.
By 2030, they will be stand up driving like speedboats.
I don’t understand why this isn’t a thing anywhere else.
A lot of it is because companies want to support the macho American image of guns, trucks, and bacon.
They know these insecure losers will spend more money to look tough in front of their idiot peers.
its to stroke the egos of soccer moms, and overcompensating men.
Partly the ridiculous sized vehicles. Partly the fact that nearly every single person driving is watching Netflix, while browsing TikTok, while eating a big Mac and running late cause they have no time management skills. And they are driving 20-30 mph over the speed limit, full of road rage, with no concern for anyone or anything. The only person on the road that matters is them.
Not to mention poorly aimed LED lights rivaling the lumen output of the fucking sun.
That just comes standard on pretty much every SUV now. Half the electric vehicles here have a fuckin light bar across the front. It’s insane how much worse visibility is at night outside of towns. Add in more aging drivers and everyone else not even looking at the road and it’s not surprising.
Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and how the youth drive dangerously because they haven nothing to live for.
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American here living in a car-only area.
I didn’t even raise an eyebrow at that previous comment. Sure most drivers are fine, but there are plenty of people who make me wonder what the hell combination of these issues (and others) is going on with them.
The most common example I get to see is the people speeding through the elementary school parking lot in their luxury SUVs. I especially love it when they start a phone call as they start driving, after they just finished standing around, collecting their kid, and walking back to the parking lot.
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Let me introduce you to a figure of speech called hyperbole.
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That’s exactly what hyperbole is.
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You mean, I wouldn’t care about them if I saw them up close, too?
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Well, I mean, I can’t make sense of what you wrote
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The article doesn’t talk about the fact that the increase is far greater in dark conditions, which is not readily explained by the changes to car design the article discusses.
This article talks more about that, and the linked report suggests population trends have contributed to more people walking at night along arterial roads with poor pedestrian infrastructure.
To be clear, daytime fatalities are up by about 40% in the interval shown, which is much more than the increase in population. Increasing vehicle size and hood height are real problems too, but don’t seem to be the biggest factor.
Daytime fatalities are up 26.5% on this graph. Not good, but not 40%. Population growth was 8.5% over that period
There are sidewalks on both sides of the street in my neighborhood. People are walking 2 abreast in the street at night and joggers are commonly running about 4 feet into the street from the curb.
Regardless of the article’s findings, some people are just oblivious.
Morons existed long before 2009. They are not a new phenomenon that accounts for a 40% increase in casualties. So your point, astute though it may be, is tangential to the article.
What is the condition of your sidewalks? My sidewalks are uneven and a neighborhood grandma who I walk with still prefers the street even though my street is not well lit. Uneven sidewalks are a tripping hazard that can be avoided by walking in the street. Her vision isn’t great so a paved stretch of road is just easier to walk with a flashlight.
Mine are pristine, I use them all the time and they are equal or better than the road. The idiots around me walk on the fucking road like chickens. Fuck em.
Top tip: don’t hit them.
I knew someone who did that because the sidewalks were too uneven. She had bad ankles and kept rolling them trying to walk in the sidewalk
Since pandemic I’ve fallen twice because of bad sidewalks. It’s embarrassing as shit
Gee, there was no way they would have been able to change this…
🤏
🔬
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But I need a massive truck to carry groceries and 2 kids.
/s
It’s literally style. Those pickup lifts often ruin durability and off-road capability.
It’s hilariously stupid. First, they lift the trucks to pretend they off road, then they have to put wide wheels and spacers because the idiotwagon is tippy, which sprays water everywhere, then finally the suspension breaks because of geometry.
Two days ago near me. She was 75 and could not see the sidewalk or the building in her Barbie Boomer truck.
How the fuck does a 75 yr old woman even climb into this thing? She must need a stepstool to do it, and I’ve seen people do exactly that.
you can see the stepladder under the door, comes with the lift kit.
Pretty hilarious to see some dude fall to the pavement trying to get out, or watch someone have to make 3-4 tries to get in. Elevators are next.
