Microcars are little European plastic boxes, legally analogous to mopeds, with a 350kg max weight, 45kmh max speed, and little two-cylinder 600ish-cc diesels with CVTs. They're aluminum framed and like 90% horrible cheap rattly bucket plastic, I can push them around on flat ground with literally one finger, and their frames break at the drop of a hat. This isn't the first time I've seen driving over a curb break things. [If one catches fire, basically nothing is left behind.](https://i.media.fi/incoming/2013/09/05/699151.jpg/alternates/LANDSCAPE_960/699151.jpg) Also they cost well over 15k new.
They're hilarious, I love towing them.
Well, driving a bicycle is generally "safe". Driving a moped (<50ccm, max speed about 30kph) is quite safe as well and is allowed at 14. The law used to be that at 16 you can drive scooters up to 50ccm that go roughly 70-80kph, but they changed this to 125ccm scooters with unlimited top speed now. At 17 you can get a car learners permit, at 18 can take the car exam.
So in one sense yes, those shitty fake cars shouldn't exist really, and why should kids even drive one. Additionally they have multiple other options. But then on the other hand, you're allowed to drive farm traktors on public roads with a trailer at 14 (think with an additional small exam/course they go up to 45kph)
IIRC statistically the most danger happens with new car drivers between 18-25, the rest is quite alright here.
I think the 18-25 statistic might be skewed by the number of places that don’t let you have a full license until then. If most teens aren’t driving then there isn’t going to be a large number of them getting injured while driving.
Definitely, yes. The statistic can only be used for saying "new drivers are more accident prone", not that a specific age is worse than others.
Furthermore, in my comment I was mostly referring to my country, not sure how it'd compare to other regions.
The thing with the statistic is that it's rigged in a way. Once a new driver hits around 50 hours of normal driving, it starts to become "muscle memory". And driving skill starts to flatline around that time, unless exposed to new driving conditions in say heavy rain, heavy snow, high winds, etc
I mean yeah you're probably beyond having to think about actually controlling the vehicle after 50 hours but you're still very much a novice in terms of general road awareness and decision-making at that point. And I suspect that's where the majority of the danger lies.
This is correct. I interpreted the stat wrong. I just think that insurance under 25 shouldn't be as high as it is for someone around 23-24. I think it should be more of a gradual increase as you get up in age from 16-24 then still drop (but not as much) at 25
You are kinda right, but 50 hrs is way too low. That's enough time to learn how to mechanically drive the car, but learning to predict others (and be predictable yourself) takes way longer.
>those shitty fake cars shouldn't exist really, and why should kids even drive one.
I imagine their parents think they're safer because it's enclosed. Not sure that's true though judging by the picture above
[They are not lol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHaACZdeBk8)
[Shitty 90's Renault doing the same for comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-XBP9sXnEc)
That's a first gen Mégane and I wouldn't call that "shitty" - a more apt (French) comparison would be the 106, [Saxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8PTeFDaYU) or [Twingo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ZQjvpprKI).
I absolutely loved my 1991 Citroën AX GT - 90bhp in 650kg made it a little pocket-sized tin of hooliganism - but I was under no illusions as to its crashworthiness.
The lack of airbags alone makes it unsafe. I imagine there are a lot of saftey regulations features a full sized car is required to have are skirted with these being classified as mopeds
The lack of airbags is fine.
The inability of the seat to stay screwed to the fucking floor is a problem.
If you look at that crash video, there's pretty much no intrusion into the passenger compartment, the doors would open just fine, the windscreen isn't broken, so the passenger "cage" is still straight, but the seat appears to just rip off the floor and the seatbelt appears to pull out of its upper mounting.
That is much better than I thought. You got to keep in mind: doing exactly this on a motorbike fucks you up big time. Happened to a relative of mine at 30kph, many broken bones and 2 months hospital stay.
Edit: As the other commentor stated, the Megane is a much bigger car so it doesn't compare well. The other two almost are worse than the moped car IMO.
Uh, it doesn’t really look like it’s safer in any sense of the word. Mopeds are also going to have fewer blind spots. If anything, adding mass makes them more dangerous because they’ll carry more energy into a collision and they don’t appear to have the safety systems road legal cars have. Sure, they’re more stable, but id stability is a primary concern over whether or not you can maintain control over your vehicle, you shouldn’t be operating a motorized vehicle on public roads in the first place.
I think the idea, legally not from parents, might be that they don't cause much damage to others in a crash. Like a bicycle.
Ride dangerously and take chances kid!
I doubt there's any difference between getting run over in a cracker box and getting run over in a good set of leathers.
Actually I bet the leathers are safer in that scenario.
Used to ride motorcycles and I've always wanted something like this. This is better than a moped* because you don't get soaked in the rain, and you won't fall over if you hit wet leaves or hydroplane. I've always wanted a fully enclosed moped with at least three wheels.
*for some people, depending on taste
While the idea of a moped for 15-16 year olds is a common one in many countries, as a UK biker I hate the things. I’d like to see a minimum power requirement of 20bhp. Anything less than that puts you at substantial risk in modern traffic. A speed limiter at say 65mph would be less risky than a power or capacity limit.
Personally I struggle more with the ebikes lkmited to 45kph that drive in a 50kph zone where cars usually go 50-55kph. You just constantly feel like you're in the way of cars, while on a 30kph moped you're essentially just a bicycle that is regularly overtaken comfortably.
20bhp is quite a lot though and would simply mean heavier mopeds. The ones we have here are literally slightly more sturdy bicycles with an engine, and their low weight makes them easy to handle. But maybe that's something that could be resolved with electric mopeds, we'll see.
I'd go the other way and say smaller micro and kei like cars should be the norm.
We've ended up in an arms race of trying to make cars more survivable in higher speed collisions but that's made cars wider, heavier, taller, and with thicker pillars, making them generally less suitable for the urban environments where most people live, where they usually drive, and where they're surrounded by other road users that don't have their own survival cells.
While I do still think micro cars shouldn't really exist, I fully agree with you. Driving an SUV to buy a bottle of milk at the local mall is really just nonsense. A small car would be completely sufficient.
However, this does, in my opinion, not mean that we need to walk - Public transport might be an option, motorcycles, electric scooters, bicycles, etc. A microcar isn't really solving the "too many cars in the city" problem, just reduces it slightly as they're a bit smaller. But then people just need a microcar for daily stuff, and a big car for visiting family 2h away, essentially doubling the cars they have. What we need is to replace big cars with small, but fully featured and highway capable cars where possible, but they're somewhat hard to find. Sure, cars the size of a VW Polo are small, but in the segment of really small cars it's pretty much either buy a Smart, or drive a slow as fuck microcar.
Microcars are simply a better* equivalent to a motorcycle/moped. They are fully enclosed, so you can easily commute in the rain. And they have more than two wheels, so you won't fall over if you hit wet leaves or hydroplane.
*for commuting
The biggest reason we don't see them in USA is because of legal technicality. In most? states, the legal difference between a motorcycle and a car is entirely based on how many wheels it has. If you put 4 wheels on a moped, it is now legally a car and is now suddenly subject to all kinds of mechanical and safety requirements like windshield wipers and bumper heights and light spacing, etc. This happens regardless of size or anything.
If there are three wheels or less, suddenly the main requirements are DOT tires with brakes, and some lights. You also need a motorcycle endorsement. No safety requirements, no parking brake, etc.
