Indeed. American car-dependency has had the added side effect of making driving miserable for everyone. Because everyone "needs" a car to get around, getting a driver's license is laughably easy, and even the stupidest, worst drivers can easily get one.
In an ideal system, getting a license would require extremely stringent road and written tests, re-administered on a regular basis. However, doing that in the US is a political nonstarter because how can anyone live without a car?
Totally different; a car is fundamentally an expensive luxury item, even if the US tries to justify that everyone should own said expensive luxury item via dumping tons of tax money into car-focused infrastructure. Voting is many things, but you'd be hard-pressed to argue it should an expensive luxury.
> you'd be hard-pressed to argue it should an expensive luxury.
I'm not arguing that at all. I'm just pointing out that _tests_ can have unintended or intended outcomes. Testing and retesting doesn't seem like a viable scalable solution.
The entire point of literacy tests was to prevent POC from voting. They were explicitly designed to be virtually impossible to complete successfully, and white people were exempted from them via "grandfather" clauses: if your grandfather was allowed to vote, so were you.
Driving tests are completely different. Right now some states basically give licenses away at age 14 for a dollar and a handshake. If you're going to let someone operate a 26.000 pound vehicle in public, shouldn't they at the very least demonstrate that they a) understand the traffic laws, and b) are able to operate the vehicle safely?
If you move to a European country, you'll be required to re-take your driver's test, and it isn't without reason. They simply don't trust the USA to do it properly and that's not entirely unfounded.
Have you been to Western Europe lately? Their infrastructure, culture, activities, education, and social values dominate the USA in every way. We have bigger cars, more money, and more guns than them though.
I agree with you that on HN, people see europe with rose-tinted glasses (or rather, only see the bad part of the US, because Europe is pretty cool to live in or to visit, as are the US). But your comment should be left on twitter or reddit, please.
The US have a lot of positive: large empty spaces, some of the best rivers in the world, a really good national park and forest office and interesting trails, a lot of boulders, a lot of different climate, and nice/impressive city centers.
To me, the freedom to strike is a positive for Europe. It says a lot about who own the power in a particular country imho.
The article mentions viewing driving as an expression of freedom. What really ticks me off with that is that it's based in denying freedom to everyone else. As a pedestrian or cyclist you have to make a lot of concessions because laws, either human or of the jungle dictate it. The worst part is, all of that is because of cars. Without notorized vehicles we would literally not need the overwhelming majority of traffic rules, signs and regulations.
>> expression of freedom[...]based in denying freedom to everyone else
> You've just summed up the entire American ethos, sadly.
That summation is just tendentious framing of the concept of tradeoffs. If the situation were changed so "pedestrian[s] or cyclist[s]" don't have to make "concessions" to cars, that could also be framed as and "expression of freedom[...]based in denying freedom to everyone else." And that framing would be less tendentious than the OP's, because in America the pedestrians and cyclists are a vocal minority.
Cyclists especially have a superiority complex. I always get voted down here when I point out that between precipitation, the winter darkness, the cold and age, there aren't many days when very many people can commute by bike. Oh, sure, there are a few great spring days. And there are some strong, hearty folks in their 20s who can cycle through the winter, but for the most part, it's not very practical for many people on many days.
Now electric scooters and eBikes will change the equation a bit, but there are plenty of purists who hate on them too. They seem to feel they're sort of like lite versions of cars.
Literally none of the issues you mention are detriments to commuting safely by bicycle. None. The fact that you got downvoted should perhaps give you pause for reflection.
A more reasonable criticism is the danger to bikes from neeedlessly massive cars and pickup trucks. Or the danger from bike lanes that are not cleared of snow.
I do bike regularly in winter in a fairly cold city (it was -8 C today) and would disagree with this.
The only gear I’ve bought specifically for winter cycling as opposed to the rest of the year are glasses and a headband. I’d probably recommend a balaclava for someone without a beard. I bought fancy biking glasses, but $5 safety glasses would be passable.
Other than that I just wear the clothes fit for wherever I’m going. (Ie jeans, maybe long underwear, a couple layers, and a puffy coat).
The comfort part is subjective and I can’t invalidate your experience of course, but I personally find it at worst comparable to the first five to ten minutes of being in a car on a cold day before the car warms up. And on anything but the coldest days I often find I’m a quite comfortable temperature. Though it’s possible to over/under dress and then be hot or cold during the commute.
