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Saving Gas Via Underpowered Death Traps
Harperdog writes with this excerpt from a story at Miller-McCune:
"Yes, it's true that the fuel-economy standards the U.S. has been using cost lives. Economist Mark Jacobson has estimated that for every mile-per-gallon we raise the standards, 149 traffic fatalities occur per year. That would mean 1,490 deaths if the standards were raised from, say, 30 miles-per-gallon to 40. But this doesn't have to be the case. It's possible, Jacobson has concluded, to increase fuel efficiency without also decreasing safety. And if government officials are smart, they'll tailor the regulations behind the new standards to do this."
"And if government officials are smart, "
That is the biggest if in the world!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
That's some of the worst crap I've ever read about saving fuel. Small diesel engines (ala VW) have the ability to get 50+mpg and still have neck-snapping torque. Underpower death-traps my hiney.
... since one way that vehicle manufacturers are tackling the fuel economy wars is by reducing vehicle weight, which is resultant from removing certain bulk & inherently shock-absorbing materials that make a vehicle arguably safer for the occupant(s).
'72 BUICK SKYLARK!
That's the only way to automotive safety. Hit a brick wall?
You'll have to pay for new bricks!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I know this one! The debate will center around whether or not it's OK for the government to intervene in private industry. And... yawn.
is not already costing drivers of big cars more in terms of liability premiums.
Nullius in verba
Not to be brutal, but that number's pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of all of this. It's a tiny fraction of total traffic fatalities, which means we can more than make up the difference looking for other forms of safety improvement.
They want to use traffic fatalities due to fuel-economy as a reason to dodge the standards?
How about just educating people to not drive like idiots?
All vehicles must pass the same safety standards. The issue seems to be that the nice new Honda Fit, approaching 40 MPG is on the road with Ford Excursions that push 12MPG on a good day. Not that the Fit is inherently unsafe.
If fuel prices keep going up, the problem will take care of itself, as no one can afford to drive an Excursion.
I think a little 1 liter city car would be just fine.
I also think if the majority in cities all had the same small car mass, then fatalities would decrease.
Would I want to be in one for high velocity travel? Nope. But for city commutes, where slow is the norm, and small meant easier parking, might be great.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Lower speed limits: two birds, one stone.
The highways deliver us all kinds of goods which prolong life. They also deliver traffic fatalities.
One is easy to measure. The other isn't.
This tendancy to focus on the metric that's easily measured is a problem in a lot of places...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah they can increase fuel economy while keeping safety but its way easier and cheaper to build a lightweight car with less safety features and better fuel economy. Especially when the MPG rating is one of the first thing you notice looking at the sticker on a car. It just makes sense for them to skimp elsewhere when it means car manufacturers can get a more fuel efficient car that'll be more attractive to consumers in todays economy.
As TFA states, the "deathtrap" is due to the smaller cars being smashed to a pulp when they run into a gas-guzzling behemoth. People are buying big cars not because they need them or that they like guzzling fuel. And maybe not even necessarily because the bigger cars have more "oomph". But also because "driving a tank = I'm safer, especially from other tanks on the road".
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
Economist Mark Jacobson has estimated that for every mile-per-gallon we raise the standards, 149 traffic fatalities occur per year.
OR
Everyone with a brain has estimated that massive, unnecessarily heavy and powerful gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs driven by distracted buffoons kill people on the road.
Also, the report and the curiously straight-line graph comes from:
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization, established in 1983. Our goal is to develop and promote private, free-market alternatives to government regulation and control, solving problems by relying on the strength of the competitive, entrepreneurial
private sector.
Here's a win-win solution: better driver training, stricter licensing tests, and much stricter traffic enforcement (not bigger fines).
You need better drivers who obey the rules of the road.
So, start cracking down, and seize the licenses of bad drivers. This will accomplish two goals:
- less licensed drivers, and therefore less cars on the road
- less car crashes
The only fine that should increase is driving without a valid license.
The key bit from the linked story:
“Having separate fuel economy standards for cars and trucks encourages people to continue to use trucks as if they were cars,” he said. “They buy a truck, but they drive it as if it were a car. They don’t necessarily need the bed or the four-wheel drive.”
It seems that the problem is not fuel efficiency standards leading to under-powered death traps. Rather, the problem is size disparity driven by misuse of large vehicles. To me, that's a different story.
The eternal problem of correlation and causation. Where is the research that supports the hypothesis? Is it possible that the population growth is the one that is causing more cars to be sold (and economy pushes for better efficiency standards) and therefore more accidents?
Is it also that more kids start driving at younger ages? I don't see the clear causation of fuel efficiency vs. death toll, but certainly I see a correlation.
Is this a trick to make insurance companies charge me more for fuel efficient vehicles?
How many deaths are attributable to CAFE being too low.
If CAFE had been doubled in the last 20 years how many overlarge trucks/SUVs would have been removed from the roads not causing other people to die when they get hit by them.
They should ban motorbike, pushbikes and especially pedestrians.
Did you know that the death rate for pedestrians is 100%
... what is the estimated number of deaths caused by pollution in the USA alone? and worldwide?
I can't drive fifty-five, oh no.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Your kidding, right?
No, my kidding.
No car is safe. Even a large suv can be a death trap in crashes. Small cars can be designed to be just as safe with the use of crumple zones and air bags.
There are a lot of smart people in government and usually the fewer people involved in a decision the better the decision will be. None of us is as dumb as all of us and Congress is a committee of 528 people. I have a hard enough time getting five people to decide on anything at work much less a Byzantine committee of 538 preening attention whores who are legally allowed to take bribes to stay in power.
This article relies on data published by the National Center for Policy Analysis , a right-wing thinktank with no motive to be objective. Why do we keep seeing these bogus rightwing "science" stories on /. ? If it's clearly not science, it shouldn't be on this site.
Because road wear is proportional to the fourth power of the weight of the vehicle, make the 4,000 lbs SUV owner pay 16 times as much in taxes as the 2,000 lbs small car owner. Pretty soon we'll see fewer SUVs on the roads, and all because of a fair, well-justified tax as opposed to new, arbitrary regulations.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Wow, a lesson in design tradeoffs. You can't have a large comfortable, safe car with several air bags, an enormous crumple zone with decent acceleration that gets 40 MPG. One of the best way to increase fuel economy is to move less car around, and, all things being equal, a heavier car is better. (That is assuming we are comparing well-designed cars.)
Around here, we could save tons of lives by having better ROADs. Most roads here have no space berm off to the side (just trees), tons of random curves, hills, blind spots, etc. They'd save tons of lives (at huge cost, no doubt) if they straightened and flattened the roads and made them a little wider. Not to mention some type of rumble strip to warn people when they cross the center line. (They have those in California, but the dots don't work when you have to plow the roads. They can make indents, but that appears to cost too much.) My theory is that Pennsylvania just paves over whatever deer path was there without regard to any sort of engineering principles (including drainage, where the lower roads carved in a hill serve as a river during storms.)
I don't know, but it works for me.
Example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtxd27jlZ_g&feature=player_embedded
Newer cars are safer, and aren't 'death traps'.
While disparity of weight has an impact, the the energy is diverted is inportant as well.
And remember, if two car travelling at 50 MPH have a head on collision, the force on each driver is 50MPH then adjusted fro mass differences.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I read TFA and what it says is that if we unify the fuel economy standards between trucks and cars, people who can afford to pay more than they do now to drive a truck to ensure *they're* the survivor in an auto accident will be able to do so. And, people who can't afford it will stop so cheaply killing people who drive cars, as they will now themselves be in cars, reducing the overall number of truck-hitting-car deaths of people in cars.
Still, the winning plan will be to buy a truck if you can afford it. And, since the price of trucks will go up, fewer people will be able to afford this winning plan (which came at the expense of car-drivers). On average, all drivers will be safer. Individually, truck drivers with more money will be safer, car drivers will be safer, and former truck drivers who can't afford a truck anymore will be something like 48 times more likely to die in truck-car crashes - which "hopefully" will become rarer.
They're called motorcycles.
This.
My sister found out the hard way what happens when in irresistable force meets an immovable object.
She was in a '77 Regal, and got broadsided by a '65 Chevy.
They both walked away.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Deliberately biased summary much?
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You prefer monarchy? Any way some statistics if someone wants to read them: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html
Watch out for those buses and delivery trucks. The ones that tend to run through red lights because they know they're going to fast to stop. Even if every other vehicle is a tiny car that it would take 2 of to hold my family that fits fine in my SUV and van, you'd still lose against mass transit vehicles in an accident. Not to mention the 18-wheel or higher semis going 65 mph down the 10-lane beside you.
This story is from a politically-motivated group with an axe to grind.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
more taxes - because that's how you grow an economy, you take money out of private sector and give it to government for more stimulus spending. I mean His Majesty God Krugman says it, so it must be so. Be damn the market, whatever it wants. It needs to be planned centrally, because government is full of market geniuses, if only they didn't want to sacrifice for the public good so much, they would have been in private sector, these Titans of Business, making Big Bucks with their vision of economic growth, because it's obvious they are great at it - they are deciding what business deserves the money and what does not.
You can't handle the truth.
Most people just don't have the patience. Driving at the old 55 mph will will do it in most naturally aspirated 4-cylinder cars. Pulse and glide will do it in most cars with a manual transmission. For example, I got 46.8 mpg from San Diego to Sacramento while doing P&G and averaging 60 MPG with my 2.5 L gasoline VW Jetta, which is EPA rated at 29 mpg (2008) on the highway.
So basically it's in the noise? Even if it were true, why would anyone care about such a small downside?
Belief is the currency of delusion.
And did economist Mark Jacobson pull these "estimates" right out of his ass?
It takes two seconds to look up the numbers and see that as cars have been getting more fuel efficient, they've also been getting safer. The Census has done the work for us. Just look at the fatality trends [census.gov] for passenger cars and light trucks since 1990. Even with total miles driven in the U.S. climbing from just over a trillion miles in 1970 to peaking over three trillion miles in in 2008, you can see the fatality rate for passenger cars plummeting during that time period (even on a per-mile basis) and fatality rate for light trucks staying about the same.
The data just doesn't at all support what this guy is saying. Also, anyone with a functioning brain should understand that injury mitigation in the case of an accident is only one piece of the pie. Accident avoidance prevents traffic fatalities as well (in fact, I'd rather work on avoiding accidents in the first place than mitigating their impact once they happen). Heavy, gas guzzling vehicles have a greatly diminished ability to safely avoid collisions compared to smaller, more manageable cars.
If that were true, everyone would be buying Oldsmobiles. Those things are big, heavy tanks. No, people buy SUVs because they better allow you to see over and around other vehicles. When half the vehicles on the road are SUVs, drivers in cars are at a significant disadvantage.
By being closer to the average height of traffic, you're not just making yourself safer. You're also making everyone around you safer because you can react more quickly to problems up ahead. In larger vehicles, you are also more easily seen by other vehicles because of your larger overall footprint, which, again, makes everyone safer.
What we need are strict standards for vehicle height consistency, and the standard needs to move towards the size of small SUVs, not cars. And those laws should apply to SUVs and light trucks, not just cars and minivans. And so should bumper height laws, but that's another issue.... Uniformity is a virtue when it comes to traffic safety. Outliers on either side of the norm put people at risk.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Keep trying with your numbers. Eventually, one of them will be the right number of congresscritters.
Not really.
Here is a Bel Air - also know for being a 'boat'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtxd27jlZ_g&feature=player_embedded
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Tanks kill people. Fact.
You could just as easy turn the whole thing around and argue that the Overweight Gas Guzzlers are doing the damage therefore they are causing the problem.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
Actually in this case they probably are being smart. Trying to mess with fuel use standards in the interests of safety will just result in a lot of loopholes and red tape. In this case KISS applies.
This isn't true in general. A car hitting an immoveable object is generally equally safe by weight, the bigger car has more energy.
In two car accidents it makes a huge difference though.
And honestly, what's the savings, we do all sorts of risky things to save money (like drive over fly).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Do you volunteer?
No?
Okay then.
Or we could just ban SUVs. That would achieve the same goal and not make me drive something that cannot corner for shit.
How about we start enforcing basic traffic code.
Basic traffic code hasn't been enforced in almost 30 years. Start ticketing people for; following too closely, making unsafe lane changes, turning into the wrong lane, using turning lanes to merge, etc. etc. etc., and watch the roads get safer. Quotas are set for speeding tickets and DUIs and nothing else. It doesn't work.
Manual transmissions save five to fifteen per cent on gas, depending on how you drive. Less weight, even with six forward gears, and no parasitic systems to run itself, as well as simplified cooling means less weight and more energy goes to the wheels. Or less, if you coast to the light in neutral.
We are the safest driving levels in a long long time. The number of fatalities per mile driven is way down from historical highs. This trend, however is slowly increasing with more "distracted drivers" out there driving while texting and shaving (yes, I saw this) while driving at 65-70 MPH (105-113 KPH). Size of cars is not saving people, better handling cars are.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I would much rather be driving an overpowered death trap. It's much more fun and doesn't waste time killing you.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
Stop being a retard. You don't need to drive a tank to be safe.
The fact remains that you are vastly, immensely more likely to survive an accident in a tiny little Smart than you would in a giant 72 buick skylark. Better design and better materials goes a long further than more weight. I'd also wonder if they accounted for the reduced numbers of deaths from the reduced air pollution that comes with increased CAFE standards and the fact that you would in reality not be significantly more likely to die in a modern compact than you would a V8-powered muscle car weighing 600 extra pounds or some top-heavy roll-happy SUV monstrosity weighing 1000 extra lbs in most accidents. Did they also account for the fact that increased CAFE standards have led to more efficient full-sized vehicles more than they've led to a proliferation of lightweight subcompacts? Because it's pretty clear that the increased sales of subcompacts has had more to do with their low price in this economy than any meaningful gas savings over their larger brethren in the compact class. At this point MOST car manufacturers offer a 40mpg 'compact' car that's actually larger than your average mid-90s midsize family sedan, with many more amenities and a much nicer interior, to boot.
The loss of life resulting from pollution of burning the extra fuel?
The cost of life resulting from efforts to secure the additional foriegn oil?
The cost in life for the many other considerations from the economic impacts of wasting fuel?
It would not surprise me if we saved more than 1490 in the process.
The biggest joke here is the assumptions that 1) small, light cars can't be safe and 2) that deaths in small light cars won't reduce as we pull big, heavy cars off the roads.
1) Is easily disproved by looking at an extreme case or two – have a crash in a 600kg Formula 1 car, and you'll very very very likely survive – hell, have a crash at 200mph in one and you'll very very very likely walk out of it.
2) Is easily disproved by looking at countries where small and light cars are already the norm. In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population
How fat are your kids?
When I grew up my parents had two kids, themselves and at times a pet in a toyota corolla. If you cannot fit the average family in such a car they are way too fat.
NCPA "proves" whatever their corporate sponsors tell them to prove. That is what think tanks usually (always?) do.
If you want to learn the truth, follow the money. Find out who sponsors NCPA, and find out who sponsored the report. If that's a bid secret, then you should ask yourself why it's a big secret.
The issue with comparing the US and UK road fatalities rates are many, the average miles per year driven in the US is much higher and US drivers license tests are a joke.
Even I took the number with any confidence, it's insignificant to the number of fatalities that oil dependency causes.
Yep. The flip side is that while people think that their boats will be safer it isn't always the case. Older vehicles like those built in the 70s and earlier may survive some crashes better; however, they were not designed to allow the occupants to survive as well as newer cars.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'd also like to point out that these modern 'underpowered' 40mpg compacts that have been flying off the lots have more power on average than the V6s of the 90s that everyone thought were gutsy. YOU DO NOT NEED 300HP TO BE SAFE ON THE ROAD. Yet another example of libertarian ideologues blinding themselves to reality and stretching to find ANY way to defend their ridiculous and harmful religion.
The higher risk for deaths is caused by heavier vehicles. In that case one just needs to calculate after each accident with a death or a heavy injury if it could have been prevented if everybody just drove the car they needed or if they could have reduced the speed to an level appropriate to compensate for the higher momentum (e.g. a car twice as much can drive half as fast). If these things are true, consider the death in the accident to be manslaughter by negligence, with all penal and civil consequences this has.
I can tell you, people would pretty quickly reduce the size of their car.
What we need are strict standards for vehicle height consistency
I can't wait to see your design for a 50-inch high semi trailer.
In the US at least, the most deadly accidents are those involving semis because they outweigh everybody else by a factor of 100 or more. The rationale for buying semis is not that they keep the driver safe, or that they let you see over and around everyone else. They just carry products between America's distant cities, as efficiently as possible. Regulating relatively light vehicles like light trucks and SUVs, won't even affect them.
Actually, at least one of your facts is off... US and UK stats roughly agree for average distance driven per year. Both lie at around 15000 miles per year for a middle aged driver, dropping off to 7000 for both OAPs and the very young.
I've never seen what a US driving test covers though, so I can't comment on that.
If you bother to do the numbers, you see it's not horsepower that makes a car safe...
My mistake I thought UK driving averages were like Continental ones. You bastards must love driving around your tiny island.
The US driving test generally covers some low speed driving and a couple street lights. Some states require a 3 point turn or parallel parking, many do not. No lessons are generally required and only a low number of practice hours with a licensed driver are required.
Indeed, I do not prefer monarchy. I prefer a system that works, where people can take risks and make decisions backed up by data. There are both government agencies and areas of the private sector where this occurs but we should strive ever forward and our goal should be smarter decisions balancing risk and reward with as little standing in the way of good decision making as possible.