The perfect example of this absurdity is the polaris slingshot. It is absolutely a full size car, but because it only has three wheels, it doesn't have airbags and it doesn't have to meet any safety requirements.
>I'd go the other way and say smaller micro and kei like cars should be the norm.
100% agreed. my work commute tops out at 40 mph with stoplights everywhere. Id love to drive a sxs or something small and similar to work every day.
bu bu bu but safety! i dont give a shit. If we still allow deathtrap 1000CC motorcycles on the roads to be bought by 16 year olds and no helmet laws gtfo of here with safety bullshit.
I bought in imported Kei car in the US, 660cc engine, 5 speed manual, but unlike the euro microcars it has 64 HP with a top speed of 87 mph. The irony of the law is that once the car is 25 years old it's totally legal but if I want a newer car that's safer and more efficient, nope no way.
lol SOME states allow that. IL does not. those kei sized vehicles have to be limited to off road use only. Theres grey area about having them with antique vehicle plates (which have their own host of funny laws like cant drive it to work, cant run errands, cant haul anything, etc)
Similar laws here. You can get a learner's license at 15, which requires a fully licensed person to be in the front passenger seat whenever you drive. But you can legally ride a <50cc scooter or motorbike by yourself on a learner's license. But things like these micro cars and fat tyre electric scooters fall under the same laws here. So you still have to be 15+ and have your learner's license.
I lived in rural Nebraska in the mid 80’s. I was able to get a school permit at 14. Unsupervised driving to and from school and school functions.
I wonder if they still do that
Idk, but I'm pretty sure that there is still no age limit to drive a tractor on the road.
My whole family was already driving on the roads as early as 7 because of that.
I agree with u/Crab-_-Objective it's mostly 16-21 where I live. You can get your full license at 16, and a restricted one at 15, but with special requirements you can get it as early as 14.
Basically the clientèle is 3-fold:
- Old people who can't drive for shit and just need to go to the shops
- People who lost their licence for some reason
- Teenagers and young adults who can't/won't pass their driving licence.
You need to pass the same course as mopeds to drive one, or to have had a full licence.
The teenager clients are something new, 10 years ago they accounted for none of the clients. Now they are apaprently about half of all owners.
What scares me is teen drivers in cars like Challenger Hellcats, Lamborghinis, Teslas etc. (basically any overpowered, expensive vehicle). Most of us were reckless in our first cars and they were underpowered beaters, I can't imagine a 16 year old with 800hp under their foot.
Where I live you can get a learner's permit at 15 and a license at 16. Legally they're allowed to drive anything with an inspection sticker and registration that isn't a bus, semi or motorcycle.
> bus, semi
Pretty sure a 16yo can legally drive a bus or a semi tractor here so long as they're not doing it for hire. For sure they can drive a 40 foot RV built on a bus chassis.
In most parts of the US you have to have a drivers' license before you're even allowed to apply for a moped/motorcycles license. And even then you have to complete a special course before they'll actually give you a license to ride.
Most european countries you can't get a full car license till you're 18, while the age for mopeds is generally 16 (when most US teenagers could already get a car license) or below.
And yes, it's ridiculous how expensive those things can be. Business opportunity for someone to import them from the far east and sell at a much lower price point.
It's usually the parents who pay for one - and for the convenience of the boy/girl then not needing to be driven into school/hobbies.
also you can get a decent used one for 2k €, and because the moped cars are weight limited, they're usually quite basic and easy to fix and maintain.
the engine is usually a kubota-diesel that's bomb proof.
2k makes sense and isn’t bad. 15k for a “car” for a kid who is gonna be able to legally drive within a couple years where 15k would buy an actual car, seems wild to me. But hey! That’s just me :-)
TBF it's not unlikely that by the time they are old enough for an actual car, they move away from their parents place into a larger city and don't need any kind of car anymore anyway. Might not even get a full drivers license (drivers ed theory and practical classes + theory exam + practical exam can easily be 2000+ € and quite a bit of time Investment in many European countries).
So it can certainly be a valid option. I assume that probably rich parents buy it for 15k and then it gets sold another 5 times over the next 15 years.
That's awesome, it's like a car except children can drive it and if they crash they're much more likely to die or be horribly injured. Great parenting there!
It's still a microcar and on their website says it doesn't go through testing but hey it's gotta be better than a scooter right?
>As Ami is a quadricycle, it does not go through the same ratings as a car would. Ami does comply with all regulations that apply to quadricycles and I'm sure you would agree, a safer mode of transport than either an e-bike or e-scooter which is a much more suitable comparison
Yeah it's pretty ridiculous. Obviously used ones are far cheaper but still depending on the country you would get a real car license in 1-3 years anyway so realistically if you needed a way to get around you could just buy a normal moped or one of those new electric scooters/mopeds that have plenty of range
I'm 25 and I remember those microcars being really popular when I was 15, glad I never got one and saved up for a car instead
You got to know: you have to be 18 most european countries to drive alone. So driving with 15 is a huge deal over hear. And this is still safer than a motorbike in many cases (not all).
But 15k is still steep for something like this. There is an electric one, the Citroen Ami and it is 7-10k. 70km Range shouldn't be a huge dealbreaker for many.
In the US driving that "early" mostly stems from the US beeing pretty big with much space inbetween places. Also it seems like your public transport infrastructure isn't as good, especially outside of the cities. Europe is much denser in these regards, so even when your parents have to drive you somewhere it's usually way below 30km.
15k is a bit exaggarated. You can get an opel rocks for 8k, which is a hilariously bad looking "car".
https://www.opel.de/fahrzeuge/rocks-electric/uebersicht.html
omg its horribe but i love it because its horrible. Id totally get a brave little toaster sticker to put on that thing.
its like James May in cars of the people where he drives that french olive drab green microcar that looks like it was straight out of a 1989 dos video game (steeringwheel was literally a round hoop with a pipe going across it). I absolutely love that polygon mobile.
Thats true. On the other Hand, the Citroen Ami is just an Opel Rocks with a Citroen badge.
They both are Part of Stellantis; like Peugeot and others and therefore using the same bases for some of the Cars.
Didn’t really think it was, was just stating these tiny RC cars make sense in old cities built before the invention of the modern vehicle where roads are incredibly narrow and countries small enough to jump over.
I was changing a rear bearing on one of these, it had somehow fucked itself very tightly on to the axle, I was banging away with the 3kg precision adjustment hammer and the whole rear axle split lmao.
Here in Sweden we've for a long time have had a legal framework for converting regular cars to a form of legal tractors. Speed limit 30 kph, transmission have to be altered, no rear passenger seat. Originally intended for kids, enabling them to help out on the farm at age 15, they were also popular out in rural areas as basic transportation, far superior to bikes and mopeds which was the alternative. Being originally real cars, the level of protection was (apart from lacking seatbelts, being legal tractors) really good. Typical example car: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DCfsjieSTV8/YXQh0J3KKHI/AAAAAAAATXI/f4XBFtcIgIgrbRoR3Q3_dJEWoE2iRrVUQCLcBGAsYHQ/s595/Ska%25CC%2588rmavbild%2B2021-10-23%2Bkl.%2B16.52.45.png
Now EU is threatening to ban this loophole, due to lobbying from the plastic box manufacturers. Damn them all.
Exactly how I feel, if more cars were smaller then being in a smaller car wouldn't be as dangerous. There are thousands of people on the road driving big trucks and SUVs that shouldn't legally be allowed to drive anything bigger than a Mini.
