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It’s time for Americans to embrace small cars
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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Americans will embrace small cars when we don't need to drive 1+hours every single day.
You dont need a large car for that...
You just need a comfortable car for that.
For some people, bigger is more comfortable. Different strokes for different folks. Others don't want to deal with playing Tetris with baggage and family every time they need to go on a trip. For others, it's a safety issue or at least they feel safer in a bigger car.
But yes. I generally agree with you.
Especially for an obese country.
It isn’t even that. America, Germany, and the UK are all very similar. And those numbers are only becoming more similar over time.
Europeans need to remember that American states are often larger than European countries.
And that generations of neglect or intentional sabotage has rendered public transport completely useless outside of outlier scenarios.
People want to handwave it away, but there are legitimate safety concerns with driving smaller vehicles in the US. Not only are they less comfortable (in a country where you have to drive everywhere, for long periods of time, even for incidental items). They will get destroyed by our obnoxiously huge SUVs and trucks. Happens all the time.
Same thing needs to be remembered when people who don’t live here insist everyone should just be biking everywhere. I agree in spirit, but the reality is that biking in the US is a gamble every time someone does it. And you can’t convince a populace to do it when a normal American is 10+ miles away from a grocery store, and when most of our states experience both extreme heat and extreme cold.
The problem is truly systemic. We have a majority of civil planning intentionally implementing hostile engineering to incentivize vehicles.
So actually there are many cars that are nearly or just as safe as SUVs and have similar storage capacity. These arguments are often used by industry but don't really hold any weight
https://youtu.be/jN7mSXMruEo https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/rollover/unsafe/theme.html
As someone who goes to Italy yearly with a family of 4 and a dog often the smaller car storage notes are bullshit.
We rent to drive to our home here and then use bikes when or borrow the inlaws car but they often say 5 or 6 seater with room for 3 luggages but it often means at the expense of seats. I often travel with my daughter's stroller beneath the kids feet and a luggage or several backpacks on the floor or in the middle seat and for a several hours drive it's not comfy. Meanwhile my traverse in the states I can fit all of them plus the luggages etc on way to anywhere and we're all comfy for hours.
Not that that's a justification for larger cars but it's definitely not on par and you totally need to play Tetris or sacrifice comfort to make it work.
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exactly. I would love to take public transport everywhere, but apparently investing in our public infrastructure is "too woke" now.
Well, when a County drops nearly a million dollars on a bus stop, it's not hard to understand why.
You kind of hit on the biggest problem with lack of public transit investments, and I don’t think you even realize it.
On I-66, they added an additional travel lane for 4 miles and it cost $85million. That’s more than $20million PER MILE. And it is only ONE travel lane, not an entire highway. And yet, we accept this as the norm, but god forbid we spend money on public transit. Everyone is up in arms on how our taxes are wasted only when it is public transit. I’m not saying that $1 million bus stop was money well spent, I honestly don’t know. But it still sounds like a better deal than $1 million for 264 feet of travel lane.
http://inside.transform66.org/about_the_project/i-66_eastbound_widening.asp
The US should really just directly employ regional workers to handle these projects. Corruption and nepotism are rampant in public construction projects, and the profit motive requires an inefficient use of tax dollars since we must pay a completely useless margin just so somebody can become richer for doing zero work.
We also need to stop expanding highways since additional lanes have been proven to not help congestion, and actually worsens it because it encourages more driving.
I remember when they expanded rt 3 in MA. I said to myself "It'll be packed in a few years." Sure enough people immediately packed into the towns along it or changed their routes and now it is a jammed as every other highway, just wider.
For them to establish a true high speed rail system down the east coast they'd have to buy up billions in property via eminent domain before they even put down a single track. I don't see that getting much support.
That doesn't make any sense. What does duration of transit have to do woth how large your vehicle is? The article didn't say clown cars.
I'm 6'2" (188cm) and I drive a tiny little '05 Mazda 3s, for 1.5 hours each way to work/home. It's not an issue at all. If anything, I'm honestly LESS comfortable in larger vehicles.
Would I like to drive less? Definitely. Working from home during Corona was fantastic and I was so much more productive.
How are you less comfortable in a large vehicle? I'm the same height and driving a Corolla my head would hit the roof sometimes. Getting in and out of a Civic felt like I was human origami. I got a Forester and it is so much more comfortable. My partially disabled dad loved being able to just slide into the seat and swing his legs in without having to drop down and struggle to get his legs folded in or out.
You have kids? Pets? Long work commute? A small car makes having to balance any of these (especially together) difficult. Sprawling suburbia makes commutes and driving anywhere suck, you want Americans to get smaller cars? Build better city infrastructure so that I don't need to use the car 98% of the time I need to leave the house. If I don't need to use it as much I can deal with less comfort and a smaller car.
Make sense now?
Uhh nope. None of those are good reasons to have a massive vehicle. Especially long work commute...thats completely irrelevant.
How many Americans do you think are going to be able to afford two or three vehicles?
If you have a family and any pets , it's very difficult to travel around anywhere. At most, people are going to get a car that can fulfill as many needs as possible. Just because YOU can get around comfortably in a smaller car, doesn't mean someone else will be. Different families have different needs.
