• Funderpants @lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    SUV, Truck, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV, sedan, SUV, SUV, SUV, SUV.

    The culture problem around big vehicles we’ve created with bad regulation and aggressive marketing is depressing.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      It isn’t just a culture problem, it’s a tragedy of the commons.

      When you’re surrounded by giant vehicles, the only way to be feel safe and see the road is to have a giant vehicle.

      • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The only way to feel safe. The really big ego-support vehicles are no safer than a subcompact to be inside of, but they are far more likely to kill your own family.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Well sure, though not being able to see anything around you when deep in truck/suv traffic is pretty scary in a sedan.

          • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            That’s a feeling, not a lack of safety. Intimidating people into buying big cars on purpose is still vile, but the people who cave are giving in to irrationality and putting their feelings above the safety of their kids and of others. Tragedy of the commons is when defecting improves your utility. The SUV/emotional support truck arms race is only decreases the utility of others in exchange for feelings of power.

              • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Which does not override the lack of safety of a tall heavy vehicle. Small cars are not less safe than emotional support trucks and full sized SUVs, because the latter get specific exemptions from safety regulations.

                “I’m going to increase the probability of killing my kid, innocent hystanders because of this one specific critereon i’ve cherry picked” is an emotional argument.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              The feeling of power and safety, itself, has utility. Feelings matter.

              No argument that there’s been an active propaganda campaign to make people in smaller cars feel less safe, but propaganda works. You can’t just dismiss it.

              • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I can object to it being used to justify killing kids for a feeling though. Which is what you were doing by suggesting it’s a prisoner’s dilemma.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  1 year ago

                  Object all you like? It doesn’t change the actual reality of what is happening and why people drive murder machines.

                  • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Now you’re dodging the point. You’re spreading the harmful propaganda, and using the fact that it’s effective to justify spreading it.

        • biddy@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          Physics says that in a collision, the heavier vehicle will always come out better. Higher mass means more resistance to acceleration, so it will take longer to change speed and impart less force on the occupants. This is one reason why buses sometimes don’t have seatbelts, when the bus collides with much lighter cars it will be largely unaffected.

          If everyone has a heavy vehicle, it’s worse overall because of higher kinetic energy causing more dramatic collisions. And obviously significantly worse for everyone outside a car.

          Hence the arms race.

          • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Which is offset by the lack of safety regulation, high center of mass, heavier weight to crush the cabin in a rollover, and much higher likelihood of running over your own kids.

            Stop spreading propaganda by cherry picking,

            • biddy@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              Which is offset by the lack of safety regulation

              Citation needed. SUVs tend to be modern which would generally have stricter safety regulations

              high center of mass, heavier weight to crush the cabin in a rollover

              I wouldn’t have though that rollovers are a common cause of deaths or serious injuries in cars. The higher center of gravity is going to be offset by the wider wheel base, so it depends on the car.

              Traction seems like a much bigger problem, although many SUVs solve this with bigger wheels.

              and much higher likelihood of running over your own kids.

              Agree 100%

              Stop spreading propaganda by cherry picking,

              Look, fuck SUVs, obviously. If you aren’t a psychopath you should not feel safe driving those things. My point was specifically about the physics of collisions. What you’re bringing up can’t be answered with physics because it depends on the details of the car, we need real world statistics to continue this conversation.

              • schroedingershat@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                “Buy a new big car because it will be later year than a new small car and thus have newer safety features” is an incredibly wild way of drawing the exact opposite conclusion to the one you should have from that data.

              • Uranium3006@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                Citation needed. SUVs tend to be modern which would generally have stricter safety regulations

                what? that makes no sense. SUVs in the US are generally regulated as light trucks, which have historically had laxer safety requirements for a given model year

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        That’s not the tragedy of the commons, and that’s not why everyone drives turboencabulators.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

        It is, I shit you not, a cold war tariff on fucking chickens. There’s some other shit that’s glommed on over the centuries, but the mad-science breeding program to create a pickup truck big enough to swallow the sun started with a stupid trade dispute over chickens between the krauts, the frogs, and the yanks.