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this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2024
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I feel like articles like these are red-herrings designed to distract people from the real problem, and/or give them an excuse to feel morally superior when they shouldn't because they drive a normal-sized car instead of a big one.
But here's the real problem: America was a catastrophe of car-dependency even before the bloated SUVs and such started showing up, and merely shrinking the cars back down to normal size isn't gonna fix it. The biggest issue with cars isn't the injuries and deaths from crashes or the or the greenhouse gas emissions; it's the fact that cities are absolutely ruined by trying to build enough parking to accommodate them all. Forcing everything to be spread out in order to fit parking lots and wide roads in between destroys walkability and the viability of transit. The costs of all the extra land -- or even just all the extra concrete for parking decks -- drive up housing prices. Euclidean zoning prohibits convenient access to third places, harming mental health, and even when the zoning does allow e.g. a pub to be built, customers have to drive drunk to get home because it's too far to walk!
My city imposes minimum parking requirements for businesses that want a license to serve alcohol. Not maximums, minimums. Think about how fucking insane and ass-backwards that is for a minute.
The article makes a big deal about how big vehicles are more dangerous to things they crash into than small ones, but consider this: car wrecks kill tens of thousands of people each year, but that harm is dwarfed by the fact that hundreds of millions of people are obese because they're forced to drive everywhere instead of walking. Over 40% of the total US population is obese now, compared to 10% in the 1950s before the effects of car-dependency had a chance to kick in.
The point is, all of these things don't change whether the cars we're dependent on are little hatchbacks or gigantic SUVs. Practically speaking, every car is the same size: one parking space*. It's the parking spaces themselves -- and therefore the cars that occupy them, whether big, small, electric or gas-guzzling -- that have got to go!
(* or one two-second safe following distance when in motion, compared to which the length of the vehicle itself is negligible in terms of its effect on road lane capacity)
The obesity in America has very little at all to do with walking or not walking.
It has everything to do with the American diet. Would forced exercise help? Some. But it ain’t gonna solve anything
That too is a red herring.
I don't think our industrialized food and unwalkable cities are mutually exclusive when it comes to obesity.
The obesity epidemic is complex and blaming it on any single issue is never going to solve it.
Further it should be noted that Europe with its vaunted walkable cities (a good thing, really,) is also having its own problem with a rise in obesity.
As I said, would it help? Probably. But it’s not a solution.
Fine, then. I have four words for you:
Drive-though fast food.
(And if that's not pointed enough, here's a video about how much easier it is to shop for healthy groceries in a walkable area, and another that points out (among other things) how lack of walkability correlates with obesity even if, as you say, it's not the single direct cause.)
I agree with a of your points that we should be reducing the negative impacts of cars to society (reducing/removing parking minimums, better zoning, etc) but I don't feel this is a red herring at all. Large vehicles are a problem for all the reasons the article indicates. Those issues should be addressed, and what your talking about is a while other problem that also needs to be addressed.
Just because it's factually true, doesn't mean it can't also be a red herring anyway. You've got to think about why it's a point that's being brought up.
In this case, there are a lot of people with a vested interest in keeping their [perceived to be] convenient car-oriented lifestyle, but who may have been feeling twinges of guilt and doubt about it lately because of all the talk about climate change and whatnot. There are also a lot of businesses with a vested interest in selling them cars and fuel and drive-thru food and pavement and other trappings of said car-oriented lifestyle. So there are huge forces motivated to push narratives aimed at absolving these drivers of their guilt.
That's what I believe the intended takeaway of an article like this is: "Oh, it's not me who's the problem; it's those other folks with the bro-dozers and mall-crawlers who are the problem. I'm behaving just fine -- virtuously, even! -- because my 'green' and 'safe' hybrid sedan shuts off instead of idling in the Starbucks drive-thru in the morning."
They want you to pay no attention to the fact that the existence of that Starbucks drive-thru, and more to the point, the existence of the stroad upon which its queue overflows each morning, are what's really causing the car crashes, and the lack of walkability, and the unsafe biking, and the climate change from everybody whose car doesn't shut off when it stops, and so on...
No. This is literally about how the likelihood of death for other drivers or pedestrians from car collisions is higher because of these larger vehicles. This is not about the tangential argument that you're trying to inject. Not everybody ingests media from Fuck cars, not just bikes, and citynerd. No, many people probably don't feel any twinges of guilt or doubt about their car oriented lifestyle, because not everyone is even aware of the alternative in the US.
Damn, I have never looked at it this way and now that I am...it's really sad. Thank you for the eye opener.
There's lots of youtube content on this subject... here's a decent jumping off point, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI