THE NEXT time you are stuck in traffic, look around you. Not at the cars, but the passengers. If you are in America, the chances are that one in 75 of them will be killed by a car—most of those by someone else’s car. Wherever you may be, the folk cocooned in a giant SUV or pickup truck are likelier to survive a collision with another vehicle. But the weight of their machines has a cost, because it makes the roads more dangerous for everyone else. The Economist has found that, for every life the heaviest 1% of SUVs or trucks saves in America, more than a dozen lives are lost in smaller vehicles. This makes traffic jams an ethics class on wheels.
Each year cars kill roughly 40,000 people in America—and not just because it is a big place where people love to drive. The country’s roads are nearly twice as dangerous per mile driven as those in the rest of the rich world. Deaths there involving cars have increased over the past decade, despite the introduction of technology meant to make driving safer.
Weight is to blame. Using data for 7.5m crashes in 14 American states in 2013-23, we found that for every 10,000 crashes the heaviest vehicles kill 37 people in the other car, compared with 5.7 for cars of a median weight and just 2.6 for the lightest. The situation is getting worse. In 2023, 31% of new cars in America weighed over 5,000lb (2.27 tonnes), compared with 22% in 2018. The number of pedestrians killed by cars has almost doubled since 2010. Although a typical car is 25% lighter in Europe and 40% lighter in Japan, electrification will add weight there too, exacerbating the gap between the heaviest vehicles and the lightest.
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Tax by weight. These things destroy roads so it’ll be easy to avoid the “government overreach” yapping.
Yeah I’ll pay more in taxes for my fat sedan, but it’ll be worth it.
The fourth power law (also known as the fourth power rule) states that the greater the axle load of a vehicle, the stress on the road caused by the motor vehicle increases in proportion to the fourth power of the axle load.
Basically a big ass pickup that weighs twice as much as a car should be taxed at 2^4 = 16 times as much by this metric
edit: source
Sounds reasonable.
That’ll work to make them less popular.People won’t understand the math, though. They’ll just blame the libs for depriving them of their overcompensation-mobile.
Some will even if they do understand the math.
Becides that’s an argument against all laws.
The people who a law is bad for, will always hate and fight it.If they stopped making the truck part of their personality, they’d probably be easier to convince.
Just to clarify, this “fourth power” rule is reasonable because that is approximately how road damage scales with per axle weight (last I checked it’s not an exact integer exponent but it is about 4)
Yup. We can of course exclude semis, construction vehicles, and shit that actually serves a purpose. But it’s the fairest way to tax vehicles overall
No. No exclusions.
It doesn’t matter if they serve a purpose; All the damage they still do still happens, and needs to be accounted for. Rolling it into the cost of the purpose is fair.Then the price of everything goes up. We already have a solution to semis damaging roads. They can’t drive on most roads unless their delivery is on it. Otherwise they have to use specific roads that were built for the weight.
Roads aren’t built to last forever. They all need maintenance. Semis cause more wear and damage on all roads, requiring more repairs. So yes, if that cost isn’t already baked into the cost of trucking everything, it only makes sense to start doing so.
The other option, is to give up on the idea of vehicles paying for roads. We could just use general tax money from everyone, as everyone benefits from quality roads. That would also be logically consistent.
I am a-okay with the general tax being enough to cover everything instead of dealing with the headaches we have now.
That is what we have now. Mostly.
The current vehicle taxes are never close to covering the costs of road maintenance.
That’s actually how a lot of people get around these taxes in some European countries. It’s not unusual to see a self employed accountant driving a Hilux
Here in the UK, I’ve seen bloody sushi restaurants and hairdressers drive branded pickup trucks FFS. No tax exemptions for businesses. As another poster noted, the damage is being done and needs to be paid for - it doesn’t magically not matter because it was done in the course of somebody using the road for their business
That sounds like a poorly written exclusion then. The goal here is to eliminate useless vehicles, not tax the shit out of a plumber for their van.
Plumbers don’t carry massive heavy plant. But I know you were just picking a concrete example of a business there so let’s not dwell on that particular case. The real point is that if a business causes damage to the roads that has to be repaired, it should contribute an appropriate amount. If that makes the cost of doing business more expensive, that just has to get passed on to the customer - who, ultimately, is the one having the heavy stuff transported
Then close the loop hole that allows it and require certain bed lengths that would exclude most of the bro dozers with dual cabs.