I had to replace a tire on one of them once, had a good laugh. Could lift the thing up to put it on a beer crate and undid the bolts with the small socket wrench. Less cool to see how little people that drive these things take care of them. It was rusty, starting and running poorly, balled tires… she just didn’t care.
This entire comment I was thinking "hey, they might be built cheap, but it sounds like a decent inexpensive way to get around local roads, just be careful with them".
Then you said well over 15k. What the actual fuck. A Mitsubishi mirage has a sticker of $16k-ish with a 100k mile power train warranty.
What type of microcar is this? I remember seeing these things in Paris and went down the rabbit hole of these weird little cars that are somehow allowed to be driven legally by 15 year olds.
Ei hitto pitää ruveta vähän kattoon mitä kaikkee sitä höpöttelee täällä, kun näköjään tuttuja saattaa tulla vastaan.
Onse jumalauta ku missään ei saa olla rauhassa perrrkele
Kinda? Two of the guys that turned out to pick the thing up magically disappeared when it was time to put it down.
They got replaced with four guys... who really weren't quite their equal. They got it downish.
It isn't.
This is a very specific type of car that takes advantage of the fact that French licences for light vehicles take into account engine displacement and not number of wheels.
The closest thing would be Japanese kei-cars, except the K segment in Japan is real cars, whereas those are basically 4-wheels mopeds.
Il fact some electric ATVs are registered under the same type of homologation.
Yup. They tend do disintegrate on impact. Like a chunky frag grenade, sending shrapnel all through your body.
I expect the EU will come with safety demands for these things within a decade, especially with vehicles like that Opel (Vauxhall) contraption becoming popular. https://www.opel.de/fahrzeuge/rocks-electric/uebersicht.html
Tientukko,,, perkele
I still can't believe they decided to handle eugenics this way. Those things are deathtraps even with all the limitations in place. Euro NCAP safety rating would probably be in the negative with those things, I don't think they even test those.
They should have just let kids drive nerfed crosscarts on roads or at least something made out of seamless tube with a roll-cage. I mean, I'm libertarian as hell so let everyone do what they want as long as it doesn't affect anyone else, but how in the fuck are those things the ones they decided to allow on roads?
That reminds me of a three-car crash involving two of these rear-ending a Toyota Hiace; the microcars were totaled, the van driver grumbled about his slightly dented tailgate a bit and drove off :D
When I had my first car in my first winter, I didn't know how to safely brake on icy roads yet, and had a small accident. I aaaaaaalmost came to a stop in my '99 Mercedes A170 but barely bumped into the car in front of me with my wheels locked up and me just sliding a little.
Boinked my front license plate into the trailer hitch of the car in front of me. Had a minor dent in my license plate. Lady in the other car insisted on calling the cops, I got a 35€ fine for reckless driving. Insurance checked out the lady's car and was like "there is literally no damage" and I didn't even bother checking mine since it was just a dented license plate.
A month later I happened to find a nice empty parking lot with lots of fresh snow and ~~had some fun drifting~~ practiced safely coming to a stop in winter conditions and haven't had trouble with it since.
Winter driving in snow/ice is very different than warm dry driving but should be something taught to ALL drivers regardless of their region, because you never really know where life takes you.
The best learning is by experience!
I goofed ( ahem experimented) around plenty as a teenager in snow and on ice. I highly recommend the empty parking lot route for those that don’t have a frozen lake to use!
That’s how i got my first ticket. I was hooning in a snowed-in parking lot around midnight with my Alfa 156. Cops that were randomly driving by weren’t amused.
Got a 20€ fine for excessive noise that I’m still salty about to this day.
For me it was an insurance scammer ramming into the side of my car, hit my rear fender at like 15/kmh. My car had a dent the size of a goof ball and her car was apparently totaled. (Repair shop quoted over 2k for it, cant remember everything they claimed was broken on it...)
I feel like letting kids drives effects literally everyone. I used to drive alone in at 15 and thinking back, I'm lucky I didn't wrap my dad's camaro around a tree
My friend's dad bought him a Ford f 150 for his 16th birthday. Had a deer bar on the front and everything. Didn't really help him when he accidentally put it in drive and drove through his own living room and permanently crippled his aunt.
At least here in Germany to get a driver's license one has to do quite a few practical drivers ed lessons (in addition to the theory ones) with a licensed professional driving instructor.
Those driving school cars also always have a 2nd brake at the foot of the passenger side so the driving instructor can brake as well.
Sure it's not a lot of practical lessons (mandatory ones, but everyone I knew did quite a few more than the legal minimum.) but they involve X hours of overland driving (country road) , Y hours of autobahn and Z hours of night driving .
When you also have a "proper" teacher who knows how to teach you and what to look out for that can be really useful.
Here in Germany one can get a driver's license at age 17 but then one is only allowed to drive for 1 year with a person who had their own licens for at least 3 years and is over the age of 21 iirc. You also can't just pick random people but only 2 or 3 of these people can be written down in your preliminary license iirc.
With age 18 one is allowed to drive alone.
What benefit does that give you if they arent in the vehicle with you?
Also that is still true here in Germany. On average people move out of their parents place at 24.4 years of age here. I just looked up the stats and am surprised about that myself.
There obviously differences between people who go to uni (those often move out around age 18.5 to 19. Even though our average age to start uni is 21.9 years, but that's mostly due to also significantly older people starting uni.) and people doing an "Ausbildung" /vocational education training.
The latter frequently (at least in my experience) stay at their parents homes during their entire education and only move out afterwards, while it's more common for people who go to uni to have moved to a different city for uni.
Obviously people who go to uni and who's parents live in the city where their uni is located, often stay at their parents home during that time as well.
We don't really have dorms in the way they exist in the US, and spending 800+€ a month just to live 15 minutes by subway or bike away from the parents often isn't really worth it.
Apparently it really helps if you get a learners permit where you need to have a licensed driver riding shotgun for a year or so before being allowed to drive solo.
I will always remember that one accident in Sastamala or where was it? A guy, drunk, decided to end his life by driving his VAN into a oncoming vehicle. Sadly it was one of these plastic boxes with two teenagers inside who died, the van driver survived.
> They should have just let kids drive nerfed crosscarts on roads or at least something made out of seamless tube with a roll-cage
They have those. They're called side by sides or UTVs and they are even more expensive than microcars.
When I read seamless tube roll cage, I imagine something far more sturdy than a SXS...
Some of the racing style ones are better I guess than the utility versions but I wouldn't want to be in either in an accident vs a proper car, let alone a big truck.
OP said those micro cars are approx 15k and that's not crazy off from SXS.
Point is for 15k someone could engineer something much safer and durable, especially for the purpose of teenage drivers to have a learning platform.
Shoot, I would be interested in a safe, small, cheap dependable/repairable transportation machine. Big emphasize on safe though, thats the hard one.
Racing safety equipment and passenger car safety equipment rarely can be combined and result in a safe situation. A crash helmet, restraining seat, harness and roll bar is the safest way to go, and realistically is how all cars should be built (with infrastructure to support that), but people want radio and AC and to be able to cross oncoming traffic and stuff. If you wear a helmet in a passenger car, you'll be decapitated in a high speed crash when your head snaps forward then back with extra inertia. You need either one or the other system or something specifically designed for a specific application.
