Not really, it's not the automakers, it's the auto buyers. The American market wants and expects BIG. There's no incentive for anything otherwise, especially when the price of gas is *once again* falling.
This isn't going to be solved until we have "autos on demand", and then pricing will be based on the vehicle size ordered. At that point, there will be no justification for an SUV if there's just a single person needing to get across town or across state.
Smaller cars are less available. They have longer wait times and higher dealer markup. In the article, the two smaller cars mentioned aren't even sold in the United States.
It’s not like car makers haven’t tried to go smaller at various points, including imports from over seas. Longer wait times and higher markups are by product of low demand. Americans like bigger cars. That’s just a fact, and it’s not up to the supply side to dictate to the demand side what demand is. It’s just not how these things work. “Educating consumers” was a topic in the article, and it’s about as absurd an idea as I’ve ever heard. People want long range not because they’re idiots, but because they occasionally do longer day trips and don’t want to be isolated based on the car they bought. You won’t “educate” people out of the idea of not being tethered to their urban core no matter how much automakers market small short range vehicles.
Gas prices are still up more than 50% from just a few years ago. No one is out buying SUVs because the average price is $3.22 today vs $3.29 a year ago lol
Gas prices blipped up for a hot second. On the other hand, compare the USA gas prices to Europe and US gas is severely lower.
Think about it...Uncle Sam is offering tax credits and such in order to encourage the purchase of EVs. And that same Uncle Sam is doing all he can to keep gas prices down (for a number of different reasons) which discourages and disincentizes EVs. Make sense, right?
You might want to read up on Clotaire Rapaile, who is the de facto father of the modern SUV and record margins per vehicle for american auto brands.
One could argue quackery but this is C-level paying millions in consultancy fees quackery.
"Rapaille no longer sees patients. He doesn't need to, because he's paid well to supply his insights to corporate America - and lives in baronial splendor outside of New York City.
Apart from Ford, GM and Chrysler, he's advised companies like Kelloggs, Kraft, and Proctor & Gamble. They pay him to get inside the deepest recesses of our brains. In fact, he's known as the "car shrink" in Detroit." [0]
"The notion of need is very, very interesting. Because what do we really need, you see? I need food, I need water. I need shelter," says Rapaille. "And you know that, but then there are other needs, needs of identity. Needs of communication. Needs of being loved, being respected."[0]
"Why do you buy a car that doesn't even make 10 miles per gallon, doesn't fit into your garage? Do you really need that? And you don't need that intellectually," he says. "But at [...] the deepest part of you, the gut level if you want, you feel like you need that."[0]
"I don't believe what people say. They have a good alibi. They have a way to explain things to make them feel comfortable about what they're to do anyways," says Rapaille, who believes it's now considered hip to appear ready to take on anything.[0]
You could just make them smaller. There's no rule saying you can't.
There kind of is. Fuel efficiency requirements are stricter for smaller vehicles, creating a perverse incentive to increase size. Here's a 2011 paper that predicted exactly what would happen: https://news.umich.edu/cafe-standards-create-profit-incentiv...
This is the reason we are all driving beasts. For a small wheelbase vehicle to meet CAFE standards it has to get an unreasonable 90mpg or the manufacturer gets fined.
> For a small wheelbase vehicle to meet CAFE standards it has to get an unreasonable 90mpg or the manufacturer gets fined.
Source? At least according to this source[1], a car with footprint similar to a Honda Fit only needs to hit 51 mpg this year, which it currently meets[2][3]. There are certainly cars that are even smaller than a Honda Fit, and maybe those do need to hit 90mpg, but the existence of cars like the Honda Fit proves that you can have CAFE compliant cars that aren't "beasts".
But then you have things like the newest Civic being considerably larger than my 10+ year old Accord. There's a size arms race for sure and it seems maybe it was caused by those requirements initially but at the end of 2023, I think it's only one factor at play.
Thanks for sharing this here, it really does appear to be the primary culprit. If anything the larger the vehicle the more fuel efficient it should be, not the opposite.
But that is just one part of the puzzle.