Not that people can’t drive in the winter if they want, but it often feels where I am that people just can’t conceive of the idea that biking in winter is a thing anyone would do. But there’s plenty of evidence that some percentage of people will choose to bike in winter if it’s viable (ie there’s good bike infrastructure).
The most uncomfortable part is touching the cold frame without gloves to carry it up into my condo. Because handling of keys with gloves is fumbly. OTOH I can just put them back on for the short while. Just forgotten it sometimes, or thinking, naa, not necessary.
Or the danger to cars and trucks caused by tiny bicycles, as bicyclists tend to have no liability insurance to pay for damages, to which they are frequently the proximate cause by failing to yield right of way.
Consider the following people: (1) a pregnant woman, (2) 60 y.o. with diabetes, (3) 16 y.o. female, (4) a veteran with an amputated leg, (5) an ex-athlete with a bum knee, (6) anyone with a 50 pound package etc.... Now imagine it's mid-January and the boss asks the person to stay a bit later, say, until 7pm. It's a new moon and so it's going to be pitch black by then. There might even be a bit light precipitation or maybe some ice leftover from a storm earlier in the week. Would you say that the issues I mentioned shouldn't matter to any of these people? Or would you still say that they should suck it up and saddle up because only bike haters believe all of that stuff about ice or crime or darkness?
Face it: many people don't want to commute by bike because they have good reasons to believe the ride will be dangerous and maybe even deadly.
We weren't all raised so badly; Many places here not that long ago, good manners and basic respect were important lessons to learn early in life, but that all seems to have gone away in more recent years. :(
Without motorized vehicles we would also lose a lot of the degrees of freedom that make modern life as comfortable as it is. No one is going back to delivering stock to city stores via horse and carriage - and you might not like it if they did, seeing as horses produce emissions of their own that aren't especially pleasant to scrape off a shoe or have sprayed up off the road by a bike tire.
Now, the idea of constraining motor vehicles, that I'm all in favor of, as a sometime cyclist and pedestrian who hates needing to own a car at all. Carless CBDs. Streets bollarded off. Time-of-day restrictions. Mass transit that actually works - yes, yes, yes, and please-for-the-love-of-God.
Argue that motor vehicles should serve where they suit best and not be allowed to pose a hazard otherwise. Don't argue that motor vehicles should cease to exist entirely - they won't, but your audience will.
> Don't argue that motor vehicles should cease to exist entirely - they won't, but your audience will.
The argument is against individual motor vehicles at current sizes, because they are simply incompatible with this goal:
> Mass transit that actually works - yes, yes, yes, and please-for-the-love-of-God.
You simply cannot design an environment to where everyone can have their own F150 and still have things be within walking/cycling distance and still have public transit operating at sufficient frequency to make it “work”.
I don't believe I suggested otherwise. My point is that if that's the argument, as I agree it should be, then make that argument - make that argument, with clarity and precision.
You're already well outside the received precepts of the culture you seek to improve, which means you are necessarily beginning under a cloud of suspicion and doubt. Take it from a gay man old enough to remember the 80s: You help yourself not at all by doing anything to further complicate your delivery of the message.
Or that they're a jerk? Can I drive my car on the sidewalk if the road isn't meeting my needs? It's exactly this self centric view that makes so many people not like cyclists.
That's exactly what is happening, though. See [0] for example, many drivers treat cycle lanes as a parking zone. And cars driving down dedicated bike lanes because they feel like it aren't exactly hard to find either.[1]
Your second link is not an example of purposeful bad driving. It's an example of terrible design. And more generally, a demonstration of how well-intended bicycle infrastructure can actually make things _more_ dangerous for bicyclists.
I've ridden thousands of miles, and the only bit of infrastructure that ever helped was wide shoulders, preferably with a bright white line demarcating.
> Or that they're a jerk? Can I drive my car on the sidewalk if the road isn't meeting my needs? It's exactly this self centric view that makes so many people not like cyclists.
Yes self centric view that staying alive is preferable to being dead. If only they were more altruistic and gave their lives, more people would like them. But no, their selfish desire to stay alive yet again destroyed everything.
As detail, I live in one of the most bike-friendly cities in the world. Lots of infrastructure, markings and signals set up to favor cyclists, and so on. Before moving here, I would have thought that that would lead to an excellent and safe environment for all.