I said “Hilux”. Not “American Fucking Pathetic Tiny-penis Replacement” 😂
There are a few Dodge Rams here, anything bigger would just be undriveable and would make people laugh at you even harder than the Rams
Hilux is the same thing. Unusable bed used for ego unless they’re taking it off road.
Stop using vehicle footprint for trucks on CAFE standards.
Starting in 2012 truck fuel economy standards changed to being based on vehicle footprint, which essentially outlawed small trucks and encouraged manufacturers to keep making them bigger and bigger.
It’s why the Ranger, Dakota, and S10 were all suddenly discontinued. The Ranger eventually came back, but is now bigger than the F150 was before.
It’s hit cargo vans too. Between 2021 and 2023, all small cargo vans (Transit Connect, Promaster City, and NV200) were discontinued as they got passed by stricter fuel economy standards that penalized them for not having a larger footprint.
Yeah, somehow the MPG count as well, they have a formula where a bigger car has higher MPG in the end, smaller cars are lower MPG by that formula.
What people do here is they use the loophole that they are super cheap in insurance and road taxes because they are A: “work” trucks. And B: they only count the usable space and not the bed or some stupid shit. Which means a ridiculous dodge ram is cheaper than a smart four four that i use to drive around for work. If they would just stop that it would help A LOT. But talking to these insane people just hurts my head. Some guy told me that bicycles should pay as much road taxes as cars, because they also use the road.
I am more than happy to pay road tax by fourth power law axle weight on all my bicycles.
Since currently I pay for roads in my property taxes AT THE SAME RATE AS EVERY MOTORIST, this would result in a tremendous household savings for me.
Well his idea was that they pay the same as a normal car, because they use the same road. What is even funnier was that he was just in america and praised their car centric culture.
I mean, that’s an option too. Bike could pay 1/8th-1/12th the amount cars do based on amount of road used.
Of course, there’s the whole problem of cars don’t fucking pay for the roads. In Ontario, vehicle registration is a whopping $32. Since the average car lifespan in Canada is around 11 years, Ontario vehicles pay less than $3 per year (less however much of the registration fee is administration and overhead)
Since bikes take up abouth 1/10th the road, they would pay $3 for registration.
Sounds good but as a person who drives a wheelchair-modified minivan, which was already twice as expensive, is heavier, and is the smallest vehicle that can accommodate a power chair, I hope you’ll remember a carve-out for disability-access vehicles.
There would be lots of carve outs I imagine. The goal wouldn’t be to remove useful vehicles from the road.
If I’m wish listing laws then those vans would just be given to people who need them, or at least the mods would be covered.
Specifically, this is what the yearly road tax should be. It should scale faster than linear, and be agonistic to gasoline or electric powertrains (since road tax is already part of the price of gasoline).
Weight, exhaust and distance driven should all be factors.
“Where people love to drive”. I hate driving but damn try getting around without a car and spend your whole day just getting groceries.
It was NOT always like this and now the regime made it so that vast majority of Americans have no choice unless you are “lucky” enough to live in a select few cities that were designed pre WW2 and region with some rail infrastructure.
3 generations of malinvestment and chronic infrastructure issues to show for it.
First world country.
There are some truly beautiful areas to drive through. But that also means it would be beautiful for buses and trains too
Agreed! I wouldn’t say cars need to be ditched entirely, but they can be a less central part of life.
When I lived in the rural northeast, driving was fun. The bendy roads with low traffic were a blast to drive.
Now that I live in a southwest city, not so much. It’s merely the least inconvenient way to get anywhere.Bro, groceries can be ordered right to your door even in nowheresville USA.
Not an option when you are struggling to pay for essentials
I guess I would have to see the math of gas and time vs delivery cost which is free after 75.00 around these parts.
So the car is the expensive boots in this situation or what is your point?
That you have to have money to be able to access the free delivery
Qu’ils mangent de la brioche
Curious, where about are “these parts”. Around me, you typically get a 3-10% markup on most items when being delivered plus a trip for the driver.