The other is of course just normal marketing, advertising, etc. convincing people that they do lots of things outdoors that they don't actually do. Ford, GM, Toyota, Dodge, etc. are not the only ones guilty of this of course as Patagonia, REI, Apple (Ultra watch), and other companies that tout the Great American Outdoors have suckered us (me included) into these outdoor lifestyle brands as well. They all make fine products, of course, but people who tend to want trucks want them because of what they think they enable.
The marketing works. As one of the people who has done outdoors stuff for 40+ years, there has been a clear increase in participants. It has not necessarily been for the better
> The other is of course just normal marketing, advertising, etc. convincing people that they do lots of things outdoors that they don't actually do.
> but people who tend to want trucks want them because of what they think they enable
Those two of statements, sandwiching a paragraph, are completely contradictory.
If the marketing works (and I would claim it does) then people who want FOO want it because of marketing, not because of actual real need fulfillment.
Bernays told us that propaganda/PR/marketing was about selling feelings, not facts. And he demonstrated to us all how well it worked in various domains. The auto industry has been selling more "freedom" than cars and trucks for longer than I have been alive.
> The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks ... imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken.
> ... since 1964 this form of protectionism has remained in place to give US domestic automakers an advantage over imported competitors.
Pretty slanted. Could write a complementary article: large cars are safer for the passengers. Why don't we keep pedestrians separate from traffic more effectively?
Large cars aren't inherently safer for passengers. They are only safer in collisions with other cars that are smaller, at the expense of the safety of the people in the smaller cars.
Having an arms race where people buy bigger and bigger cars to be safer in collisions with other cars is really not ideal, because it doesn't improve overall automobile safety on a national level even just for drivers, and it hurts safety for pedestrians.
Cities including mine are drunk on putting speed humps everywhere.
But obviously they’re not “tuned” for each vehicle size.
A coupe/sedan needs to slow down to half the speed limit to go over, while a larger vehicle with a suspension and tire sizes to match can take them at speed.
Same story for potholes, which of course are worsened by heavier vehicles while small vehicles pay the price.
Literally encouraging an arms race when it comes to vehicle size.
This is almost entirely suspension based. I currently have an F350 but drove an off-road edition Tacoma for a long time. The Tacoma is half the weight and significantly smaller than the F350, and it would take speed bumps like they were nothing because of the offroad tuning, whereas the F350 is quite difficult to drive at fast speeds and takes bumps pretty harshly due to its weight and stiffer suspension designed for hauling.
Pedestrians aren't getting killed more often because cars are bigger. They're not being seen due to low visibility from A pillar designs. SUVs used to be quite boxy and large in the 90s and early 00s (think 90s Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc), but began to take on a more streamlined, car-like look in the late 00s / early 10s. As a result of this design shift to crossovers, the A column gets slanted and blocks a wide field of view that especially affects drivers when making left turns. This coupled with a higher ride height means pedestrians aren't getting seen, especially at night.
If you look at the stats, virtually the entire increase in pedestrian deaths over the last 10 years has occurred at night.
That "pop over the hood" theory is incorrect. If a car is moving at deadly speed you will not simply roll over a cars hood unharmed. You're still taking a 3000+ pound hit at 30 or more miles per hour, and you will most likely be embedded into the forward crush zone and subsequently flung forwards after the driver brakes in response.
At any rate, it's largely left-turning, night driving vehicles that are causing the increase in deaths in North America. These pedestrians are being struck at an angle rather than head on.
It's not the slant so much as the width - it wouldn't be thick enough, close enough, and leave such poor visibility were it thinner. But it's required to be thicker to survive a rollover without the big heavy body crushing the roof (and occupants).
I've driven vehicles that don't have to survive a rollover (a few models of New Flyer diesel bus). The A pillar being slanted or straight makes no difference. It's the thickness that'll block a pedestrian.
This is definitely true, but if a pillar is vertically oriented, it's going to obscure less horizontal area regardless of thickness. Both factors work against visibility.