Also a Mazda 3 is not that small, neither is a Corolla.
Not anymore they're not. Not in the U.S., at least.
Neither of which will be big enough to travel with. A family with kids and a dog is a crammed vehicle. If I can't afford a larger car, I'm going to get something that's less cramped and uncomfortable when theres a full load like that.
If you have 20 kids and a great Dane I guess you're right. If you have 2 kids and a dog that's on you.
Just buy a station car? It’s hot more space than I’ll ever need and I have all of the things you mention. Small does not equal clown car you know.
Motherfucker, 15% of American males don't even have friends, 95% of you don't need an SUV. You think people in other countries don't have jobs and families and cities? Christ, pull your head out of your ass and look out a window once in a while.
I can see why...
Yeah, poor stupid Americans.
Getting in and out of a higher-riding vehicle with an upright seating position is more natural and comfortable, particularly for the elderly and/or infirm. Furthermore, we have engineered away most of the drawbacks of crossovers and SUVs.
Based on the numbers of SUV's and large trucks on US roads I'm going to assume 90% of your population is elderly or infirm.
Vast majority are obese, close enough to infirm.
I agree that most people don’t need SUVs. And even more don’t need a truck. But few others are forced to drive as much nor as far as Americans on a daily basis, so we don’t give a shit if people in other countries with robust public transport sometimes have to drive places in their (comparatively) small countries with their families.
TIL that a dubious 15% is also === 95%.
Edit: that is to say, this isn’t as simple as “LOL Americans fat, Americans dumb.” The same old Euro arguments don’t work on this one. Civil planning is completely fucked here. It isn’t just bad, it is actively hostile to non-drivers.
And SUVs in particular can get these massive tax advantages that cars don’t get. Same with some models of truck. Plus, marketing is highly effective and nearly totally unregulated like so much else over here.
You have morons giving themselves brain damage for the right to own gas stoves, and we have similar morons suffocating themselves and everyone else by insisting they need huge vehicles. And the government actively encourages it.
Aww. Someone got angry lol.
Don't be so disingenuous as to assume that just because I enjoy cursing that I'm angry, you just make yourself sound like a fucking idiot. Especially when you don't respond to the message with anything of substance, like a belligerent child.
I'm not responding to an insufferable little bitch. Either learn to talk like an adult and, you know, be somewhat respectable, or get use to being treated like a child. Byeeeeee
The stick is so far up your ass it's pushing shit out of your mouth, careful there.
Because I don't want to engage with someone? Do I owe that person a response? Please. If this is such an important discussion to have, please stand in for me.
If self awareness was a disease you'd be the healthiest person alive. How much of a coward do you have to be to run away from mean words? It's a bullshit excuse, you can't attack my message so you try to disingenuously dismiss it without consideration. Pathetic.
Lol, don't get angry because I don't want to engage with you. You're an angry little man that came in hostile. I just don't want to waste my time on someone like you. Sorry bud. Be nicer next time.
No, because now this has become entertaining. You so easily riled up. 😂. Please. Keep going.
I enjoy telling you how much of a moron you are, if you want to keep getting told then I'll keep telling you. You still haven't gotten back on topic after all because youre not competent enough to participate.
Fuck you both. Take this petulant shit back to reddit.
Hilarious comment chain, but does show the need for disabling inbox notifications. Probably went in that long because each wanting to leave the last word after being notified of a response and being caught in a loop for a while.
No it doesn't make sense but thanks for patronizing me.
All I see here is you barking back the truck industry's talking points to me. I know plenty of people with kids and pets and small cars and guess what? They are used to it and don't hate it.
Your entitlement is the difference, let's not make any mistake about this.
Entitlement over what? I drive a crosstrek mate. I can't get into a smaller car otherwise I'm leaving the kids behind. Your arguing with a single person. The reality of PEOPLE is that they won't change unless they don't need cars as much.... it's only logical mate.
Right because all these small vehicles only have two seats, I keep forgetting the only small car options are old mr2, fiero, and rx-7's. SILLY ME
I drive a, for American standards, small Peugeot 308. It’s the 2018 model. Does about 45-50 MPG (the diesel does even better) and has all the luxuries I can imagine. I drive the station which means I have plenty of space for everything I could need. I drive it for 2,5-3 hours a day. It drives like a dream. You don’t need a massive SUV for that.
I drive a Crosstrek and have a small truck. I'm about as small as it gets before going to clown cars. I don't why everyone here thinks they are going to persuade me how wrong I am....I was making a statement that's isn't wrong. You want people to move to smaller vehicles, build better infrastructure.
A cross trek isn't a small vehicle. It's larger than almost all sedans. I drive a WRX which is significantly smaller and far from a 'clown car'. I wouldn't say that yours are large vehicles, but your statement about going smaller absolutely is wrong. I don't have to persuade you, you're just categorically wrong.
I commuted 2 1/2 hours a day, mostly highway driving. In a Yaris, with a passenger. For 8 years. I was driving, not stretching out to take a nap.
TBH, I would have preferred a car that was quieter and had a bit more comfortable ride. But a Corolla, Civic, Mazda 3 or Elantra would have been just fine.