It's not. Bicyclists regularly terrorize pedestrians on sidewalks, even when there are excellent purpose-built bike paths mere meters away. At intersections, they regularly flip back and forth between being "like bicycles" and "like pedestrians", making them dangerously unpredictable. They pound on cars when they feel they should have the right of way (they don't). Even when they are in the bike lane, a quarter of the time they're riding against the flow of traffic. No lights, no reflectors, dressed in black at night. The most bicycle-sympathetic drivers struggle to avoid hitting these knuckleheads.
If there were anything like 6k dead pedestrians who got run down by cyclists every year, this would be good commentary. Perversely, there are many perceived "near-collisions" between bikes and peds, while there generally aren't these between cars and peds. Cars generally just kill their victim without missing. This leads to an overabundance of those who live to say that a bicyclist almost killed them once. As a Finnish study concludes, "Near accidents appear to occur often, while actual collisions are rare."
You know, I've never felt the urge to bike down the sidewalk, and I don't think I ever see anyone else do so.
But that's probably because my area has decent cycling infrastructure, so that means I have a place to cycle without fearing for my life besides the sidewalk.
I live in a city where it’s legal and it’s never bothered me. People don’t ride fast on the sidewalk. It’s mostly old people who just wouldn’t be riding at all if it wasn’t legal.
Then you've never lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, where drivers seems to consider bikers (even in bike lanes) as targets to harass and scare off the road (and even to throw 7-11 full "Big Gulp"s at), and crosswalks as "pedestrian target zones"…
And that is why when I'm forced to ride on the sidewalk due to lack of any bike lanes or other safety related issues (ridiculously dangerous car / truck drivers in some areas where I've lived, etc) I always go out of my way to give pedestrians all the right of way and respect possible, even to the point of getting off my bike and walking it when there's no other available way to respect the pedestrians and allow them to feel safe walking on the sidewalk. In my mind, the sidewalks are for pedestrians first and foremost, so I make whatever necessary efforts to give them their space and not put them at risk. Is only fair…
The article has linked large cars to increased fatalities without even offering an idea as to how they're related. Why are larger cars more fatal? Is it the hood being higher off the ground? Increased mass leading to lower maneuverability?
They are taller and heavier. I don't know about the studies or numbers, but just imagine that you are walking, biking, or driving a small car, and you are hit by a small car vs. a truck or SUV. The location and force of impact is very different in all those cases.
E = mc^2. The bigger the vehicle the more mass the more force and time needed to come to a safe stop. More force on impact to the driver and pedestrians.
Big does not have to mean slow to stop; you just have bigger brakes (and since they're power, the force doesn't matter).
Once the vehicle::pedestrian mass is high enough, a higher ratio won't change the kinematics much. And how are you thinking that a driver of a big vehicle is more at risk than that of a small one?
A big factor is the height of the hood. When a smaller car hits a pedestrian, the hood is usually at or slightly under the pedestrian's center of mass, so the person will often roll up onto the hood. In a bigger car the hood is substantially above the center of mass so that a person cannot roll up --- they end up being forced under the car, which is much more dangerous.
The biggest thing is that safety standards vary for what the congress defines as a “truck” vs a “car”.
Trucks are moneymakers and the big 3 automakers historically lobby hard to stop changes. Change = lost margin. Up until the 90s, full size pickups had saddle tanks that were likely to explode in a side collision, for example. Doors didn’t require crash safety reinforcement, etc.
A lot of that has been addressed by regulators, but the hood height thing has not. Car hoods are designed to catch and roll pedestrians. A low speed hit will hurt and probably result in injury. With a newer pickup truck, some of which require cameras to even see the road in front, you get knocked down, crack your head on the pavement, and likely get run over.
> Car hoods are designed to catch and roll pedestrians
Citation? I know that's more likely with a car than with a big truck, but is that a conscious design choice, or just that a low driver position requires a low hood to see anything at all?
I’ve always found it fascinating that most (white) Americans I know seemingly manage to find crazy (often highly aspirational) justifications for owning 20mpg giant cars: the alternatives exist, they’re great, and yet a lot of people decide to drive monster SUVs and trucks even though they’re objectively worse to drive.
It’s obviously the same people who are always in debt and never understand why, despite their incomes being 2-3x what’d they earn in any other country, they never seen to be saving any money.
I love these « benefits » because they are all incredibly shallow. Trucks are better in snow, assuming the snow isn’t cleared where you are. For the vast majority of the urban population, ground clearance isn’t an issue at all.