Thank you for sharing this, that is really an amazing video! It's always good to look back and remind ourselves just how far we've come, and just how thankful we should be for the advances in technology around us.
Aikon-
Yes, the summary is biased. As the article points out, it is in fact the large cars that are dangerous-- they are, however, dangerous to the smaller cars.
Making cars smaller doesn't result in more deaths-- unless you have large cars on the road as well. It is the larger cars that are killing people. (and the bogus statistic comes from the "National Center for Policy Analysis"-- read: political action group paid to shill for oil companies.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
What we need are strict standards for vehicle height consistency, and the standard needs to move towards the size of small SUVs, not cars.
I guess in a country where driving is a God-given right, you can't just not let blind people drive.
Anybody notice that the article linked about the supposed increased death rate for small cars is labelled:
"For immediate release: Wednesday, February 13, 2002"
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How many fewer people will die of lung cancer and other diseases thanks to fewer gallons of gasoline being burned?
The solution to that is to ban them from general purpose roads. Make them use special purpose roads or let freight travel on rail. As they also do the most road damage the road savings should help to pay for the increased delivery costs.
There were more fatalities in 1972 and less cars, but I guess that is a cool car. http://blog.american.com/2010/09/the-good-old-days-are-now-trickle-down-automotive-safety/ Slashdot has been invaded by garbage or propaganda submissions. Is someone getting paid for this crap?
Monarchies can work very well; some of them in history actually did. The problem with monarchies is that they're limited to the lifetime of the monarch, and it's completely random as to how good the monarch will be. So if you currently have a pretty good monarch, you're lucky. But what if he dies (or gets assassinated)? Then his heir will take over, and there's no telling how good he or she will be.
The other problem with monarchs and other authoritarian governments is that they might be good for some people, but really bad for other people. So for instance (I've been watching The Tudors lately), suppose you're living under King Edward VI. He wasn't too bad, and if you were a Protestant, you were probably fairly happy with his rule. But then he died early, at only 16 years of age, and his evil sister Mary took over. She wasn't called "Bloody Mary" for nothing, as she tried to return England to Roman Catholic rule, and in the process had scores of Protestants executed. So if you were a Protestant at that time, you definitely weren't too happy with her rule, even though you were perfectly happy with the previous monarch. But then, luckily, Mary too died early, and her younger sister Elizabeth took over, and things were OK for Protestants again, and in fact her reign is widely regarded as a "golden age" for the British Empire, as she protected them from the Spaniard invasion, and also reigned for over 40 years, creating a sense of stability that had been absent before with a lot of short-lived rulers.
One of the nice things about authoritarian governments, however, is efficiency. They don't have to debate things to death or compromise; they just do what the people in charge want (assuming the people in charge all think a lot alike, which is usually true for such governments). There's no constant in-fighting like you frequently see in democracies. But that comes at a price: possibly bad rulers that you can't get rid of, and also suppression of minorities. Minority groups (whether ethnic, religious, socioeconomic, etc.) usually do much better in republic-style governments, because there's mechanisms there for them to have some power instead of being completely sidelined.
We have a modern-day example: China. They have a largely free-market economy, but the government is thoroughly authoritarian, with a single ruling party and no elections. They have a certain agenda (mainly building up the economy and turning the country into a world power), and they're accomplishing that agenda quite well. Compared to where they were 50 years ago, or even 30 years ago, their progress is remarkable. However, if you're an ethnic minority there (like a Uighur), you're screwed. If you want to follow certain religions (like Falun Gong), you're screwed. The system is working really well for certain groups (mainly the majority Han), and not at all for others, but the rulers don't care, because they're not concerned about those people.
In a Republic, any group of sufficient size gets representation, and a voice in government. This helps avoid too much suppression of minorities. This doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but it's a lot better than places where they have zero representation or voice in government. But it also can cause in-fighting, because too many different opinions means no one can agree on anything. Look at what's going on in the USA today; no one here can agree on even the most fundamental things, like whether abortion should be legal, whether progressive taxation should exist, and much more. So we constantly fight about them, while our economy goes down the toilet. This is why the best Republics/democracies are small ones, like Switzerland, Netherlands, etc. With less diversity of thought and a much, much smaller population, there just isn't that much to fight about, and governance is more effective.
When a Republic grows too large and too diverse, to avoid corruption and eventual collapse like the Romans, it needs to break apart into smaller countries, so that there's less infighting, as well as less power to corrupt the leaders. This is exactly what needs to happen in the USA, as it's obvious that this country is not going to be successful in its present state.
I've often wondered if a smaller Congress would be better. Maybe another country has some experience with that.
535. Typing with a baby in one arm while dealing with a toddler.
"1,490 deaths if the standards were raised from, say, 30 miles-per-gallon to 40."
Lets see, out of 190,625,023 drivers in the US (back in 2000) that is an odds of dying increase of 0.00078%
I think I am ok with that increase especially if it means I get an extra 10 miles/gallon.
What's with the 'This.' meme on Slashdot recently? It's totally pointless filler and a redundant word, sentence and paragraph all in one. Well done there.
It'll take a lot more than "smart" government officials to fix this.
This article dumbs it down to high-gas mileage = death trap because they're light weight, so solution is make everything have better gas mileage, right?
Not always true: 2001 Ford Explorer 2wd SUV has a curb weight of 3769 and averaged 17mpg. 2011 Ford Explorer 2wd SUV has a curb weight of 4400 lbs and averages 20mpg. 600 lbs (18%) more, 3mpg (20%) better gas mileage.
So go ahead, require better gas mileage, but better mpg != lighter vehicles.
Besides this is already a problem because I can buy a used 2005 (last year they were made) 7,000+ lbs 15mpg Ford Excursion and outweigh almost every non-commercial vehicle on the road by 2,000+ lbs. Even a 2011 4WD Chevy Suburban is over 1,000 lbs lighter than a Ford Excursion.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
So I guess after studying the statistics you'll agree that CAFE standards don't cause any fatalities and idiots in government have done a good job?
There's a problem with this: if everyone drives an SUV, there's no more advantage in being able to see over anyone. The same goes for crashes: if everyone drove a small or medium-size car, the crash standards could be different. The problem is when you have crashes between vehicles of vastly different masses. When an SUV crashes into a small car, the people in the small car are generally screwed. That's why "small" cars these days frequently weigh over 3000 pounds now, and frequently get about the same fuel economy as mid-size SUVs. But when two SUVs crash into each other, they're on equal footing. If everyone drove an SUV, there'd be no safety advantage for the SUV drivers.
People are affraid of cars. Cars are affraid of trucks. Trucks are affraid of trains. Trains are affraid off... Chuq Norris here's a vid of a diminutive smart car crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz-s1sIoLhU&feature=related held up pretty good.
removing certain bulk & inherently shock-absorbing materials that make a vehicle arguably safer for the occupant(s)
As opposed to removing certain bulk that makes the vehicle heavier and less maneuverable?
Any race car designer will tell you that the way to make a car less susceptible to skidding is by cutting weight. That's why all race car categories have very strict rules about minimum weight,
Perhaps the simplest regulation to reduce accidents would be to require special training for drivers to drive any car above a certain weight limit. I see too many soccer moms driving SUVs that they are clearly not capable of controlling safely.
In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population
It's also much more difficult to actually get a driving license in the UK. The written and road tests are more difficult than in North America. If you drive in the UK it's quite evident that most of the drivers on the road seem more skilled and more 'situationally aware' than their North American counterparts.
By your account USA should have to be one of if not the safest country in the world to drive in.
How is it then that USA' s death rates because of car accidents are so ridiculously high?
Many of my friends are families of 5-7 (6 being the overwhelming mean). My family is 4, but my kids have friends, thus a vehicle that seats 6 is relatively mandatory. Weight doesn't factor into it at all, thus I would say is a fairly mean spirited ad hominem.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
I disbelieve that laughably straight line graph to start with. If you could extrapolate like that then making every car supremely efficient would kill off everyone on the planet in traffic accidents.
My co-worker passed someone on the freeway this morning driving well below the speed limit in the fast lane watching a movie on their tablet...
they should be charged as if a DUIs (Driving under the influence of stupid...)
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
similar sentiment here in the uk where people think big old volvos are safer than moder cars.. not true...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBDyeWofcLY
hmmm.
The problem? Toyota crippled the car with the computer programming. When you are at a stop sign and need to pull out on the highway, and the inside front wheel slips a little because you are pushing it, as to not get creamed by the semi tractor trailer barrelling down the road at you, the computer will say "oh dear, my tire is slipping, I'd better turn down the horse power so we don't make any screeching noises, or for heaven sake, actually burn any rubber, oh no". Toyota would rather I get *killed* than for me to wear down my tires? Or trying to get up a snowy hill, it does the same. No power. What I want is for the computer to realize I pressed the gas peddle down very quickly to the floor and take that fact as a command saying 'do it NOW dammit!'. If it would do that then I would have no complaints about the car at all.
Yet semi's actually managed to be bumper to bumper with sedans instead of crushing them under their raised asses...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
5-7 members exceeds the average family size. A Corolla seats 5 and a station wagon can easily seat the amount of people you are talking about.
An ad hominem would have been to say "Wow your kids must be as fat as cows", I asked because most of these SUV drivers seem to be fat people with fat children.
If your goal is to reduce gas consumption, then just raise the MPG requirements on new cars.
We tried that. I remember reading studies that showed that increasing mpg tends to increase miles driven. Lower cost per mile = more miles driven. It also lead to the SUV craze due to requirements not being as tough on them.
I don't read AC A human right
I like linking to this Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate, as it has stats for fatalities per billion vehicle-miles. There are a lot of countries without that data, but there are 8.5 in the US, compared to only 5.7 in the UK.
I do agree that the US driving test is a joke, I actually had to take it recently: it involved about 5-10 minutes of driving through quiet residential streets, and a parallel park in a special area. Despite completely screwing up my parallel park, and doing the first half of the test in "3", rather than drive I still passed the test.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
A while back (15 years? 25 years?) when the Pinto was still a car, Ford or somebody did an experiment (IIRC it was in Popular Mechanics or some such). First they took a new Pinto and a new Fairlane and crashed them together. The Pinto was, of course, a pancake along with anyone who would have been in it. Then they took two more but filled various body cavities in the Pinto with rigid urethane foam. This time, the Pinto broke even with the Fairlane - nobody in either car would have died.
So just basic methods _can_ have a very good effect.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Why the fuck would I want a car that'll flip when I take a corner too fast?
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Many states do not require the parallel park, PA dropped the requirement in 1999 or so. The fact that you can take it in an automatic and be allowed to drive a stick I think also says a lot.
Odd that making it more rigid helped - usually the problem is actually that the car doesn't crumple up enough, and transfers too much energy into the occupants, not that it crumpled up too much.
LMAO...actually read the PDF of the kids journal article, inside the linked article off /. It's all based on mathematical formulas and theory. The only real part about it is the data from actual crash tests that predicted the severity of injury. Everything else seems to have been "simulated". The whole premise is a big "IF"!
I'd say the whole thing was a joke. I will have to look if he neglected to take into account the increase in speed limits, urbanization, and just down right stupid behavior of most American drivers. That would be a lovely equation!
I'm as green as the next Liberal, but I've got 3 kids in child seats (we need three rows of seating) and I make lots of runs to home depot. We don't own an SUV for safety or to see "over and around" other vehicles, but because its big and can haul a lot of stuff and people. *My* car is an eco friendly car (SUV is my wife's car) because I just use it to commute, but as much as I hate monster big SUVs, sometimes they do have justifiable uses and IMHO, that's never to "be a tank".
I'd prefer if you made my SUV as light and fuel efficient as possible. Carrying around 6000 lbs of steel isn't what will save you, modern safety features will.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Link http://www.econ.ucsd.edu/~m3jacobs/Jacobsen_Safety.pdf
hahahaha fuckers.
Exactly! Raising the standards *at manufacturer only* is what is causing the (temporary) issues, as all those SUVs they put on the roads last decade are *still out there* and being driven just as recklessly. Take those off the roads, increase patrolling of commercial safety inspectors, and you'd see significant injury/fatalities from accidents *decrease* -- after all, you have less gas in the tanks, lighter vehicles, and for the 'underpowered' ones, lower speeds. The damage done by a less massive object traveling at lower speeds is going to be less by definition.
Another way this could be spun is that the older, less efficient, heavier vehicles are more of a hazard on public roadways, and the new legislation will eventually decrease traffic fatalities..
A 1-liter car doesn't have enough power to drive at highway speeds, and in the USA, going anywhere in a city usually means driving on a highway. There's a reason cities have beltways around them, highways through them, etc. (sometimes arranged like a spoked wheel): cities are too large to drive through on surface streets. If you need to get from one side of the city to another, 30 miles away, that can take ages when you have to stop at every traffic light, plus it uses a lot of fuel. Highways make it faster and more efficient, but you have to be able to drive 55-75mph.
Also, 1-liter cars aren't practical for use on rural highways for long-distance trips. While Americans don't do that all the time, they do it frequently enough. You can't have one car for just long trips, and another car just for city driving; that costs a lot of money, and worse, it results in high insurance payments. Insurance companies are not friendly to people who have extra cars, even though it's physically impossible for 1 person to drive 2 cars simultaneously. For most people, it's far more economical to just have one vehicle that does everything they need.
In general, people drive a lot more in the UK than they do in the US. In the US, people drive very short distances - you'd think nothing of hopping in the car to go half a mile to the shops - but take public transport for longer trips. In the UK it's the opposite; we take public transport for short journeys but drive for long journeys.
What's with the 'This.' meme on Slashdot recently? It's totally pointless filler and a redundant word, sentence and paragraph all in one. Well done there.
This.
The problem is, if you're in a "gas-guzzling behemoth" then you have practically no protection in an accident. Even in a low-speed shunt, the car might be undamaged but your insides will be pulp.
A couple of years ago not far from me there was a crash at about 30mph between an imported Ford pickup truck and a Suzuki jeep - the Suzuki was very bent but the people in it were okay, the Ford was a bit scratched but the people in it were stone dead.
On the way back from San Diego last year we saw some old codger reading a trade paperback while driving his Cadillac. Son of a bitch. My dad is one of those assholes who shave behind the wheel, he has one of those battery-operated shavers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Will people who commute into the city, and make up half the traffic volume on city streets, park at the edge of the city and transfer themselves and their cargo to a little city car?
Because he's forgetting the power of the illusion of safety and anonymity. I've noticed that a lot of people in SUV's do ridiculously stupid things, and the only plausible explanation I can find is that they feel invincible in such a large car. Either that, or they're completely unaware of the dimensions of their car and what it's capable of. I have also seen otherwise normal, calm, sane people turn into viciously rabid people the moment they get behind the wheel of an SUV, and again, the only plausible explanation I can provide is that they're under the illusion that they're invisible, too, inside that high up vehicle.
I was just going to post this video as well.
I show this to people who cling to the "old cars are safer" bit. Believe me, I love, LOVE classic cars, but the plain truth is that newer cars are safer. My fave things to point out in that crash are 1) the A Pillar collapsing, 2) The dummy doesn't hit the dashboard, the dashboard and steering column fly up to hit the dummy and 3) if this car were a few years older, there wouldn't be any safety glass in it. Yes that '59 has a fully boxed frame in it, but the level of intrusion is grotesque compared to the opposing car.
Something to note is that small cars colliding with small cars is still safer than small cars colliding with SUVs. SUVs which (interestingly) aren't always safer either. There will always be other things for small cars to crash into, such as tractor trailers, trains, buildings and bridge posts, but the more properly engineered small cars there are on the road, the general safety will increase, IMUAEO*
*In My Unscientific Armchair Engineer Opinion
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Uh, in the1950's and 60's cars were built with 1 Liter engines a lot, and some of them capable of 120mph. (at the sports car end, but still...). Today, of course the drivers in many parts of the US seem to weigh more than those 1 Liter cars did back then. And of course some of the cars back then could only go a few hundred miles before breaking down :-)
> The biggest joke here is the assumptions that 1) small, light cars can't be safe and 2) that deaths in small light cars won't reduce as we pull big, heavy cars off the roads.
I don't think those are the assumptions.
I'd say that the assumptions are:
1) At this time, small, light cars are generally not built to be reasonably safe for cost reasons
2) the deaths in small light cars due to single car accidents, small light cars colliding with each others and then colliding with large immovable objects like bridge abutments, and collisions with large commercial vehicles, will remain a significant number even after all the Hum-Vees are taken off the road.
And the conclusion, that small light cars could be made safer seems reasonable to me. Does it not seem reasonable to you?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Really? I'd have said it's the other way round, where cars really excel is short to medium journeys where the competition would be buses or walking, where they win easily in time and convenience. For long journeys though, trains can be the quicker and easier option..
From what I remember from the statistics, the USA has something like 50% more cars per capita than Western Europe, so you indeed drive a lot more over there.
I'd love for a world (roadway) in which everyone drove small sensible cars... However this isn't dreamland or one filled with rainbows and unicorns.
I do agree that the number of fatalities (or atleast injuries) would go up. Why? Because not everyone can live with a tiny car. Got a family with a bunch of kids? Not so easy putting them in the back of a VW Golf. A camry/accord is larger and does fit the bill. So do minivans if you think about hauling 3 kids plus their stuff to football practice...