For twice the price of already exorbitant prices.
Maybe not relevant for this specific discussion, but a decent quantity of Americans are stuck with fucking Dollar General for their groceries and they sure as hell don’t deliver.
What kind of hell scape has this place become?
Bro, USA isn’t the only country in the world, and some people prefer to see the item before purchase.
Aye.
I’ve said this before, but create a new license requirement for these, “light duty trucks,” that are causing all these problems. Right now a standard Class D allows any chud to drive one of these things. If you want to drive something that weighs more than 5,000 pounds, you should have to get a special license that teaches you about how huge their blind spots are and why they aren’t crash-compatible with normal cars.
That is kinda like a prisoner’s dilemma. If we all go smaller we all win, but if one person goes big they win and others lose.
We cannot rely on people to do the right thing because there is an incentive to do the wrong thing. Change has to be through legislative incentive.
Don’t need legislation. Simply needed mechanical sorting. Place barriers only reasonably-sized vehicles can fit through without being damaged. Added bonuses: traffic calming, driver competency testing.
Would be funny if an entire country made all it’s border crossings with 2m wide bamboo bridges above a moat. Car too wide or heavy? In the moat it goes. Sploosh!
<Obnoxious Pedantic comment>
All your ideas would need to be legislated.
</Obnoxious Pedantic comment>
This is precisely why I’d want my own kid driving a tank of a car, until laws are passed such that nearly all vehicles become smaller. I’d make him save up money to get a little car, and match whatever he’s saved to get him a far larger car.
1 in 75? That math seems pretty off.
40,000 fatalities would be a sample size of 3 million. The USA is 335 million, 110x larger.
1 in 8,250 is more like it.
Try thinking about the math a little differently. Instead using a by mile approach I get a similar result.
- Average American drives 15,000 miles/year
- Over 60 years, that’s 900,000 miles total
- Using a death rate of 1.33 per 100 million miles:
- So for 900,000 miles: (1.33 / 100,000,000) * 900,000 = 0.01197
- Convert to percentage: 0.01197 * 100 = 1.197%
- 1/75 is about 1.3% which is not far from my guess.
Lifetime vs annual.
You have a 100% chance of your life ending in death. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen this year.
Yeah the number seems way off to me too.
In 2022, there were 42,795 total motor vehicle fatalities.
That would be 1 in 75 if the population was 3,225,000.
The USA is well over 300 million.
You’re right about it being 100x more
You’re conflating two separate things.
It’s not 1:75, of all living people, for that year.
It’s 1:75 of people who die in the US, are killed by cars.
In any given year, if 40K die from cars, 3M people will have died some other way, that year.
Article math seems fuzzy for sure. I wondered if they were measuring for a lifetime of time. Even if that were true, it still feels off.
12.8 per 100,000. That’s way less than 1 in 75.
I read a different article a few months ago about how cars are now so heavy that guardrails do absolutely nothing to stop them anymore. And while I’m all about small cars for a number of reasons, electric cars are super heavy even if small which of course is growing in demand. I’ll just be glad to move back to the city soon where I can take public transit.
They were not designed for vehicles over 5000 lbs allegedly. Which is weird since lots of the older cars pushed that threshold. Maybe they meant 80’s cars.
Same thing they do with everything else. Glorify it and double down.
SUVs for toddlers. Wear a car pin whenever an accident happens nearby.
they forgot to add deathsand chronic illness from air pollution caused by cars, not only nasty particles from gas combustion but brakes and tires dust, aggravated with weight
The good thing is that new generations can’t afford new cars. And if they can afford them, then can’t afford to crash their only home. So I predict that people will be more careful with their homes as they drive them from time to time according to parking laws.
Economics will catch up to many of these people at least for vanity ICE trucks. When did the blue collar workers started buying 60-90k luxury vehicles?
But people will die while that self resolves. EV will likely grow and there is no solution to that besides public transit. But US is way behind on transit so the next generation of workers, most will need a car to be able to work.
EV as transportation solution were always a red herring even if the product tech has use cases as family car or delivery truck.
Public transit is the proper transportation solution and US seriously under investing in that.
Don’t these economists know that the economy regulates itself? lmao.
