This is automakers responding to buyer demands and a lax enforcement of government regulations. Nearly every state has bumper height restrictions, yet it is commonplace to see "brodozers" on the road built for decapitating motorcyclists and gassing EV drivers, not for off-roading. Most truck makers are now selling ready-made "brodozers" because trucks and CUV/SUVs are outselling cars.
Not only are these vehicles massively more dangerous to pedestrians and people on two-wheel vehicles, but they're also more stressful and dangerous for anyone driving a normal car on the road, because you can't see through them, they block ahead. When multiple normal cars are in a line on a highway, you can usually see beyond the cars in front partially by seeing through their rear window and windshield, but when all you can see is a solid aluminum tailgate, the pumpkin for the rear differential, and a hanging pair of truck nuts, it means you cannot plan ahead and react as quickly as possible to changing road conditions ahead.
Nothing is quite as disturbing to me as a conscientious driver as being behind a "brodozer" where I can't see anything ahead of me or having one with an unnecessary cattle/bull bar right behind me, essentially threatening me with certain death as their unnecessary monument to their small penis would roll right over the top of my normal car crushing me if we were to be in an "accident". These vehicles violate existing regulations in nearly every state in the US, yet seem to be epidemic on American highways and not disappearing any time soon.
You've got some good points to make here, but your language is dripping with derision, scorn, and personal judgement/attack. Please mind the site guidelines.
I don’t know, being nice to car drivers is a bit like appeasement, I think a bit of passion could be good. I think on HN at least you can try and empathise as to why they might feel so strongly. IRL of course you could use a bit of a more diplomatic tone.
There's a broad gulf between "nice" and downright insulting. Somewhere in that gulf, one can find productive discussion. The internet is real life. It's probably where you spend most of your time. It is what you make of it.
This is always the excuse for upper crust liberals to sneer down at working class culture.
Always. It's always how everyone is in danger. Against mtf in female sports? You're causing violence to trans people. Use a gas powered blower to blow the leaves from the 400 trees on your property? You're killing the planet and everyone on it. Vote republican? You want fascism and the fall of democracy. Everything is always exaggerated to excuse a total lack of civility and then the lack of civility makes solving the problem impossible.
bc no one can be the bigger person, the culture divide grows bigger and problems become harder to solve bc the solution requires consensus in our democracy.
First off, I'm not a liberal. Cut a liberal and a fascist bleeds.
Second off, hot take but it's fine to have different policies for different parts of the country.
Third, literally these are not problems anywhere else in the world. The "working class culture", which I suspect is your heavily American-bastardized version of it works fine in plenty of the rest of the world without cars the sizes of a building.
Now, maybe focus on these issues one at a time and lead a proper discussion.
Finally, as a believer in anarchism, I don't care about consensus. Don't fuck with my life and I won't fuck with yours. Ask me for help, and I will do literally anything I can to help. But don't try to legislate or regulate your way through controlling the behavior of others. This is something the "American both sides" do.
> your language is dripping with derision, scorn, and personal judgement
Absolutely, and every inch of it fully justified. I stand by my comments, in their entirety, without any desire to mitigate my spite for those who go out of their way to make the world a worse place and get off on threatening physical harm and intimidating other people. That is anti-social, nihilistic, and unacceptable behavior and I have every intent and desire to incur as much shame and derision in the direction of people who engage in such behavior as is possible.
People who modify their trucks into "brodozers" are people who understand that a vehicle is a weapon, and then choose to make it /more dangerous/ and /more intimidating/, intentionally, at great expense, to appease their own ego and sociopathy. I have no respect whatsoever for that type of behavior and it has no place on public roadways or in polite society.
It isn't just the brodozers, all cars have gotten into that height. I drive cars made in the 90s and even driving behind a tiny car feels like tailing a truck because of the height difference.
Not to mention the headlights. I can deal with most of the rest of the stuff, but the headlights are downright dangerous to all other drivers around. They're rarely correctly angled, so due to the base height of the truck they'll frequently be right at eye level for smaller vehicles. On roads with short or no barriers, they also blind oncoming traffic in addition to whoever happens to be in front of them.
That's not just manufacturers though. Plenty of people are replacing standard halogens with aftermarket LEDs in response to others doing the same.
The end result is that night-driving is incredibly dangerous, because the brightness is spiraling out of control. Instead of increased visibility, you are forced to squint from the brightness of incoming traffic.
I try to avoid night-time driving as a result of this like the plague. It is simply too dangerous for me (I've been in 3 near-accidents in 2021, despite driving the least I've ever driven in a year).
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. All your problems can be solved with a massive SUV. Now we just need them all to be winter-proof electric and recharged with nuclear power.
By the way, they are crazy comfortable - as a tall guy, I’m never squatting and folding my ass into a little Eurocar again.
A funny thing (not haha funny) I noticed about this article is that it mentions the demographics of the people being hit by the car, but just makes the "hyper-masculine" assumption about the drivers of the cars. You kind of do that here by using the term "brodozers". This is a kind of implicit bias I think a lot of people just accept as fact, but it could be a dangerous assumption to make. Ford did a survey of truck owners and (apparently) 46% of their respondents were women [0]. Now there are two things you can take from that 46% number depending on your beliefs. If you don't believe it, then you should be concerned: it means the companies that make these trucks are trying to get more people to buy trucks by "de-gendering" them. If you do believe it, then you should be concerned about going after only a subset of the demographic who uses these vehicles. It turns it into an identity issue where you're just targeting the safety of "men driving trucks" and not the overall safety of trucks. The result is ... men continuing to drive their trucks as an identity and just increasing the amount of women driving them as well.
I write this wall of text to say "truck bad because (our conception of what is toxic) masculinity bad" isn't necessarily helpful. Maybe you only meant to mention the safety, but you could have said all the things you've said about safety without making any specific reference to gender (or at least doing so with a reminder to continue to check the demographics). When we talk about these things and genderize them without referencing the true demographics, we open things up for the wrong conversation. The narrative can shift to "less men are driving trucks" (when really it's less men are driving trucks as a percentage of total truck drivers) after Ford rebrands to a gender-inclusive image for trucks. I think it's just more important to focus on the safety aspect and try to turn it from "men driving trucks aggresively" to "less people driving unsafe trucks". Marketing would love for you to just make this an "irresponsible men" thing so they can keep selling unsafe vehicles. This is not to say that men aren't aggressive drivers or don't get into more accidents, just that I want to make that conclusion on my own and not have marketing departments deflect the true cause of these safety issues.
I get your point, yet I think you are missing mine. "Brodozers" aren't just pickup trucks, they're specifically pickup trucks that are modified with a lift-kit and usually also larger wheels and tires so that they sit up higher off the ground. There are legitimate purposes for these modifications in off-roading applications, such as when going mudding, but the majority of these vehicles don't even have appropriate wheels and tires for going off-road after being modified. They're "pavement princesses" in the truck-community parlance.