I need a 14 ft SUV to carry an 8 lb baby.
This is an accepted part of the economy. Our leaders have decided us dying for private profit is fine. Now add up all the accepted deaths per year from every product and service and see how many of us are sacrificed for profit.
The real horror is the trend. Between 2009 and 2023, pedestrian deaths rose a staggering 80%, while all other traffic fatalities increased just 13%. In a decade-plus span, pedestrians have been dying at a rate nearly seven times faster than population growth. This isn’t random. It’s the intentional outcome of systems designed to prioritize vehicles over people.
Shameful and pathetic, what a material abandonment of the social contract.
I propose we trick our fellow Americans by making smol cars offroady enough to embarrass an F150:
Look at them! Who would want a rolling brick over that?
And the Ford Focus is already mostly there.
love this
Concur.
My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do
My old job had me going to a lot of places in very bad conditions and off road. I always drove an audi or a subaru and watched the lifted trucks spin out / go in the ditch / flip over / get stuck / and generally have a poor showing.
these look dope af
And functional! You’re looking at Dakar rally champions, and hatchbacks so unreasonably fast on dirt, their league was banned.
This is what actual off-roaders look like.
Hood heights. You have pickup trucks that have to have a front camera now.
And mechanics now use stepladders.
FFS guys just buy a strap on dildo, she’ll never know the difference.
We need to switch to EVs to protect the environment
But also no efforts to keep vehicles from getting bigger and heavier, which not only uses more resources (in construction and during use) but also increases danger to pedestrians and cyclists.
We need simple laws restricting vehicle weights. The hummer EV is 10000 lbs and wastes most of it charge just carrying around a stupidly large 3000lb battery pack. In a rear end collision, the car in front, and the car in front of that are all dead.
Meanwhile in the UK pedestrian deaths are down despite the number of miles walked increasing.
The UK has among the lowest road deaths in the world.
I’m not quite sure why that is (although anecdotally as a pedestrian, you seem to be treated like royalty in the UK in comparison to other places I’ve been - so much as glance at a zebra crossing and cars come to an immediate stop).
Given how UK drivers often use summer tyres year-round, the weather is dark and cool, and the roads are usually damp, you’d logically expect poor results, but we see the opposite.
Perhaps it’s due to the rather strict yearly MOT safety check? Who knows.
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The more people walking, the fewer people driving. Makes enough sense to me.
My wife is a medical coder for the ED, for more than a dozen hospitals and says the overwhelming area for vehicle fatalities she codes is intersections crossing in front of traffic. Particularly trying to make the yellow. The plural of anecdote isn’t data mind you, but she’s been at this for 15+ years and has a pretty good sense of it.
My similar anecdote is people taking a right on red without stopping (or apparently looking), and would probably be included in those statistics. Since there may be a pedestrian or cyclist just around the corner you can’t see until you’re at the intersection, stopping and looking is critical for safety
I used to be a proponent of right on red, because who wants to be stuck at a dead intersection? If you only consider cars, it’s a nice efficiency gain. But now non-car users like pedestrians and cyclists don’t have a safe time to cross the intersection. And it’s so much worse now that people turning right on red seem to have forgotten the parts about “after coming to a complete stop” and “yielding to other traffic”
For sure! When driving downtown this is what freaks me out most while driving around. Last thing I want to do is hit someone.
When in NYC and Makati it shocked me to see how flagrant people are with just crossing the street wherever. Two places I’ll never drive, I’m not a good enough driver to not hit people in places like that.
At least in Manhattan, traffic is usually slow enough that pedestrians are at least as fast. Also they tend to go as a crowd. I’ll usually wait for the light but when hundreds of other pedestrians swarm into the street I figure we’re fairly visible and safe.
I would never drive in Manhattan simply because it’s the slowest and most frustrating way to get around. I used to drive around queens when I had a girlfriend there but we’d always take a train around the city, and I’m sure traffic has only gotten worse. It’s just not worth it
Those are pretty staggering numbers considering the population has only grown by maybe 12% in that same timeframe.