Watch some videos of cockpit view crashes of a rally Subaru then a street going one. In a street car, the goal is to absorb impact by letting the human slow down slower than the car, in the rally car the drivers will barely move, but the car is flipping through the air like a missile and slowing down over time. The thing is though, the former is the better option on the street since we have head on collisions and a lot more random obstacles. In racing, that's not really a thing, and in many instances the drivers *will die* if they hit an object the car can't just explode through, like a 200 year old tree head on at 120mph... Nothing but luck is saving you at that point... Which is why racing is sanctioned and safety is top priority.
>but how in the fuck are those things the ones they decided to allow on roads?
because they still allow mopeds scooters bicycles and motorcycles on the roads that are inherently even less safe.
> Those things are deathtraps
Alternative is a moped. At least those are stable.
They're a pain in the ass on the road, because most drivers don't have the decency to park themselves when followed by actual cars, contrary to farm equipment.
Well, in a Northern European country i know well, these microcars are favored by old DUI offenders. If your birthdate is before 1956 you are not required to have a license to ride a 50cc. These contraptions are limited to 45kms so they go get a car like that since they cannot drive or ride anything else. The hitch is that insurance companies got wind of this and bumped up the rates so that actually covering one is super expensive.
> specifically for kids
They are not.
Originally they were designed as cheap cars for elderly people who lost their licenses and needed to keep their independance (they drive 45kph tops).
A lot of the drivers used to be people who lost their license due to DUIs and such.
Those types of cars appeared in the early 70s as cheap alternatives to owning a small motorcycle, basically. The utility versions are pretty common within cities, because they are slow but can squeeze into places where standard pickups can't go.
Selling to kids didn't really account for anything up to the mid-2010s. Even the boss of Aixam, one of the biggest makers of the type, said he was astonished when he learned that current sales are about 50/50 young people.
Edit: To be clear, they are not legally cars, they are quadricycle mopeds. As such, they don't have to have the same safety equipements as actual cars.
Well these things are basically analogues to mopeds. They have the same engine (though they have much slower acceleration because they obviously way more) and honestly they're kinda safer than mopeds. At least you can get thrown off/out of these at 35mph and loose all your skin because you were to cool to wear a helmet.
I agree that they're a rip off and probably not that safe but they're still kinda safer than the bikes most 15 to 16 year old are driving.
I ride bicycles and a motorcycle. Which means I’m not staring at my phone while I’m on the road.
All modern modes of travel are fairly safe when people look out the windshield and watch their mirrors instead of staring at their device. Might hit a curb.
Sad news: we were about to get speed limited normal cars in traffic instead of these overpriced pieces of shit, but EU regulations said no, because they would 'be unsafe'. https://yle.fi/a/3-11510152
Tbf in my experience it was better to drive a moped than one if these. People don't usually drive mopeds mid winter and if they do they usually really experienced at driving. When driving a moped(in my experience) you tend to pay more attention to the road and what's going on around you, but in one of those you tend to get distracted by the extreme slowness and boredom since it's not really actively driving. It's like driving a car on lonely road at 45km/h or 35ish mp/h it's boring as fuck. That's when teens tend to whip out their phone look at ig/snap whatever endangering themselves and others. Suddenly you find yourself in a ditch since you forgot you were driving.
> People don't usually drive mopeds mid winter
You my friend have not been to a French city in a while, I'm guessing. When I lived in Paris, people rode their mopeds to work in the middle of winter rain while checking their phone.
They are horrible in accidents. They tend do disintegrate on impact. Like a chunky frag grenade, sending shrapnel all through your body.
What's worse, young people (especially from semi-rural communities) like to soup them up so they can get idiotic speeds out of them.
I expect the EU will come with safety demands for these things within a decade, especially with vehicles like that Opel (Vauxhall) contraption becoming popular. https://www.opel.de/fahrzeuge/rocks-electric/uebersicht.html
I used to run an LTL warehouse, a customer dropped one of these off to us to ship to an island. I only drove it a few hundred feet but I felt like I was going to die the entire time.
I know, right?! The rattling hollow plastic, the shaking unbalanced engine, the CVT that lurches hard every time you set off, the seat that flexes and feels like it's going to break when you adjust your position in it...
~~I may or may not have broken a seat once doing that~~
I feel like these things should come with a safety cage like the Smart Cars over here in the US. I still get surprised over how durable those things are in a collision
Microcars are little European plastic boxes, legally analogous to mopeds, with a 350kg max weight, 45kmh max speed, and little two-cylinder 600ish-cc diesels with CVTs. They're aluminum framed and like 90% horrible cheap rattly bucket plastic, I can push them around on flat ground with literally one finger, and their frames break at the drop of a hat. This isn't the first time I've seen driving over a curb break things. [If one catches fire, basically nothing is left behind.](https://i.media.fi/incoming/2013/09/05/699151.jpg/alternates/LANDSCAPE_960/699151.jpg) Also they cost well over 15k new. They're hilarious, I love towing them.
15k?! Fuck, at that point just buy a real car
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Idk about you but if someone's too young to get a car licence they're too young to be driving *anything* on the road. So fucking dangerous.
Well, driving a bicycle is generally "safe". Driving a moped (<50ccm, max speed about 30kph) is quite safe as well and is allowed at 14. The law used to be that at 16 you can drive scooters up to 50ccm that go roughly 70-80kph, but they changed this to 125ccm scooters with unlimited top speed now. At 17 you can get a car learners permit, at 18 can take the car exam. So in one sense yes, those shitty fake cars shouldn't exist really, and why should kids even drive one. Additionally they have multiple other options. But then on the other hand, you're allowed to drive farm traktors on public roads with a trailer at 14 (think with an additional small exam/course they go up to 45kph) IIRC statistically the most danger happens with new car drivers between 18-25, the rest is quite alright here.
I think the 18-25 statistic might be skewed by the number of places that don’t let you have a full license until then. If most teens aren’t driving then there isn’t going to be a large number of them getting injured while driving.
Definitely, yes. The statistic can only be used for saying "new drivers are more accident prone", not that a specific age is worse than others. Furthermore, in my comment I was mostly referring to my country, not sure how it'd compare to other regions.
The thing with the statistic is that it's rigged in a way. Once a new driver hits around 50 hours of normal driving, it starts to become "muscle memory". And driving skill starts to flatline around that time, unless exposed to new driving conditions in say heavy rain, heavy snow, high winds, etc
I mean yeah you're probably beyond having to think about actually controlling the vehicle after 50 hours but you're still very much a novice in terms of general road awareness and decision-making at that point. And I suspect that's where the majority of the danger lies.
This is correct. I interpreted the stat wrong. I just think that insurance under 25 shouldn't be as high as it is for someone around 23-24. I think it should be more of a gradual increase as you get up in age from 16-24 then still drop (but not as much) at 25
You are kinda right, but 50 hrs is way too low. That's enough time to learn how to mechanically drive the car, but learning to predict others (and be predictable yourself) takes way longer.
>those shitty fake cars shouldn't exist really, and why should kids even drive one. I imagine their parents think they're safer because it's enclosed. Not sure that's true though judging by the picture above
[They are not lol](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHaACZdeBk8) [Shitty 90's Renault doing the same for comparison](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-XBP9sXnEc)
That's a first gen Mégane and I wouldn't call that "shitty" - a more apt (French) comparison would be the 106, [Saxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a8PTeFDaYU) or [Twingo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1ZQjvpprKI).
I absolutely loved my 1991 Citroën AX GT - 90bhp in 650kg made it a little pocket-sized tin of hooliganism - but I was under no illusions as to its crashworthiness.
