Big cars are dead weight dragging down climate policy
Big cars are dead weight dragging down climate policy
Australia’s government has released a new transport climate policy. But it doesn’t deal with the problem of car bloat: the main driver of rising emissions.
The US government of yesteryear recognized a problem, so they drew up legislation intended to improve fuel efficiency, and thus reduce emissions. But they recognized that certain trades required large vehicles that could never be that efficient. So they built in a loophole for vehicles over a certain size not counting towards the requirements being placed manufacturers. Manufacturers being the crafty hogs they are realized if they just increased the size of everything they wouldn’t have to follow any of the rules. Now you have a company like Ford that only has one actual car ( a muscle car at that) in its lineup. Everything else are trucks suvs and crossovers.
The government of today could rewrite these rules to make the loophole require business licenses or something else, but half of them refuse to see there’s a problem at all, and half of what’s left are in the pocket of the problem makers.
What’s more interesting is that if you go overseas and look at the same brands, you can see companies like Ford and BMW selling station wagons and normal-sized cars without a single truck, if any, available for purchase.
The Obama admin began changing CAFE to use a whole-fleet average which would have closed the large vehicle loophole.
The Trump admin reversed that and pushed to eliminate CAFE altogether.
Not to mention they’re tremendously dangerous for everyone who isn’t inside. The fear of dying in a car crash meets the illusion of safety, when it’s being forced to ride or drive in a car that puts your safety at risk to begin with.
This is what happened with my family. We had a VW GTI and a Golf.. when the kiddo came along the wife wanted an SUV so if we got in an accident the kid wouldn't be automatically dead by one of these fucking monstrosities... I think I'm slowly convincing her that a car might be safe, but VW doesn't make the Golf for USA anymore..
I feel like maybe a path forward would be a long the lines of what someone else has said. Make vehicle registration cost more depending on how big it is.. but who knows...
Now to top it all off because of America's obsession with big vehicles there is still a limited selection of small hatchbacks in the EV zone...
A big truck should require a CDL, maybe not the same class of CDL a tractor-trailer requires, but a significant bar to entry. Automotive lobbies have probably kept this from happening yet.
But what about my truck that is 65 tonnes of American Pride?
Unexplained fires are a matter for the court!
12 yards long, 2 lanes wide
God I get triggered by these monstrosities. Something tells me that's exactly why the people who buy them, buy them.
Pass the pedestrian crossing extra slowly.
Report any of them for any minor parking violation.
Make them eat shit. If I could.
I parked behind one yesterday. Dude backed up into my car during my brunch. He comes into the restaurant to fess up. I tell him I'm the owner. He was nice enough. All he did was put a square dent in my license plate and bent it. I told him it's an old car and that it's ok. But as we were walking to my car he said "you parked close behind me and I couldn't see it as I backed up". I had half a mind to make a remark about having a clean, lifted, truck that probably hasn't hauled anything in 2 years, but I just shut up and let bygones be bygones.
Still, I hope that guy realizes having a 9ft truck isn't worth the sweat every time he backs up. I have a Toyota Camry. Not the fanciest thing in the world. It's 20 years old and I do most of the work on it. So I'm not phased by a dent in the license plate (and possible minor trauma to the bumper). But it's the kind of car that a lot of people own. If he can't see that, he probably should consider lowering his lifted truck. Or perhaps learning to look behind his car before he hops in and tries to exit a parking space.
People like that probably will never learn. They are buying an aesthetic, not a tool. It's like buying a high caliber pistol, an expensive phone, or a McMansion. It's not about having a tool. It's about having a sense of visible identity.
Based on my long rant, I can tell I have not entirely "let bygones be bygones" despite shaking his hand and letting him drive away without a lick of shame.
The other day a jeep wrangler swiped my car in a parking lot and drove off. I wasn't there but a kind bystander saw it and left their number and the offenders license plate. The damage wasn't small, but also small enough for me to shrug off because it's a 2014 golf wagon and in the end it's just a car.
But the hit and run pissed me off enough that I reported it. The cops found the driver who will be ticketed now and their insurance will go up. If they fessed up I'd have let it slide.
At least your dude fessed up. And yes, they'd all have a much easier time parking if they chose a sensible car.
The problem isn't only the cars, but the people who drive those cars also tend to not respect the rules.
Bigger cars need to have more harsh road rules applied. Had a dodge ram 1500 go the wrong way around a round about as an example the other day and nearly hit me on my scooter.
If I get hit by a hatchback, I'm fine (it has happened before). Dodge ram? I'm dead
Simply requiring a truck licence and applying different rules would be enough
All my homies want a '95 Toyota Pickup instead of a '24 F-250.
That's the thing. You still see those old toyotas on the road. They're ugly from wear but still choochin.
If they had their frames replaced. 95-04 iirc were the bad years, and they were bad years for rot.
The US needs to revisit emissions laws. We need access to smaller trucks. Very VERY few people need a tank on public roads. I'd love to get something like an S10, early 2000's ranger, or an older Tacoma sized truck. My 13" F150 extended crew is the largest truck I feel comfortable owning.