I live in Texas, in a working class community, and I don't denigrate "brodozers" because of the politics, gender, or other demographics of this community or typical truck owners. I denigrate them because I'm someone who loves cars (and trucks) and I understand when a modification is reasonable, safe, and necessary and when it is not. If you are modifying your truck specifically to get into off-roading hobbies, go for it, but if you are putting a lift-kit, 36" tires, oversized wheels, and a reinforced bumper on your truck to primarily go down the highway where you are massively endangering everyone else by doing so, that is not okay.
The amount of badly done and unnecessary lifts where the owners don't even bother to re-aim their headlights afterwards are epidemic in Texas, but they're found all over the US. They're also generally illegal because they violate bumper height restrictions. This behavior is already against the law, but that law is not really enforced. At no point do I go "truck bad because toxic masculinity", you are assuming a lot of things about my personal philosophy that are not only not in evidence, but are false. This is a safety issue, I don't give a crap who the owner of the vehicle voted for, what is between their legs, their general temperament and character, or what color their hair is. When you drive a vehicle on public highways, you need to ensure that it is safe to operate.
I despise "brodozers" for the same reason I despise stance cars. They're intentionally unsafe, anti-social, nihilistic shitboxes that get people killed needlessly. They're also a huge waste of money. There is no world in which it is reasonable or safe for people to be driving around monster trucks that can literally drive over a normal car on public roads. It's deranged.
As to the point of demographics, the /majority/ of trucks purchased are used for work and are left unmodified as they rolled off the lot. Those who are modifying their trucks with lift kits are vastly predominantly men, and they're marketed to specifically on how these modifications enhance the appearance of their masculinity, with much of the same imagery and word choices you see in marketing of motorcycles. I don't care if 90% of truck owners are women, these are not the truck owners going out and putting an 8" lift on their 3/4 ton pickup, adding in stacks with clappers so they can roll coal "in style", a hoop with a lightbar, and a steel reinforced bumper guard on the front. The entire marketing and /point/ of these modifications is to make the vehicle appear more menacing and literally use its oversized physical presence to intimidate and dominate other people on the public roadways. If you spend more than a week driving in any major Texas city or on any interstate highways here you'll no doubt get tailgated by a brodozer with a huge lift, intentionally aiming their lights (and possibly turning their lightbar on) behind you at night while doing 20-30+ over the speed limit even when they have a clear lane to pass you, just because it makes these people smile to intimidate others on the roadway and threaten others with imminent physical harm and death.
I’m not sure who should get to decide the definition of a “normal” car. You? I don’t really agree that there is some universal, canonical “normal” size of a car. In many places I’ve lived, pick up trucks and SUVs vastly (10:1) outnumbered coupes and sedans. In these places, an F-250 is the median, normal size for a car. What is special about (for example) a two-door coupe that makes it “normal”?
What the freak is a "brodozer?" I've never seen that term used before and I can't tell what you are really talking about. Are you talking about large 4x4 trucks that are high of the ground (kind of the opposite of what a bulldozer is)? These 4x4s have been around for ages. Nothing new. What is new (in the last ten it so years) are the SUVs and cross overs. These are larger than a sedan, but I wouldn't call them a brodozer or anything else.
This article is a bit backwards - the number of pedestrians walking in front of vehicles is much higher than vehicles being at fault for hitting pedestrians.
We need to reintroduce the concept of pedestrians and cyclists being mindful of where they are... Or put barriers in place to keep pedestrians where they should be (out of the street).
I don't disagree that pedestrians and cyclists need to be careful, but as someone who walks far, far more than they drive, I really regret that cars are king in modern cities. Even in Europe, where cities are often better than their American counterparts, it is very difficult to walk without constant interruptions by roads (in the sense that they cause frequent stopping and waiting for traffic lights as well as the constant noise and choking stench of cars with poor exhaust systems).
I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense.
AFAIK buses and trains are safer than cars for the occupants, and they are a lot better for the environment.
What mostly hinders public transport experience is a chicken-and-egg problem, basically, with more passengers we would have more routes, and more buses/trains on them.
1. This problem is solved. In Amsterdam, the elderly and disabled can get very small, speed-restricted vehicles to use the bike paths.
2. How is a car safer than a train or bus? Definitely agree cars are more convenient given the current design of American cities. But consider if you had a nearby train station with an express line to downtown. By taking the train, you avoid sitting in traffic, get there quicker, don’t have to worry about parking, don’t have to worry about how much alcohol you consume before driving, and help your health by walking a bit more. Of course, few American cities have public transit that good, but that’s because American cities are designed for cars, not because public transit has an inherit problem.
3/4. You’re thinking about this from a car-centric point of view. But that’s totally arbitrary. What actually matters when considering city policies and society? Hunks of metal? No, people matter. The quality of life for people living in the city should be the utmost priority. Why is the person crossing the road? Well, it turns out that you need to walk to places even after you get out of your car. The problem is that humans don’t have a convenient transit option from one side of the street to the other, because cities aren’t designed to promote walking, despite walking being the most space, time, health, and energy efficient transit option for short distances.
Containment is totally irrelevant, imo. Sure, highways must be separate for effective transit. But it’s absolutely impossible to design highways to every single location, especially in extremely location-dense areas. We’ve attempted to do that with the so-called “stroad,” and it has been a massive failure. Those multi-lane roads by strip malls and chain stores are very dangerous for drivers because cars can’t be contained, and that’s without hardly any people walking around. To avoid that, you need to design walkable areas for “destinations,” which completely deprioritize cars.
Also, traffic is irrelevant. The purpose of transit is to allow people to get from A to B. car traffic exists to allow that transit. Forms of transit with large vehicles self-create their own congestion. (Like cars) Some, like buses and trains, can be scheduled to avoid that problem. But individual people walking or biking can saturate a given space with significantly more people per second without creating severe congestion. This is crucial for cities, which is why it’s ridiculous that cars have been prioritized in city centers for so long. It’s such an inefficient transit option for dense areas in basically any way you look at it. It’s not even that good for drivers, since city driving is always dangerous, stressful, and congested.
Keep cars to the highways for medium/long-distance trips. But there are many better options for dense areas, and that’s where big cars killing people is a problem.
When cars usurp a disproportionately large amount of public space for their exclusive use and require far more space-efficient methods of transportation like walking to stay out of that space, cars are the problem.
> I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense.
People have come to believe it because they believed it when cars first came on the scene.
They believed it then because before cars major dense urban areas were not low traffic pedestrian safe areas that got ruined by cars. They were areas full of heavy horse and horse drawn vehicle traffic with pedestrian fatality rates from horse and horse drawn vehicle accidents comparable to modern pedestrian fatality rates from cars in those cities in modern times.
NYC for instance in 1900 actually had a higher pedestrian fatality rate from horse accidents than from car accidents in 2003 [1]. In England and Wales the car rate is a little higher than the horse rate [2]. Here are some accounts of what horse accidents were like [3].