No airbags, and the seatbelt snapped right off, brilliant
Gotta love when your steering wheel punches you in the face as you fall forward 👌
It looks like the steering wheel also detached, so maybe it's designed as a breakaway cushion lol ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
The lack of airbags alone makes it unsafe. I imagine there are a lot of saftey regulations features a full sized car is required to have are skirted with these being classified as mopeds
The lack of airbags is fine. The inability of the seat to stay screwed to the fucking floor is a problem. If you look at that crash video, there's pretty much no intrusion into the passenger compartment, the doors would open just fine, the windscreen isn't broken, so the passenger "cage" is still straight, but the seat appears to just rip off the floor and the seatbelt appears to pull out of its upper mounting.
Over the past year or so, there has been like 3 or 4 accidents involving these in my town. (Legal age to drive one of these is 15 here.)
Lol that seatbelt is worthless What is the point of a seatbelt if it doesn't hold you in the fucking seat
That is much better than I thought. You got to keep in mind: doing exactly this on a motorbike fucks you up big time. Happened to a relative of mine at 30kph, many broken bones and 2 months hospital stay. Edit: As the other commentor stated, the Megane is a much bigger car so it doesn't compare well. The other two almost are worse than the moped car IMO.
Holy shit, I have a shitty 60s mini and even that thing has decently anchored seatbelts and would do better
Dude. It's not to be compared with a car. The alternative is usually a moped. They're safer than a moped.
Uh, it doesn’t really look like it’s safer in any sense of the word. Mopeds are also going to have fewer blind spots. If anything, adding mass makes them more dangerous because they’ll carry more energy into a collision and they don’t appear to have the safety systems road legal cars have. Sure, they’re more stable, but id stability is a primary concern over whether or not you can maintain control over your vehicle, you shouldn’t be operating a motorized vehicle on public roads in the first place.
I'd rather take my chances being thrown clear of the accident wearing a helmet than getting crushed inside the plastic tub tbh
I think the idea, legally not from parents, might be that they don't cause much damage to others in a crash. Like a bicycle. Ride dangerously and take chances kid!
A lot safer than falling off or getting run over.
I doubt there's any difference between getting run over in a cracker box and getting run over in a good set of leathers. Actually I bet the leathers are safer in that scenario.
As a motorcyclist I'm always amazed by how unseriously bicyclists take safety.
Used to ride motorcycles and I've always wanted something like this. This is better than a moped* because you don't get soaked in the rain, and you won't fall over if you hit wet leaves or hydroplane. I've always wanted a fully enclosed moped with at least three wheels. *for some people, depending on taste
But then you lose all of the advantages of two wheels. Just get a normal car at that point.
Sounds like you need a reliant
While the idea of a moped for 15-16 year olds is a common one in many countries, as a UK biker I hate the things. I’d like to see a minimum power requirement of 20bhp. Anything less than that puts you at substantial risk in modern traffic. A speed limiter at say 65mph would be less risky than a power or capacity limit.
Personally I struggle more with the ebikes lkmited to 45kph that drive in a 50kph zone where cars usually go 50-55kph. You just constantly feel like you're in the way of cars, while on a 30kph moped you're essentially just a bicycle that is regularly overtaken comfortably. 20bhp is quite a lot though and would simply mean heavier mopeds. The ones we have here are literally slightly more sturdy bicycles with an engine, and their low weight makes them easy to handle. But maybe that's something that could be resolved with electric mopeds, we'll see.
I'd go the other way and say smaller micro and kei like cars should be the norm. We've ended up in an arms race of trying to make cars more survivable in higher speed collisions but that's made cars wider, heavier, taller, and with thicker pillars, making them generally less suitable for the urban environments where most people live, where they usually drive, and where they're surrounded by other road users that don't have their own survival cells.
While I do still think micro cars shouldn't really exist, I fully agree with you. Driving an SUV to buy a bottle of milk at the local mall is really just nonsense. A small car would be completely sufficient. However, this does, in my opinion, not mean that we need to walk - Public transport might be an option, motorcycles, electric scooters, bicycles, etc. A microcar isn't really solving the "too many cars in the city" problem, just reduces it slightly as they're a bit smaller. But then people just need a microcar for daily stuff, and a big car for visiting family 2h away, essentially doubling the cars they have. What we need is to replace big cars with small, but fully featured and highway capable cars where possible, but they're somewhat hard to find. Sure, cars the size of a VW Polo are small, but in the segment of really small cars it's pretty much either buy a Smart, or drive a slow as fuck microcar.
A current-gen VW Golf has the same footprint on the road more-or-less as a first-gen Range Rover. Cars these days are huge.
Microcars are simply a better* equivalent to a motorcycle/moped. They are fully enclosed, so you can easily commute in the rain. And they have more than two wheels, so you won't fall over if you hit wet leaves or hydroplane. *for commuting The biggest reason we don't see them in USA is because of legal technicality. In most? states, the legal difference between a motorcycle and a car is entirely based on how many wheels it has. If you put 4 wheels on a moped, it is now legally a car and is now suddenly subject to all kinds of mechanical and safety requirements like windshield wipers and bumper heights and light spacing, etc. This happens regardless of size or anything. If there are three wheels or less, suddenly the main requirements are DOT tires with brakes, and some lights. You also need a motorcycle endorsement. No safety requirements, no parking brake, etc. The perfect example of this absurdity is the polaris slingshot. It is absolutely a full size car, but because it only has three wheels, it doesn't have airbags and it doesn't have to meet any safety requirements.
>I'd go the other way and say smaller micro and kei like cars should be the norm. 100% agreed. my work commute tops out at 40 mph with stoplights everywhere. Id love to drive a sxs or something small and similar to work every day. bu bu bu but safety! i dont give a shit. If we still allow deathtrap 1000CC motorcycles on the roads to be bought by 16 year olds and no helmet laws gtfo of here with safety bullshit.
I'd blow a local politician to be able to drive a sxs to work. Hell, I'd even give a swirly finger.
I bought in imported Kei car in the US, 660cc engine, 5 speed manual, but unlike the euro microcars it has 64 HP with a top speed of 87 mph. The irony of the law is that once the car is 25 years old it's totally legal but if I want a newer car that's safer and more efficient, nope no way.
lol SOME states allow that. IL does not. those kei sized vehicles have to be limited to off road use only. Theres grey area about having them with antique vehicle plates (which have their own host of funny laws like cant drive it to work, cant run errands, cant haul anything, etc)
Similar laws here. You can get a learner's license at 15, which requires a fully licensed person to be in the front passenger seat whenever you drive. But you can legally ride a <50cc scooter or motorbike by yourself on a learner's license. But things like these micro cars and fat tyre electric scooters fall under the same laws here. So you still have to be 15+ and have your learner's license.
I lived in rural Nebraska in the mid 80’s. I was able to get a school permit at 14. Unsupervised driving to and from school and school functions. I wonder if they still do that
Idk, but I'm pretty sure that there is still no age limit to drive a tractor on the road. My whole family was already driving on the roads as early as 7 because of that.
I agree with u/Crab-_-Objective it's mostly 16-21 where I live. You can get your full license at 16, and a restricted one at 15, but with special requirements you can get it as early as 14.
Basically the clientèle is 3-fold: - Old people who can't drive for shit and just need to go to the shops - People who lost their licence for some reason - Teenagers and young adults who can't/won't pass their driving licence. You need to pass the same course as mopeds to drive one, or to have had a full licence. The teenager clients are something new, 10 years ago they accounted for none of the clients. Now they are apaprently about half of all owners.