The flip side of increased interior room is exterior width, poor site lines, increased weight, increased energy waste, increased danger to pedestrians, increased road wear…
Yeah, well, I'm not going to carry $10K worth of tools and a couple of ladders on a bicycle. Or on the bus. Yes that's my work truck. Yes those tools get used every day.
Never seen a pick-up in New York or San Francisco. They're everywhere in Wyoming. No, you don't need it around town. But if you're hauling a snowmobile or going off road, even only a few times a year, the trade-off can be worth it.
I don't drive a truck. But calling a subjective preference "objectively worse" is reductive.
I'm suggesting you have a total lack of understanding why trucks can be a necessity and not merely "the exception." I realize a lot of folks on HN work coding or other computer/technology focused jobs. There are many of us, however, who are tasked with keeping reality relatively functional. Trucks aren't optional for us. Neither are they compensation for inadequate manhood. They're tools. My tool chain is Ford and Milwaukee M12. What's yours?
You could probably get a Mercedes-Benz Vito, or a similar vehicle. It has even more storage space, and it is more convenient to access than a truck bed.
Sure, a truck might be the best vehicle for your use case. It's probably the best vehicle for farmers, for example. But you could do all that with a 1970'd Ford F-150 just fine. Why does the 2023 F-150 have to be so much bigger, while not even gaining a lot cargo space?
I have 3 kids. The minivan and SUV are by far the best options for my family. And i would make the same argument for 2 kids.
When I had to commute more and the kids were little, I had a super efficient car. Now I have the SUV, and the delta is probably 100 gallons of gas annually.
Personally, I’d rather have a station wagon, but they don’t make them anymore. My next car in a few years will be an electric non-Tesla minivan/crossover vehicle.
What justification is there for SUV for the 99% of people who never drive on a trail?
Minivan is more spacious and fuel efficient and can easily sit 8 adults. The only answer I have received for why someone is buying an SUV rather than minivan is for vanity.
I agree. You'll get a bunch of anecdotal replies going on about how their particular use case blah de blah, but the majority of people I know with these huge cars have absolutely no need for them. I've got 3 kids and a bunch of animals, pick up a bale of hay or straw regularly, tow a trailer occasionally for garden landscaping. And we've got a 5 door saloon.
When we planned a long trip we thought maybe a larger car would be useful so we test drove a bunch of SUV things. They don't even give you extra space. The room across the backseats is actually less, and the boot space is more vertical. I'd rather have the better drive.
Cars are better to drive on a nice dry road. They suck in unplowed snow or in the flood, pretty bad even in just a heavy rain. Many places where people live in the US get either or all of the above. Significant number of people die stuck in such conditions in a car[1]. But even though the chances to die are pretty low, an inconvenience of having no means of transportation whenever there are few inches of snow on the road or having to flatbed your superior ride after being caught in a flash flood pushes many people towards objectively more reliable vehicles.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that is that this wildly dangerous transportation system is also so incredibly expensive.
Compared to the thousands required to buy into using the car based transportation system, not to mention the ever increasing price of gas, the expense of using a bicycle for transportation is practically nil.
Unfortunately, as this article shows, cars are so incredibly dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, that unless you're fortunate enough to live in a city where leaders have decided the the investment of safe protected cycling lanes is well worth it, cycling is rarely a safe and viable option.
The article makes a point of blaming "individualism" (apparently the author thinks we'd be safer if we could all just embrace "the collective good" and buy Priuses) but many of these problems can be traced to government policy, or lack thereof. The NHTSA has encouraged carmakers to build bigger with size-based fuel economy standards. Outside of California, subsidies for EVs and PEVs have mostly been limited to the federal tax credits, which are lower than the subsidies I've seen in Western Europe. And some of those European subsidies used to be available for plain old hybrids, which was never the case in America. Pedestrian deaths are made worse by larger vehicles, and also by failures to invest in sidewalks, crosswalks, roundabouts, and other safety infrastructure. Speeding can be seen as evidence of selfishness, but if freeways and school zones were blanketed in automated speed traps then the self-interested choice would be to slow down.
I'm not saying there's no culture involved here (the point about Republicans buying more big cars is interesting, but the survey is paywalled so I can't look into it more) but there's no need to go straight to culture when there's a wealth of more practical reasons for the state of the US vehicle market.