(As noted in the BMJ article, a direct comparison of fatality rates might not be the right comparison because we have much better treatment for injuries nowadays. Many accidents that were fatal back then would be survivable today).
From that BMJ article:
> Motor vehicles were welcomed because they were faster, safer, unlikely to swerve or bolt, better able brake in an emergency, and took up less room: a single large lorry could pull a load that would take several teams of horses and wagons – and do so without producing any dung.
So of course people accepted cars in their city centers. They were a big improvement over what they had before.
> Or put barriers in place to keep pedestrians where they should be (out of the street)
This is probably closer to the rational solution than your previous statement (about "pedestrians and cyclists being mindful of where they are"). With proper road design, cars are moving slow enough near pedestrians so they can stop within time. Separated bike lanes save the lives of cyclists and lead to less traffic on the road.
North America has been designed to the benefit of cars over pedestrians essentially everywhere, to the great detriment of the local population.
The improper road design you tangentially refer to is called a "stroad" and it's been discussed on HN before.[0] In short, highway speeds (like a road) but with numerous stops (like a street), and little to none of the predestrian-related benefits of a street (e.g. places to sit, walk, ride bicycles safely etc.).
I've been struck, or nearly struck by cars several times walking in a "designated area" both in uncontrolled and controlled intersections where I had the right of way. In almost all cases, the driver was either utterly oblivious (my favorite being the cop who was looking for vehicular traffic from the left, and accelerated into me while I was in a crosswalk on his right side) or I was plausibly hidden by their A-pillar.
That you place the lion's share of the blame on pedestrians is specious.
That claim of yours could use some support. As a pedestrian who agrees traffic lights are there for a reason, I increasingly find crossing the street when I have the right of way to be one of the riskiest situations; many drivers like to make a right turn on red (while I am preparing to cross to the right of them) but are so invested in their plan that all their attention is directed to checking for the approach of vehicles from the left.
The sense of entitlement among some drivers just beggars belief. The other day I crossed the street with the pedestrian signal. Beyond the traffic signal (to my right) there were two police cars with lights on blocking one lane to cordon the scene of a recent accident and redirect traffic. While I was crossing a vehicle just casually ran the red light and nearly hit me. When I angrily pointed to the light indicating I had the right of way, they angrily pointed at the police cars, as if their presence somehow superseded the existence of the intervening traffic light.
Capitalism can be a very efficient system, but it also has flaws. We have seen a trend towards larger, more sophisticated and more expensive cars. It simply wouldn't be as profitable for manufacturers to make small, reliable and efficient cars. There's less profit in that.
What exactly is the "flaw" in capitalism here you are insinuating here?
There are plenty of small, cheap, reliable, and efficient cars available, if that's what you want to buy. The Toyota Prius. The Honda Fit. The Tesla Model 3?
Is it a "flaw" in capitalism that some people don't want to buy those? That someone can choose to buy a Chevrolet Suburban instead of any of these options?
The market for automobiles is as competitive as it gets. If a manufacturer is making profits, it's because they're selling what people want to buy.
From my perspective, the only "flaw" here would seem to be that capitalism makes it difficult for you to impose your own preferences on others.
Did you not read TFA? The outcome is not positive for any party. Bigger cars consume more gas, kill more people, etc, and people buy them because they can. That’s a failure of market forces to do the right thing.
The outcome for the buyers of those vehicles is estimated by those buyers to be positive. I don't know if it is or isn't, but it seems at least a little presumptuous to conclude that a third party (you or I) knows more about the buyer's preferences/value function than the buyer themself.
If the outcome were known to be negative for everyone, it would be a lot less common.
Do you think those buyers didn't know they'd get bad gas mileage or us it more likely that they care about other factors more? I hate the cup holder in my car. It pisses me off on a regular basis. I still think buying my car resulted in a net gain for me.
I think they fooled themselves into believing that low gas prices were a norm and that filling up a huge tank shouldn't be that expensive. I don't remember the details exactly because it didn't affect me, but I'm thinking back to a similar thing ~15 years ago where Hummers got super popular due to a combination of aesthetics and favorable tax treatment, but then the price of gas shot up following some reversal in the Middle East and lots of people decided the total cost of ownership wasn't that great after all.
I'd argue that the buyers are getting a free ride by offloading the negative externalities of the purchase to others. So we have to consider the cost of climate change remediation, the cost of accidents etc. A study by the Technical University of Dresden(1) estimated a rough cost to society of €16,000 per new car sold. 40%-60% of that cost was due accidents, the single highest cost category.
The costs will change from society to society, but given the mix of vehicles in the United States and the structure of our health care system I feel confident that A) the accident cost are higher here and B) those costs will be distributed in less equitable fashion.
If you were hit by one of these vehicles and received a life changing injury, even if they paid you the "market rate" for your loss of ability, would you see that as a good outcome? capitilism working?
The price of cyclist deaths, pollution, vehicular/pedestrian inury is not being priced in adequately. Over 90% of these car drivers have no real need for vehicles this large but when te cost to them is small who cares.
But I don't want to buy a vehicle. I want to not be hit by one whose driver doesn't pay attention to their environment because they feel invulnerable. You might respond that I could insulate myself within a similar behemoth, but I like walking and would prefer not to be burdened with the negative externalities of automakers' profit maximization strategies.
Put another way, why should I be imposed upon by others' preferences, in every respect from potential collisions to parking space to street blockages?
With most issues American’s be like, “it is my right to shit in the stream and you can’t stop me with your preference for clean water. Go further up stream if you want clean water.” And pretty soon the whole river is full of shit, or covid, or lead, or CO2, or enormous death vehicles, or whatever, it’s a metaphor.
So yeah, I’d like to force my “preference” of having people cease shitting in the stream. Their actions are not taking place in a vacuum and they’re affecting other people negatively.
What does this have to do with capitalism at all? The idea that im allowed to own and exchange money means big cars bad?
Given that there are what maybe 1 or 2 command economies on the planet, are they somehow automotive paradises? Im going to say probably not given that cars are a privelege for a small elite class in those places.
Exchanging money is commerce, not capitalism. Capitalism is private (not personal, but private) ownership, usually of the means of production but not always limited to just that.
Anyway, there are numerous well-functioning cities on the planet that are bicycle-centric rather than car-centric.
> Capitalism is private (not personal, but private) ownership
Note that the sense of “private property” used in the definition of capitalism by its critics is not typically used or understood within capitalism except by people who follow the theory of those critics, and that “private property” to people more immersed in the theories supportive of capitalism tends to just mean non-public property.
To clarify a common point of confusion: what you seem to be describing (personal property, market economy) is not unique to capitalism. Market socialism is not command economy and involves the use of markets and money to efficiently allocate resources. However, there's a substantial difference in corporate / business ownership; profits are generally redistributed to the workers and thus reward labor over capital accumulation.
Market socialism is capitalism with a welfare state.
The US has capitalism with a welfare state.