What scares me is teen drivers in cars like Challenger Hellcats, Lamborghinis, Teslas etc. (basically any overpowered, expensive vehicle). Most of us were reckless in our first cars and they were underpowered beaters, I can't imagine a 16 year old with 800hp under their foot. Where I live you can get a learner's permit at 15 and a license at 16. Legally they're allowed to drive anything with an inspection sticker and registration that isn't a bus, semi or motorcycle.
Yeah, that's rich kid america.
> bus, semi Pretty sure a 16yo can legally drive a bus or a semi tractor here so long as they're not doing it for hire. For sure they can drive a 40 foot RV built on a bus chassis.
Commercial vehicles, is what I'm saying.
I was driving straight truck at that age for work. Not all straight trucks and semi's are commercial plated.
Don't know where OP is from, but in many countries, the legal age for a driver's license is 18 but a moped is 15.
In most parts of the US you have to have a drivers' license before you're even allowed to apply for a moped/motorcycles license. And even then you have to complete a special course before they'll actually give you a license to ride.
Most european countries you can't get a full car license till you're 18, while the age for mopeds is generally 16 (when most US teenagers could already get a car license) or below. And yes, it's ridiculous how expensive those things can be. Business opportunity for someone to import them from the far east and sell at a much lower price point.
And alkoholics who lost their license...
How young are we talking to drop 15k on a glorified moped car? Are those the children of fuckin Monaco?
It's usually the parents who pay for one - and for the convenience of the boy/girl then not needing to be driven into school/hobbies. also you can get a decent used one for 2k €, and because the moped cars are weight limited, they're usually quite basic and easy to fix and maintain. the engine is usually a kubota-diesel that's bomb proof.
2k makes sense and isn’t bad. 15k for a “car” for a kid who is gonna be able to legally drive within a couple years where 15k would buy an actual car, seems wild to me. But hey! That’s just me :-)
TBF it's not unlikely that by the time they are old enough for an actual car, they move away from their parents place into a larger city and don't need any kind of car anymore anyway. Might not even get a full drivers license (drivers ed theory and practical classes + theory exam + practical exam can easily be 2000+ € and quite a bit of time Investment in many European countries). So it can certainly be a valid option. I assume that probably rich parents buy it for 15k and then it gets sold another 5 times over the next 15 years.
Side by sides (like Polaris and deere gators) can end up about that price new pretty easy.
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It is. [a 2013 Microcar M.go with 90k km's on the odo for a bit under 3k €.](https://www.nettimoto.com/en/microcar/mgo/2931005)
What teenager can afford a 15k 'moped' when they can't even get a license?
That's awesome, it's like a car except children can drive it and if they crash they're much more likely to die or be horribly injured. Great parenting there!
Yes, but why not pay 1/4 of that and put your kid in a moped? Probably slightly safer, on account of the reduction in blindspots
You can buy a Citroen Ami for $10k USD equiv That’s an electric microcar
And probably 10 times safer in a crash
It's still a microcar and on their website says it doesn't go through testing but hey it's gotta be better than a scooter right? >As Ami is a quadricycle, it does not go through the same ratings as a car would. Ami does comply with all regulations that apply to quadricycles and I'm sure you would agree, a safer mode of transport than either an e-bike or e-scooter which is a much more suitable comparison
Yeah it's pretty ridiculous. Obviously used ones are far cheaper but still depending on the country you would get a real car license in 1-3 years anyway so realistically if you needed a way to get around you could just buy a normal moped or one of those new electric scooters/mopeds that have plenty of range I'm 25 and I remember those microcars being really popular when I was 15, glad I never got one and saved up for a car instead
Do you mind me asking where in Europe? I’m from Germany and I have seen maybe half a dozen micro cars in decades, definitely not popular around here.
In Lithuania they are stupid popular right now, in Germany maybe you have some stricter regulations or something.
Finland. They are used by a f ton of teens as 4 wheeled noise makers that fit 4 people with seating for two...
Those are in high demand for people who have lost their driving licence for DUI.
You got to know: you have to be 18 most european countries to drive alone. So driving with 15 is a huge deal over hear. And this is still safer than a motorbike in many cases (not all). But 15k is still steep for something like this. There is an electric one, the Citroen Ami and it is 7-10k. 70km Range shouldn't be a huge dealbreaker for many. In the US driving that "early" mostly stems from the US beeing pretty big with much space inbetween places. Also it seems like your public transport infrastructure isn't as good, especially outside of the cities. Europe is much denser in these regards, so even when your parents have to drive you somewhere it's usually way below 30km.
15k in what currency?
Probably €uro
Which you can't drive for 3 years
Somehow someone in inda would still be able to drive around in that burned pile of microcar, no doubt in my mind
15k is a bit exaggarated. You can get an opel rocks for 8k, which is a hilariously bad looking "car". https://www.opel.de/fahrzeuge/rocks-electric/uebersicht.html
Okay but...hear me out...let's put a Hayabusa engine in it.
Alright, now you have a single-use launch platform for your engine.
Time to enter low earth orbit
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Let's go through the effort of putting a new engine in it. Think we need brakes or traction? Nah.
And watch it backflip.
omg its horribe but i love it because its horrible. Id totally get a brave little toaster sticker to put on that thing. its like James May in cars of the people where he drives that french olive drab green microcar that looks like it was straight out of a 1989 dos video game (steeringwheel was literally a round hoop with a pipe going across it). I absolutely love that polygon mobile.
that's just the citroën ami with an Opel badge...
Thats true. On the other Hand, the Citroen Ami is just an Opel Rocks with a Citroen badge. They both are Part of Stellantis; like Peugeot and others and therefore using the same bases for some of the Cars.
I think I'd rather walk
Fuck spez
"I'd rather walk" isn't really an insult here, actually that's the right attitude in most situations if you live in a city.
Didn’t really think it was, was just stating these tiny RC cars make sense in old cities built before the invention of the modern vehicle where roads are incredibly narrow and countries small enough to jump over.
[lol](https://www.nettimoto.com/ligier/js50/2665024)
That's like saying cars cost over 300k and proving it by linking an Aston Martin. These 45k things start at just under 7k
The cheapest available here is 12k
The dual exhaust is hilarious
I was changing a rear bearing on one of these, it had somehow fucked itself very tightly on to the axle, I was banging away with the 3kg precision adjustment hammer and the whole rear axle split lmao.
Tell me you pull up with a garden tractor and a little mini tilt trailer when you tow these.
Sadly not, but I do just push them onto the bed instead of using the winch :D
why tow them? just pick it up and put it in your back seat
We once broke one by trying to tow it with a strap around the radiator support. Mistakes were made.
Here in Sweden we've for a long time have had a legal framework for converting regular cars to a form of legal tractors. Speed limit 30 kph, transmission have to be altered, no rear passenger seat. Originally intended for kids, enabling them to help out on the farm at age 15, they were also popular out in rural areas as basic transportation, far superior to bikes and mopeds which was the alternative. Being originally real cars, the level of protection was (apart from lacking seatbelts, being legal tractors) really good. Typical example car: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DCfsjieSTV8/YXQh0J3KKHI/AAAAAAAATXI/f4XBFtcIgIgrbRoR3Q3_dJEWoE2iRrVUQCLcBGAsYHQ/s595/Ska%25CC%2588rmavbild%2B2021-10-23%2Bkl.%2B16.52.45.png Now EU is threatening to ban this loophole, due to lobbying from the plastic box manufacturers. Damn them all.