> They're not being seen due to low visibility from A column designs. SUVs used to be quite boxy and large in the 90s and early 00s (think 90s Ford Explorer, Chevy Suburban, etc), but began to take on a more streamlined, car-like look in the late 00s / early 10s. As a result of this design shift to crossovers, the A column gets slanted and blocks a wide field of view that especially affects drivers when making left turns
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this. I've done some visibility tests in my car, a 2006 Honda CR-V, and I don't think the A columns would cause me to miss a pedestrian. I'm not sure how that compares to newer cars, but just looking from the outside at newer cars in parking lots and on the street the size and slant of the A columns seems similar to mine.
What I found in my tests is that the slant of the columns helps with me seeing pedestrians. Yes, along any given horizontal line the column could completely span the visual width of a pedestrian who is not very close to the car, but since pedestrians stand vertically it is only covering part of them vertically. E.g., if the column is blocking me seeing waist it won't be blocking the chest or head. If it is blocking their chest I'll see their waist and head.
A column with little or no slant would be able to block from head to waist.
From my perspective in the driver's seat, the driver side column is less slanted than the passenger side column, so it does block more of a pedestrian. Still, I think if a walking pedestrian was close enough that I might hit them when turning in that direction they would be close enough that enough of them would be unblocked for me to see them.
Also, since I'm much closer to the driver side column, when I turn my head from looking straight ahead to looking to the left that moves my eyes enough that there is enough perspective shift that the places that someone who is at a distance where they could be completely blocked cannot remain blocked throughout the head turn. I'll either catch them with my right eye at early in the head turn or my left late in the head turn.
This might vary between people. When I turn my head to check the driver's side I also move my head back a little. Someone who moves their head forward as they turn it could end up with the perspective shift from the turn being offset by the perspective shift from moving the head forward.
PS: while writing this I had an idea for a simple add on that could make it a lot easier to see pedestrians near the car. Why not add a pair of mirrors near the bottom of the windshield directly in front of the driver. One mirror would be angled to let the driver see what is on the left, and one to see what is on the right.
Yes, it would help to have more pedestrian only streets, ban drive throughs, reduce curb cuts, ban right turns on red, and reduce speed limits in urban areas to more reasonable safe speeds like 15 mph.
Do you mean on average they are safer or inherently? Is that a function of the average on the other side of the collision and most importantly is there data proving your position.
Large cars are less agile, making it more difficult to avoid accidents. SUVs in particular are also much more likely to rollover than passenger cars. This makes larger vehicles less safe for their passengers.
They've really decreased in popularity. As far as I know there are only a handful of manufacturers even making minivans for the US market: Toyota, Kia, Chrysler, and Honda, and they each only offer a single model last I knew. I'm not sure why no one buys them anymore since from a practical standpoint they offer a lot more space and ergonomics when compared to most SUV's. My only guess in that people have a lot fewer kids these days.
Minivans are still more likely to rollover than passenger cars, but suvs and pickups at the time of this article rollover in one in four accidents - which is shockingly high.
As luck would have it, I do have pictures of myself in a car. However, for privacy reasons I would rather not upload pictures of my face on the internet. I'd be happy to provide the picture to a trusted third party auditor of your choosing (eg. Deloitte, E&Y, KPMG, PWC) for verification, provided that you pay the fees :^)
Now, I don't imagine that there would be any privacy related issues related to providing evidence regarding whether a Chevrolet Impala was considered a compact car or not, so I look forward to receiving correspondence from your auditor and whatever evidence you have that Chevrolet Impala was considered a compact car.
Sorry that's not a source, and is seemingly contradicted by sources like [1], which say
>The highest-selling full-size car nameplate is the Chevrolet Impala, sold as a full-size car from 1958 to 1986, 1994 to 1996, and then from 2000 until 2020.
I love that we've come to an era where supposedly educated people are in the habit of telling others that the use of their senses and mind to understand the world are invalid because someone didn't put the conclusions on a website.
How is that a good thing? The internet is a dumpster fire of half truths, infotainment, and objective falsehoods. I'll take human memory with all its warts over most of what's on the web any day.
The irony here is that the comment itself that's up for discussion (ie. whether a car is "full size") is also on the internet, and therefore I can flip your argument of "internet is a dumpster fire of half truths, infotainment, and objective falsehoods. I'll take human memory with all its warts over most of what's on the web any day" right back at you. What makes one random commenter's assertion that it's a full sized car more correct than another comment that claims the opposite?