Canada has capitalism with a welfare state.
Norway has capitalism with a welfare state.
Russia has capitalism with a welfare state.
Basically every country on the planet has capitalism with some amount of redistribution.
The socialism / capitalism "debate" is just bickering over the details of how much welfare. But lets be clear, every single one of these countries is capitalist. Every single one of these countries has businesses which can own property and money and make profits. Every single one of these countries has banks which charge interest (yes including muslim countries which have to play financial and verbal gymnastics to hide this fact)
Scandanavian countries and Canada are socialist as much as China and Vietnam are communist (they all arent). None of those places involve businesses which are required to distribute any sizable amounts of profits to workers. You are arguing nuances of how competing utopias (dystopias) maybe could exist because no where actually does those things.
Here go look at the wikipedia entry for socialist countries to see a dumpster fire of failed economies.
These places are THE MOST CAPITALIST because when everyine has nothing, money can get you anything. I bet you could easily buy human organs or child prostitutes in any one of the places on the list so Im going to say they havent created post capitalist utopias.
Rather than bet, you could try traveling to some of these places. I’ve been to Vietnam and Cuba. In neither country could you find anything close to child prostitution (I don’t think it’s possible to observe organ sales in the same way). In part I believe this is due to the relatively flat distribution of income and wealth. Neither nation is as rich as their former colonizer, but they also lack the widespread desperate poverty which would incentivize these transactions. Both states also invested heavily in controlling inflows of capital and currency from tourists and their immigrant diaspora which would permit concentrations of wealth in the hands of someone who would purchase such things.
I did observe rampant child or underage prostitution in Cambodia, Thailand, Haiti, the Dominican Republic of course, if the American judiciary is to be believed, among certain American billionaires, politicians, and members of the British royal family.
Returning to the fundamentals of the debate I’d enjoy seeing some justification For your assertion that market mechanisms are unique to capitalist economies considering they predate them considerably.
Capital concentration and investment is a fundamental economic activity. No moderately complicated society can function without it. Capitalism is just one way to organize this activity. There’s a case to be made for it that relies on empiricism rather than mere distortion and ignorance.
Reliable and efficient are obviously things that capitalism have made better through competition, see the popularity of Japanese cars in the US. Modern cars are objectively more reliable, safer (for the passengers), and more efficient (see the popularity of the Prius) than any time in history, though obviously emissions regulation is helping here as well. Their exterior size and dimensions are another question that obviously seem to need some regulation.
The biggest issue I have is that the headlights of many of these cars, especially lifted trucks, are right at my eye level when I drive a sedan. So at night, I am constantly being blinded by headlights of trucks and SUVs going in the opposite direction. The solution seems to be to buy an SUV myself, but that just feels like I'm contributing to the arms race.
GP talks about heading towards the trucks and SUVs, they will, in that scenario, eventually be behind the trucks, so yes they can do that. But they (and the rest of us) still have to deal with vehicles with bright lights right at eye level for a typical sedan-sized vehicle heading towards us at night.
These are oncoming, so unless you drive with welder's goggles, all you can do is glance away from the road in pain. I know that some hi/lo-beams now use LCDs to shape the beam, what I want is a whole windshield covered with them to selectively blot out just the searing headlights.
I think really hard to remove, thick stickers are the solution to super bright and/or eye level lights like that. Or hammers. Seriously, wtf is wrong with manufacturers. We need safety regulations that rein in headlights, it's becoming ridiculous.
I drive a TRD Tacoma. Which is a bit lifted over a standard. I still get blinded by oncoming lights.
Most often it’s those super white LEDs even on cars noticeably lower than mine (ie: SUVs. ).
I put LED lamps in my truck because my headlights are missing a mount point (the bottom exterior bracket was shipped non functional) and the vibration had me going through a ton of head lamps as the filaments shook loose.
I noticed the following
1. I immediately was constantly flashed by others as if my brights were on and the only difference was the bulb color temp.
2. I adjusted my headlamps down to basically the legal (and my comfort) limit as I do a fair amount of driving on back/country roads with deer crossings. This cut down those flashing me about 75% but I still get it here and there.
I cannot find LED lamps in 5000 k color. They are all 6500 k. I’m are fairly sure moving back to a 5000k lamp color would fix the issue for most.
> I cannot find LED lamps in 5000 k color. They are all 6500 k. I’m are fairly sure moving back to a 5000k lamp color would fix the issue for most.
The temperature isn't the issue, it's the brightness and incorrect angle. When 99% of consumers simply shove a LED into where the Halogen bulb was, not only is it 3x brighter as a result of LEDs being more efficient, it is another 3x brighter, because the diffuser was never designed for a LED-like light source.
I personally still drive with old halogen lights. Whenever a more recently manufactured vehicle comes up behind me, their lights usually completely flood the road, to the point that I'm not even sure I have my headlights on.
They could be 50 feet behind me, and their lights are BRIGHTER than both of my lights. This is insane. I'm not sure why this isn't being legislated out of existence ASAP. I guess I'll have to start wearing sunglasses for nighttime driving.
Mine stayed at the same angle (I checked it at install and even adjusted it based on oncoming driver feedback)
I THINK I looked up the lumens of the lights I had previously used and bought the same/most similar I could find. It was definitely one of those things I spent at least some time researching. I actually returned the first set I ordered and got a different set.
And I’m not one of those savages that runs my fog lamps 24/7 either.
So that left me at the temp being the main difference maker as to why it was blowing people out. At least to my estimation. And like I said, I’ve seen new SUVs and even cars that blew me out and my truck does sit on the higher side I would estimate (it’s stock, but the suspension is designed with clearance for light off-road duty)
The issue is that the LEDs are concentrated in a slightly different area of the housing than a filament on an incandescent bulb, so the rays are not all reflected as expected when an LED bulb is installed.
You might’ve thought you angled them correctly but leds literally don’t emit light in the same way and the “bulbs” are never the exact same shape. This creates hotspots and light scattering in directions that aren’t intended. No amount of “aiming”/leveling the headlights will fix that.
The housing for many halogen based car lights is very specific. It’s completely designed around a specific light bulb and doesn’t have as much tolerance as you might think.
I was told that the headlight adjustment in some large vehicles are meant to accomodate for weight (2 people in front vs 5 people in vehicle), but it seems that most people simply adjust this as high as it goes because they can see further. Even in Australia, which doesn’t have quite as much of a large-car problem, it’s becoming incredibly difficult to drive on the highway at night in a small car due to incredibly bright lights from behind.
What a coincidence. Just yesterday on a perfectly well lit road I was constantly blinded by headlights from a distant oncoming car. The headlights tuned down on approach, but long before that they were too bright. I wonder if they were set on "automatic", in which case the regulators must tune the requirements for that automatic behavior to make it less aggressive (car manufacturers have no incentive to do that on their own).
I don't think either momentum or kinetic energy are very good measures here.