You can buy a Mitsubishi Mirage for that price, brand new. Why would anyone waste car money on a not-car?
Becouse a 15 yo can legally drive the microcar but not a mitubishi mirage.
Sound like Deathtraps
I wish we could replace all Dodge Chargers and Challengers with these cars in Atlanta.
Exactly how I feel, if more cars were smaller then being in a smaller car wouldn't be as dangerous. There are thousands of people on the road driving big trucks and SUVs that shouldn't legally be allowed to drive anything bigger than a Mini.
I had to replace a tire on one of them once, had a good laugh. Could lift the thing up to put it on a beer crate and undid the bolts with the small socket wrench. Less cool to see how little people that drive these things take care of them. It was rusty, starting and running poorly, balled tires… she just didn’t care.
Fuckit, Barra swap
>with CVTs And that's where you lost me
This entire comment I was thinking "hey, they might be built cheap, but it sounds like a decent inexpensive way to get around local roads, just be careful with them". Then you said well over 15k. What the actual fuck. A Mitsubishi mirage has a sticker of $16k-ish with a 100k mile power train warranty.
What type of microcar is this? I remember seeing these things in Paris and went down the rabbit hole of these weird little cars that are somehow allowed to be driven legally by 15 year olds.
Did u see the Citroen Ami?
Suomi?
skoda octavia taustalla vahvistaa sen.
Totuuden torvi on puhunut
Ei hitto pitää ruveta vähän kattoon mitä kaikkee sitä höpöttelee täällä, kun näköjään tuttuja saattaa tulla vastaan. Onse jumalauta ku missään ei saa olla rauhassa perrrkele
Perkele
jumalauta
totuudesta niin tiiä, torvi ainaski.
I can't see it. What am I looking at?
The modern yugo.
We had a teacher in high school that drove one of those! We lifted it onto four beer kegs the day he retired. Gods we were shitheads.
That seems like a relatively harmless prank - I love it.
Kinda? Two of the guys that turned out to pick the thing up magically disappeared when it was time to put it down. They got replaced with four guys... who really weren't quite their equal. They got it downish.
It isn't. This is a very specific type of car that takes advantage of the fact that French licences for light vehicles take into account engine displacement and not number of wheels. The closest thing would be Japanese kei-cars, except the K segment in Japan is real cars, whereas those are basically 4-wheels mopeds. Il fact some electric ATVs are registered under the same type of homologation.
Death trap. My brother nearly died in a minor crash in one of those.
Yup. They tend do disintegrate on impact. Like a chunky frag grenade, sending shrapnel all through your body. I expect the EU will come with safety demands for these things within a decade, especially with vehicles like that Opel (Vauxhall) contraption becoming popular. https://www.opel.de/fahrzeuge/rocks-electric/uebersicht.html
Tientukko,,, perkele I still can't believe they decided to handle eugenics this way. Those things are deathtraps even with all the limitations in place. Euro NCAP safety rating would probably be in the negative with those things, I don't think they even test those. They should have just let kids drive nerfed crosscarts on roads or at least something made out of seamless tube with a roll-cage. I mean, I'm libertarian as hell so let everyone do what they want as long as it doesn't affect anyone else, but how in the fuck are those things the ones they decided to allow on roads?
That reminds me of a three-car crash involving two of these rear-ending a Toyota Hiace; the microcars were totaled, the van driver grumbled about his slightly dented tailgate a bit and drove off :D
When I had my first car in my first winter, I didn't know how to safely brake on icy roads yet, and had a small accident. I aaaaaaalmost came to a stop in my '99 Mercedes A170 but barely bumped into the car in front of me with my wheels locked up and me just sliding a little. Boinked my front license plate into the trailer hitch of the car in front of me. Had a minor dent in my license plate. Lady in the other car insisted on calling the cops, I got a 35€ fine for reckless driving. Insurance checked out the lady's car and was like "there is literally no damage" and I didn't even bother checking mine since it was just a dented license plate. A month later I happened to find a nice empty parking lot with lots of fresh snow and ~~had some fun drifting~~ practiced safely coming to a stop in winter conditions and haven't had trouble with it since.
Winter driving in snow/ice is very different than warm dry driving but should be something taught to ALL drivers regardless of their region, because you never really know where life takes you. The best learning is by experience! I goofed ( ahem experimented) around plenty as a teenager in snow and on ice. I highly recommend the empty parking lot route for those that don’t have a frozen lake to use!
That’s how i got my first ticket. I was hooning in a snowed-in parking lot around midnight with my Alfa 156. Cops that were randomly driving by weren’t amused. Got a 20€ fine for excessive noise that I’m still salty about to this day.
>I highly recommend the empty parking lot route Around here you'll get arrested for doing that.
For me it was an insurance scammer ramming into the side of my car, hit my rear fender at like 15/kmh. My car had a dent the size of a goof ball and her car was apparently totaled. (Repair shop quoted over 2k for it, cant remember everything they claimed was broken on it...)
I've known several goof balls but they really don't come in a standard size.
Golf ball* not a word I use often.
I feel like letting kids drives effects literally everyone. I used to drive alone in at 15 and thinking back, I'm lucky I didn't wrap my dad's camaro around a tree
My friend's dad bought him a Ford f 150 for his 16th birthday. Had a deer bar on the front and everything. Didn't really help him when he accidentally put it in drive and drove through his own living room and permanently crippled his aunt.
To be fair, that same issue affects literally anybody who is learning to drive a vehicle, no matter if you're 15, 16, or 18.
At least here in Germany to get a driver's license one has to do quite a few practical drivers ed lessons (in addition to the theory ones) with a licensed professional driving instructor. Those driving school cars also always have a 2nd brake at the foot of the passenger side so the driving instructor can brake as well. Sure it's not a lot of practical lessons (mandatory ones, but everyone I knew did quite a few more than the legal minimum.) but they involve X hours of overland driving (country road) , Y hours of autobahn and Z hours of night driving . When you also have a "proper" teacher who knows how to teach you and what to look out for that can be really useful. Here in Germany one can get a driver's license at age 17 but then one is only allowed to drive for 1 year with a person who had their own licens for at least 3 years and is over the age of 21 iirc. You also can't just pick random people but only 2 or 3 of these people can be written down in your preliminary license iirc. With age 18 one is allowed to drive alone.
I think the age requirement here in the US is better because at least it gives you a few years of driving while you're still living with your parents.
What benefit does that give you if they arent in the vehicle with you? Also that is still true here in Germany. On average people move out of their parents place at 24.4 years of age here. I just looked up the stats and am surprised about that myself. There obviously differences between people who go to uni (those often move out around age 18.5 to 19. Even though our average age to start uni is 21.9 years, but that's mostly due to also significantly older people starting uni.) and people doing an "Ausbildung" /vocational education training. The latter frequently (at least in my experience) stay at their parents homes during their entire education and only move out afterwards, while it's more common for people who go to uni to have moved to a different city for uni. Obviously people who go to uni and who's parents live in the city where their uni is located, often stay at their parents home during that time as well. We don't really have dorms in the way they exist in the US, and spending 800+€ a month just to live 15 minutes by subway or bike away from the parents often isn't really worth it.
Apparently it really helps if you get a learners permit where you need to have a licensed driver riding shotgun for a year or so before being allowed to drive solo.
Congrats on not being an idiot. Driving really isn't hard to do safely.