"full-size" is an objective, standardized designation for automobiles [1] so it really doesn't MATTER what someone's "senses and mind" are in that specific statement.
Full-sized U.S. cars were large up until the oil embargos of the 1970s, and even then it took most of a decade for Detroit to start marketing smaller cars. The Ford LTD (a large full-sized car) was 224" (17'4") long, and simply massive.
There was a pretty radical re-basing of automobile sizes beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s / early 1990s.
Back when I used to have a car (over 10 years ago now...) I drive a 2001 Subaru Forester. Newer Foresters are much bigger and nigh unrecognizable.
I occasionally rent cars and always ask for a sedan, but half the time I get "upgraded" to a tank that has huge blind spots (how are you supposed to see cyclists?), uses twice as much fuel and is much harder to park in front of my condo building (which requires maneuvering around elevated train pillars). My toddler even calls it a bus.
Similar, I'm always getting an "upgrade" when I travel. Inevitably to a Suburban or most recently a Expedition MAX which was one of the biggest pieces of absolute crap I've ever driven. The hoods are so long, tall and square you could hide an entire classroom behind them. They drive like absolute trash, slow to stop, body roll for days, turn the wheel 4 times to make a tight turn, etc... I know there is some demented subset of people who equate their masculinity to these things, but who else actually want to drive these monstrosities?
I've always driven small cars. One time when I had to get a rental vehicle they only had F150s available. The visibility was so bad that I ended up backing into a shopping cart in a grocery store parking lot. I hate that everyone is running around in multi-ton death machines nowadays.
Maybe it would be, but only in your head. It's not just single data point that I base my opinion on.
The average SUV can cost significantly more than a typical car. The manufacturer tends to build SUVS with larger wheels, and sturdier components. Very often SUVs will be built on a Truck body for example. The larger wheels, sturdier frame are much better going over potholes, and clearing snow.
Just curious, do you live anywhere with snow/winter weather?
You can make a small car manage potholes well and you can put big wheels and tiny sidewalls on a larger car. It's a matter of design and aesthetics. Sometimes aesthetics win and sometimes mechanical design wins.
Fair point. I had a friend with a rear wheel drive BMW sports car. Great looking car, but he kept it in the garage in winter, after he spun out a few times on icy roads. Also the car had a hard time clearing even a modest snow fall.
Can cars be made to outperform SUVs in winter driving? Probably.
But I wrote in reference to the market average car vs the average suv. There's probably at least $10k price difference there. The observation I have made owning both cars and SUVs, is that the SUV is more rugged and durable, and drives better in Winter. The larger price tag, also means that the manufacturer doesn't have to skimp on every component as much, to come in under $25k. A real challenge at the bottom of the market, where the largest share of car consumers tended to be.
If I was living in Hawaii, I honestly would not give a shit what kind of car I drive. I would just be happy to have a car in Hawaii.
What this discussion misses is the context of how a car gets used. And that largely depends on where the car is driven.
doesn't make a lot of sense to put this on manufacturers. The safety aspect is a collective action problem. When only one person buys a smaller car they're not safer, so you need to get everyone to change. Next big factor is regulation and protectionism. Read a depressing blog about the effort a guy had to go through to get a mini truck from China to the US and he couldn't even drive it on some roads. Importing the thing cost almost as much as the truck. Also the US still has no carbon market, putting a higher price on fossil fuels creates an actual incentive to buy more efficient cars.
These are structural issues, asking manufacturers to just make different cars won't magically create demand for them.
> The safety aspect is a collective action problem. When only one person buys a smaller car they're not safer, so you need to get everyone to change.
The difficulty with getting people to agree to that is that when it comes to crashes between two cars, or between one car and some stationary object like a big tree, "everyone has a smaller car" is less safe than "everyone has a larger car".
"Everyone has a smaller car" would be safer for pedestrians and cyclists, but something like 80% of deaths involving cars are from cars hitting cars or cars hitting stationary objects accidents so that's probably going to be the priority for most people.
Lots of people want big cars, and they vote with their checkbook. I have a big car. I have children. They have stuff, and friends and we go on long drives sometimes. It's nice to have a big car.