Consider getting hit in the head with a fastball pitched by a major league baseball pitcher. A baseball weighs ~0.145 kg, and a fastball might be going 45 m/s.
That gives a momentum of 6.5 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 146.8 J, and a serious possibly life threatening injury.
Now consider getting hit by a fully loaded B-52 (220000 kg) being towed at 0.5 m/s.
That has a momentum of 110000 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 27500 J. That's ~17000 times the momentum of the baseball and ~190 times the kinetic energy, but all it will do is knock you over. (You might subsequently get run over by it, which would do a lot damage, but that injury will be from neither the momentum nor the kinetic energy).
Kinetic energy is a good measure for a baseball, because essentially all of the kinetic energy is being transferred from the small object to you.
Kinetic energy is not a good measure for a car or B-52, as after the collision the large object has essentially the same kinetic energy, and a very small fraction has been transferred to you.
A bicycle is more toward the small object side, as a pedestrian is going to absorb a good fraction of the kinetic energy of the rider, which is much larger than the kinetic energy of the bicycle itself.
It's legal to buy them, but you can't manufacture/sell them like you used to.
For small cars (compacts, sedans, coupes), the one thing I've noticed is that they seem to have much less window space than they used to. The reason for this, I've been told, is that there's a minimum height which the top of the door frame now has to reach. In older small cars, I remember being able to comfortably sit with my arm resting on the window sill. Modern cars, my arm has to be at an uncomfortable angle to even attempt to do so. Last time I was car shopping, I had a couple people mention that it was because of a safety regulation.
Which is fine, passenger safety is a nice thing, but there then is the unintended consequence of less overall visibility when driving.
My parents had a Saturn SL2 when I was a child. The car had amazing visibility, huge windows. It felt like driving in a bubble. When I compare that to newer cars, the visibility is much lower because of the smaller windows, maybe larger vertical support beams between the front and back seats... I assume that why they started having to include back-up cameras. You just can't see as much in a modern car as you could in an older one.
I am so sick of car culture. One good part of covid was seeing all the pointless car driving significantly reduced.
The usual arguments I see here on HN which are pro cars are "what about the children/disabled/elderly". Completely nonsense pro car argument. An efficient, humane public transport system that is well connected, gets you to where you want to go, well funded and maintained would probably be better for a majority of the people in these groups anyway. Im not even advocating for removal of cars, but Im sure the majority of the population could easily reduce dependence.
As for the "freedom" argument. Sitting in some box confined to miles of endless tarmac with countless rules, regulations, taxes, insurance doesn't seem free at all.
Sure, I like the ability to go out into the country side to go for a trail run, but again that is not the majority of my trips.
The vast majority of trips in a city could probably easily be replaced by public transport for a lot of people. It's just laziness and a deeply embedded car culture. Looking at pictures of American cities with enormous parking lots horrifies me.
I think "car culture" is a bit too broad. I don't have as much of a problem with car enthusiasts, more so our country's continuous commitment to car infrastructure without supporting other options.
I'm actually a huge car enthusiast, I love them. I don't own one though, nor do I drive much at all. But I think there is a difference between being passionate about cars, and forcing that passion to require people to use cars for nearly all transportation.
Totally agree with your other points, although the US has a lot of work to start incentivizing other modes of transportation.
Yes, you can appreciate the technology and the engineering involved. My comment and issue is towards the general mass adoption, car focused infrastructure. I don't want them eliminated entirely, they are still useful, certain people do have use cases. But I am sure for the vast majority of people their dependence could be quite reduced by supporting alternatives. There are plenty of disabled people that can't drive, and plenty of old people that can still ride a bike. I just see these arguments come up every time on HN and they are too focused on specifics.
I like the idea of public transit in theory, but if they want me to wear a face mask just to ride the bus then forget it. I'll drive my big car instead and be comfortable.
The taxes and insurance on my cars aren't very high. And the rules and regulations don't bother me a bit.
Why would you not wear a mask during a global pandemic in such close proximity to others and such a poorly ventilated space as a bus or train? I can never understand why people treat mask wearing as such an unreasonable burden, and I've yet to hear someone explain their reluctance in terms that don't involve an almost depraved indifference toward exposing others to a potentially deadly pathogen.
But we don't have an efficient, humane public transport system. And it will take decades to build something even closer.
Even Europe didn't really have an efficient humane transport system that goes everywhere.
Sitting in a small box that can go almost anywhere you want, even with tons of rules, offers much more freedom than sitting in a slightly larger box that has even more rules and didn't go very many places.
I have also experienced this buying behavior first hand when a colleagues spouse had an avoidable accident with the kid on board. The thought was - My partner cannot drive, so I need to buy a bigger car so that they dont endanger my kid.
The US needs regulation and more driving training to protect the other traffic participants. While we are at it also safer bike lanes and walk ways and crossings.
> My partner cannot drive, so I need to buy a bigger car so that they dont endanger my kid.
I've seen this same logic from many people who have asked me for my advice about vehicle purchases. The thing is, the evidence doesn't support the conclusion that larger/heavier vehicles are safer. In fact, it's just the opposite.
We really need stricter licensing requirements for driving in the US. Compare the way people in Germany drive to the way people in the US drive on average, and it's night and day. Most Americans drive aggressively, without regard for others, with little attention being paid, looking just barely in front of their vehicle and never their complete surroundings, and without even basic understanding of vehicle dynamics or roadway rules and etiquette. I daily see drivers, especially in larger vehicles, incapable of even maintaining lane presence while going straight down a highway, which is like remedial driving 020 skill levels. Most American drivers aren't even at 101 level.
Woah, is that an Oldsmobile Alero in the background? I had a coupe as a kid and boy was that car a piece of shit. The same components failed consistently.
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[ 7.6 ms ] story [ 1780 ms ] threadNot only are these vehicles massively more dangerous to pedestrians and people on two-wheel vehicles, but they're also more stressful and dangerous for anyone driving a normal car on the road, because you can't see through them, they block ahead. When multiple normal cars are in a line on a highway, you can usually see beyond the cars in front partially by seeing through their rear window and windshield, but when all you can see is a solid aluminum tailgate, the pumpkin for the rear differential, and a hanging pair of truck nuts, it means you cannot plan ahead and react as quickly as possible to changing road conditions ahead.
Nothing is quite as disturbing to me as a conscientious driver as being behind a "brodozer" where I can't see anything ahead of me or having one with an unnecessary cattle/bull bar right behind me, essentially threatening me with certain death as their unnecessary monument to their small penis would roll right over the top of my normal car crushing me if we were to be in an "accident". These vehicles violate existing regulations in nearly every state in the US, yet seem to be epidemic on American highways and not disappearing any time soon.
Always. It's always how everyone is in danger. Against mtf in female sports? You're causing violence to trans people. Use a gas powered blower to blow the leaves from the 400 trees on your property? You're killing the planet and everyone on it. Vote republican? You want fascism and the fall of democracy. Everything is always exaggerated to excuse a total lack of civility and then the lack of civility makes solving the problem impossible.
bc no one can be the bigger person, the culture divide grows bigger and problems become harder to solve bc the solution requires consensus in our democracy.