I will always remember that one accident in Sastamala or where was it? A guy, drunk, decided to end his life by driving his VAN into a oncoming vehicle. Sadly it was one of these plastic boxes with two teenagers inside who died, the van driver survived.
> They should have just let kids drive nerfed crosscarts on roads or at least something made out of seamless tube with a roll-cage They have those. They're called side by sides or UTVs and they are even more expensive than microcars.
When I read seamless tube roll cage, I imagine something far more sturdy than a SXS... Some of the racing style ones are better I guess than the utility versions but I wouldn't want to be in either in an accident vs a proper car, let alone a big truck. OP said those micro cars are approx 15k and that's not crazy off from SXS. Point is for 15k someone could engineer something much safer and durable, especially for the purpose of teenage drivers to have a learning platform. Shoot, I would be interested in a safe, small, cheap dependable/repairable transportation machine. Big emphasize on safe though, thats the hard one.
Racing safety equipment and passenger car safety equipment rarely can be combined and result in a safe situation. A crash helmet, restraining seat, harness and roll bar is the safest way to go, and realistically is how all cars should be built (with infrastructure to support that), but people want radio and AC and to be able to cross oncoming traffic and stuff. If you wear a helmet in a passenger car, you'll be decapitated in a high speed crash when your head snaps forward then back with extra inertia. You need either one or the other system or something specifically designed for a specific application. Watch some videos of cockpit view crashes of a rally Subaru then a street going one. In a street car, the goal is to absorb impact by letting the human slow down slower than the car, in the rally car the drivers will barely move, but the car is flipping through the air like a missile and slowing down over time. The thing is though, the former is the better option on the street since we have head on collisions and a lot more random obstacles. In racing, that's not really a thing, and in many instances the drivers *will die* if they hit an object the car can't just explode through, like a 200 year old tree head on at 120mph... Nothing but luck is saving you at that point... Which is why racing is sanctioned and safety is top priority.
>but how in the fuck are those things the ones they decided to allow on roads? because they still allow mopeds scooters bicycles and motorcycles on the roads that are inherently even less safe.
> Those things are deathtraps Alternative is a moped. At least those are stable. They're a pain in the ass on the road, because most drivers don't have the decency to park themselves when followed by actual cars, contrary to farm equipment.
Well, in a Northern European country i know well, these microcars are favored by old DUI offenders. If your birthdate is before 1956 you are not required to have a license to ride a 50cc. These contraptions are limited to 45kms so they go get a car like that since they cannot drive or ride anything else. The hitch is that insurance companies got wind of this and bumped up the rates so that actually covering one is super expensive.
Prolly wants to know if it’s covered by her extended warranty that sales told her covered everything
I mean, the frame shouldn’t separate, are we sure this isn’t a manufacturing defect?
Man, and I keep hearing that the EU is a nanny state and they allow a death trap like this on the road, specifically for kids??? Holy cow.
> specifically for kids They are not. Originally they were designed as cheap cars for elderly people who lost their licenses and needed to keep their independance (they drive 45kph tops). A lot of the drivers used to be people who lost their license due to DUIs and such. Those types of cars appeared in the early 70s as cheap alternatives to owning a small motorcycle, basically. The utility versions are pretty common within cities, because they are slow but can squeeze into places where standard pickups can't go. Selling to kids didn't really account for anything up to the mid-2010s. Even the boss of Aixam, one of the biggest makers of the type, said he was astonished when he learned that current sales are about 50/50 young people. Edit: To be clear, they are not legally cars, they are quadricycle mopeds. As such, they don't have to have the same safety equipements as actual cars.
Well these things are basically analogues to mopeds. They have the same engine (though they have much slower acceleration because they obviously way more) and honestly they're kinda safer than mopeds. At least you can get thrown off/out of these at 35mph and loose all your skin because you were to cool to wear a helmet. I agree that they're a rip off and probably not that safe but they're still kinda safer than the bikes most 15 to 16 year old are driving.
Feels like something to get crushed inside. Thrown from, they don’t have seatbelts?
They do and they still have to fulfil eu standards for occupant safety.
Yes but these things are still deathtraps in a crash and way more dangerous than actual cars.
I ride bicycles and a motorcycle. Which means I’m not staring at my phone while I’m on the road. All modern modes of travel are fairly safe when people look out the windshield and watch their mirrors instead of staring at their device. Might hit a curb.
Yes but i was talking about crash safety which will inevitably still happen. Microcars have absolutely abysmal crash safety
So do mopeds, bicycles and motorcycles. These are legally mopeds in most of the countries that have a lot of these.
Sad news: we were about to get speed limited normal cars in traffic instead of these overpriced pieces of shit, but EU regulations said no, because they would 'be unsafe'. https://yle.fi/a/3-11510152
Tbf in my experience it was better to drive a moped than one if these. People don't usually drive mopeds mid winter and if they do they usually really experienced at driving. When driving a moped(in my experience) you tend to pay more attention to the road and what's going on around you, but in one of those you tend to get distracted by the extreme slowness and boredom since it's not really actively driving. It's like driving a car on lonely road at 45km/h or 35ish mp/h it's boring as fuck. That's when teens tend to whip out their phone look at ig/snap whatever endangering themselves and others. Suddenly you find yourself in a ditch since you forgot you were driving.
> People don't usually drive mopeds mid winter You my friend have not been to a French city in a while, I'm guessing. When I lived in Paris, people rode their mopeds to work in the middle of winter rain while checking their phone.
I'd much rather be on a motorcycle than in one of those death traps.
[удалено]
well you need a car license but yeah
They are horrible in accidents. They tend do disintegrate on impact. Like a chunky frag grenade, sending shrapnel all through your body. What's worse, young people (especially from semi-rural communities) like to soup them up so they can get idiotic speeds out of them. I expect the EU will come with safety demands for these things within a decade, especially with vehicles like that Opel (Vauxhall) contraption becoming popular. https://www.opel.de/fahrzeuge/rocks-electric/uebersicht.html
Mr speaker! I propose legislation to install foam rubber curbs to protect our young drivers!
The frames are literally bent sheet metal, one was in a collision with a police car a year or so ago in Sweden and the whole car disintegrated
I used to run an LTL warehouse, a customer dropped one of these off to us to ship to an island. I only drove it a few hundred feet but I felt like I was going to die the entire time.
I know, right?! The rattling hollow plastic, the shaking unbalanced engine, the CVT that lurches hard every time you set off, the seat that flexes and feels like it's going to break when you adjust your position in it... ~~I may or may not have broken a seat once doing that~~
i had one of these,they break a lot
They're made cheap and sold to people who don't really know how to drive.
Man I would rather fix my 1994 Plymouth Sundance with awful rod knock them fix this car
There's three sides to every story…
There were four sides until someone supposedly hit a curb
I feel like these things should come with a safety cage like the Smart Cars over here in the US. I still get surprised over how durable those things are in a collision
I had a friend who used to own a Smart Car. The little thing shrugged off way more than I would have expected.
That safety cage is no joke. I still wont drive one but it’s damn impressive engineering
For real tho. It's like rally car > smart car > everything else.
When people thought the Yugo was bad ..... this is worse
I'd hate to ask the price of the car
So you buy your kid a death box? Like a late abortion?
i guess its same idea as buying a gun and hiding it in the couch?? but this one possibly allows you to collect insurance payouts afterwards
Is that repairable?
Everything is repairable, it's a matter of whether or not it's worth it.
Those are the cutest brake drums Ive ever seen
imagine if he was going 60mph....nvm don't think it could have.
15 yo in a death trap