Anyhow.. I am a former owner of a 2009 Smart four-two. I replaced my nice and fast BMW 330 with something that a) didn't use super-unleaded and b) got decent gas mileage for commuting to/from work (30mi round trip) in bad traffic.
Then last summer I was sitting at a light and I was rear ended by a Honda Accord. No not a hummer or other monstrous SUV, by 3000lb family sedan going about 20mph. While my rear bumper only got a small dent in it, I was shot into the middle of the intersection like a kickball on the playground. While the car was ok, I was not. For the next 3 months I suffered from a dull pain that started at the base of my skull and went 1/2 down my back.
Why did I get injured? Simple. There's no crumple zone in the rear of a Smartcar compared to any other car out there. In any other small car (Golf, Civic etc..) there's atleast some form of a trunk that can collapse and slow down the deceleration of the other car and the acceleration of mine. Since there's no crumple zone, my car ping-ponged into the intersection and thereby transmitted most of the energy to me.
I now drive a camry.
Here's a link: http://jalopnik.com/5549518/how-the-us-government-killed-the-safest-car-ever-built
Basically touted as one of the safest cars ever built and good MPG for its time to boot. Oh, and silently destroyed.
You'll notice I explicitly did not include heavy trucks in what I said the vehicle height laws should cover. That said, bumper height laws should apply to semis. There's no good reason for them not to.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The asshat who wrote the first study sited in TFA is a shill for ExxonMobil. The article hinges it's entire premis on the results of the second scholarly work which is a month old draft of an unpublished, unpeer-reviewed, unproven idea for an econometric model to analyze policy effects on on safety (translate: probably not even close to accurate). In fact, the article states as it's first line "Research confirms that increasing fuel economy standards does cost lives on the road.", as if this is proven fucking fact now. Stuff like this on slashdot makes me want to punch people in the face. Few bother to question or even read linked articles but love to go all modern jackass on meta shit that doesn't even have anything to do with the subject.
A couple points:
1. It's gotten so bad, we tend to have suppression of majorities. Try being white or a Christian in America today. You're getting attacked left and right (no pun intended).
2. That's why we were supposed to have States' rights, so that the locals could do what's best for them.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
A taller vehicle always has the advantage of providing longer sight distance with respect to the road. The headlights are usually higher up too, unless it's a Chevy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My mistake I thought UK driving averages were like Continental ones. You bastards must love driving around your tiny island.
The US driving test generally covers some low speed driving and a couple street lights. Some states require a 3 point turn or parallel parking, many do not. No lessons are generally required and only a low number of practice hours with a licensed driver are required.
I wish -I- could drive around that tiny island. I understand that it is a wonderful, beautiful, historically rich place. :^)
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You may not be able to see over them, but at least you aren't at a height disadvantage; you can see through their rear window. If you're in a car and an SUV is in front of you, even that is not true.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The big difference is back then you had an engine that was cast iron. The Malibu had an aluminum engine so although they may have had the same mass more mass is concentrated in the body of the Malibu which explains the crash results.
The big advance will happen when the manufacture of carbon composites gets the point it can be automated cheaply. They are lighter, stiffer, and stronger that most metals. In a minor crash the composite will deflect but not yield so you will most likely just need to buff it out and paint it.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
No, people buy SUV's because they make them feel safer.
I know several middle-aged women who buy SUV's (Excursion) because they are safer then in their Accord they traded in. Seeing over people isn't their reason.
It's hard to say/remember how rigid 'rigid' meant at the time - at least not squishy like a foam mattress, but perhaps not rock-hard rigid. Happy medium and all that.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
http://www.questionablecontent.net/random/winfail.png pretty much covers it.
Today is red jello day - all workers must eat all of their red jello. Failure to comply will result in five demerits.
What do you need to see around the car in front of you for? If the reason you give for many people driving big SUVs true then it's probably what's causing all the SUV crashes in the first place. UNSAFE driving. You need to see the lanes on either side of you, what is directly in front of you and be aware of automobiles that are directly behind and to the side of you and that's it. Don't worry about what's in front of the other guy. Your argument makes no sense.
You also don't need to be seen more easily. If that's true, then what effect does the presence of SUVs and other large vehicles have on motorcycles and other smaller vehicles? This again makes no sense. With a proper following distance and constant rate of speed, a motorcycle rider is just as safe as an SUV driver is while trailing a semi.
The solution is good basic driving habits, like following distances and looking before going, which includes while changing lanes. All vehicles are unsafe if driven incorrectly and in an unsafe manner. As it is right now, people just get their driver's license renewed every few years without any barrier other than how well they can see and whether or not they had a DWI/DUI. The problem compounds with the number of drivers doing the same thing. We should be re-educating drivers at every license renewal to remind them of basic driving habits that can save lives. It's an inconvenience, yes, but then again, so are injuries and death.
The eternal struggle of good vs. evil begins within one's self.
The only problem is they are not tanks. SUVs are far more likely to flip or launch over a guard rail during a traffic accident.
It's the US Government's grand plan. There's no carbon scheme that has a greater effect than taking a human out of the population. A person is a carbon footprint that can't be offset.
+1
1. It's gotten so bad, we tend to have suppression of majorities. Try being white or a Christian in America today. You're getting attacked left and right (no pun intended).
Oh please. Why do Christian fundamentalists always think they're being persecuted, when they're the majority and have the most political power? The Republican party is all about kowtowing to fundamentalist Christians. No one is "attacking" you, you just hate it that you're not able to oppress homosexuals like you used to.
2. That's why we were supposed to have States' rights, so that the locals could do what's best for them.
You can't have States' rights with a Federal government; it always tends toward concentration of power at the top. This question was settled in 1865. You need to have a Confederacy, like the Swiss, if you want real States' rights. However, for various historical reasons that didn't work out for us (mainly because we were trying to hold together two parts of the country which were just too different), which is why we abandoned the Articles of Confederation and wrote the Constitution instead, which doomed us to Federalism. The only way to change that now is to overthrow the government and make a new confederation, hopefully modeled after the Swiss.
Small cars lose vs mass transit vehicles in an accident, true.
Small cars lose vs 18 wheelers on freeways, true.
Also true:
Big ass SUVs also lose vs mass transit vehicles in an accident.
Big ass SUVs also get squashed like bugs when hitting 18 semi-trucks on the freeway.
So what was your point? The weight advantage of the "big" SUVs only helps you when you're running into small cars in accidents. So you're basically making yourself safer at the cost of the safety of other people on the road who are in smaller cars. Is it any wonder that people in small cars don't really like this?
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
So what? If everyone is driving a car, they can also see through the rear window of the car in front of them. The problem only arises when there's vehicles of greatly differing heights sharing a road together. Make them all the same, and the problem disappears. And if you're going to make them the same, it makes more sense to make them all cars, because cars get better mpg, have better handling, and don't roll over so easily. If people would start buying wagons again, they'd have the cargo room and utility that SUVs have too (probably more, in fact; most SUVs seem to make very poor use of their interior volume).
As someone who when driving a small car frequently found themselves being merged into by SUV drivers changing lanes where their "height advantage" evidently caused them to completely overlook my car I think the height is a problem rather than a solution.
It isn't just the height though, I never found myself being squished by truck or bus drivers so I think it is in part due to driver ability (professional drivers generally being better) and vehicle design (perhaps mirrors on trucks and buses are of a fuller length while SUV mirrors are kept as small as possible for style reasons).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Extending your logic, the tax bill on an 80,000 lb 18-wheeler that hauls food to your local grocery would be 2.56 million times the taxes paid on a 2,000 lb car.
So, the question is how much are you willing to pay for strawberries?
Or we could just ban SUVs. That would achieve the same goal and not make me drive something that cannot corner for shit.
Great idea! I'll start towing my 25' travel trailer with my BMW Z3. That should be a lot safer!
One small suggestion - don't drive in front of me if I need to emergency stop. If I am towing using a subcompact, I'll have to use you as an intertia reducing device.
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you are shorter of breath and one day closer to death
So what? On a flat road, that advantage is pretty small, and I've never noticed any lack of distance vision in my small car. Maybe if you're driving 200mph the extra distance would be an advantage, but tall vehicles can't handle high speeds safely (I suppose they could if you proportionately increased their width and length too, but vehicles are width-constrained by roads and regulations).
My kia has more horsepower, more torque, better gas mileage, something like 10 or 12 fucking airbags, scored better on every crash test and COST LESS than a competing GM product.
So I might ask, do we really want to start waving this flag at our precious dumbass auto liability?
Dirty Harry's off-the-cuff wisdom applies here:
"A man's gotta know his [and his vehicle's] limitations.
Sadly, far too many people don't recognize the limits of either. They think they can fly even when they're not high on LSD. The cars aren't the problem, nor is making them lighter/smaller; it's the ignorance of the people driving them. More fragile vehicles demand that people be less competitive, more cooperative, more observant, and if they aren't trained to behave that way they'll die or be maimed.
It's the same ignorance that makes the use of roundabouts instead of traffic signals more dangerous than they logically should be (in the U.S. at least). That's also a huge shame, because roundabouts require NO ENERGY and NO MAINTENANCE and are inherently more efficient than traffic signals. Traffic signals require electricity, waste gasoline, and require human maintenance, but they require much less awareness and cooperation because the signals are telling people what to do and when to do it. To function correctly - and safely - roundabouts require that people cooperate and observe; at least in the U.S., people have not been trained to do those things, and they are not instinctive for most.
The mean limits of human awareness and intelligence is the problem that needs a solution.
an old Pinto didn't have designed crumple zones that crumpled around the passengers. It was luck whether the body crushed around you or into you. Also the foam is not as incompressible as steel, there's a good change it absorbed energy from the crash via compression.
Wrong. The difference is that now engineers know how to design a car to protect its passengers from a crash, and they're more motivated to do so.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Been shaving whilst commuting since 83, have had several (4) minor shunts at junctions over the years all due to mine or other driver errors. None of them on a commute. Having perfect situational awareness will not prevent someone running into the back of you at a junction or your pulling out into the back of someone who puts the brakes on unexpectedly, or the brain is tricked about what it sees. Shaving can only be done when you are on the open road with plenty of stopping distance behind and in front of you in good conditions, its far less of a distraction than changing channels on a radio or replying to a passenger because you are still looking at the road not something inside the vehicle. Conclusion, don't allow anything ever to distract you where the traffic changes speed - e.g. junctions. Otherwise, situational awareness including your level of distraction and defensive driving seems to work. Oh and remember that if you have a bad cold or are dead tired your reactions are not much better than a drunk driver, though I haven't noticed any legislation about it despite the number of people falling asleep and driving off the road.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
In a minor crash the composite will deflect but not yield so you will most likely just need to buff it out and paint it.
The problem with that though, is that carbon fiber won't absorb as much energy from the impact as the steel will. To retain the same safety, a carbon-fiber car will still have to have some form of crumple zone or other energy absorption component that WILL yield and will likely result in the car being "undriveable until repaired" just the same as current ones.
Of course, in minor accidents this could become a quick easy bolt-off/bolt-on part (then buff and paint as you say), but now I'm just scheming.
do() || do_not();
That would be true if the drivers of pickups were taking advantage of their improved visibility and paying attention but many drivers in pickups seem to be in their own little world with the radio on, and coffee in hand. They feel safe, and in fact they are safe, but they make everybody else less safe by their inattention.
I ride a motorcycle during the summer. . . . Drivers who pay attention make other drivers safer.
No, we should restrict max height closer to a station wagon.
Also, we absolutely must have a minimum standard for bumper height. Too many redneck idiots with body-lift kits who don't lower their bumpers back down, so they'll ride up on our hoods and decaptitate us.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Car crash deaths are not that big a deal. Lack of exercise is estimated to kill an order of magnitude more people. One study compared the health risk from not exercising (i.e., from driving cars to excess), to the crash risk for bicycles (not cars, bicycles), and found that riding bicycles saves about 10 years of expected lifespan for every year lost to bicycle crashes. Another study in Denmark found that the mortality rate was 39% higher for non-bicycle commuters, after correcting for risk factors.
So, seriously, it's old news, but if you think that the right way to think about safety is which car to drive, as opposed to whether to you should be driving, you're not looking at the big picture. If government officials were smart, they would ignore this pinheaded economist, and focus on ways to get people out of their cars and getting a bit more exercise.
2) Is easily disproved by looking at countries where small and light cars are already the norm. In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population
Supposed world mortality rates per capita for 2004.
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mor_mot_or_non_veh_acc_typ_of_veh_uns_percap-accident-type-unspecified-per-capita
Why the fuck would you take a corner too fast?
This sig is not paradoxical or ironic.
America has 300 million+ people.... and he's estimating a change that MIGHT increase fatalities by 149 per year.
Sorry, but that's background noise. We lose more people to random lightning strikes. We lose 400,000 to heart disease each year. He didn't say how many lives would be saved or improved my reduced air pollution either.
Sounds like someone needs to quit letting Greg Giraldo do his thinking for him.
Ya know, he die... it was the drugs.
It also disregards the long term effects of the carbonic acid released into the atmosphere.
That's not green.
I can't speak for Christians (myself not being one), but there are *definitely* disadvantages to being white.
For example, the RCMP is *required* to take non-white applicants first, even though in most areas whites are becoming the MINORITY.
Another example is a strip-mall nearby (~8-12 businesses). The owners decided to refuse to renew the leases of any business not run by Koreans and then proceeded to replace ALL of those businesses with *identical* businesses (hair dresser vs Korean hair dresser, etc) run by Koreans. This stunt made it into the local papers numerous times, but nothing happened. I *guarantee* that had a white person tried to kick out all asian stores and replace them with white equivalents, there would have been hell to pay! Had they simply been bringing in Korean-oriented (food, culture stuff, not insurance companies, etc) businesses, there wouldn't have been such an issue, but they replaced them with *identical* businesses, just with Korean owners and workers. *** Disclaimer. I have NOTHING against Koreans, it just happened that this land-lord was Korean and this is what they did.
I'm not saying there are no disadvantages to being black/asian/etc, but society is definitely not "favouring the white guy" like it used to 10 years ago.
Odd how I regularly see little 1 litre cars doing 80+ mph on the motorway and have driven similar cars at similar speeds and for journeys of a couple of hundred miles. As one example, a Fiat 500 Twin Air with it tiny 0.9 litre engine maxes out at 108 mph.
If you want something a bit bigger and more luxurious, the Volvo V50 we'll be getting delivered next month can seat 4 or 5 in comfort, has a big boot and the Drive model with its little 1.6 litre diesel engine gets to 60 in under 11 seconds and maxes out at 120 mph. Not fast, but more than fast enough that you're not a liability. And it'll get over 80 mpg on a run - about 70 mpg in US units.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
... when a Porsche (a small one, not a Cayenne) hit the side of her SUV at 150km/h.
Being in a SUV or being hit by a small car sadly didn't help in her case.
This story is a little bit idiotic, isn't it... it's like some kind of FUD: don't buy an economic car or you'll die. Very lame.
There was a study a while ago that concluded that drivers of big vehicles tend to drive less safely because of a false perception of greater safety provided by the larger vehicle. Less attentiveness and visibility, not to mention the drawbacks when driving on icy roads. IMHO, if you buy a car because it makes you feel safe and not because you're confident while driving it, then you're probably worse off than a guy in a small car who knows exactly how to get it out of a bad situation. Driving isn't a game. If you can't handle it, might I suggest public transit or carpooling?
From the article “When you buy a large SUV, you’re not paying for the risk you pose to everyone else on the road,”
As good a title for the post is that SUV drivers on killing spree
Had your sister been in a Honda Civic and the other been a VW GTI, they would have avoided a collision in the first place. Driving a 5,000 lb rust-bucket doesn't prevent the floaty suspensions and 200+ feet 60-0 stopping distance-induced wrecks.
For example, the RCMP is *required* to take non-white applicants first, even though in most areas whites are becoming the MINORITY.
While affirmative action is definitely trading one kind of oppression for another, the previous poster was complaining about oppression in America, not Canada.
Another example is a strip-mall nearby (~8-12 businesses). The owners decided to refuse to renew the leases of any business not run by Koreans and then proceeded to replace ALL of those businesses with *identical* businesses (hair dresser vs Korean hair dresser, etc) run by Koreans. This stunt made it into the local papers numerous times, but nothing happened.
Was this in America or Canada? Canada with their strong focus on "multi-culturalism" probably has a lot more things like this than America, and definitely seems to be taking the affirmative action thing way too far. Here in the US, it's not nearly that bad, though in certain areas you can be screwed if you're white, don't speak Spanish, and are applying for a job as a hotel maid or a cook at a restaurant.
As to #2, I'm an American and lived in England. Not only are your cars smaller (well, our cars, since I drive a Fiesta here in the US), but your roads are far more dangerous, yet you have less deaths (something about traffic circles being less death inducing than 4 way intersections). I'm willing to bet you have more actual accidents, and as you posted, less deaths. The answer is easy--in America we have far too many SUVs and Pickup Trucks. A pickup truck is a shell on a frame. It is probably the least safe thing to be inside when you roll into a ditch, kareem off a wall, or get hit by another vehicle. An SUV is a horrible engineered vehicle (a heavier shell on the same truck frame) usually driven by the worst drivers who have a faux sense of safety due to driving a ten-foot tall miniature house.
I've passed both the UK and the US drivers tests. They are both equally easy when it comes to passing the "driving" portion. The UK one is harder with the rules-of-the-road test, but that's probably because I'm American and it was new to me.