Just a reminder - even though you're probably right, in some sense, every time you do this, reasonable public debate gets another nail in the coffin.
Anyone can sign a dotted line and struggle to make payments.
First off, I'm not a liberal. Cut a liberal and a fascist bleeds.
Second off, hot take but it's fine to have different policies for different parts of the country.
Third, literally these are not problems anywhere else in the world. The "working class culture", which I suspect is your heavily American-bastardized version of it works fine in plenty of the rest of the world without cars the sizes of a building.
Now, maybe focus on these issues one at a time and lead a proper discussion.
Finally, as a believer in anarchism, I don't care about consensus. Don't fuck with my life and I won't fuck with yours. Ask me for help, and I will do literally anything I can to help. But don't try to legislate or regulate your way through controlling the behavior of others. This is something the "American both sides" do.
Absolutely, and every inch of it fully justified. I stand by my comments, in their entirety, without any desire to mitigate my spite for those who go out of their way to make the world a worse place and get off on threatening physical harm and intimidating other people. That is anti-social, nihilistic, and unacceptable behavior and I have every intent and desire to incur as much shame and derision in the direction of people who engage in such behavior as is possible.
People who modify their trucks into "brodozers" are people who understand that a vehicle is a weapon, and then choose to make it /more dangerous/ and /more intimidating/, intentionally, at great expense, to appease their own ego and sociopathy. I have no respect whatsoever for that type of behavior and it has no place on public roadways or in polite society.
The end result is that night-driving is incredibly dangerous, because the brightness is spiraling out of control. Instead of increased visibility, you are forced to squint from the brightness of incoming traffic.
I try to avoid night-time driving as a result of this like the plague. It is simply too dangerous for me (I've been in 3 near-accidents in 2021, despite driving the least I've ever driven in a year).
By the way, they are crazy comfortable - as a tall guy, I’m never squatting and folding my ass into a little Eurocar again.
Is this sarcastic?
I write this wall of text to say "truck bad because (our conception of what is toxic) masculinity bad" isn't necessarily helpful. Maybe you only meant to mention the safety, but you could have said all the things you've said about safety without making any specific reference to gender (or at least doing so with a reminder to continue to check the demographics). When we talk about these things and genderize them without referencing the true demographics, we open things up for the wrong conversation. The narrative can shift to "less men are driving trucks" (when really it's less men are driving trucks as a percentage of total truck drivers) after Ford rebrands to a gender-inclusive image for trucks. I think it's just more important to focus on the safety aspect and try to turn it from "men driving trucks aggresively" to "less people driving unsafe trucks". Marketing would love for you to just make this an "irresponsible men" thing so they can keep selling unsafe vehicles. This is not to say that men aren't aggressive drivers or don't get into more accidents, just that I want to make that conclusion on my own and not have marketing departments deflect the true cause of these safety issues.
[0]: https://media.ford.com/content/dam/fordmedia/North%20America...
I live in Texas, in a working class community, and I don't denigrate "brodozers" because of the politics, gender, or other demographics of this community or typical truck owners. I denigrate them because I'm someone who loves cars (and trucks) and I understand when a modification is reasonable, safe, and necessary and when it is not. If you are modifying your truck specifically to get into off-roading hobbies, go for it, but if you are putting a lift-kit, 36" tires, oversized wheels, and a reinforced bumper on your truck to primarily go down the highway where you are massively endangering everyone else by doing so, that is not okay.
The amount of badly done and unnecessary lifts where the owners don't even bother to re-aim their headlights afterwards are epidemic in Texas, but they're found all over the US. They're also generally illegal because they violate bumper height restrictions. This behavior is already against the law, but that law is not really enforced. At no point do I go "truck bad because toxic masculinity", you are assuming a lot of things about my personal philosophy that are not only not in evidence, but are false. This is a safety issue, I don't give a crap who the owner of the vehicle voted for, what is between their legs, their general temperament and character, or what color their hair is. When you drive a vehicle on public highways, you need to ensure that it is safe to operate.
I despise "brodozers" for the same reason I despise stance cars. They're intentionally unsafe, anti-social, nihilistic shitboxes that get people killed needlessly. They're also a huge waste of money. There is no world in which it is reasonable or safe for people to be driving around monster trucks that can literally drive over a normal car on public roads. It's deranged.
As to the point of demographics, the /majority/ of trucks purchased are used for work and are left unmodified as they rolled off the lot. Those who are modifying their trucks with lift kits are vastly predominantly men, and they're marketed to specifically on how these modifications enhance the appearance of their masculinity, with much of the same imagery and word choices you see in marketing of motorcycles. I don't care if 90% of truck owners are women, these are not the truck owners going out and putting an 8" lift on their 3/4 ton pickup, adding in stacks with clappers so they can roll coal "in style", a hoop with a lightbar, and a steel reinforced bumper guard on the front. The entire marketing and /point/ of these modifications is to make the vehicle appear more menacing and literally use its oversized physical presence to intimidate and dominate other people on the public roadways. If you spend more than a week driving in any major Texas city or on any interstate highways here you'll no doubt get tailgated by a brodozer with a huge lift, intentionally aiming their lights (and possibly turning their lightbar on) behind you at night while doing 20-30+ over the speed limit even when they have a clear lane to pass you, just because it makes these people smile to intimidate others on the roadway and threaten others with imminent physical harm and death.
The definition is something that comes from the NHTSA and the legal statutes of each state.
Either way, there's nothing wrong with trying to make cars safer for pedestrians too.
I do think cars have their place, but I don't understand how people have come to believe that cars in, say, Manhattan or the center of Paris, make a lot of sense.
Cars are safer and more convenient than any public transportation for most of the world.
Humans interrupt traffic in my city far more than cars do.
Cars are easily contained, humans are not therefore humans are the actual problem.
What mostly hinders public transport experience is a chicken-and-egg problem, basically, with more passengers we would have more routes, and more buses/trains on them.
Buses and Trains in my city are dangerous and are rarely on time.
2. How is a car safer than a train or bus? Definitely agree cars are more convenient given the current design of American cities. But consider if you had a nearby train station with an express line to downtown. By taking the train, you avoid sitting in traffic, get there quicker, don’t have to worry about parking, don’t have to worry about how much alcohol you consume before driving, and help your health by walking a bit more. Of course, few American cities have public transit that good, but that’s because American cities are designed for cars, not because public transit has an inherit problem.
3/4. You’re thinking about this from a car-centric point of view. But that’s totally arbitrary. What actually matters when considering city policies and society? Hunks of metal? No, people matter. The quality of life for people living in the city should be the utmost priority. Why is the person crossing the road? Well, it turns out that you need to walk to places even after you get out of your car. The problem is that humans don’t have a convenient transit option from one side of the street to the other, because cities aren’t designed to promote walking, despite walking being the most space, time, health, and energy efficient transit option for short distances.
