Gigantic SUVs are a public health threat. Why don’t we treat them like one? “Like tobacco, its use can — and often does — kill innocent bystanders. I’m talking about oversized cars.”
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It does feel like an arms race. My wife wants an SUV because she says she'd see better and feel safer because she's surrounded by other SUVs. We currently have a hatchback. We won't need the extra cargo space and we're not planning on going off-roading. We live in a city where parking large vehicles is stupidly challenging, and pedestrians absolutely get mowed over by huge vehicles every year. It's so frustrating.
I drove a Smart for almost 23 years. Great little car. High driving position. Great safety features (one big roll cage, as it were). Great mileage. Used half the parking space of a sedan. Ferry and bridge fares in Denmark same as a motorcycle (!).
Little trunk that will fit two suitcases. Lowest road tax rate over here in the Netherlands…
If all people would scale back to small cars a lot of problems would be mostly solved.
BTW: If any of my grandkids get run over by a SUV, I will definitely k*ll the driver.
Who else can see a David Zipper article from a mile away? He's great, but why is no one else on this beat? We need so much more of this, but I'm afraid that whatever the "Unsafe at Any Speed" of big vehicles in the 2020s is, too much of the American population--and leadership--cannot be brought to care enough and it'll just be ignored or outright shouted down as un-American, and action will ever happen.
As a dual national who grew up in the UK but now lives in California, the love of 'big truck' is chilling; the fact that it's not regulated is horrifying.
As a regular cyclist in a city a few things:
1. The focus on deaths deeply undercounts just how many times I'm effectively assaulted and fearing for my life on the streets not to mention life altering/destroying injuries. Cars have high utility relative to smoking and so when people see these death tolls which are relatively small compared to the number of people in the US.
2. While the SUV arms race is the most visible and aggravating part of this whole debacle, general safety improving measures like thickened A-pillars have made it such that even small cars have terrible visibility such that whole humans or bikes can hide in them.
I'm tired of people complaining about bikes not stopping at stop signs while most cars regularly drive over the speed limit. I want all the nit picking on laws and Altruistic Punishment drive me bananas.
I've reached the following 2 beliefs:
1. There should be distinct set of laws for city driving and suburb driving, as the conditions are so wildly different in terms of number of ped conflict and speeds.
2. Within the city context, I don't honestly care that much about traffic enforcement, with one exception. I think every car should be locked at driving slower than 12 mph either through actual car based limits or through rigid and strict enforcement.
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