Germany, on the other hand...they're doing it right.
Those 1 liter cars won't meet US crash standards, and wouldn't do well in a crash with that Volvo either.
As for the V50, a 1.6L diesel engine is 60% larger than the 1-liter engines we're talking about. That's a pretty big increase. Just because it's less than the next whole number doesn't mean it's in the same class. Heck, if we picked some other arbitrary unit of volume, we could make a 1L engine sound like almost the same size as a 5L engine.
Maybe they should make drivers licenses harder to get. And what's more important the lives of thousands of drivers, or the life of the environment that supports billions.
It's an issue of selfishness. Buying the bigger tank than the next person on the road to make sure that they absorb more energy in a collision is subtly stating that, "You and yours be damned, I've gotta look out for me and mine." (I still argue that the safety advantage of these large vehicles is more marketing than reality, but I've already posted that above.) And maybe this attitude is natural.
So fair enough. It's war, then. You pull out a knife, so I pull out a gun, so you pull out an ICBM, etc. I propose a solution to move things back in the right (efficient) direction with regard to this highway arms race: I call it "The Wedge," and it's my dream car.
The Wedge would be a small four or five seat car that's very low and slants sharply to the ground at front. The nose of the car is made to crumple fore and aft to mitigate an impact with an immovable object, but also made INCREDIBLY strong in vertical compression. Perhaps the entire hood and windshield is made of composite sandwich structures and visibility is achieved with cameras or something.
Upon impact with a larger vehicle, The Wedge would effectively act as a ramp, sending Hummer McDoucherson and his entire family rolling to their unfortunate demise, crushed under the weight of 6000 pounds of "safety." Meanwhile, The Wedge would have a few scratches and dings to buff out.
It's great because this design could be kept to a very low weight, and this combined with slippery aerodynamics would achieve great fuel economy. All the while my family could be completely safe from the 6000 pound tanks on their way to soccer practice. Not that such an impact would be likely, because The Wedge would be able to actually get out of its own way.
It's a shame so many other families that would have the bad luck of having an unfortunate encounter with The Wedge would have to die, but, hey, they started it.
Wow, that's quite the backwards thinking. Instead of lobbying for equally tall and giant space hogging SUVs, I'd posit that we need smaller cars that take up less space and are easier to maneuver. Lower center of gravity and shorter stopping distances are far better for safety than your crazy "equal heights" requirement.
But yeah, I'd LOVE to live in a society where everyone drives an SUV. 65mph speed zones would bog down to 45mph, parking lots would double in size, and gas prices would triple to take advantage of the market.
While affirmative action is definitely trading one kind of oppression for another, the previous poster was complaining about oppression in America, not Canada.
Why, yes, Canada is the only country in the world that has "affirmative action" and thus it is impossible to find anything similar in the US of A. Like lower standards for members of "underrepresented groups" wanting to be police officers or soldiers, for example. Or getting into graduate school. Or med school. Like Brown v. BOE. That didn't happen in the US of A.
Move along, nothing to see here.
Was this in America or Canada?
Psssst, don't look now, but the map has changed since you went to school. Canada is part of America. North America. Just like the US of A. Yes, that's pedantic, but so too is you pointing out an example is from Canada for something that goes on in the US as well.
I read once that a Scion XB has more interior space than a Suburban. Maybe I misread it, but the point is that giant SUV driving apologists are exactly that. 9 out of 10 SUV drivers will tell you they need it but maybe 3 of 10 actually do.
I have three kids (one in a car seat, and one who is 240lbs) and a wife. Care to guess what we drive?
2008 Mazdaspeed 3
1999 Ford Contour SVT
And we all fit just fine. My kids live with their mom 70 miles away and we meet halfway every weekend, just in case you want to play the "kids don't like small cars on long rides" argument.
The false assumption here is that just passive safety counts (aka protection in a crash).
Active safety (avoiding the collision in the first place) actually plays a huge roll in vehicle safety.
This article is simply non-sense.
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great essay debunking this myth with HARD facts (deaths per million vehicles)
Big and Bad: How the S.U.V. ran over automotive safety.
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
I encourage those you that don't know any better to read it.
----- "Profanity is the one language that all programmers understand."
How is it then that USA' s death rates because of car accidents are so ridiculously high?
SUVs and trucks. But you already knew that, and SUV apologists don't want to believe it so they'll make ridiculous claims in this thread.
People who demonstrate such a lack of judgment by purchasing an SUV in the first place certainly can't be expected to demonstrate good judgment behind the wheel, now can they?
Why the fuck would you take a corner too fast?
So that explains the horde of SUV drivers ahead of me that consistently drive 15 mph under the speed limit at first sight of a hill or curve.
535. Typing with a baby in one arm while dealing with a toddler.
Did I hear you right? Dealing with congress is like dealing with 100 babies and 435 toddlers? Or the other way around?
It's a poor test. First there is no way to verify the integrity of the Bel-Air. 2nd. The Bel-Air had an "X frame".. Which has far less strength in any direction than a ladder frame. This car was chosen specifically because they knew it's design would allow it to fail this specific test. Try this same test with a '76 Electra 225. Or a Lincoln Mark 3. Or allow for the new Chevy to be subjected to a side impact test by a 71 Caddy. Physics is a cruel mother. Which is why the other video's of the mid sized cars hitting the ultra compacts is so damning. In one video a mid sized Merc literally punts a smart car.. which goes completely airborne, spinning off to the side. Now imagine if they had done those tests with Full sized SUV's and the mico's.. That's not to say that there haven't been improvements in safety.. Merely that you can only do so much to overcome physics. My 5 year old daughter has "her" car.. We bought it for her when she was born. Now both she and my 3 year old daughter have joint ownership. It's the only car they ride in. A 2006 Expedition. 15mpg is the price I pay for safety.
No, people buy SUVs because they better allow you to see over and around other vehicles.
A large vehicle gives people a false sense of security. Most sane people should be paranoid about driving. It is one of the riskiest things people do on a daily basis.
Not everyone is a competent driver, some are only watching the road directly in front of their bumper. They have to, or they can't keep the car in the lane under normal circumstances. And then there's the people that take their foot off the brake and put their hands in front of their face before they crash into something. The seat belt is there to keep them from trying to jump into the back seat or out the door.
Other drivers on the road are hazards. But, I own a small sedan that's only five feet high. It makes up for its shortcomings by being reliable, having a manual transmission, and reasonably good visibility (I'm a foot taller than the car - I could get out and see better).
Bad visibility isn't primarily due to the height of the car, it's having decals, stupid window curves, a small back window, and a bulky rear view mirror on the windshield. IMHO, whoever needs several buttons on their mirror would be better off having a garage door opener surgically attached to their crotch. It's in the wrong place already, it'd be better for everyone else that way.
I asked because most of these SUV drivers seem to be fat people with fat children.
It's the fish/plants growth-theory...get a bigger fish tank or plant vase and the fish and plants grow bigger.
Something tells me you've never driven a small displacement modern vehicle. You think a 1 liter car can't exceed even the highest speed limit ANYWHERE in the United States? Ok, if it's got the typically sized American driving it, then yeah, probably not, but otherwise you should easily hit 100mph in that sort of vehicle (speed rating of tires dependent).
Typically a good design has an energy absorbing crumple zone around a rigid passenger compartment.
"... filled various body cavities in the Pinto with rigid urethane foam."
Without seeing the article it's not clear what they did, but urethane foam would also be an energy absorber when it is deformed. It is possible to create polyurethanes with vastly differing flexibility. When they are foamed, their properties are vastly different. Rigid polyurethane foam is the type that is used for insulation (in refrigerators for example) and flexible polyurethane foam, 'foam rubber' is the type that is used to cushion seating.
Someone is getting paid to post misleading articles on the web.
'Mr Bean' (Rowan Atkinson)wrecks his rare McLaren F1, likely he survived because of the McLarens poor gas mileage
Cars don't have room for the whole family, can't easily carry your kids and their friends to soccer practice, etc. Nothing beats a minivan or a full-size SUV or van for carrying lots of people.
Also, this is anecdotal, but I've also had less trouble with hydroplaning in my RAV4 than I have in cars or minivans that I have driven over the years. I figure it probably has to do with the weight of the vehicle pressing the water out from under your tires better. Or maybe California's roads have just improved. (*snickers under breath*)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The law says that you may not drive in an impaired state of any kind, but it's easy to demonize drunk drivers (Thanks, MADD, for helping to prevent any rational national discourse) without actually solving any problems... but while being able to make a whole bunch of money on them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
actually i think they should be moving towards things like the lotus elise. the smaller the car the less energy in a crash, also the less energy required to move the damn thing.
why do you feel that "crossover" is the right height? corners can be cleared of obstructions(I live in MN so i include snow in this). Really the only thing you loose in the shorter car is over hill/crest visibility. but how many tight hills are there around you?
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
'Mr Bean' (Rowan Atkinson) wrecks his rare McLaren F1
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2011/08/mr-bean-wrecks-his-rare-mclaren-f1/1
Because if I actually leave a safe stopping distance, three cars will cut in front of me, and I will no longer have a safe stopping distance. Therefore, the only way to drive safely is to be aware not just of the vehicle in front of you, but two or three cars ahead. If you've never driven in California, you probably can't understand this concept, but that's the unfortunate reality.
Motorcycle drivers have always been screwed due to being hard to see. It's one of the first things you learn in driver's ed. This is why I said that you need to try to push people away from smaller vehicles (including motorcycles) and towards uniformly sized vehicles.
Don't get me wrong, in theory, you're absolutely correct. In practice, it doesn't work. Of course, the best thing we could do as a society is to remove the meatbags from the drivers' seats entirely. Since that won't happen for at least another decade or two, the best thing we can do in the interim is to try to minimize obvious problems like huge discrepancies between vehicle sizes, huge discrepancies between the slowest and fastest vehicles on the road (enforcing both minimum and maximum speeds, eliminating truck speed limits where possible, etc.), making vehicles safer in the event of rollovers, and so on.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Unless you mean "aircraft" when you say "public transport", I'm not sure how you think Americans get around, and even then it's a bit of a stretch - I don't think about flying until it's at least 400-500 miles, and then only if I'm going to be there for a day or less. If I'm going to be there for a week, I'll drive ~900 miles (one full day driving) each way. I've done drives roughly equivalent to going from Penzance to John O'Groats in a single day many times.
I wonder how many of those are people pulling out in front of a loaded semi and expecting it to stop like a F1 car?
Also all US Semi drivers have a CDL( commercial drivers license) which implies that they have significant extra training in handling the large trucks.
I think the solution is something like "skip barber" for all drivers. More of a focus on driving on real roads, but the car control is always helpful. A rain requirement, a gravel requirement, a snow requirement for everyone north of the Mason/Dixon line should be on the driving test. Before you scream that will take every diver 6 months to get a license, there are materials that can mimic the low traction of snow, and sprinklers for the rain.
Emergency maneuvers on all of the above surfaces would be required, in straight lines, and both left and right hand turns. in the corners, you would be required to tighten the corner to miss something, open it up, as well as full stop without loss of control.
That would help i think. All of that would have to be done in the normal road car of the driver, training could be in a slightly modified road car.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Speaking as somebody who drives an SUV, they merge into us all the time, too, so I'm pretty sure it is much less the height and more the drivers. Happened to me yesterday, in fact. A guy turned right out of the left lane, directly in front of me. Glad I have good brakes and good reflexes. I couldn't even swerve because there were pedestrians at the curbside.
BTW, were the vehicles cutting you off usually Lexus SUVs, perchance? I've noticed that the worst driving around here seems to be by people with luxury cars. Maybe it's regional, but I've noticed it often enough to suspect that at least around here, that's not purely anecdotal....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It's a big advantage if you're dealing with lumpy and/or potholed terrain; you get to see stuff sooner, provide you're maintaining a safe following distance from any preceding traffic. I've owned and driven a broad range of vehicles from a 3" dropped 1989 240SX fastback up to my 1992 F250 7.3 with 4" lift on 35s and the extra sight distance makes a HUGE difference up here in the boonies where you can easily fail to see a pothole behind a bump and bend a wheel if you're low down to the ground — I have, and I wasn't going particularly fast, though it was a TSW (reputed to stand for "totally soft wheel"... but 15x7 alloy at 9lb when the factory steel is 14 and the factory alloy is 19 is pretty sexy.)
When I lived in Santa Cruz it was no big deal. Living in Marysville the 240SX was livable but a hassle. Living in Lake County the 240SX was ridiculous. I see these guys around here with lowered civics and stuff now and I just shake my head. I had a 1993 Impreza and that was OK in terms of stance but still a little too low. When I got my 300SD I sold the GC5 to someone who got hit on the highway (as in, fully not his fault) and rolled it five times, walked away with scratches and some small bruises. I just like telling that story.
When I go from truck to car I feel like I'm in a race car and I can't see shit. When I go from car to truck it feels ponderous, but if you jam the pedal down all kinds of dramatic shit happens comparatively, and I can see everything for miles. Sometimes I drive my lady's Astro and then it fucking kills my back... but you can see pretty well and you are rarely blinded even when one of these 12" combined lift diesels comes storming by with HIDs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
ohh i forgot a nation wide legal BAC limit of 0.00 with the complete loss of your license on the second offense, and should you be driving a car after you loose it for your second DUI, we simply lock you away in a hole for the rest of your life. Proof of criminal negligence that could result in the death of a person or some such like it.
This also goes for cell phone use, texting, applying makeup, reading the paper, shaving, etc. basically anything other than driving the car.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
You prefer monarchy?
Any way some statistics if someone wants to read them:
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/transportation/motor_vehicle_accidents_and_fatalities.html
As a Canadian living under a (constitutional) Monarchy: yes I do.
People who demonstrate such a lack of judgment by purchasing an SUV in the first place certainly can't be expected to demonstrate good judgment behind the wheel, now can they?
(from this)
So that explains the horde of SUV drivers ahead of me that consistently drive 15 mph under the speed limit at first sight of a hill or curve.
Well, which is it? Are they overly cautious, or maniacs?
Then they took two more but filled various body cavities in the Pinto with rigid urethane foam.
I don't think I want to fill my body cavities with foam!
(something about traffic circles being less death inducing than 4 way intersections).
It would seem reasonable that a glancing blow is less fatal than a t-bone. The entrance of a roundabout forces you to turn nearly parallel to existing traffic to enter.
The answer is easy--in America we have far too many SUVs and Pickup Trucks.
That's an opinion, not a fact. And it's probably not the right answer, since most easy answers aren't.
I'd say it has more to do with the kinds of roads. In the US, we've got wonderful freeways that entice people to go fast. In the UK, not so many. From what I remember of the place, even the largest "freeways" are only four lane divided. Maybe different around London...
Also, many of the roads at the small end are smaller in the UK. I remember a lot of one-lane roads once you get into the more rural areas, and I've found very few such here, until you get into the largely untravelled forest roads. You're going to go slower on a road where you know someone else can be coming at you head on.
usually driven by the worst drivers
Your confirmation bias is showing. You hate the vehicle, so the drivers must be hateful, too.
due to driving a ten-foot tall miniature house.
Now you've ruined any possible value of your argument by using such hyperbole. I don't know of a ten foot tall SUV, although the Chevy Suburban is large. Mine is about 5'.
I didn't say anything about them being maniacs. I said they can't be expected to demonstrate good judgment--part of which is operating your vehicle at safe speeds for the conditions--not 15 mph slower than everyone else around you.
How about the idea that it isn't that the microcars are unsafe, but instead your 2006 Expedition that is deadly to smaller cars.
Blaming small cars for the killing passengers when they hit bigger cars is like the old saying "Well, dressed like that, she was ASKING for it!"
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
A taller vehicle is also inherently less stable and more prone to rollovers.
Agreed. I remember several years ago, some studies were done, regarding bumper heights. In these videos of crash tests, the bumpers always seem to match, or nearly match. Passenger vehicles seem to have been standardized, ages ago, regarding bumper height. But, pickups, SUV's, and other vehicles such as delivery trucks all have higher bumpers. Meaning, their bumpers ride up over your bumper, at the least slamming into your radiator and engine, or at the worst, coming directly at you, through the windshield.
I've not actually witnessed crashes of this type, but I have seen the results. It's ugly. If safety is the primary issue, then all vehicles on the road would have a standard bumper height. Your energy absorption technology is pretty well meaningless in a situation where that absorption never comes into play. Even class 8 trucks - those big 18 wheelers - could have improved bumpers on the trailers. It's a no-brainer that those big F-350 pickups with lift kits should be outlawed.
As has been pointed out many times, the vast majority of trucks like an F-350 are almost never used for their designed purpose. They are status symbols, and phallic symbols. That is even more true when those trucks have over sized tires, and lift kits. People who actually WORK a truck don't need, or want, lift kits. Instead, they need and demand stability. The lower the center of gravity, the more stable that truck will be.
It only makes sense that pickup bumper heights are required by law to match the vast majority of small, fuel efficient passenger vehicles.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
"None of us is as dumb as all of us and Congress is a committee of 528 people."
are you sure? i had a really hard time reading that! maybe i'm the exception! :)
Your confirmation bias is showing. You hate the vehicle, so the drivers must be hateful, too.
So close, it's the drivers I hate (and their incessant rationalization of their choice of vehicle), not the vehicle.