I grew up before SUV existed. I had siblings. Somehow we survived.
Many countries around the world don't have an SUV epidemic. Somehow families there make it work with smaller cars, even today.
Many people around the world have large families and zero cars. Somehow they
make it work.
People are MADE to want big cars by advertisements.
Other than the emissions standards mentioned by other commenters, the real solution is to ban car advertisements. We should ban gambling and alcohol advertisements as well. It worked for tobacco.
People also survived in caves long ago. The fact that humans have survived various uncomfortable situations doesn't make them stop wanting to be more comfortable.
Nope. People go test drive them, and realize it's nicer to have more space. There are cars in every shape and size in the US. I went to buy a midsized SUV and ended up with a full SUV after test driving. It's much more comfortable. More space is valued by humans in houses, cars, airline seats, hotel rooms and various other places.
There's really no substitute for having a big car. Sure it's possible to live with a small car (I've done it), but having more interior space and cargo capacity makes everything so much easier. Especially if you have children who participate in team sports.
I’ll point out and it will probably get downvoted again because it is an inconvenient truth, but making vehicles safer for the occupants at the cost of slightly to somewhat more dangerous for non-occupants can still result in a net improvement of overall safety because pedestrians and vehicle accidents happen far less frequently than vehicle to vehicle accidents.
No it doesn't. The larger vehicle in a collision is safer, but the smaller vehicle is less safe. If you buy an Expedition, you're more likely to kill a pedestrian, plus you're more likely to kill the occupants of any other vehicles you collide with. You're more likely to die in a rollover, and dont significantly affect your odds when colliding with a fixed object.
Your personal risk goes down because as you say vehicle to vehicle is the most common and you win that zero sum game, but overall the score is very negative.
So you do or don’t agree with my statement of “making vehicles safer for the occupants at the cost of slightly to somewhat more dangerous for non-occupants can still result in a net improvement of overall safety”?
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[ 32.1 ms ] story [ 1378 ms ] threadThis isn't going to be solved until we have "autos on demand", and then pricing will be based on the vehicle size ordered. At that point, there will be no justification for an SUV if there's just a single person needing to get across town or across state.
Let's forget small / smaller for a second. Let's just go with mid-sized. *Plenty* of options there and yet SUVs and trucks are the goto choice. See?
It's the market.
Think about it...Uncle Sam is offering tax credits and such in order to encourage the purchase of EVs. And that same Uncle Sam is doing all he can to keep gas prices down (for a number of different reasons) which discourages and disincentizes EVs. Make sense, right?
They need _a_ car _now_ .
I guess the question is, why. It is because marketing works? Or a sense of safety? Bigger is associated with wealth, power? etc.
Auto makers have figured out how to push our buttons and buy larger and more wasteful vehicles in what is a de facto arms race on the public road.
If you are the man you must buy NewAuto TM, you wouldn't want to look weak.
One could argue quackery but this is C-level paying millions in consultancy fees quackery.
"Rapaille no longer sees patients. He doesn't need to, because he's paid well to supply his insights to corporate America - and lives in baronial splendor outside of New York City.
Apart from Ford, GM and Chrysler, he's advised companies like Kelloggs, Kraft, and Proctor & Gamble. They pay him to get inside the deepest recesses of our brains. In fact, he's known as the "car shrink" in Detroit." [0]
"The notion of need is very, very interesting. Because what do we really need, you see? I need food, I need water. I need shelter," says Rapaille. "And you know that, but then there are other needs, needs of identity. Needs of communication. Needs of being loved, being respected."[0]
"Why do you buy a car that doesn't even make 10 miles per gallon, doesn't fit into your garage? Do you really need that? And you don't need that intellectually," he says. "But at [...] the deepest part of you, the gut level if you want, you feel like you need that."[0]
"I don't believe what people say. They have a good alibi. They have a way to explain things to make them feel comfortable about what they're to do anyways," says Rapaille, who believes it's now considered hip to appear ready to take on anything.[0]
[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-thrill-of-the-suv/
There kind of is. Fuel efficiency requirements are stricter for smaller vehicles, creating a perverse incentive to increase size. Here's a 2011 paper that predicted exactly what would happen: https://news.umich.edu/cafe-standards-create-profit-incentiv...
https://www.taxfyle.com/blog/list-of-vehicles-over-6000-lbs
Source? At least according to this source[1], a car with footprint similar to a Honda Fit only needs to hit 51 mpg this year, which it currently meets[2][3]. There are certainly cars that are even smaller than a Honda Fit, and maybe those do need to hit 90mpg, but the existence of cars like the Honda Fit proves that you can have CAFE compliant cars that aren't "beasts".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy...
