Cars should also have their performance limited when on public roads. There's no need for your car to be able to accelerate to 60 in 2.5 seconds or go over 100 mph. If you want to track your car, there should be licensed officials that can temporarily disable the speed-limiter so you can still use it as a racecar where appropriate.
I don't think you're quite getting what really causes these safety issues. Limiting cars' acceleration or speed still leaves 6000lb SUVs with double the momentum of 3000lb sedans. Most car crashes don't involve anyone going 100mph, but heavy SUVs with bad visibility are frequently involved in accidents.
Because they're technically "offroad vehicles" (even though most of them never go offroad), SUVs are allowed to ignore many pedestrian crash standards. The NHTSA also crash tests vehicles against other vehicles in the same class, so the true consequences of SUVs don't show up in their tests.
There's also the issue of children being run over in driveways and parking lots by SUVs with massive blind spots.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 30.0 ms ] threadWhich is why vehicle size and weight should be more tightly constrained in regulations but our regulators are borderline incompetent.
Because they're technically "offroad vehicles" (even though most of them never go offroad), SUVs are allowed to ignore many pedestrian crash standards. The NHTSA also crash tests vehicles against other vehicles in the same class, so the true consequences of SUVs don't show up in their tests.
There's also the issue of children being run over in driveways and parking lots by SUVs with massive blind spots.