We outgrew the number of seats available. First we gave up the sports cars for a van and a SUV because although sports cars have back seats, they are a real pain to deal with using car seats. Then we had to switch off the SUV for a bigger SUV since the van couldn't reliably get us around in deep snow and the first SUV ran out of seats. Then we finally traded the first van off for a bigger van that would hold all 7 of us - plus luggage for a couple of weeks on the road when needed.
The next vehicle we purchase will probably be back in the small and efficient category, but it'll be awhile before we do that I suspect. That will handle commuting better, at least assuming we don't have to transport a cello back and forth to school this year - it's not just the seats that can be issue - it's also the big odd shapes of objects you end up needing to haul. But it still doesn't eliminate the times we all pile in to go someplace so we'll need a vehicle that handles a big family and their friends for several more years to come.
To set h4rr4r's mind at ease, none of our kids have weight issues, and we're in a part of the country where most of the population is more reasonably sized (and drives a disproportionate number of SUVs, pickups, and vans). Station wagons don't have enough ground clearance for winter - sorry to burst your illusions - and even then most won't seat 7 with room for luggage. It's also much nicer to handle groceries for a family of 7 with a van versus a tiny economically friendly car. A gallon of milk a day adds up... and that's just one item. You tend to buy in bulk when you can, and most of those bulk purchases don't fit into a tiny car easily unless you make enough trips to negate it's economic advantages - especially when you might need to take quite a bit of the family along on an errand run to handle all the activities. One of the reasons we don't have weight issues is we rarely eat out and eat at fast food places even less frequently. It's much cheaper to fix meals at home and my wife is a great cook. You don't tend to get as fat if you're eating at home.
YOU'LL GeT My TaNk WhEn I RuN OvEr YoUr TiN-CaN WiTh WhEEls! GooD LuCk WiTh ThAt!
I could be wrong, but that window on the Bel Air isn't breaking like I would expect an original to.
There is a famous old joke
A Camel is a horse designed by a committee
da da da dum indeed.
a:) In the UK it's perfectly normal to drive long distances between major cities for things like business trips or weekends visiting relatives, e.g. London to Glasgow, a good 7-8 hours with a couple of short breaks, where as in the US it seems it would be more common to fly in similar situations.
b:) In Continental Europe, train services and public transport are far superior in just about every respect and have been the envy of the British for the last thirty years or so. In recent times things have got worse, with prices for longer train journeys reaching almost ridiculous levels if bought on the day of travel. Though in the cities buses can be pretty good, in rural areas they are awful, unless you like 1 hr journeys on bumpy roads that cost the same as the equivalent direct 20 min drive in your car.
c:) North American towns and smaller cities are far better equipped with local shops and services than their equivalents in the UK, particularly in more rural and "satellite town" areas. In the US and Canada I'd constantly be amazed by what was on offer in small towns that would in the UK just be villages with a single newsagent/minimarket, maybe a post office and a few pubs. People in the UK in places like this are used to driving 20 mins+ to a town/city in the area that's larger to get more than the most basic services or go to the supermarket. Both supermarkets and larger shopping malls in the UK are, on average, quite a lot more crowded than their equivalents in the US and Canada. My theory is that this is due to the higher costs of land, rent, and running a business on average here to due to our great population density, minimum wage laws and many restrictions on new development, leading to a consolidation of businesses into fewer, more concentrated areas - but it results in more 20-40 min drives for the significant semi-rural population.
d:) One reason why there are less cars per person in the UK, it's really expensive in the UK to keep a car road legal compared to other countries. Insurance and road tax add up to £600-£1500 per year for most drivers, for a fairly modest type of car. Insurance varies hugely depending on how sporty/big engined the car is and how young you are. You don't see 17-20 year olds driving SUVs / Jap sports coupes/ sports cars nearly as commonly as in the US or other countries because the insurance would be so expensive (it might not even be possible to buy insurance for some car/driver combinations). I think that's one reason why fatal accidents are lower here.
Well, you would have to factor in that drinking and driving is stigmatized way more than it was in 1972.
http://www.alcoholismrehab.org/drunk-driving/the-costs-of-drunk-driving/
Are you sure that frame's fully boxed, and not a flexible C-channel with whimpy crossmembers which is pretty much always replaced with something from Art Morrison (or similar) if the new drivetrain makes any kind of power? :)
It also doesn't balance the count with 4400 US deaths in Iraq due to a desire for more oil.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
"or soldiers, for example"
Seriously, if you want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan and are the right age and healthy, I am sure they will take you, they don't discriminate. Even if you are white and christian. Don't just sit at your computer boy, move. Put down the Cheesy Poofs.
You know, alternatives do exist. They're called "minivans". They'll carry just as many people, they'll haul as much stuff from the Home Depot as you're willing to carry, and they're more fuel efficient and safer overall because they're not perched up on top of a ridiculously heavy and tall offroad truck chassis.
If you're not going offroad (no matter what you think, you're not) but you have a lot of people to move around, you're way better off getting a minivan than you are getting an SUV. Those grotesqueries were only made to exploit a loophole in the tax laws that (IIRC) has since been closed, anyway.
If their vehicles are less stable against lateral forces than yours, why is driving slow enough to prevent rollovers unsafe?
Great .sig
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It was on the local news a while back. If you have an SUV big enough to get the truck incentives (5000 lb, IIRC) you are also not supposed to park it in certain neighborhoods, or drive through certain residential areas unless you have a destination there.
The cops were not going to drive up into the hills, barge into the gates of multi-$million mansions owned by multi-$millionaires, and cite them.
Well your family if they drive is as good as dead.
Hey now don't pick on us truck owners. it may be different where you're at but in my area damned near everyone has a truck and that is because we HAUL STUFF in them! I haul everything from a months worth of groceries (I have a trunk I can pop on/off) to furniture to customers old PCs in my Ranger, my oldest is pretty much the "go to" guy at his college for those needing to move thanks to his S10, and my dad has his F350 loaded full of electrical equipment most of the time.
And as for jacking up? Yeah while there is some kids that do it because they are dumbasses the majority of those I've seen LOWER not jack the truck. Hell I've seen them so low I doubt seriously they could go over a speed bump. And I've known guys that have jacked their trucks with good reason...hunting and managing a large property with woods and swamps. if you try to go down in those areas with a regular truck you aren't getting that sucker out without a tractor buddy!
And finally I'd remind you that TFA is showing how using government power, aka banning which you are suggesting, can be bad with a capital B. Just look at how we went from the nice Ranchero/ El Camino and station wagons to the monster SUVs thanks to CAFE. Personally I'd have rather been hit by a Camino or station wagon than one of those 6,000 pound SUV monsters, not to mention how much gas those suckers blow.
Frankly I'd prefer less government involvement, thanks. With plenty of sources like Consumer Reports it isn't hard to find out what is safe and what is not, so just let folks vote with their wallets okay?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
So next time you go spouting off, make sure the facts actually back up your argument. Oh, I forget, conservatives create don't need no stinkin' facts - they make up their own when convenient.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Seriously, I was starting to wonder when I would read a line like "Oh, and smoking does not increase the risk of lung cancer."
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Just because you or even your friends haven't changed their driving patterns in response to changes in fuel prices, doesn't mean nobody will. And what you do in the short run and long run are two different things. When it comes time to buy a new automobile, is it just within the realms of possibility that you might take mileage a bit more seriously than you did when buying your present car?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
A past acquaintance from school posted pictures of this horrible wreck they were in. The car was fucking annihilated from the side. It looked like a jacked up fork lift monster truck had rolled over them. I was worried about them so I texted them to see if they were alright.
Yep, their truck wasn't damaged much. The truck was a huge jacked up Ford. The bumper hit at about head level. The only reason BOTH people in the car they broadsided weren't decapitated was because they saw it coming and got under the car. Firefighters had to cut them out. The speed was 30mph and their side impact airbags went off.
Then they complained about all the undercarriage damage their truck had received and the fact that their suspension was now fucked up. While they all walked away with no injuries, and the people in the car had lengthy hospital stays.
I hope the people that got hit sued the ever-loving shit out of them for driving an unsafe vehicle.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
accusing the government of doing a good job, how un-american of you! at least you called them idiots.
I'll drive 1/2 the length of the UK in an evening to go see friends for a weekend.
Once I drove the length of the UK (700ish miles) just to go on a white water rafting trip.
Last summer we drove more than the length of the UK to go to NYC for a week.
I searched for "High Mileage Car United Kingdom" and this was one of the first hits, here was another.
Those are some very low numbers. My '98 has 250k and I haven't really even driven it the last 4 years. I know people with '00-'02 that have at least that. Somehow I doubt that those in the UK drive as much as us.
It's not so much the size of the vehicle, it's the construction method.
Unibody vehicles are very safe. That safety may scale up.
Truck frame vehicles (vehicles built on a platform, roughly shaped like an H) are not. Trucks frame vehicles don't fare well in accidents. The occupants get killed. They do fine when THEY do the hitting, and the thing they hit is a unibody vehicle which is smaller than them, but in rolling (flipping), side smacks, head-ons with walls, head ons with other trucks, etc. the occupants are much more likely to die.
SUVs exist because the car manufacturers were looking for something that people would buy that could easily roll out of underused truck factories. Meaning most SUVs (all SUVs until recently) were much less safe than smaller cars.
So A. Bigger isn't safer. B. Bigger vehicles (SUVs) can be made safer by changing their construction method, rather than their size. C. There is a specific impact combination (H-frame hitting a small unibody vehicle) which is deadly for small cars.
People think that the more cupholders a vehicle has, the safe it is. (I know this sounds like a joke, but this apparently has been born out by studies -- sorry I haven't got a article reference.) It's something to do with feeling cared for and the assumption of real care versus superficial.
So yes, we need to get unneeded H-frame vehicles off the road. That can be done by increasing the usage cost of trucks and SUVs by taxing non-unibody vehicles. I think vehicles getting smaller would be great, but it's not strictly necessary.
Everyone seems to view car safety by assuming they are perfect drivers and the only way they would ever be involved in an accident is if some other guy hits them.
How many crashes involve a single car? Probably a majority of them. Yes, there are still red light runners and people that are not paying attention and cross the yellow line but I see those much less. I live on a very curvy two lane road lined with huge old growth trees just a few feet from the road edge. One small wrong move with the right tire going off the road followed by a severe over correction results in the car shooting across the other lane sideways into a tree happens almost every other week. I'd rather have a smaller car that will not flip or sway wildly then a big "safe" SUV. Prevent the accident instead of worrying about your size thinking you will be bigger and safer during an accident caused by the other guy.
I'd like to rebut this -- some of the cars built back in say the 1950s were just not that structurally sound, and I dare say the Bel Air is probably one of them. That 1972 Skylark (or the 1972 Cadillac Fleetwood I used to have), I think crashing one of them into the Malibu would have VERY different results.
Of course, they also sold the Pinto in this timeframe (which, to save $11, had bolts that'd puncture the gas tank in a rear end collision, at which point one of the components -- don't remember if it was the fuel level sender or fuel pump -- would spark and ignite the fuel) and the Chevy Vega (since some would spontaneously break in two just going over a rough bump or railroad tracks, I doubt they were too crashworthy.) Also that Fleetwood only got 12MPG highway (and about 8MPG city), this was barely workable for me even back in the 1990s when gas was like $1.20 a gallon.
Of course he's right. You're just being defensive. Many people buy SUVs because they feel that they're safe. It's a well known part of the common set of buying reasons. And yet SUVs are not safer. They're significantly less safe than small cars in accidents with stationary objects, accidents with other SUVs and in rolls.
So the buyers/drivers are more heavily people who are frightened. They're a self-selecting group. And they think they're safe, so they can drive less defensively.
I suspect Volvo drivers are also worse than the common set, as well, for the exact same reasons.
You should hate both. The vehicles are more dangerous than they need to be.
Why didn't you buy a minivan? They're safer.
Watch how safe that Expedition is when you blow a tire going 60 down the highway or when you are going around a bend at the posted speed and hit that small shady spot with a small patch of ice. Physics applies there as well. Unless you mistakenly believe the only accidents are caused by the other guy running into you which is a myth perpetuated by the only current testing methods of US automobiles that uses crash tests to determine a cars "safety" rating. Crash avoidance capability is completely ignored and not accounted for at all. The auto makers know exactly what the specific tests are and the cars are designed specifically for them. If the US government had standard tests of a vehicles during a very common overcorrection situation, the safety ratings would be much different and they would be closer to reality.
Of course driving a semi is safer than riding a bicycle when it comes to having an accident with the typical vehicle on the road, but the more who drive smaller vehicles the more the typical vehicle decreases in size which makes the road safer for everyone. Constantly pushing tons of metal and plastic around on the road wastes insane amounts of energy. There are lots of other ways to get from A to B without having to do that.
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.
My mistake I thought UK driving averages were like Continental ones. You bastards must love driving around your tiny island.
Yeah because it is well known that the entire Continental population lives inside a major city center and thus never commutes to work... 20000 miles is the average in the Luxembourg area, I do commute 31000 miles while some colleagues commute 55000 miles just for work (we tend to live in one country and work in another). We still have "only" 9.8 per 100.000 population... it may look high, but the vast majority of trucks going from one side of Europe to the other side of Europe (North-South or East-West) tend to go across Luxembourg to refuel. The large accidents are usually caused by truck catching fire in a tunnel or people going 120mph+ in low visibility while drunk. So it is actually Darwin at work.
For what it is worth, the driving test there is a bit more difficult. The first driving exam includes city and highway driving. There is a second exam to be taken within the first two years, that covers the funny stuff (icy road, wet road, muddy road, emergency braking, ...) and voids the license if failed. You also only have 6 points on your license until those two years have passed, running out of points means you need to start from scratch again.
That's exactly what the article said. It just has a horrible headline and gets to its conclusion in a really roundabout way.
The article specifically says that if trucks and SUVs also had to be fuel efficient then deaths would decrease.
An actual voice of reason? People need to understand that we shouldn't just start banning things because they personally do not have a use for them. Car seats almost necessitate larger vehicles. 1) As a 6'2 adult, there is no room in a small car for a rear facing car seat behind me. 2) Try fitting two children, a wife and a visiting grandparent in a small car with car seats. Families need cars that can actually move the family about town. We also need to be able to haul things to and from the store.
And where am I going to park that extra car? The environmentalists have already achieved limiting lots for houses in my area to 3500 sqft. No room for a three car garage. Also, am I supposed to drive the kids to school in the big car, drive home, get the small car, drive to work, drive home, get the big car and drive to pick up the kids? Won't that extra travel negate the savings?
Is easily disproved by looking at countries where small and light cars are already the norm. In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population
Your statistic may actually be true, but your data doesn't back it up. USians drive a lot more than UKians. If you look at death per 100,000 miles driven, instead of per 100,000 population, the death rates are a lot closer. If you normalize for different drunk driving habits, it might be even closer, but I've never done that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Stuff like this on slashdot makes me want to punch people in the face.
Calm down. There is little in life worth getting angry about. This is not one of them. Unless you like getting angry. In which case, look at my sig and help that poor guy out by commenting on his video.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Three weeks ago I was in a very bad accident in a Honda Fit, which is a TINY car. A tire blew out and, as luck would have it, we were in semi-tight traffic at speed, and my only choice was to go off the road.
At about 70 MPH I went off the road into a culvert and we rolled AND flipped (as in, rolled side to side AND flipped end over end). We went something like 200 feet before crashing to a stop. One of the wheels to the car was found almost 600 feet from where the car ended up. Not only that, but we were carrying a very full load - a camping trip had been underway - and so there were a lot of missile hazards in the car.
I wound up with a lot of cuts, a slightly (as in not bad enough to tube) collapsed lung, and a lot of bruises. My passenger shattered his arm but is expected to make a full recovery. When I was in the ER being checked out the highway patrol officer investigating the wreck came in and said he'd shake my hand or give me a hug if I wasn't so beat up because not only did I do everything I could to minimize the risk (going off road rather than smashing into other people), he had never seen a wreck that bad where there wasn't at least one fatality.
Literally every single person I spoke with said they were shocked we weren't killed when they found out I had been driving a Honda Fit.
So no, as you say - small cars do NOT need to be death traps. They are QUITE safe, assuming you go for a quality make and model.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
When I was a kid, child seats were not required. Could easily throw a couple kids in the back. I often rode in the back of a station wagon or the bed of a truck. Child seats take more space than a typical adult. Especially if they're rear facing. You're stuck with those big, space hogging seats until the kids are about five or so.
Sounds about right. Trying to draw a direct correlation like that is pretty much only something of use to the oil industry. If you were to replace 10% of the cars on the roads with electrics you'd get an increase in fleet efficiency without necessarily having to decrease the mass that much.
Yes, decreasing the mass is the easiest way to increase gas mileage, but it's hardly the only way. And ultimately it's a tad disingenuous to suggest that it's the only way of doing it. For instance one could improve the transmission, I don't think that anybody's managed to get more efficient in that respect than a CVT except possibly by eliminating the transmission completely. A change like that would be neutral or possibly a slight improvement in terms of death toll over the current models.
A.) They're already banned on general purpose roads in most states. There are certain roads that are considered "truck routes" and most states only allow you within a mile of one, to go to a terminal or access truck services (fuel, rest stops, etc.). Guess what? It can't be enforced, because businesses who utilize trucks often build more than a mile away from a truck route, and a cop can't tell if the driver is on legitimate business without stopping every truck and looking at their bill of lading.