Containment is totally irrelevant, imo. Sure, highways must be separate for effective transit. But it’s absolutely impossible to design highways to every single location, especially in extremely location-dense areas. We’ve attempted to do that with the so-called “stroad,” and it has been a massive failure. Those multi-lane roads by strip malls and chain stores are very dangerous for drivers because cars can’t be contained, and that’s without hardly any people walking around. To avoid that, you need to design walkable areas for “destinations,” which completely deprioritize cars.
Also, traffic is irrelevant. The purpose of transit is to allow people to get from A to B. car traffic exists to allow that transit. Forms of transit with large vehicles self-create their own congestion. (Like cars) Some, like buses and trains, can be scheduled to avoid that problem. But individual people walking or biking can saturate a given space with significantly more people per second without creating severe congestion. This is crucial for cities, which is why it’s ridiculous that cars have been prioritized in city centers for so long. It’s such an inefficient transit option for dense areas in basically any way you look at it. It’s not even that good for drivers, since city driving is always dangerous, stressful, and congested.
Keep cars to the highways for medium/long-distance trips. But there are many better options for dense areas, and that’s where big cars killing people is a problem.
There is no legitimate comparason between the two.
When people create the problem by obliviously walking out into the street or if they're on a bicycle being reckless - cars are not the problem.
People have come to believe it because they believed it when cars first came on the scene.
They believed it then because before cars major dense urban areas were not low traffic pedestrian safe areas that got ruined by cars. They were areas full of heavy horse and horse drawn vehicle traffic with pedestrian fatality rates from horse and horse drawn vehicle accidents comparable to modern pedestrian fatality rates from cars in those cities in modern times.
NYC for instance in 1900 actually had a higher pedestrian fatality rate from horse accidents than from car accidents in 2003 [1]. In England and Wales the car rate is a little higher than the horse rate [2]. Here are some accounts of what horse accidents were like [3].
(As noted in the BMJ article, a direct comparison of fatality rates might not be the right comparison because we have much better treatment for injuries nowadays. Many accidents that were fatal back then would be survivable today).
From that BMJ article:
> Motor vehicles were welcomed because they were faster, safer, unlikely to swerve or bolt, better able brake in an emergency, and took up less room: a single large lorry could pull a load that would take several teams of horses and wagons – and do so without producing any dung.
So of course people accepted cars in their city centers. They were a big improvement over what they had before.
[1] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p...
[2] https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horse...
[3] https://www.seacoastonline.com/story/news/local/exeter-news-...
This is probably closer to the rational solution than your previous statement (about "pedestrians and cyclists being mindful of where they are"). With proper road design, cars are moving slow enough near pedestrians so they can stop within time. Separated bike lanes save the lives of cyclists and lead to less traffic on the road.
North America has been designed to the benefit of cars over pedestrians essentially everywhere, to the great detriment of the local population.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29293456
They're 95% of the problem in my city (San Francisco).
If you walk in the designated areas there is no way you'd be legally confined anywhere.
That you place the lion's share of the blame on pedestrians is specious.
The sense of entitlement among some drivers just beggars belief. The other day I crossed the street with the pedestrian signal. Beyond the traffic signal (to my right) there were two police cars with lights on blocking one lane to cordon the scene of a recent accident and redirect traffic. While I was crossing a vehicle just casually ran the red light and nearly hit me. When I angrily pointed to the light indicating I had the right of way, they angrily pointed at the police cars, as if their presence somehow superseded the existence of the intervening traffic light.
There are plenty of small, cheap, reliable, and efficient cars available, if that's what you want to buy. The Toyota Prius. The Honda Fit. The Tesla Model 3?
Is it a "flaw" in capitalism that some people don't want to buy those? That someone can choose to buy a Chevrolet Suburban instead of any of these options?
The market for automobiles is as competitive as it gets. If a manufacturer is making profits, it's because they're selling what people want to buy.
From my perspective, the only "flaw" here would seem to be that capitalism makes it difficult for you to impose your own preferences on others.
The outcome for the buyers of those vehicles is estimated by those buyers to be positive. I don't know if it is or isn't, but it seems at least a little presumptuous to conclude that a third party (you or I) knows more about the buyer's preferences/value function than the buyer themself.
If the outcome were known to be negative for everyone, it would be a lot less common.
The costs will change from society to society, but given the mix of vehicles in the United States and the structure of our health care system I feel confident that A) the accident cost are higher here and B) those costs will be distributed in less equitable fashion.
1 https://stopclimatechange.net/fileadmin/content/documents/mo...
Put another way, why should I be imposed upon by others' preferences, in every respect from potential collisions to parking space to street blockages?
So yeah, I’d like to force my “preference” of having people cease shitting in the stream. Their actions are not taking place in a vacuum and they’re affecting other people negatively.
Given that there are what maybe 1 or 2 command economies on the planet, are they somehow automotive paradises? Im going to say probably not given that cars are a privelege for a small elite class in those places.
Anyway, there are numerous well-functioning cities on the planet that are bicycle-centric rather than car-centric.
Note that the sense of “private property” used in the definition of capitalism by its critics is not typically used or understood within capitalism except by people who follow the theory of those critics, and that “private property” to people more immersed in the theories supportive of capitalism tends to just mean non-public property.
The US has capitalism with a welfare state.
Canada has capitalism with a welfare state.
Norway has capitalism with a welfare state.
Russia has capitalism with a welfare state.
Basically every country on the planet has capitalism with some amount of redistribution.
The socialism / capitalism "debate" is just bickering over the details of how much welfare. But lets be clear, every single one of these countries is capitalist. Every single one of these countries has businesses which can own property and money and make profits. Every single one of these countries has banks which charge interest (yes including muslim countries which have to play financial and verbal gymnastics to hide this fact)
Scandanavian countries and Canada are socialist as much as China and Vietnam are communist (they all arent). None of those places involve businesses which are required to distribute any sizable amounts of profits to workers. You are arguing nuances of how competing utopias (dystopias) maybe could exist because no where actually does those things.
Here go look at the wikipedia entry for socialist countries to see a dumpster fire of failed economies.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_socialist_states#Mar...
These places are THE MOST CAPITALIST because when everyine has nothing, money can get you anything. I bet you could easily buy human organs or child prostitutes in any one of the places on the list so Im going to say they havent created post capitalist utopias.
I did observe rampant child or underage prostitution in Cambodia, Thailand, Haiti, the Dominican Republic of course, if the American judiciary is to be believed, among certain American billionaires, politicians, and members of the British royal family.
Returning to the fundamentals of the debate I’d enjoy seeing some justification For your assertion that market mechanisms are unique to capitalist economies considering they predate them considerably.
Capital concentration and investment is a fundamental economic activity. No moderately complicated society can function without it. Capitalism is just one way to organize this activity. There’s a case to be made for it that relies on empiricism rather than mere distortion and ignorance.