[2] https://hondanews.eu/eu/fi/cars/media/pressreleases/1523/hon...
[3] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=+4.5+L%2F100km+to+mpg
But that is just one part of the puzzle.
The other is of course just normal marketing, advertising, etc. convincing people that they do lots of things outdoors that they don't actually do. Ford, GM, Toyota, Dodge, etc. are not the only ones guilty of this of course as Patagonia, REI, Apple (Ultra watch), and other companies that tout the Great American Outdoors have suckered us (me included) into these outdoor lifestyle brands as well. They all make fine products, of course, but people who tend to want trucks want them because of what they think they enable.
> but people who tend to want trucks want them because of what they think they enable
Those two of statements, sandwiching a paragraph, are completely contradictory.
If the marketing works (and I would claim it does) then people who want FOO want it because of marketing, not because of actual real need fulfillment.
Bernays told us that propaganda/PR/marketing was about selling feelings, not facts. And he demonstrated to us all how well it worked in various domains. The auto industry has been selling more "freedom" than cars and trucks for longer than I have been alive.
I am also quite confused about your follow up comment as well since I haven’t written anything to the contrary here in my previous post.
> The Chicken Tax is a 25 percent tariff on light trucks ... imposed in 1964 by the United States under President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to tariffs placed by France and West Germany on importation of U.S. chicken.
> ... since 1964 this form of protectionism has remained in place to give US domestic automakers an advantage over imported competitors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax
Having an arms race where people buy bigger and bigger cars to be safer in collisions with other cars is really not ideal, because it doesn't improve overall automobile safety on a national level even just for drivers, and it hurts safety for pedestrians.
Cities including mine are drunk on putting speed humps everywhere.
But obviously they’re not “tuned” for each vehicle size.
A coupe/sedan needs to slow down to half the speed limit to go over, while a larger vehicle with a suspension and tire sizes to match can take them at speed.
Same story for potholes, which of course are worsened by heavier vehicles while small vehicles pay the price.
Literally encouraging an arms race when it comes to vehicle size.
And they are, but only for larger vehicles on my ass for slowing down to go over them in my sedan.
If you look at the stats, virtually the entire increase in pedestrian deaths over the last 10 years has occurred at night.
At any rate, it's largely left-turning, night driving vehicles that are causing the increase in deaths in North America. These pedestrians are being struck at an angle rather than head on.
I've driven vehicles that don't have to survive a rollover (a few models of New Flyer diesel bus). The A pillar being slanted or straight makes no difference. It's the thickness that'll block a pedestrian.
I'm having a bit of trouble understanding this. I've done some visibility tests in my car, a 2006 Honda CR-V, and I don't think the A columns would cause me to miss a pedestrian. I'm not sure how that compares to newer cars, but just looking from the outside at newer cars in parking lots and on the street the size and slant of the A columns seems similar to mine.
What I found in my tests is that the slant of the columns helps with me seeing pedestrians. Yes, along any given horizontal line the column could completely span the visual width of a pedestrian who is not very close to the car, but since pedestrians stand vertically it is only covering part of them vertically. E.g., if the column is blocking me seeing waist it won't be blocking the chest or head. If it is blocking their chest I'll see their waist and head.
A column with little or no slant would be able to block from head to waist.
From my perspective in the driver's seat, the driver side column is less slanted than the passenger side column, so it does block more of a pedestrian. Still, I think if a walking pedestrian was close enough that I might hit them when turning in that direction they would be close enough that enough of them would be unblocked for me to see them.
Also, since I'm much closer to the driver side column, when I turn my head from looking straight ahead to looking to the left that moves my eyes enough that there is enough perspective shift that the places that someone who is at a distance where they could be completely blocked cannot remain blocked throughout the head turn. I'll either catch them with my right eye at early in the head turn or my left late in the head turn.