If you government isn't comprised of people with a range of typical American values, from West coast to East, I have all kinds of questions. For example, if you polled someone from either side of the aisle on an issue (Christ, any issue), I think you'd find either a begrudging "We had to compromise and ended up there", or one side would support where America has ended up.
Sure, but that's the result of different issues from the kind of individualism emphasized in the article. We didn't get the CAFE standards as they exist today because Republicans wanted "aggressive" pickup trucks. Road upkeep and improvements aren't underfunded because drivers don't care about pedestrian deaths.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadAmen.
In an ideal system, getting a license would require extremely stringent road and written tests, re-administered on a regular basis. However, doing that in the US is a political nonstarter because how can anyone live without a car?
Edit: Here's more information on voter literacy tests that were once conducted. The outcome kept POC from being able to vote.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/democracy-exhibition/vote-voi...
Says you.
I'm not arguing that at all. I'm just pointing out that _tests_ can have unintended or intended outcomes. Testing and retesting doesn't seem like a viable scalable solution.
Or, that my voting constrains your freedom.
Driving tests are completely different. Right now some states basically give licenses away at age 14 for a dollar and a handshake. If you're going to let someone operate a 26.000 pound vehicle in public, shouldn't they at the very least demonstrate that they a) understand the traffic laws, and b) are able to operate the vehicle safely?
If you move to a European country, you'll be required to re-take your driver's test, and it isn't without reason. They simply don't trust the USA to do it properly and that's not entirely unfounded.
To me, the freedom to strike is a positive for Europe. It says a lot about who own the power in a particular country imho.
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/154e8143-en/index.html?i...
You've just summed up the entire American ethos, sadly.
> You've just summed up the entire American ethos, sadly.
That summation is just tendentious framing of the concept of tradeoffs. If the situation were changed so "pedestrian[s] or cyclist[s]" don't have to make "concessions" to cars, that could also be framed as and "expression of freedom[...]based in denying freedom to everyone else." And that framing would be less tendentious than the OP's, because in America the pedestrians and cyclists are a vocal minority.
Now electric scooters and eBikes will change the equation a bit, but there are plenty of purists who hate on them too. They seem to feel they're sort of like lite versions of cars.
A more reasonable criticism is the danger to bikes from neeedlessly massive cars and pickup trucks. Or the danger from bike lanes that are not cleared of snow.
It’s not even a safety issue, it’s simply uncomfortable and expensive to get outfitted with appropriate gear. Not everyone lives in San Diego.
That doesn’t mean that robust bicycle infrastructure shouldn’t exist.
The only gear I’ve bought specifically for winter cycling as opposed to the rest of the year are glasses and a headband. I’d probably recommend a balaclava for someone without a beard. I bought fancy biking glasses, but $5 safety glasses would be passable.
Other than that I just wear the clothes fit for wherever I’m going. (Ie jeans, maybe long underwear, a couple layers, and a puffy coat).
The comfort part is subjective and I can’t invalidate your experience of course, but I personally find it at worst comparable to the first five to ten minutes of being in a car on a cold day before the car warms up. And on anything but the coldest days I often find I’m a quite comfortable temperature. Though it’s possible to over/under dress and then be hot or cold during the commute.
Not that people can’t drive in the winter if they want, but it often feels where I am that people just can’t conceive of the idea that biking in winter is a thing anyone would do. But there’s plenty of evidence that some percentage of people will choose to bike in winter if it’s viable (ie there’s good bike infrastructure).
All the other stuff? Shrug
Face it: many people don't want to commute by bike because they have good reasons to believe the ride will be dangerous and maybe even deadly.
Now, the idea of constraining motor vehicles, that I'm all in favor of, as a sometime cyclist and pedestrian who hates needing to own a car at all. Carless CBDs. Streets bollarded off. Time-of-day restrictions. Mass transit that actually works - yes, yes, yes, and please-for-the-love-of-God.
Argue that motor vehicles should serve where they suit best and not be allowed to pose a hazard otherwise. Don't argue that motor vehicles should cease to exist entirely - they won't, but your audience will.
The argument is against individual motor vehicles at current sizes, because they are simply incompatible with this goal:
> Mass transit that actually works - yes, yes, yes, and please-for-the-love-of-God.
You simply cannot design an environment to where everyone can have their own F150 and still have things be within walking/cycling distance and still have public transit operating at sufficient frequency to make it “work”.