It does make me curious: has anyone seen a survey on how widespread that interest may be? Sure, it’s the practical answer, but i it an answer that a lot of people would give?
Or how much price difference would it require? We naturally expect a smaller vehicle to cost less. The propaganda from one major manufacturer is that a small truck is still as complex and materials cost is small, so they could not produce a small truck for enough less that people would buy it. I know it’s corporate propaganda for sticking with their profit machines, but I suspect there may also be some truth in it.
Ok fine what is the solution to the ridiculously complex welding of vehicle and identity that is basically universal in the western world?
Because until that is addressed, most people won't give up their way oversized daily drivers.
One solution would be requiring special license for larger vehicles.
A lot of people claim they need a car to get around. A normal license should allow you to drive just that - a sub 1 tonne vehicle.
Now, if you fancy a large utility vehicle with lots of blind zones and taking up extra space - that's no problem, just get extra training to learn how to drive it safely and get reevaluated yearly to show that you are not a danger on the road. A lower threshold to losing or suspending your license would help too.
This would dissuade a lot of people from upgrading to a large vehicles.
Meanwhile, people hate motorcycles even more
Noisy, dangerous
Bullshit, more dangerous because of the other cars who are not used to having motorbikes nearby, and you have this idea of being less protected on a motorbike, in reality you should try to understand that on a motorbike everything is much more predictable and the problem is almost only who is riding it, in a car, you have more blind spots and less control and therefore greater risk of making mistakes and for pollution, seriously, the simple use of a motorbike when all the space in the car is not needed would eliminate almost all traffic on the road therefore less pollution, less weight to move, less wasted energy, motorbikes are better in everything and not they are only considered because of the comfort zone of the average person.
And noisy what the fuck means? even motorcyclists can be idiots and change the exhaust to make more noise, but this happens because having the fucking motorbike is a niche of people who adore and modify their motorbike, but you can very well not do it.
Challenging this. Maybe the problem is the constant appetite to change your car every year? Maybe if there was a push to have consumers keep the same car for 10 years (I've had mine 11 now) it would be overall better for the environment. I'd argue the biggest impact on the environment around automobiles is the energy taken to create it, not to use it once it exists. This is what worries me with the push to electric. Perhaps we shouldn't be pushing people to continue the same model of disposable vehicles except now they're electric. Maybe we should stop people treating vehicles like they're disposable.
This is my same belief with phones, computers, etc.
We have an underlying problem with how we treat things as disposable.
It takes significantly larger amounts of pollution, energy, resources to produce these ridiculously large vehicles that are in many many use cases not the best tool for the job of transporting 1 to 5 people. Driving a vehicle for a longer time doesn't change this. Drive a regular sized car for 15 years or longer.
Correct me if I'm wrong but most of times when they dispose of a vehicle they sell it someone else to use right? So the only waste for that person be the rapid loss in car value after buying it new. Or are a lot of these cars ending in the dump?
Frequently changing vehicles is wasteful to that person’s weatlth but the vehicle stays on the road just as long. For the rest of us, this behavior just fills out a fpbigger used car market
I like turtles
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If SUVs were a country, they'd be the sixth most polluting, and banning/regulating them wouldn't be pushing the responsibility onto consumers.
Cars are absolutely not a drop in the climate change bucket.
Industries do cause the majority of carbon emissions and we should take them down. In the meanwhile, consumerism is still what empowers them. You cannot be an ecologist and think we will keep the same wasteful lifestyle.
I don't think big cars are especially bad. Imho the issue is at-will vehicle license. We should give them to people who need it for work or really can't do otherwise.
EDIT: before you downvote, please consider if you have conflict of interest in this. If you are a polluter yourself, you are not rational.
Nothing's as badfaithed as a vroomer.
This would straight up not work for the vast majority of the US. Public transit in most areas of the country is an absolute joke. That sort of policy would basically be tantamount to revoking poor people’s ability to travel any meaningful distance.
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Well the average american have 100 times the footprint of a normal person. This is why. There is an egg-or-chicken problem there. They will not put buslines and public transportation as long as everybody's taking their cars.
Beside, that is why I said "really can't do otherwise".
Also, sorry, I just don't really care that much about the US. Most of the world grew organically around population center, they were not settlers colonialists with enough space to cover the country with lawns and labyrinth-like suburbs.
Well the average american have 100 times the footprint of a normal person. This is why. There is an egg-or-chicken problem there. They will not put buslines and public transportation as long as everybody's taking their cars.
Beside, that is why I said "really can't do otherwise".
Also, sorry, I just don't really care that much about the US. Most of the world grew organically around population center, they were not settlers colonialists with enough space to cover the country with lawns and labyrinth-like suburbs.
I don't care that much about americans. They are a lost cause with 100x the footprint of a normal person. Most countries have trains. I'm speaking about normal countries, not settler-colonialists ones who covered the land they emptied with low-density labyrinth like suburbs.
Seriously how first world can you be? A car alone cost more money than most of the world yearly salary. Only westerners would think it's necessary to live.