As an EV fan, I’d want a closer look at how dangerous vehicle weight really is. Historically more weight correlates with trucks, with poor visibility, higher hoods, misaligned bumpers and lights, poor handling. However EVs tend to be heavy, but with better handling and visibility , aligned bumpers and lights, normal hoods, and advanced safety features. It’s quite possible that using weight here is a proxy for larger vehicles
Once EVs become popular many of their designs will mimic what we see today with trucks and SUVs. We need regulation specifically for bumper shapes and hood heights. This can help enforce better visibility and improve crash outcomes as lower, curved out hoods push people away or over the car. The current flat and tall hoods on trucks push people under the car.
Except that,
E = 1/2 m v^2. You can’t get rid of thatm. All else being equal, lethality scales linearly with vehicle weight. The safety features that exist are still for the occupants; there are crumple zones for decelerating another vehicle hitting head on, not foam padding for protecting pedestrians. Some features of trucks are extra bad for impacts, but a heavy EV is going to be worse than the same frame with less mass.Sure, I never said weight wasn’t a factor but I’m not convinced it’s much of a factor.
Aside from excesses like the monstrosity of an Hummer EV, I’ve read that EVs are typically 20% heavier than a corresponding ICE car. So, any collision is with a vehicle 20% heavier.
However that EV also
- has a standard height bumper so any car collision will be in the most reinforced spot, as opposed to anything raised/lifted which inflicts that vehicles most reinforced spot on a weaker part of the victim vehicle
- has a standard hood (except pickups) so any pedestrian collision has a better chance of pedestrian survival, as opposed to the solid wall the is the front of many trucks
- I likely to have outstanding reflexes and stopping distance to avoid or lessen an accident, being more likely to have advanced automated collision avoidance plus tires that can handle instant torque/braking
- as more likely to be a car with normal sight lines, is more likely to see and avoid than a truck
- as lower center of gravity, help with emergency maneuvers so more likely to avoid an accident
- Heavier vehicles have worse emergency maneuver and braking performance
- Majority of EV’s sold in the US are SUV/crossovers which have the same visibility issues
- EV’s have ridiculously high rates of acceleration, leading to dangerous driving
You’re assuming weight is the only variable and all else remains the same. It doesn’t.
By far the most common EV sold in the US is a Tesla Model Y. While I suppose you could call it an SUV, it has a normal car hood and forward visibility. It also has far better braking than any other car I’ve owned, while also having far better collision avoidance.
The second most common EV sold in the US is Tesla Model 3, which is a car and similar but better in all of the above.
The third most popular EV in the US is also a car
Tesla has notoriously bad rear visibility. And just being a larger vehicle means more blind spots no matter how many cameras/sensors are used to compensate. I’ve unfortunately been a passenger enough times to know Tesla’s collision avoidance stuff doesn’t work at all.
The statista link isn’t publicly readable, but other sources say Mustang-ev is #3. Ford calls it an SUV. Long-term, the Administration is subsidizing 1-for-1 replacement of the fleet with EV equivalent – so expect much more SUV/truck in the EV sector if they get their way.
Ban passenger cars, mandate light duty trucks as smallest legal vehicle.
Win.
This shit belongs in [email protected], not here.
Don’t you people see? Scapegoating big trucks as if they’re the only kind of cars that are a problem is a misdirection tactic. Quit falling for it! Car-supremacists like at The Economist just want to get us circle-jerking about big trucks so that we waste all our grass-roots energy attacking some tiny corner of the car industry while forgetting about the rest of the system.
The real solution here – the only real solution here – is that the zoning must be repaired so that people can get out of the cars (regardless of size) in the first place!
I don’t see why we can’t go after both at once.
Fix zoning issues and work on reducing car weights
Political capital is a limited resource.
Zoning is a very important topic, but if someone doesn’t have any passion for it, then it’s better for them to focus on vehicle design than nothing.
Try not to control how other people help - you may have more success posting and commenting about zoning issues and actions in your community to bring awareness and dialogue than discouraging others from focusing on truck-specific issues. 🙂
“Not here”? Trucks are still cars and part of the problem.
It’s important for people to tackle the issues from many angles, including both zoning and dangerous vehicle design. I’d argue the real waste of our grass-roots energy is going after each other.