B.) Trucking companies pay their share of road taxes. IFTA keeps track of fuel usage in every state and doles out the fuel tax accordingly (my truck gets between five and six miles to the gallon). Trucks have to have all kinds of permits and licenses to operate, which adds to the amount of tax paid in. They also pay much higher tolls on toll roads (the highest toll on the Pennsylvania Turnpike is upwards of $800, although I usually end up paying around $70 for the part I drive).
C.) Bulk freight travels on rail. Coal, grain, flour, oil, Coca-Cola syrup, etc. travels by rail. Garage doors (what I usually haul) don't - it's not cost effective. I imagine your local Wal-mart doesn't have a railhead next to the building either. There are a few companies like Triple Crown that specialize in truck-to-rail operations, but the logistics of that sort of thing is a nightmare for most shipping. Container transport suffers the same difficulties.
A note about rail transport: emphasizing rail transport would really only lower the amount of trucks on the interstate system. The freight still has to get to the receiver, and the vast majority of the time rail won't get it there. It would still have to be trucked, so you'd still see trucks all over your town, delivering and picking up freight.
From a safety perspective, trucks are actually pretty safe. Yeah, you're screwed if you hit one of us head on, but you're much, much more likely to hit another car than a truck. We do this for a living, and those of us that last more than a year or so tend to be very good at it. Everyone has a story about how a truck cut them off (it happens), but few have a relative who actually had a serious accident with one of us. When it happens, it's bad - but it doesn't happen very often.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
UK has far higher traffic density, though, coupled with probably higher speeds than the US.
A 1-liter car doesn't have enough power to drive at highway speeds, and in the USA, going anywhere in a city usually means driving on a highway.
Damn, I should tell that to the driver the next time I pass one on the Autobahn... you do realize that there are plenty of those in Germany, right? Now, to be fair, I think you're talking about a US-built 1-liter engine... the size-to-power ratio of engines is a bit different over here.
Note that the crash test is not "head on". There is a reason for this.
Right, but that's not uncommon in the UK either. As a previous poster commented, trains are expensive and it's just less hassle to drive. I'm going down to the south of England next weekend, which will take about £120 in diesel for the return trip (I drive a big thirsty van). To get the train would have been closer to £800 for two people - more than I've ever spent on even buying a car, never mind fuel for a trip.
For a good few years, my daily commute was around 240 miles.
Regarding the car mileages, those are mostly all fairly new cars. I've seen ex-fleet cars that have over 250k on the clock at three years old.
I recently had to teach a friend how to parallel park for the drivers test in Pennsylvania. It may have been dropped a few year ago but it has been a requirement again since at least 2005.
Just to note – a McLaren F1 is not an F1 car... Also, he did walk out (no idea how fast he was going though).
TFA *guesses* that. They don't have any proof. Thankfully, more reliable sources actually do look into these things. Check out this site for actual crash test results:
http://www.euroncap.com/
Lets do a quick comparison. A large 4x4, such as the 2002 GM/Vauxhall Frontera; they get 3 stars for safety.
http://www.euroncap.com/results/opel_vauxhall/frontera.aspx?class=89a54410-df46-4551-aa7c-f2f6f5643454
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/opel_vauxhall_frontera_2002/125.aspx
Compared to, say, the 2004 GM/Vauxhall Astra, a small and fuel efficient family car; they get 5 stars.
http://www.euroncap.com/results/opel_vauxhall/astra.aspx?class=9abf175b-92c7-4c9f-b111-b37f9369f2f7
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/opel_vauxhall_astra_2004/185.aspx
Or the 2002 GM/Vauxhall Corsa, an even smaller and more fuel efficient car; 4 stars for them.
http://www.euroncap.com/results/opel_vauxhall/corsa.aspx?class=a18a311b-f3c5-47a8-92a7-15e294350858
http://www.euroncap.com/tests/opel_vauxhall_corsa_2002/113.aspx
Obviously this can't be generalised too strongly, but it does rather go against the notion that "small cars are death traps, big cars are tanks".
Iirc, the pinto was a design compromised by executive meddling.
Also, a lot has changes in car safety design since then (at least elsewhere in the world, USA seems more and more the odd one out in various areas as time moves on).
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
It comes from having compact cities and proper public transport systems in place. End result is that it is easier to grab public then try to hunt for parking space.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I recall a study (not sure if it was global or US only) that claimed car owners wanted vehicles that was a tank on the outside and a womb on the inside.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I suspect the biggest thing is that we humans intuitively expect to find body parts everywhere when we see car parts everywhere, and so accidents involving small cars designed around crumple zones rather then rigidity to handle the forces look much worse then they are.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I've heard a few stories of people talking to cops who told them people would have survived accidents if it wasn't an SUV, minivan or pickup truck crashing into them.
This has been one of the reasons why I have stayed away from cars that have better mileage as the result of being smaller and having lighter materials.
I drive safely most of the time ( everyone gets distracted ), but other people do not. There are plenty of times I have close calls with people driving SUVs and minivans while talking on their mobile phones.
Some people need these large vehicles for their jobs, but most people are using them as their cars. Maybe it is time for that to to end.
Foam will absorb the impact, hence the reason cycle helmets are made from it, sending something in the mail?
If anything it really is helping the metal structure transfer that energy, when the frame and impact zone is "crumpling up" it's not only being compressed in line with the impact but also perpendicular as the foam casing buckles inwards.
They'll have that foam from demolition man one day, :P :)
Or maybe an external air bag that detects an in coming impact and deploys.
Must be the European in me...
Don't look at the population of a country when comparing accidents, look at the number of cars!
This is blinging
Three kids in child seats and shopping like crazy? Audi A4 would sort you out. You don't need a SUV for that.
This is blinging
Wikipedia claims that the US had bumper height regulations between 1974 and 1981.
You also have to take into account that a car's front bumper will dip under heavy braking.
When did you pass your UK test, out of interest? I took mine in 2002... but they've changed fairly significantly since then. The theory test has a hazard perception section that you take on a computer, where you're shown a video and you have to click on anything that you perceive to be a hazard.
The practical test has some basic vehicle roadworthiness checks (nothing huge, just checking the oil and that kind of thing), and it also has a section where the examiner stops giving you constant instructions and just tells you to drive to a certain place using your own initiative.
The test still doesn't go as far as I think it should. There should definitely be a dual-carriageway (arm, divided highway?) section, although I guess that would be problematic if you were taking your test in Shetland. And a skid-pan course would be useful too.
USians drive a lot more than UKians.
Although bear in mind that the population density (and by extrapolation, the traffic density) is much higher in the UK than in the US as a whole. Accidents are far more likely with multiple vehicles and junctions in close proximity.
I do agree that one should be careful reading too much into a simple statistic. However, it's worth pointing out that obtaining a driving licence is much stricter process in the UK than the US, and the standard of driving (as any of us who has driven in both countries would agree) bears witness to this.
distance driven not cars. although you might need to look at area too.
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Yep. One data point with no information about speeds, angles, etc. vs. decades of engineering studies. I definitely think 70's cars are safer based on that.
Global warming is 100% wrong, too, based on similar logic. Right?
No sig today...
If I hit a brick wall, I'd rather be in my '02 Concorde. The brick wall won't kill or maim you, the car's interior will. Your skylark had no crumple zones, no air bags, no shoulder harness. The dash wasn't even padded! If you were wearing your seat belt you'd live, but you'd be in a wheelchair for the rest of your life from the broken spine.
Plus, it's easier to avoid the brick wall in the first place. That big heavy Buick handled like utter shit and had no ABS.
And it got maybe 13 MPG on the highway. My car's just as roomy and I got 36 MPG doing 50 with a donut spare once, and I usually get 27-32 depending on wind and terrain.
Free Martian Whores!
So isn't that at least part of the solution? Demand higher safety standards alongside better mileage?
The problem with democracies is that they're limited to the term of the elected leader, and it's almost completely random as to how good the elected leader will be.
FTFY
Dude, be glad I commented in this thread*. I have 13 mod points and I'm in a bad mood and I intend to mod anybody who doesn't know the difference between your and you're, there, their, and they're, lose and loose, etc. as "flambait -- because if it pisses me off, it's flamebait. IMO aliterates don't belong on slashdot -- read a book once in a while.
To misqoote Twain, "an aliterate has no advantage over an illiterate".
Now someone please mod me offtopic, because I am.
* even though you're already +4 and it wouldn't have made any difference
Free Martian Whores!
I don't think it's the testing that makes UK drivers better, it's the tiny roads with cars parked on both sides. You have to be aware of the size of your car and what is going on around you all the time or you hit something (I learned to drive in the UK). Here in Western Australian (and in the US from what I've seen) the roads and lanes are wide, long and straight and half the drivers are asleep.
Exactly. The rest of the planet drives underpowered death traps without any problems.
They also have no 'sticking gas pedal' problems either.
Americans just can't drive.
1) Any citations to support your claims? I could not find any statistics about mortality of Formula 1 car drivers in street accidents, could possibly have to do with the fact that Formula 1 cars are not allowed on the streets at all and all the accidents happen on specially designed tracks with only other 600kg cars and tire walls to collide with. I somehow doubt that you had "very very very" good chances to survive after driving under a truck in a Formula 1 car, unless they invented some cure for decapitation recently.
2) Death rate per population would be meaningful if the number of vehicles per population and the driving habits had been the same. Death rate per vehicle*Km is much closer (5.7 and 8.5 according to Wiki) and could be explained by the fact that people drive more through urban areas at low speeds in UK.
What you are trying to prove here is that physics are wrong.
The Toyota Yaris hatchback is sold in Europe with a 1.0L engine. I doubt it'll go much over 80mph, but that should be enough for every day driving. Also, the Fiat 500 Twin Air could also be sold in the US, the regular Fiat 500 is.
It depends on the time of day. During commute times people are good drivers; at weekends and during the day the level of driving skill drops horrendously, even if the number of cars on the road are the same.
The median may be higher, but it's the idiots at the bottom end of the scale that mostly matter, and I don't think our idiots are going to be any better than US ones.
Except that small light cars _are_ generally built to be reasonably safe.
Shit, my 2 door coupe has eight airbags in it. It has front and rear crumple zones. It has side impact protection built into the structure.
Assumption 2 however does stand, and no, I don't think I'd walk away from the wreck if I drove into a bridge at 100mph.
Fuel economy is however fuck all to do with that.
In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population
Last I checked, miles driven was the largest factor in determining frequency of accidents. In the US we drive more on average than the Brits. If you check the number of deaths per billion vehicle kilometers, the numbers get much closer: 9.3 for the UK and 10.7 for the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_traffic_safety#KSI_by_country
The Economist published a study on exactly this about ten years ago. They took the full NHTSA collision database of all fatalities in multivehicle accidents, and looked for "significant effects".
There was only ONE indicator that rose to statistical significance- weight of the vehicle. More precisely, the probability of a person dying in a two-vehicle collision is proportional to the inverse square of the masses of the vehicles; heavier vehicle wins, and it wins by the _square_ of the ratio of the masses. Half the mass == FOUR TIMES LIKELIER TO DIE. A third the mass == NINE TIMES LIKELIER TO DIE.
The worse part: NOTHING ELSE MATTERED. Super-safe "brands" like Volvo and Mercedes did no better on a weight-by-weight basis than Subaru or Ford; the highly touted "design for safety" did absolutely _nothing_ (in a statistical sense) to help passengers survive.
In short- saving fuel may be good for politics, global warming, etc. Therefore it's a good idea to get everyone _else_ into small light cars, but it's an even better idea to keep yourself and those you hold dear into the heaviest vehicle you can afford to buy and operate.
A tire blew out and, as luck would have it, we were in semi-tight traffic at speed, and my only choice was to go off the road.
Interesting. You didn't have the choice of, I don't know, just slowing down gradually, before coming to a halt by the side of the road so that you could change your tyre?
I've been in cars that have had tyres blow out. I've had a tyre go from full to empty in under a second while doing close to 100mph. I've yet to see anybody actually have to dramatically swerve off the road and crash.
Cars can actually drive quite fast on three wheels. They don't corner too well, but it doesn't take long to slow down.
Formula 1 cars are not allowed on the streets at all and all the accidents happen on specially designed tracks with only other 600kg cars and tire walls to collide with
May I introduce you to the small principality of Monaco, where they drive Formula 1 cars on the street, and (when it's wet) they drive them by accident into concrete walls at 150mph.
I'm sure there's evidence on Youtube, if you want to see the effects - although because it's twisty streets, the more spectacular crashes occur elsewhere.
If you're not going offroad (no matter what you think, you're not)
The biggest irony for me being, that I am, but can't find a small light 4x4 that's road legal, cheap and fuel efficient.
(and no, quad bikes don't count unless you can find one that gives me comfortable protection from the weather)
The only thing that causes accidents is drivers. Not cars, not SUVs, not traffic rules, nothing. Buy yourself a copy of Roadcraft and learn what the hell you're doing.
[FUCK BETA]
Also, the UK has plenty of roundabouts. lrn2rounabout US
s/Your/You're
Of course people will show old cars hitting new cars etc just to skew things in their favor, since old cars were not designed for offset-impact collisions. Even if those are common, my old tank crushed the back seat of a new econobox right up tight to the front seats. If a 2-ton car is designed to have the same level of impact damage at the same speed compared to a 1-ton car, the 2-ton car must be fortified to compensate for the extra weight. This is a rather simple concept that escapes most of the geniuses in here. The damage might look similar when the two have a head-on collision, but the big difference is what happens inside: The person inside the small car experiences much higher g-forces as the lighter object bounces off the heavier one. Put that into a 2-ton vs 1-ton debate and the 1-ton car is going backwards while the 2-ton car simply slows down.
In the UK for example, the death rate from car accidents was 5.4 per 100,000 population, while in the US it was 14.3 per 100,000 population
While I appreciate the data, its somewhat meaningless to compare these two countries without Deaths per Unit-of-Distance.
Yeah, that '59 Bel Air has a the infamous X-frame, which neither particularly resilient nor completely typical of old car design (which is the same as current SUV and pickup design).
The relevant issue that makes something a "death trap" is passenger cabin intrusion.
The Malibu, like all modern cars is designed to prevent cabin intrusion in an accident -- that is, parts of the car are designed so that if they are destroyed in an accident, they will not come into the cabin or damage its structural integrity.
That Bel Air has a solid metal steering wheel, steering column, and tiny narrow roof pillars. This makes the car look beautiful and evoke the classic styling of that era, but it does precisely nothing to protect the passenger cabin or the passengers in an accident. 1959 was the first year that seat belts were even offered as standard equipment on a Chevrolet!
The other thing that many do not realize is that both of those cars are in the same weight class, ~3500 pounds. Much of 1959's weight is in the sheet metal styling cues and chrome and heavy iron-block engine: the smallest engine available was the 3.8 liter 6-cylinder Blueflame (125 hp!). The Malibu, on the other hand, gains much more of its weight from passenger comfort and safety system: not only is the car itself much smaller, and has slighter body panels, but the largest engine, an all aluminum 3.6 liter 6-cylinder LY7 engine produces over a hundred more horsepower (252 hp), and weighs significantly less.
The only deathtraps on the road are the big old cars, and the trucks and SUVs which are patterned off of them mechanically.
What about increases in the speed limit and fatalities? Those are also connected. And, oddly enough, lowering speed limits lowers fuel consumption. But high speeds are a sacred cow grazing in the same pasture as hand guns and tax cuts. If I could, I would gladly buy a Seat or Skoda, one of the newer offspring of the old Golf that got such good mileage and were, when built in Europe, very reliable cars. And I'd happily drive the thing at 60 on a 55mph interstate. I'd also like to see an end to all the breaks that SUVs get by being classed as something other than they are, which is a macho minivan.
Which seems to confirms that smaller lighter vehicles do not increase the number of deaths.
The fourth power law is an impressive argument against public buses as worse than SUVs. Al Gore thanks you for saving his family's environmental reputation.
I didn't focus on the details leading up to the accident because they are irrelevant - what was relevant was the horrible roll and flip and the fact that everyone came out of it unscathed.
In the circumstances that I faced, no, I did not have the option of simply slowing down - there was no shoulder what-so-ever, there was someone tailgating me, and I couldn't change lanes because there was a car there, and in front there was a very unsafe vehicle (long pipes jutting WAY out the back of it at pretty much the perfect level to come right into the passenger compartment and impale us), and basically it was a perfect storm of "well fuck, there aren't a whole lot of options here".
But I'm glad you felt compelled to focus on the irrelevant part of this and indulge in the whole Slashdot tradition of Monday morning quarterbacking shit you have no information about. It's cute - don't ever change.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
" if government officials are smart, they'll tailor the regulations behind the new standards to do this" You have got to be kidding. Most of the people in Washington are self serving bureaucratic idiots! They will do what ever their handlers in the political machine dictate, who are in turn funded by the automotive/oil mega-corporations. Don't hold your breath.
Skip Stein Free Agent Management Systems Consulting, Inc. http://www.msc-inc.net www.linkedin.com/in/skipstein
Right. You couldn't slow down because someone was tailgating you, but you could swerve off the road at 70mph.
Do your future passengers a favour and stop driving while you still can.
Correlation != causation. If that was the case, a 80,000 lb semi would be the safest vehicle in the world.
Additional weight adds momentum that has to be cancelled in the event of a crash. Minimize weight and you minimize the required stopping force. If everybody would stop driving land yachts, cars wouldn't burn so much fuel. I wonder how many of those additional accidents were caused by fat-ass SUVs that can't negotiate emergency conditions.