Most often it’s those super white LEDs even on cars noticeably lower than mine (ie: SUVs. ).
I put LED lamps in my truck because my headlights are missing a mount point (the bottom exterior bracket was shipped non functional) and the vibration had me going through a ton of head lamps as the filaments shook loose.
I noticed the following
1. I immediately was constantly flashed by others as if my brights were on and the only difference was the bulb color temp.
2. I adjusted my headlamps down to basically the legal (and my comfort) limit as I do a fair amount of driving on back/country roads with deer crossings. This cut down those flashing me about 75% but I still get it here and there.
I cannot find LED lamps in 5000 k color. They are all 6500 k. I’m are fairly sure moving back to a 5000k lamp color would fix the issue for most.
The temperature isn't the issue, it's the brightness and incorrect angle. When 99% of consumers simply shove a LED into where the Halogen bulb was, not only is it 3x brighter as a result of LEDs being more efficient, it is another 3x brighter, because the diffuser was never designed for a LED-like light source.
I personally still drive with old halogen lights. Whenever a more recently manufactured vehicle comes up behind me, their lights usually completely flood the road, to the point that I'm not even sure I have my headlights on.
They could be 50 feet behind me, and their lights are BRIGHTER than both of my lights. This is insane. I'm not sure why this isn't being legislated out of existence ASAP. I guess I'll have to start wearing sunglasses for nighttime driving.
I THINK I looked up the lumens of the lights I had previously used and bought the same/most similar I could find. It was definitely one of those things I spent at least some time researching. I actually returned the first set I ordered and got a different set.
And I’m not one of those savages that runs my fog lamps 24/7 either.
So that left me at the temp being the main difference maker as to why it was blowing people out. At least to my estimation. And like I said, I’ve seen new SUVs and even cars that blew me out and my truck does sit on the higher side I would estimate (it’s stock, but the suspension is designed with clearance for light off-road duty)
The housing for many halogen based car lights is very specific. It’s completely designed around a specific light bulb and doesn’t have as much tolerance as you might think.
I was told that the headlight adjustment in some large vehicles are meant to accomodate for weight (2 people in front vs 5 people in vehicle), but it seems that most people simply adjust this as high as it goes because they can see further. Even in Australia, which doesn’t have quite as much of a large-car problem, it’s becoming incredibly difficult to drive on the highway at night in a small car due to incredibly bright lights from behind.
NB: I didn't do the math, so this is probably mildly hyperbolic, but I think it illustrates the point.
Consider getting hit in the head with a fastball pitched by a major league baseball pitcher. A baseball weighs ~0.145 kg, and a fastball might be going 45 m/s.
That gives a momentum of 6.5 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 146.8 J, and a serious possibly life threatening injury.
Now consider getting hit by a fully loaded B-52 (220000 kg) being towed at 0.5 m/s.
That has a momentum of 110000 kg m/s, and a kinetic energy of 27500 J. That's ~17000 times the momentum of the baseball and ~190 times the kinetic energy, but all it will do is knock you over. (You might subsequently get run over by it, which would do a lot damage, but that injury will be from neither the momentum nor the kinetic energy).
Kinetic energy is not a good measure for a car or B-52, as after the collision the large object has essentially the same kinetic energy, and a very small fraction has been transferred to you.
A bicycle is more toward the small object side, as a pedestrian is going to absorb a good fraction of the kinetic energy of the rider, which is much larger than the kinetic energy of the bicycle itself.
For small cars (compacts, sedans, coupes), the one thing I've noticed is that they seem to have much less window space than they used to. The reason for this, I've been told, is that there's a minimum height which the top of the door frame now has to reach. In older small cars, I remember being able to comfortably sit with my arm resting on the window sill. Modern cars, my arm has to be at an uncomfortable angle to even attempt to do so. Last time I was car shopping, I had a couple people mention that it was because of a safety regulation.
Which is fine, passenger safety is a nice thing, but there then is the unintended consequence of less overall visibility when driving.
My parents had a Saturn SL2 when I was a child. The car had amazing visibility, huge windows. It felt like driving in a bubble. When I compare that to newer cars, the visibility is much lower because of the smaller windows, maybe larger vertical support beams between the front and back seats... I assume that why they started having to include back-up cameras. You just can't see as much in a modern car as you could in an older one.
(Edited a couple things for clarity)
These drivers tend to know how to stay out of dangerous situations and how to react when they do come up.
The usual arguments I see here on HN which are pro cars are "what about the children/disabled/elderly". Completely nonsense pro car argument. An efficient, humane public transport system that is well connected, gets you to where you want to go, well funded and maintained would probably be better for a majority of the people in these groups anyway. Im not even advocating for removal of cars, but Im sure the majority of the population could easily reduce dependence.
As for the "freedom" argument. Sitting in some box confined to miles of endless tarmac with countless rules, regulations, taxes, insurance doesn't seem free at all.
Sure, I like the ability to go out into the country side to go for a trail run, but again that is not the majority of my trips.
The vast majority of trips in a city could probably easily be replaced by public transport for a lot of people. It's just laziness and a deeply embedded car culture. Looking at pictures of American cities with enormous parking lots horrifies me.
I think "car culture" is a bit too broad. I don't have as much of a problem with car enthusiasts, more so our country's continuous commitment to car infrastructure without supporting other options.
I'm actually a huge car enthusiast, I love them. I don't own one though, nor do I drive much at all. But I think there is a difference between being passionate about cars, and forcing that passion to require people to use cars for nearly all transportation.
Totally agree with your other points, although the US has a lot of work to start incentivizing other modes of transportation.
The taxes and insurance on my cars aren't very high. And the rules and regulations don't bother me a bit.
Sitting in a small box that can go almost anywhere you want, even with tons of rules, offers much more freedom than sitting in a slightly larger box that has even more rules and didn't go very many places.
For the people (and there are a lot of them) who live in suburbs and beyond, public transportation is a non-starter.
The US needs regulation and more driving training to protect the other traffic participants. While we are at it also safer bike lanes and walk ways and crossings.
I've seen this same logic from many people who have asked me for my advice about vehicle purchases. The thing is, the evidence doesn't support the conclusion that larger/heavier vehicles are safer. In fact, it's just the opposite.
We really need stricter licensing requirements for driving in the US. Compare the way people in Germany drive to the way people in the US drive on average, and it's night and day. Most Americans drive aggressively, without regard for others, with little attention being paid, looking just barely in front of their vehicle and never their complete surroundings, and without even basic understanding of vehicle dynamics or roadway rules and etiquette. I daily see drivers, especially in larger vehicles, incapable of even maintaining lane presence while going straight down a highway, which is like remedial driving 020 skill levels. Most American drivers aren't even at 101 level.
Woah, is that an Oldsmobile Alero in the background? I had a coupe as a kid and boy was that car a piece of shit. The same components failed consistently.