• kubica@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    If only there existed some coordinated organization on a national level that could create laws to ensure the safety of pedestrians.

    • Jerkface (any/all)@lemmy.ca
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      1 day ago

      There does, and it does, but that doesn’t really seem to be the point of the story to me. This is very much a “loud exhausts correlate to dark triad personality traits” kind of story. Or perhaps more like how everyone knows they participate in actual atrocity and torture against vulnerable individuals but just keep buying their corpses.

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        You do realise the government can just ban cars above a certain size anytime they want right? Like I can’t buy a tank and drive it down the road, or a car that is wider than the size of a lane. All they have to do is adjust the limits to weed out the dangerous and inefficient models. Sometimes talking apes are far too stupid to allow their non-existent critical thought to self-regulate their actions.

        • Jaberw0cky@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Indeed, but have you ever seen the cars politicians drive? In the UK at least they are in SUVs to a man. I drove past King Charles not too long ago and there were two land rovers and four police motorbikes… On a related note I was driving my wonderful electric Dacia Spring at the time… highly recommend those. Costs me £105 a month and perhaps £15 in electric.

        • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          With how popular huge SUVs seem to be, that would be a very unpopular measure. Then you also have the car manufacturer lobbies squeezing your balls if you try to pass something like that.

          I’d like a middle ground where these cars have much higher insurance premiums and are heavily taxed in proportion to their space usage.

          Want to drive around in a car that weighs 3x my city car, then you need to pay 3x as more.

          • phutatorius@lemmy.zip
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            1 day ago

            Road damage caused by a vehicle is proportional to the fourth power of vehicle weight. That leaves out other externalities such as deaths and injuries caused to pedestrians, cyclists and people in other motor vehicles.

            But taxes should reflect externalities, so a bit part of vehicle tax should also rise as the fourth power of vehicle weight. Double the weight, sixteen times the tax. I’d make enforcement simpler by setting a zero-rate mimimum of 1000 kg.

            By the way, use of this formula also illustrates the imbecility of those demanding a tax on bicycles. If the base rate is, let’s say, £100 per annum for an unladen 1-tonne vehicle, then that for a bike weighing 20kg would be £100/100**4. That is, 1/10,000 of a pound, or 1/100 of a penny. And other bicycle-caused externalities aren’t much different in proportion to those caused by a motor vehicle.

  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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    2 days ago

    How is the financial penalty of them costing a shitload more to buy and run not enough, why do people want these?

    • bryndos@fedia.io
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      2 days ago

      Conspicuous cuntsumption maybe. They can tell people how much they pay for it?

    • 𝕱𝖎𝖗𝖊𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖈𝖍@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Around 2020, manufacturers all but stopped making small cars since it’s easier for them to make SUVs and trucks with weaker emissions standards. It’s almost impossible to find any compact that was made after 2020, especially in the US. I’m sure it’s only a bonus that they’re typically more expensive than small cars.

      There’s also the problem that the more SUVs and trucks dominate the streets, the more dangerous they become for everyone. Your average car weighs as much as a damn elephant nowadays. I own a compact but hate driving because it’s like being in the middle of a drunken stampede.

      At the end of the day, fuck cars.

    • Mojitas@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I think a lot of people don’t want them. But in my case there wasn’t any normal car that had the features I wanted. I’d rather not need it but I really do if I’m gonna be able to work full time.

        • Mojitas@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          I wanted a car that was relatively quiet and a plug in hybrid. Not a big list of demands by far.

          But so many of the PHEVs are SUVs nowadays.

          • notsosure@sh.itjust.works
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            2 days ago

            Why do you want a plug in hybrid? Haven’t they been shown to be useless for the climate?!

            • Mojitas@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Because the vast majority of my traveling can be done using electricity and not gasoline.

              It is way cheaper to charge it and I frankly like to drive it more, when it is using electricity. Sometimes I do longer trips and need to use gasoline and I do not have the option of charging it at home.

        • teft@piefed.social
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          2 days ago

          Any who lives in snowy conditions could want the additional ground clearance or weight for traction.

            • teft@piefed.social
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              2 days ago

              Never lived in northern new england i take it? Maybe in your neck of the woods they get plowed early and often. In some parts of the country you won’t get to work until noon if you wait for the plows.

              • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                2 days ago

                So then the issue is the lack of plowing. How does a big car solve that? Is there no work from home option?

                Do company employers not try to take the weather into account? Are there no work from home options?

  • tensorpudding@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The implication is that the buyer is a bad driver, which most people would think is someone else since they are actually a good driver. The Dunning-Kruger effect applies here.

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I guarantee that most of the apes buying emotional support vehicles do not think or care about the world outside their idiot brains.

      • bryndos@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        if all those dangeorous cars are out there with all these bad drivers killing people, i’d better protect myself in a giant wank tank.

  • BlackVenom@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Wait did someone think people buy cars with others in mind? (Noting that “impressing” others is for the self, not the others)

  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Why are all the studies nowadays doing nothing more than confirming common sense that almost everyone else can see?

    • br3d@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 day ago

      I mean, very obviously not everybody sees this, otherwise we wouldn’t have streets full of deadly vehicles would we?

      • melsaskca@lemmy.ca
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        1 day ago

        I call the modern-day cigarette smoker an exception to that rule, but yes, there are none so blind as those that cannot see.