An early 90s Civic CRX HF gets over 50mpg and isn't a hybrid. Ford has a diesel car that gets 65 mpg, but can't sell in the US due to the bureaucratic shortsightedness of the EPA. Diesel pollution requirements are by volume and do *not* take efficiency into account. Frankly, it's stupid that a multi-ton utility vehicle can be approved, but something that uses ten times less fuel cannot. These pollution requirements are why we can't get a 230mpg Aptera diesel (prototype wasn't a hybrid either).
Because they cause traffic congestion and increase the differences in rates of speed with the vehicles around them.
Well, yes. New cars right now have good safety standards, it's just that force equals mass times the square of the velocity, so a small car is still at a disadvantage compared to an SUV.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I passed mine in 2006. They had the reaction test on there that was kind of dumb. What's a "skid-pan course?
And small wonder! Have you seen that man park?
Believe me, I understand perfectly well that a lot of people have utility vehicles that are utilized for heavy use. F-350 and larger trucks. I've used many of them. Today - I don't own a truck. My oldest son owns an F-150 that meets all his needs, and when I actually NEED a truck, I can go get it. Most of the time, I just drive one of my little cars, and enjoy 24mpg, or 27mpg, or even 29.9 mpg in the smallest of them.
But, you should have realized I wasn't picking at people who actually USE those trucks. Roughly 80 percent of the trucks sold in America are almost never USED as a truck. To be honest, my son's truck only gets used three or four times a year, until Dad needs it. The kid's afraid to scratch up the paint INSIDE THE FREAKING BED! Can you believe that? Hell, my trucks never HAD paint inside the bed. Every truck I ever owned was scraped clean, down to shiny metal!
All that aside - I was complaining about bumper heights, more than anything. If some young fool just absolutely MUST have his truck jacked three feet in the air, then he should be willing to affix some kind of bumper system that will protect others from being run over. I've seen, and I'm sure that you've seen, a small car like my MX6 sitting beside a pickup, the bumper above the roof of the MX6. That's plumb ridiculous!
The federal DOT has requirements on Class 8 vehicles, detailing how high the bumpers can be. Personally, I believe the requirements are a little to lenient. Few tractor trailer bumpers, front or rear, are actually going to prevent a car from driving UNDER the truck, or the trailer. Those bumpers need to come down about 8 inches in the front, and about 12 inches on the trailers. THEN they will help to prevent cars driving under the truck!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Force? Should be energy. Kinetic energy = 0.5 * mass * velocity ^ 2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_energy
Even google agrees. Google for: 1000 kg * (60 kph ) ^ 2
Notice the resulting unit is in joules and not newtons.
"And if government officials are smart, they'll tailor the regulations behind the new standards to do this."
We have no need of vacuous statements here.
-- The Grand Teddy Bear has Spoken: "Windows 8 Source Code Available NOW! more disgusting than your pr..."
What an absolutely sick video.
If you've got a weak stomach, don't click. They absolutely destroy a beautiful old Bel Air. That should be criminal.
At the very least, somebody deserves a good swift kick in the nads for doing that to that car.
What do you need to see around the car in front of you for?
If you're not looking at traffic in front of the vehicle that's in front of you, then you're doing it wrong. Yes, we've all been taught about safe driving distances, but you will never see them work in daily commuting in any large city...people will continuously scoot around, and fill in the gap. I'd bet dollars to donuts, that less than 1% of drivers come anywhere close to following the guideline. In the Washington DC suburbs, I'm frequently in highway traffic, where the norm is less than two car lengths at 60-70mph...I'm not recommending it, I'm just stating that it's a fact of life, and you have to learn to deal with it, or stay off the road.
Safe driving also involves anticipating what is going to happen, and by seeing the traffic farther ahead, you're able to adjust accordingly. Brakes can frequently be applied much earlier than if you were simply relying upon the brake lights of the vehicle in front of you...that's especially important in an emergency stop.
Just another day in Paradise
That's what the article is saying. In response to another article somewhere....
I know in my state they passed a law a few years back to make Tractor Trailers have "car-ish" height rear guards... I'd fail to call them "bumpers" because they're just raw steel bars.
Frankly, the fix is that states should start enforcing SUVs and trucks as "commercial" vehicles... with the associated bump in plates. The big joke for a while was that SUVs got BIGGER because Trucks over 6000 lbs counted for a "work" tax credit.. even though you weren't a COMPANY moms were buying them all over the country. That's how "trucks" went from plain $14k work trucks to $39k SUVs. The state of COMMERCIAL vehicles is the problem, not smaller cars. Granted, when commercial trucks and semis hit things it's really not that often for how much they are on the road, but the results are almost always severe in both human and property damage. I'd think the states could affect insurance laws as well... adjust the liability balance when commercial-class vehicles are involved so their insurance pays a higher portion of medical bills. Right now, insurance actually penalizes drivers of efficient, safe cars because "they might" hit one of the giant SUVs? so rather than get SUVs off the road, they just want to reward everybody for driving one? That's counter-intuitive on a bunch of levels.
The problem is not "trucks" if anybody hits a stake truck or semi, even an SUV or ANOTHER heavy truck is getting demolished by that. So the PROBLEM is specifically PRIVATELY OWNED trucks at the top of the "residential" weight classes. As far as transportation duties, the Feds already reclassified MINIVANS as CARS for passenger safety, which is why the crop of cross-overs started popping up a few years back. A minivan can do almost everything an SUV can do as far as hauling people around. They make better vehicles for salesmen and delivery men because they "lock up" better than Pickup trucks.
the BEST way to fix the economy and safety problem is for the Feds to revisit the 20-cent gas tax... really, that was fine when gas was $1 but now it's $3-$4 and going to be there for a while.. We're paying $7 TRILLION on a war for GAS... knock the "oil-based fuel" tax on ALL vehicles up to about $0.75 -$1 and watch folks scramble for smaller cheaper trucks in a heartbeat. Watch electric vehicles take off because Natural gas and coal are North American made and wouldn't be affected. Watch all the other alternate power sources like bio-diesel and ethanol take off because they are US made as well. Besides we have a $7Trilion dollar hole to dig out of... specifically because people like driving around in cars!! it makes sense people should pay for that. It will also foster LOCAL businesses because shipping costs will increase.... meaning more things (like food stuff, farm products, services, etc) will be cost-effective to do at home if they can't be done electronically. Socially, we've needed a way to stop the ever expanding "suburban commuter" thing for a while too... it's just a bad thing for our culture. Lastly it would make mass transit more lucrative... the feds could give THEM a tax credit.... according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation) we should probably use Vans or Trains, not Buses though.
Especially hilarious when the right thing to do in a blow out is to not touch the breaks at all –just let it gently roll to a halt... Who gives a fuck if someone's tail gating you –you're not slamming the anchors on anyway.
Toyota Camry.
Now can we please get back to talking about something important, like Bitcoins?
Just curious, what happens when a Formula 1 crashes into an SUV at 200 mph?
it's the "pressurized" container problem. Just like you can easily stand on a pop can still filled all day. Take the pop out of the can and you can still stand on it but VERY carefully as you'll damage the container's SHAPE and cause failure. But the can is not "rigid" in the metallurgy sense of the word by a long shot. Rigid means filled with "metal". Foam and even most plastics wouldn't count as much past filler.. but they DO count because they help maintain the SHAPE of the container allowing the metal to do it's job without stress points. Today's small cars are lighter than a Ford Pinto anyway... but far more safe because of advanced geometry and FME being used.
In addition to bumper height, something Should Be Done about headlight height.... Being blided by a headlight right in your eye as your turn a corner past one of the big jacked up trucks in a parking lot really sucks, and can cause accidents ...
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
It teaches you how to drive in low-friction environments. I think it's a mandatory part of the Finnish driving test. As somebody who has crashed a car after hitting oil on the road, I would've appreciated this training.
It's cool and all that you want to have an opinion about a situation you were not in - more power to you if doing that makes you feel somehow relevant. Me, I will just go along with the cops at the scene who said it couldn't be avoided, the hiway patrol investigation that cleared me of fault, and - probably most persuasive - my insurance company who said I wasn't at fault and paid up without any argument at all.
Just gonna say, I think experts in crashes and a corporation that has a financial interest in blaming me NOT blaming me pretty much trumps the blathering of some slashbot who wasn't there. Anyway, please feel free to keep on with the off topic and irrelevant fixation you have - I'll leave you to it.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
> Shit, my 2 door coupe has eight airbags in it. It has front and rear crumple zones. It has side impact protection built into the structure.
But that makes it safer than what? Safer than a small light car would be without these features, not necessarily safer than an F350 pickup.
> Fuel economy is however fuck all to do with that.
Seriously? You are seriously stating that fuel economy has nothing to do with the fact that your car is smaller and lighter, and you are as a result, despite the 15 airbags and crumple zones, more vulnerable than, say, if you were driving a 1974 Chrysler Town and Country with a properly adjusted shoulder belt?
I drive a motorcycle to work (or did before the accident, and will again when I recover) and I get just under 50 miles to the gallon, as opposed to the 13 mpg my truck gets, but I don't try to fool myself that it's safe for any reasonable meaning of the word. Nor do I blame the larger vehicles on the road for my choice in transportation. My daughter's little car has integral roll cage and side airbags, but I don't try to fool myself that it's as safe as the old Chrysler we used to have. But the little car gets 35 mpg and and the Chrysler got 9, and sacrifices needed to be made.
I strongly suspect the safety gap between little economy cars and rolling tanks could be narrowed, and I'm glad someone is looking at the problem. Aren't you?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Have you seen Monaco Grand Prix or just read that it happens on the street and concluded it goes through traffic? Watch it on youtube - it's a racing track built on the streets (it takes over a month to build), there is no traffic (duh!) other than Formula 1 cars and there are tire walls and deflectors whenever possible. Still I'd like to see what happens when a formula 1 card drives into concrete walls at 150 mph - any particular accidents you had in mind?
And what if we just like driving SUVs?
I'm sick of all the self-righteous assholes who want to fuck with my right to drive the kind of vehicle I'm most comfortable in.
I don't give a fuck about global warming (if it's even real), I'll be dead by the time it would matter anyway. I don't have kids. I don't give a fuck about your kids. If I want to burn the gas, I'll burn the gas.
I like being able to see over traffic. I like being able to ignore curbs. I like driving something that can take a hit from a F150, destroy the F150's bumper and pop its airbags, and only get a few scratches. I like driving in snow. I like driving off road. And I like being able to haul stuff.
Maybe I don't NEED an SUV. But I'm going to drive one anyway, and fuck you if you think you're going to stop me.
First rate assessment, my friend, your credentials notwithstanding. A quibble though...
The dash and steering column don't fly up to hit the dummy, though that's exactly how it looks from the point of view from the interior camera. What really happens, of course, is that those simply parts slowed down a lot faster than the driver, his seat, and the camera did. The far greater mass of that boat and the fact that it was not engineered to take energy around the occupant space is key. Note how the boat's driver's door buckles (and flies open). The newer car's driver door deforms, but remains in place, transmitting energy to the B pillar and rear door, which also deforms. If we could look more closely, we'd almost certainly see evidence of still more energy being expended deforming bits of car aft of the C pillar. The key thing is that there was nowhere near as great a deceleration of car parts in the path of the (still moving) occupant in the newer car.
Now, there are limits to what you can do with kinetic energy through clever engineering. At some point, the greater mass of a larger vehicle is going to overwhelm those clever design features, especially in those impact domains where there is less material to absorb and/or transmit energy. When that happens, there's a greater impact velocity for, and exponentially greater KE absorbed by, the occupant. Side impact is the prime example. Sure, newer designs are still safer, but if the whole vehicle's mass is much less than that of the other's, the other one wins the shoving match.
It occurs to me that we are diverging from the point. There *are* relatively safe(er) small cars out there -- a Volvo for instance is safer than a Ford Fiesta, and people can make individual choices to improve their chances of surviving an accident. But the push for more fuel-efficient cars inevitably puts more cars on the road (even if those cars are not yours or mine) that aren't as sturdy or safe as a Volvo for cost reasons, and I think that's what the article is addressing. Inevitably, as fuel economy is forced upwards, at least some auto makers will cut corners in order to sell cars with higher gas mileage.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Thing is, my small light car is safer than the bigger heavier car it replaced, the two bigger heavier cars I owned before that, the big heavier car before that and the bigger but similar weight car before that.
It's also every bit as safe as a F350. It's far far less likely to crash, far less likely to kill someone else (because it weighs so much less) and (using Euro NCAP ratings for the Ford Ranger as a comparison) it's significantly less likely to kill the occupants if they do have an accident.
So no, fuel economy has not compromised safety. I am seriously stating that having a smaller, lighter car does not mean compromising safety, especially within reasonable tolerances.
The Fiat 500 has a 5 star Euro NCAP safety rating for adult occupants (that's the maximum) and is on sale in the USA, so I'm guessing it passes your crash tests too.
The V50 does indeed have a bigger engine. I was just using it as an example of a larger, more luxurious car which is extremely economical to show that tiny cars aren't the only option if you want something that does a lot better for fuel than the typical car sold in the USA.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
The difference is that now engineers know how to design a car to protect its passengers from a crash,
I blame engineers for today's crappy drivers. You can tailgate someone today, 20ft off their back bumper at 75mph, and survive the crash. Darwin has been cheated and the habit persists.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
So now you want them to balance the danger posed to themselves (and everyone) by driving too fast around a corner (i.e., too fast for physical conditions) against the danger posed to everyone else (and possibly themselves) by driving too slow around a corner (i.e., too slow for traffic conditions)? Is SUV ownership something like original sin to you?
Thank you! For some people, a car is more than just point A to B transportation. And no Scion is going to hold a load of 4x8 plywood and ton of concrete mix or a pallet of bricks.
Suzuki Jimny, Vitara or Samurai? Daihatsu Feroza or Terios?
Yes, exactly. I want them to not drive too fast and not drive too slow that they endanger everyone else. This is equally true for all drivers, but SUV especially, given their irresponsible choice of vehicle.
I don't think a vehicle like an SUV, although more inherently dangerous than a lower center of gravity, lower weight vehicle, should have any problem maneuvering a corner at the posted speed limits. Speed limits are set artificially low for this exact reason.
Please see the DOT document entitled TRAFFIC FATALITIES IN 2010 DROP TO LOWEST LEVEL IN RECORDED HISTORY. I submit that the disparity in vehicle length, weight and power has never been higher than today. In the past car sizes were more uniform as compared to today's Smart car/Escalade match up, not to mention double length trailers. The above document shows that fatalities have decreased over time. My question is, how are these data explained? Even if we started in the decade when seat belts and airbags appear it seems apparent that the difference in fuel economy won't automatically mean more deaths.
Being able to 100 mph eventually isn't enough; it has to have enough power to accelerate to freeway speeds in a reasonable amount of time on on-ramps. No, that doesn't mean you need 300hp and a 5-second 0-60 time, but 60-second 0-60 times aren't sufficient either.
It simply isn't possible for a 1L car to accelerate that fast, when it's pushing 3000 pounds of weight. Small cars here are no less than 2800 pounds now, sans driver, and they can't be any lighter due to safety regulations, which apparently European cars don't have to meet. There are a few lighter cars like the Lotuses sold here, but those are quite expensive, and probably achieve that low weight (while meeting safety standards) using materials and construction methods that drive up the cost considerably, making them unusable on regular $20,000 cars.
Yes, in Europe, it's probably quite possible to get good performance out a 1L engine, because it's driving a car that isn't much heavier than a motorcycle. Those cars aren't legal here. So stop talking about them. We don't care about cars which simply aren't possible to purchase here; they're irrelevant to the discussion.
Well 1L cars aren't possible here because nobody sells one. It's not that they aren't legal, it's they aren't available.
Granted, I don't want one either (I'm buying a Fiesta soon, which is about as small of a car and engine I can see as viable here in big bad Texas), but to say it wouldn't be possible is projecting.
The relationship between car safety and fuel consumption does not stand up to scrutiny. From this analogy it would follow that in Europe, the death rate for car accidents is an order of magnitude larger than in US and that's clearly not the case. And wasn't it a gigantic Ford Explorer that was liable to turn itself on the roof and kill everybody as the roof pillars were not strong enough? Get out of your F150 and into a modern european diesel hatchback and stop whining, ok?
You do realize we import tons of Japanese and European cars here, right? We have the same specific-power engines you have, but we don't have 1L cars, at all. Obviously, there's a reason for that: they don't meet our safety standards. You simply can't build a 3500-pound car with a 1L engine that anyone would want to buy.
Because full head on crashes rarely happen. Also a partial head on is worse because the same impact force is concentrated on a smaller area on each car.
If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
Wrong; the elected leader has to campaign before he's elected, plus for high-up positions, he has to have some kind of track record, such as being governor of some state before. So the voters can look at the candidate's track record, and all his speeches and debates, and get an idea of what kind of leader he'll be.
Of course, this only works well in countries where the voting populace is educated and somewhat intelligent. In countries where the populace is full of uneducated morons, you end up with leaders like Palin, Obama, Bush, Pelosi, and Bachmann.
Buying a car shouldn't be an arms-race. The easy solution: treat big cars accordingly and adjust law/tax/insurance.
Some examples:
A SUV with one of these cow-bars hitting a pedestrian on a cross-walk at slow speed will cause a fractured hip and possible death, same size SUV with a round hood will cause a broken arm. Car makers know that. Why isn't there liability for deadly design? A mandatory warning when you buy it? Higher car tax for dangerous vehicles?
