Pedestrians: "can you please make your cars a little safer for us?"
US carmakers:
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2024
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Fuck Cars
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When you snort so much iron oxide that the only notes you have on car design is "bigger! BIGGER! ADD SPIKES! "
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I didn't see the community and was already primed to say no half measures! abolish cars! and instead have functioning public transport (and if elon musk sabotages it like he did with california high speed rail he gets launched into the mars on his own garbage shuttle). Then there can also be housing layouts that aren't atomizing and reactionary social-engineering projects to facilitate white flight and capital extraction from cities like the hellscape that is the suburbs; where people are conditioned to give money to the chemical/chemical-weapons companies who invented the concept of "lawn weed" and to fossil fuel industries to pollutively wastefully mow and always forever re-mow their sterile mediocre lawns so theyre 'too busy [with pointless busywork] to be a communist'
Lawns are the one of the most watered crop in america, and we don't even eat them. Lawns should be completely banned from places with water shortages as a start and replaced with drought resistant native plants.
Yes! go off!
new culture war just dropped: them femocrats is going to take away your truck...
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Why are trucks so popular in the us? What do you guys need to often put in the back?
Nothing. But you never know...
Meanwhile in Europe:
How am I ever going to carry a couch on my bicycle? Haha, silly me. I don't carry couches. (Or I'd just spend a whooping 80 euros to rent a van for a few hours)
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There is a lot of ego to it as well. You aren't a "real man" if you don't drive a truck. People assume they see a truck, thats a hard working real man right there, even if it is just some guy driving to his desk job that doesn't need 500+ hp and 4000lbs towing capacity. I can't remember which company but a truck manufactuer surveyed people with pictures of men next to cars or trucks and the truck scored higher in things like resourcefulness, trust, reliability. And when the exact same guy is pictured next to cars, he scored lower in the same categories. Even some women get trapped in this ego thinking they are tough with stickers like "silly boys, trucks are for girls". Trucks aren't for a specific gender, they are for hauling bulky loads or towing. .
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Honestly, I think station was wagons could make a big come back if they designed them right. Make them super practical and utilitarian, I could see younger generations going for them instead of SUVs.
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I don't remember exactly but it's something to do with new ~~safety and emissions~~ fuel efficiency regulations brought about in the 90s(?) that would fine manufacturers who didn't meet the new standards. "Light trucks" such as the F150 were exempt so manufacturers started pushing those hard as the fashionable choice.
Fast forward 30 years, the regulations haven't changed, and here we are. There's a good video about it somewhere...
Yeah here we go: https://youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
Ah very interesting thanks!
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I like the title, I like the framing, but unfortunately it's a nothing burger. They need to close the SUV/truck loophole and regulate vehicle size directly.
If there isn't a weight limit, nothing else matters. Limit truck to <3500lbs, ban cameras and require ~130 degree unobstructed view for all mirrors.
But that also mean truck can't electrify. Tesla Model 3 weight around 3500lbs, a Ford F150 Lightning weight 6500lbs. That's mean a "small" pickup truck like Nissan Navara/Frontier, which weight around 3500lbs, when turned into electric vehicle it will be around 4900lbs. A toyota Hilux 1998 also weight around 3600lbs.
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Ban cameras? Like, back up cameras?
@PowerCrazy @return2ozma I like where you are heading. Probably better to define being able to see a set of targets around the vehicle. Easier to define, harder to game.
I wouldn't ban cameras, but I would require the visibility be obtained without them. Cameras can give vision that is useful and implausible without them.
I wouldn’t ban cameras, but I would require the visibility be obtained without them. Cameras can give vision that is useful and implausible without them.
Yea this is probably the better play. But too often with modern cars they use the existence of the camera's to make the sight lines impossibly dangerous (the infamous front facing camera on the f150 for example).
@PowerCrazy Yeah.
And why aren't they putting in more useful cameras. My new car has at least 6 exteria cameras, but why isn't their a pair of cameras at the rear pointing sideways? Getting that view when reversing out of a perpendicular parking space would be *really* valuable.
The full size pickups today have horrible sight lines. I own two pickups, one is a '95 F150 and one is a '05 Super Duty. Even the 10 years between the two of those trucks brought a huge difference in sight lines, but surprisingly the situational awareness is better in the '05. Harder to see a child in front of the truck but much easier to see anything to the sides and rear. Camera and backup sensors on the '05, in addition to MUCH better mirrors.
I've driven a modern pickup and it "feels" as big as it is. I think the hood height was nearly 4ft. Situational awareness is OK in them because of good mirrors and a camera but that front profile is insane.
I just went and measured the front of my F250 and was surprised it was 49in tall. That's 1.2m+. The '22 I drove is only a few inches taller but it sure seemed bigger. Maybe it had a lift in the front, I don't know.
quick edit: that drawing seems a little off though, the LOS drawn assumes the driver sights directly down the hood and being almost 6' tall my eyes view the side window about 3in below the top frame of the door. I can't go check how far out my first view of the ground is because my driveway is sloped.