For the 97% of the planet -
7000lbs is about 3200kg.
To put that into perspective, a big old Volvo XC90 is about 2400kg
That's how fuckin stupidly wasteful, childish and insecure Americans are when choosing their vehicles
this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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Velomobiles weight 35kg (77 pounds) and offer very good protection compared to normal bicycles. Theoretically you could design single seat cars not much heavier. Of course for higher speeds you'd want more protection and a little bit wider.
I imagine the ideal self driving car or robo-taxi to be two seats that face each other, so when you get one alone you have plenty of space to stretch your feet or put your groceries. It could be totally luxurious, simple to call and use and fast too. And the embodied energy would be very small and the "mpg" would be insane.
It's just sad how badly we are tackling climate change by just letting the free market run wild.
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(5 replies)
Maybe car sales taxes should scale by vehicle weight.
If you consume more of the road, you pay more
They fundamentally do through taxes on emissions and fuel efficiency, plus fuel consumption taxes.
It's just written as explicitly as it being a weight tax
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(14 replies)
That’s at least 500 stone.
Or like 1500 bricks.
Over $8800
we obviously need to take money from Amtrak and public transport grants to rebuild the interstate system. Guardrails upgraded everywhere, new lanes would be added to reduce congestion
The guard rails are pretty good enough as is. When you hear of something like this it's very often caused by lack of maintenance/poor installation/assembly. There is a guy on youtube that has videos of a whole bunch of guardrails that are simply unsafe because they are missing bolts or were assembled incorrectly.
And remember - guard rails are meant to slow you down enough to try and prevent a worse situation rather than always turning you back into the roadway to create a larger accident with other traffic or stop you completely.
New lanes don't reduce congestion. When you add new lanes, drivers who had previously avoided those routes suddenly think "oh more lanes, it'll be less congested" and it just fills back up to capacity. Except it's worse because there's even more cars now in the extra lanes you just built. Adding lanes makes congestion worse, not better.
What we need to do is get people off the roads and onto public transportation. That's how you reduce congestion - get people off the roads. Unfortunately that means actually investing in public transportation, so that'll never happen in the US.