Highway safety? Just treat SUVs like trucks and enforce the truck speed limit and no-passing zones on SUVs.
I hate to break it to you, but you're not as green as the next liberal.
This country is loaded up with people who think they're green, because they changed 10 light bulbs to CFLs, or because they recycle about as much as they throw out. That's not "green". You just have grown up in a society that's absolutely as wasteful and "brown" as the world has ever known.
If you were as green as the next liberal, you wouldn't own an SUV at all. There are no eco-friendly SUVs available. You also aren't as green as the next liberal, because you have 3 kids. There's absolutely nothing as damaging to the environment as having more kids, especially when you have more than 2, which is all you need to have to replace yourself (and spouse). Not that there's any need to replace one's self on a planet with an exploding population. Not in 2011.
Since everyone does not have an SUV, and the average number of kids per family is something like 2.2, not only are you not as green as the next liberal, I would guess that you're not even as green as the average American, which is pathetic.
Sorry, but there's no justifiable use for "monster big SUVs", unless you're an NBA center and 7'0", or the President, and in need of armored transport. You have grossly exaggerated the term "justifiable".
Oh, no need for that. With your attitude you'll be stopped soon enough without me or anyone else here bothering a thing. We'll just drive by the scene on our bikes and in our cars without feeling any need to destroy bumpers or pop airbags.
--frank[at]unternet.org
The 'replacement factor' for humans in the western world is actually larger than 1, ie. the average couple has to have somewhere around 2.1 children to keep the population stable. If you think about it it does make sense as not every human is able to reproduce for one or more reasons (more boys than girls are born, some of those die before they get the chance to reproduce, etc). In a street of 10 houses, each housing a single family with 2 children, one of those families would need to have 3 children to keep the numbers up.
--frank[at]unternet.org
Yeah, right... The test is harder but basically if you decide you want to drive you can pass it. Maybe not the first time, but usually within 3 attempts. The written test is multiple choice and I didn't have to do any studying to pass it.
Our roads are simply safer. We don't have big multi-lane roads in build up areas so you never get into a situation where you have traffic coming at you from multiple directions. In fact our roads are generally too narrow, especially in residential areas where people park by the curb. In my city most residential roads are only 3.5 cars wide, so with a car parked on both curbs you can't pass someone coming the other way. You keep your speed down too because it is narrow and you can't see things coming out of junctions easily. In fact turning out of a road is very dangerous because your view is usually obscured by parked cars. All that means fewer deaths because you can never build up any speed.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I'm as green as the next Liberal, but I've got 3 kids in child seats (we need three rows of seating) and I make lots of runs to home depot. We don't own an SUV for safety or to see "over and around" other vehicles, but because its big and can haul a lot of stuff and people. *My* car is an eco friendly car (SUV is my wife's car) because I just use it to commute, but as much as I hate monster big SUVs, sometimes they do have justifiable uses and IMHO, that's never to "be a tank".
I'd prefer if you made my SUV as light and fuel efficient as possible. Carrying around 6000 lbs of steel isn't what will save you, modern safety features will.
d
So in other words, "Do as I say, not as I do." Yes, you are a typical liberal.
Got to admire the thinking behind the National Center for Policy Analysis article quoted in the original article. The risk is lighter cars absorb more of the energy when hit by heavier vehicles (so far so good) so making the heavier vehicles lighter will.... make more drivers at risk. ?? Similarly, if you have a truck full of loose light bulbs and bowling balls, when you get where you're going you will have a lot of broken light bulbs; but if you had replaced the bowling balls with more light bulbs, then you would have ended up with more broken bulbs than if you had kept the bowling balls. Yup. And by the way, the science of global warming is not settled, as that article also points out.
Fwiw, I have a 99 Ranger XLT myself. 2.5L 4cyl, 5spd, etc... On a good day, driving like an old man, I can almost squeeze 30mpg out of it on the highway. I wouldn't consider it a 'large' vehicle. I.e., I couldn't tow a boat with it or anything like that. I am using it this weekend to help my girlfriend move, which it is well suited for, and it looks good doing it.
What's unfortunate, is that pickup trucks are actually pretty unsafe on principle. Watch some crash tests in slo-mo at Progressive.com's website. Generally, the cab collapses in almost every offset crash a pickup truck is in.
I also have an '02 Impreza wagon that gets worse fuel mileage than the truck. Safer? you bet. Similar cargo capacity? Yup, and better in a rainstorm. Good in snow? The 2WD Ranger is surprisingly agile, but the Subaru wins hands down. All around the Subaru is a better vehicle (and I love small wagons). The Ranger however, has been mine since new. I put all 180,000 miles on it, and I feel that we are bound to each other until one of us dies. I tell myself "200,000 or graduation from school, whichever comes first", but I think the Ranger will hit 200 Large first.
When I do graduate from school and start working, my first order of business WILL be a new car. Probably a smaller 5-door hatch like the Subaru.
(but I'm not trading in the Ranger)
do() || do_not();
And not actually more fuel efficient. We don't have a "monster big" SUV as a different poster said, we have one that gets 15-21 MPG... which is exactly the same as the average minivan.
Economics also played a role in the purchase in what we could get on the used car market for the price we were looking for.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Minivans aren't more fuel efficient. I own an acura MDX that gets 15 21 city hwy. Look at a minivan and tell me what it gets? They aren't eco friendly either. For our uses an SUV works better and we found a great deal on the used market when we bought it several years ago so it was a winner all around.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
If my kids were out of car seats that would be manageable... .it doesn't sound fun, but it could work. Try fitting three car seats in a row in a car. If you can do it you must have a narrower brand that I've got because it simply doesn't work. Each seat takes up more space than a singe seat so three in a row doesn't work.
So numbers: What you drive gets 18-26 mpg and 24-32 mpg. I'm not driving a Suburban or other monster SUV. My MDX that can fit 7 (and not uncommonly does) gets 15-21. Yes, sucky. Worst that I'd like, but its a trade off for the convenience of the vehicle, and a trade off I fully stand behind. .
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
An Audi A4? Why not just say a Mazda Miata or other car that doesn't meet my criteria at all? We aren't shopping like crazy compared to our peer group. The most we spend on is groceries and stuff at home depot to fix up the beaten up foreclosed house we bought. An Audi A4 is outside our price range unless we buy on the used market.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Decelerating an object can be modeled as a spring damper system. The spring provides a force based on deflection and the damper provides a force based on velocity. It is the damper that does the energy absorption vehicle the spring will just return the energy to the system. Industrial shock absorbers work on this principle. A metal body acts both the spring and damper. A composite body will have less energy absorption but will still bring your vehicle to a stop. We actually have great technology in seatbelts and airbags now to almost eliminate body damage based on deceleration. More deaths are caused now by the crushing of or intrusion into the passenger compartment.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I don't care about mpg, obviously. It doesn't bother me that big trucks and SUVs get bad gas mileage. It bothers me that they are dangerous vehicles to their drivers and other drivers and they take up so much space on the roads. It especially bothers me that most people who drive them, don't need them (yourself excluded). I'm talking the stay-at-home mom in Texas who puts one kid on the bus and drives the other to daycare, then goes and gets a mani/pedi/coffee in her Cadillac Escalade.
Good for you. It happens to be the same choice I make. I much prefer smaller cars.
My problem comes in making the choice for others, meaning you are responsible for their deaths.
Bureaucratic-minded types seem to have no problem playing god. But they never want to volunteer to be one of the unfortunate dead of their decisions.
So let's now apply it to something other than auto-auto incidents. If I run into a pedestrian while driving 100 mph, I'm going to pretty much reduce him to his raw components. Why? I have a lot more mass in my vehicle. So let's take another pedestrian, surrounded by 100 tons of reinforced concrete, with a nice crawler to move them along. I run into him at 100 with my left wing idiot Prius. I'm dead. I run into him with my middle of the road Ford. I'm still dead. I run into him with my "killed by the tree huggers" HumVee or Ford Excursion. I'm still dead. Point is it's all about mass.
So if we all drove Ford Excursions, would we be safer? Not even, because we'd be wrecking into other vehicles of similar mass. The only way around this is to continually increase the mass of the vehicle we are driving, to have more mass than the other vehicles on the road; so that in an accident, we come out on top. Eventually we're driving around in 20 thousand pound automobiles. The end is only attained when the vehicles are so heavy, we can't move them.
There lies the self absorption and immorality of those sort of studies, and the people who use the mass method of safety. By buying a vehicle that imposes mass safety by destroying other vehicles and killing their occupants, we are conducting a sort of legalized manslaughter. If a vehicle needs to be big by virtue of the work it does, that's just fine. Not just so that if you're in an accident "You win".
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
1. a station wagon or small minivan can hold 3 child seats. and many of them get over 30mpg
2. you're not green if you decided on having 3 children.
3. having one car and carpooling is greener than having an SUV and something efficient(even a prius).
My guess is you like the idea of being a green liberal, but find such a lifestyle impractical.
I completely agree.
d
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Unfortunately, you can make all the laws you want, but Stupid will find a way. Here in .au we banned cell phone use years ago - first it caused people to text more (because it's easier to hide the phone in your lap) but what I see now is more idiots who pull over anywhere to answer the phone. In the breakdown lanes of the freeway, around blind corners, you name it. The new laws have done _nothing_ to make the roads safer, the selfish assholes have just found new ways to be selfish assholes.
I hear you on the "reading the paper" theme though. The cell phone laws always pissed me off because they do nothing to address the idiots who are tuning their radio, lighting a cigarette, eating a hamburger and turning around to talk to someone in the back seat all at the same time while going around a corner! To me, this seems a lot more dangerous than checking a text when you're stopped at a red light.
Unfortunately, you can't ban Stupid, because Stupid always finds a way. We already have plenty of laws about dangerous driving, they just need to be enforced, rather than banning specific behaviours, which does nothing to address to underlying problem.
sustainable living
I wouldn't pick on truck owners (the ones who actually use them to transport stuff), but that doesn't prevent rules about the bumper height (and the headlight height). As is customary these rules should start with new trucks (and cars) so the current owners don't have to change their cars to fit the new laws. After 10 years or so the law can change to all cars and trucks.
This will have the advantage that the new trucks will be butt ugly and thus the dickheads who own a truck but don't need them (they only like the looks) will not want them anymore, because the looks are ruined.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Haha, thank you so much. That really made my morning. :)
By these statistics, cars should be made that average over 1000MPG. Our overpopulation problems would be solved overnight!
Sounds like you should be driving a minivan, then.
God is imaginary
you have not justified your use of a SUV, but instead, of a van with folding seats or even a station wagon.
Right, lower those bumpers about 8-12 inches, right into the heads under the roof of the just-barely-clearing-it car. There's a balance here that isn't even remotely being approached :/
Obviously... a 3500 pounds car should get a larger engine. Now why is there such an obsession with driving 3500 pounds land boats on your side of the Atlantic? And what is it with US 3.3 liters V6 engines developing less power/torque than the 1.8T 4-cyl in my car while drinking way more?
Now why is there such an obsession with driving 3500 pounds land boats
It's called crash performance. 1500 pound cars don't do very well in crashes.
One car I looked at lately is the compact Volvo C30. It weighs over 3200 pounds, yet can only seat two comfortably (plus two more uncomfortably). Since it comes from Europe (made in Belgium), why is there such an obsession with making 3200 pound compact cars on YOUR side of the Atlantic?
And what is it with US 3.3 liters V6 engines developing less power/torque than the 1.8T 4-cyl in my car while drinking way more?
Citation needed. I've been looking at new cars lately, and the American-made V6 engines seem to get BETTER fuel economy than the 4-cylinder turbo engines. Fuel economy seems to be tied directly to power output, and have little relation with engine size (i.e. a small turbo engine making the same power as a large naturally-aspirated engine seems to get about the same mpg).
Here's a couple of cherry-picked examples: the 2012 Dodge Avenger has an option for a 3.6L V6 engine which gets 19/29 mpg according to the latest EPA methodology and makes 283 hp. The smaller Mazdaspeed3 has a much smaller 2.3L 4-cylinder turbo engine making 263 hp, but it only gets 18/25 mpg. Back to the Avenger, you could opt for the base engine, which is a 2.4L 4-cyl, but that will only get you up to 20/31 mpg, an insignificant improvement.
My current vehicle: 1999 Audi A3 1.8T (178 bhp), tows mad stuff, carries a full sized workbench and a passenger without any issue, while drinking about 8.2 L/100. 4stars NCAP rating (9 points in a frontal impact, 16 points in a side impact), 2400 lbs.
We are now looking for a larger vehicle, so we tested the following:
2003 Chrysler Voyager 3.3 V6 (156 bhp), looks very practical but don't get in an accident with it(*). Drinks about 12 L/100. 2 stars NCAP rating (0 point in a frontal impact, 14 points on side impact [as the driver would be higher than most points of impact]), 4133 lbs.The more recent version actually scores lower on the NCAP test.
1999 VW Sharan 1.8T (150 bhp), Drinks about 10 L/100. 3 stars NCAP rating (6 points frontal impact, 15 side impact). 3681lbs
(*) except if you enjoy having your legs crushed and receiving the steering column through your face and chest.
The NCAP test is an impact at 64km/h, hardly excessive speed for an accident on the national roads (90-100 km/h) or autobahn (130 km/h recommended, no speed limit).
You've got a problem here: you're looking at older cars. This really isn't valid, because these cars are no longer viable, i.e., it's not legal to sell them. It doesn't matter how well they did on a crash test from 1999, the question is how well they do now, as the standards have changed. I'm sure those NCAP tests weren't the same in 1999 as in 2003, and certainly not 2011. How well does the Voyager do on the 1999 test? You'll probably never know.
Not only that, but you can't always compare fuel economy between model years. I don't know about your European tests, but here in the USA, you can't directly compare cars made in 2008 or later with cars made before then, as the entire methodology for EPA fuel economy testing changed in that year, generally resulting in lower numbers.
That's why I only pointed out brand new cars in my post, ones that are on the market right now.
They can be sold on the market here, without any issue... there are actually many Gen II Voyagers for sale right now, with very low miles and full trim, literally for peanuts. With the amount of KM I drive a year, a new vehicle makes no sense whatsoever. I'd have clocked 300000KM on it before paying off the credit. I prefer paying cash for a used vehicle I will drive into the ground before changing for another used vehicle paid in cash.
The difference in fuel economy between the Sharan and the Voyager represent 2 months worth of gasoline tanks over the year. If I picked up the 130BHP TDI version of the Sharan or the similar TDI Ford Galaxy instead of the 1.8T Sharan, I would be looking at 6 months of tank-filling difference. For my use, the costs in fuel alone would be: 8000 euro a year (voyager) vs 6000 euro a year (sharan 1.8T) vs 3500 euro a year (sharan/galaxy 1.9TDI). Do the extra 6 BHP negated by the weight increase justify a 2000 euro a year difference? Nope. For that matter, do the extra 26 BHP justify the 4500 euro a year difference? Hell no!
The 2007 Voyager didn't fare much better on the NCAP tests, with the added safety measures firing too late after the impact. The car autonomy was virtually unchanged. The voyager was unchanged between 1999 and 2003, why would you expect the economy or safety features to change between those years?
How often do people drive to work taking their entire family?
I usually drive by myself, so my commute car only needs to hold one person: me.
Our other car is the full sized family car.
But, if 1 out of every 2 cars in a 2 car household was a little 1 liter commute car:
- more city cars per block, more people can park
- less fuel consumption by that society overall
- money saved in buying the tiny car means more mondey left over for other things
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Sure the M is big for 18 wheelers, SUVs, and vans, trains, and Iron Giants.
But in city traffic, at gridlock or slow-and-go speeds of rush hour, V is small. Then it is my thought that there is no bus, van, SUV, or such going at high speed through red lights, or at all.
Would be curious for citations of fatalities per capita in rush hour traffic and urban environments vs wide open freeway speeds.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
According to Top Gear, even the 1000hp Bugatti Veyron only requires 50hp to cruise at hwy speeds.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Then put the 1 liter engines in US cars that meet US crash standards.
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.
Haven't you been reading? It's impossible: a car that meets US crash standards must weigh a certain amount thanks to the laws of physics, and a 1L engine isn't sufficient to power that much mass again thanks to the laws of physics.
If you don't like that, I suggest you find us a source of aluminum, magnesium, titanium, or some other high strength-to-weight metal that's cheaper than the steel that we currently use. I suppose it's possible to make a lightweight car with a 1L engine that meets crash standards, but it'd probably have a carbon fiber chassis, which is prohibitively expensive. No one is going to pay $500,000 for an "economy" car here.
Cruising and accelerating are two different things. A car only needs a small amount of power to maintain 55-75mph on a flat glade, but to accelerate and pass, it needs much more. Or, if it needs to go up a long incline at that speed, again it needs much more. Finally, just accelerating from a stop light usually needs more power than you need for cruising at speed. A car's engine must be sized according to its peak power needs, not its average, but the larger the engine, the greater the pumping losses, which is why the Veyron gets horrific fuel economy on the highway (or anywhere else), even if only really needs 50hp at certain instances of time. Why do you think hybrids were invented?
Besides, what is your definition of "hwy speeds"? In Germany, if you're driving 150mph on the autobahn, you'll need a lot more than 50hp to maintain that speed, as air resistance increases power requirements geometrically. But if you restrict yourself to 55mph, air resistance is barely a factor at that speed, though it'll take forever to get anywhere at that speed.