You're already well outside the received precepts of the culture you seek to improve, which means you are necessarily beginning under a cloud of suspicion and doubt. Take it from a gay man old enough to remember the 80s: You help yourself not at all by doing anything to further complicate your delivery of the message.
Next time you're bicycling down the sidewalk, remember that this is how pedestrians feel about _you_.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXzObryNvxk
I've ridden thousands of miles, and the only bit of infrastructure that ever helped was wide shoulders, preferably with a bright white line demarcating.
Yes self centric view that staying alive is preferable to being dead. If only they were more altruistic and gave their lives, more people would like them. But no, their selfish desire to stay alive yet again destroyed everything.
It's not. Bicyclists regularly terrorize pedestrians on sidewalks, even when there are excellent purpose-built bike paths mere meters away. At intersections, they regularly flip back and forth between being "like bicycles" and "like pedestrians", making them dangerously unpredictable. They pound on cars when they feel they should have the right of way (they don't). Even when they are in the bike lane, a quarter of the time they're riding against the flow of traffic. No lights, no reflectors, dressed in black at night. The most bicycle-sympathetic drivers struggle to avoid hitting these knuckleheads.
It's a sad situation.
But that's probably because my area has decent cycling infrastructure, so that means I have a place to cycle without fearing for my life besides the sidewalk.
Or fast enough to have a nontrivial mass from pure kinetic energy (though I think the nuclear reactions would start happening well before then).
Once the vehicle::pedestrian mass is high enough, a higher ratio won't change the kinematics much. And how are you thinking that a driver of a big vehicle is more at risk than that of a small one?
And, Einstein has nothing to do with it.
Trucks are moneymakers and the big 3 automakers historically lobby hard to stop changes. Change = lost margin. Up until the 90s, full size pickups had saddle tanks that were likely to explode in a side collision, for example. Doors didn’t require crash safety reinforcement, etc.
A lot of that has been addressed by regulators, but the hood height thing has not. Car hoods are designed to catch and roll pedestrians. A low speed hit will hurt and probably result in injury. With a newer pickup truck, some of which require cameras to even see the road in front, you get knocked down, crack your head on the pavement, and likely get run over.
Citation? I know that's more likely with a car than with a big truck, but is that a conscious design choice, or just that a low driver position requires a low hood to see anything at all?
It’s obviously the same people who are always in debt and never understand why, despite their incomes being 2-3x what’d they earn in any other country, they never seen to be saving any money.
The flip side of increased interior room is exterior width, poor site lines, increased weight, increased energy waste, increased danger to pedestrians, increased road wear…
Never seen a pick-up in New York or San Francisco. They're everywhere in Wyoming. No, you don't need it around town. But if you're hauling a snowmobile or going off road, even only a few times a year, the trade-off can be worth it.
I don't drive a truck. But calling a subjective preference "objectively worse" is reductive.
Sure, a truck might be the best vehicle for your use case. It's probably the best vehicle for farmers, for example. But you could do all that with a 1970'd Ford F-150 just fine. Why does the 2023 F-150 have to be so much bigger, while not even gaining a lot cargo space?
I agree that pickups have grown ridiculously large.
When I had to commute more and the kids were little, I had a super efficient car. Now I have the SUV, and the delta is probably 100 gallons of gas annually.
Personally, I’d rather have a station wagon, but they don’t make them anymore. My next car in a few years will be an electric non-Tesla minivan/crossover vehicle.
Minivan is more spacious and fuel efficient and can easily sit 8 adults. The only answer I have received for why someone is buying an SUV rather than minivan is for vanity.
When we planned a long trip we thought maybe a larger car would be useful so we test drove a bunch of SUV things. They don't even give you extra space. The room across the backseats is actually less, and the boot space is more vertical. I'd rather have the better drive.
1. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/27/1145589871/buffalo-winter-sto...
Compared to the thousands required to buy into using the car based transportation system, not to mention the ever increasing price of gas, the expense of using a bicycle for transportation is practically nil.
Unfortunately, as this article shows, cars are so incredibly dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, that unless you're fortunate enough to live in a city where leaders have decided the the investment of safe protected cycling lanes is well worth it, cycling is rarely a safe and viable option.
I'm not saying there's no culture involved here (the point about Republicans buying more big cars is interesting, but the survey is paywalled so I can't look into it more) but there's no need to go straight to culture when there's a wealth of more practical reasons for the state of the US vehicle market.