This might vary between people. When I turn my head to check the driver's side I also move my head back a little. Someone who moves their head forward as they turn it could end up with the perspective shift from the turn being offset by the perspective shift from moving the head forward.
PS: while writing this I had an idea for a simple add on that could make it a lot easier to see pedestrians near the car. Why not add a pair of mirrors near the bottom of the windshield directly in front of the driver. One mirror would be angled to let the driver see what is on the left, and one to see what is on the right.
But while minivans won't roll over, they also will almost certainly have longer stopping distances than a sedan.
https://www.autosafety.org/formula-predicts-rollover-risk/
source?
Now, I don't imagine that there would be any privacy related issues related to providing evidence regarding whether a Chevrolet Impala was considered a compact car or not, so I look forward to receiving correspondence from your auditor and whatever evidence you have that Chevrolet Impala was considered a compact car.
A bunch of us were alive in the 90's and driving cars.
>The highest-selling full-size car nameplate is the Chevrolet Impala, sold as a full-size car from 1958 to 1986, 1994 to 1996, and then from 2000 until 2020.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-size_car
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_size_class
The 1970's Ford Maverick, for example, is described on Wikipedia as a "subcompact", at just under 180" (15', or 4.5 m) length.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Maverick_(1970%E2%80%9319...>
Full-sized U.S. cars were large up until the oil embargos of the 1970s, and even then it took most of a decade for Detroit to start marketing smaller cars. The Ford LTD (a large full-sized car) was 224" (17'4") long, and simply massive.
There was a pretty radical re-basing of automobile sizes beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the 1980s / early 1990s.
“Full size” now = “Compact” in the 80s
(Going by size)
I occasionally rent cars and always ask for a sedan, but half the time I get "upgraded" to a tank that has huge blind spots (how are you supposed to see cyclists?), uses twice as much fuel and is much harder to park in front of my condo building (which requires maneuvering around elevated train pillars). My toddler even calls it a bus.
Dude, you do understand that making extrapolations onto all cars from a single datapoint is idiocy?
The average SUV can cost significantly more than a typical car. The manufacturer tends to build SUVS with larger wheels, and sturdier components. Very often SUVs will be built on a Truck body for example. The larger wheels, sturdier frame are much better going over potholes, and clearing snow.
Just curious, do you live anywhere with snow/winter weather?
But I wrote in reference to the market average car vs the average suv. There's probably at least $10k price difference there. The observation I have made owning both cars and SUVs, is that the SUV is more rugged and durable, and drives better in Winter. The larger price tag, also means that the manufacturer doesn't have to skimp on every component as much, to come in under $25k. A real challenge at the bottom of the market, where the largest share of car consumers tended to be.
If I was living in Hawaii, I honestly would not give a shit what kind of car I drive. I would just be happy to have a car in Hawaii.
What this discussion misses is the context of how a car gets used. And that largely depends on where the car is driven.
These are structural issues, asking manufacturers to just make different cars won't magically create demand for them.
The difficulty with getting people to agree to that is that when it comes to crashes between two cars, or between one car and some stationary object like a big tree, "everyone has a smaller car" is less safe than "everyone has a larger car".
"Everyone has a smaller car" would be safer for pedestrians and cyclists, but something like 80% of deaths involving cars are from cars hitting cars or cars hitting stationary objects accidents so that's probably going to be the priority for most people.
People are MADE to want big cars by advertisements.
Other than the emissions standards mentioned by other commenters, the real solution is to ban car advertisements. We should ban gambling and alcohol advertisements as well. It worked for tobacco.
Nope. People go test drive them, and realize it's nicer to have more space. There are cars in every shape and size in the US. I went to buy a midsized SUV and ended up with a full SUV after test driving. It's much more comfortable. More space is valued by humans in houses, cars, airline seats, hotel rooms and various other places.
> These massive trucks are actually safer for their occupants, but far more deadly to the people outside
Your personal risk goes down because as you say vehicle to vehicle is the most common and you win that zero sum game, but overall the score is very negative.