Americans gladly go into more debt to show off the things they can't afford

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.

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...

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 can see better" says so much about a person's psychology.

I can see better if I sit higher

Japanese import here. :)

One woman nearly broke into tears when she saw how little I had to spend to fill it with fuel.

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.

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.

its to stroke the egos of soccer moms, and overcompensating men.

By 2030, they will be stand up driving like speedboats.

Not to mention poorly aimed LED lights rivaling the lumen output of the fucking sun.

Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451 and how the youth drive dangerously because they haven nothing to live for.

🤏

My stock Subaru can handle more off-roading than most trucks ever do

love this

these look dope af

It’s literally style. Those pickup lifts often ruin durability and off-road capability.

I need a 14 ft SUV to carry an 8 lb baby.

And mechanics now use stepladders.

FFS guys just buy a strap on dildo, she'll never know the difference.

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.

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.

The more people walking, the fewer people driving. Makes enough sense to me.

What kind of EVs?

The Aptera?

https://aptera.us/vehicle/ ?

Peter Perkins' Solar Powered Van?

If we switch to painting the entire bodywork in cheap recyclable low-light efficient photovoltaic paint made from carbon buckyballs and nanotubules, and photovoltaic dyes in the windows... and hemp sourced graphene capacitor bank batteries, EVs could help protect the environment, yup.

... And likely help protect pedestrians and cyclists too... certainly far more than the high-mass high-inertia high-hood high-glare low-visibility SUV tanks going around.

Edit: Hrmm... why'd those image links no work? http://www.evuk.co.uk/imgs/solarvan_ev1.jpg http://www.evuk.co.uk/imgs/solarvan_ev2.jpg Edit: Oh, because http not https?

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.

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”

Mega trucks ans SUVs are what sells, I guess.

Unfortunately, people buy what they are told to buy through advertising and marketing. The demand for sports cars didn't dry up because people lost interest, but because better margins were found in large vehicles (and since emissions requirements were easier to hit for large vehicles than small powerful ones).

If the auto industry decided small cars were more profitable, the entire marketing machine would start touting the benefits of small cars, and in a few years, people would be claiming they always loved small cars and are so glad they are back so they can replace their monster trucks with tiny hatches.

We’re still working on the loss of caring about driving from pandemic. For some reason it brought out the worst in people, and some of them are still there

There's just more fucking people in general so the odds of encountering the worst of them goes up

Options for reasonable sized cars is the US have decreased

I think that's only true if you're buying an american vehicle, which you shouldn't be doing anyways unless you like shit that breaks.

40% decrease from 2013 to 2023

https://etsc.eu/euroadsafetydata/

When you need a step ladder to get into your truck maybe it is too high for public roads.