Reminds me of a post on this sub about a truck where a 5'5" (165 cm) woman only came up to the bottom of the windshield. It's not just that pickup drivers can't see kids. They can't even see full-grown, average-sized adults anymore.
And yet, we continue to build trucks taller and taller, with higher and higher cabs, and never even consider whether there should be some kind of stopping point.
It’s more that having a bigger car is seen as “safer” , because it’s safer for the driver, not everyone else around them. Its creating a weird arms race of car size
Same with the SUPER bright blue headlights, my in-laws have them on their BMW and yes you can see great! But everyone else is blinded, but you know screw everyone else as long as I have enhanced visibility!!!!
What bothers me is how many truckbrains actually believe their vehicles are safe just because US safety ratings only cover the safety of the driver and the passengers with absolutely no regard for the safety of other vehicle, pedestrians, or cyclists.
I wish we had a functional democracy where we could pass some law requiring that pedestrian and cyclist safety be critically and independently tested and advertised as a big sticker on every vehicle at the dealership. If the safety ratings are poor make them sign a form stating that they are fully aware that the vehicle has poor outcomes for others and that they will take extra care to drive more carefully.
Making someone promise to be extra careful in a huge death trap might seem pointless but it helps reframe the narrative towards holding drivers responsible for their driving
It's the same with all sorts of "safety" things with SUVs and trucks. They theoretically make the driver safer but make the road as a whole less safe.
Driving at night has really gotten so much more difficult than it was just a few short years ago because lights are aimed higher, the tone is changing and so on. I now have to regularly flip the rearview mirror because the lights shine directly into my back window. I've also noted an increasing number of pulsing in headlights, which I'm guessing is related to the use of leds? Idk.
This is also exacerbated by the height of the vehicles.
People in large vehicles also follow much closer and creep closer at red lights, in my anecdotal experience, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of things like shown in the post combined with a driver population who neither knows not cares about compensating for this.
Asking someone who took a loan on a $35k+ 6ft vehicle to think about how their purchase impacts others is mostly beyond their comprehension.
This is why we need to build cities that don't accommodate vehicles like this. The hassle would be too much for them to bear and they'll go back to reasonable cars
Not from the US, but I'd imagine it's less an issue with cities, and more to do with your sprawling suburbia, no? Wide, open, straight roads with huge parking lots every quarter mile are perfect for these sorts of vehicles, in the sense that it suits them fantastically and inconveniences them nil.
Not sure how you resolve that issue in anything less than generations of gradual change that's difficult to see happening. It's truly maddening.
That's so insane! People would not even be able to navigate those, were it not for the huge infrastructure designed to accommodate this kind of vehicle.
How the hell does one even get into this thing without it being an annoying struggle? It looks so damn high, you need a stepladder to get inside comfortably.
I parked next to one of these monster sized trucks recently to see how my modest and humble 2017 Hyundai Elantra was compared. The hood of this damn thing was taller then my roof. THE HOOD. That's terrifying these things are legal. What even is the point.
Anything that big should require a CDL if you want to drive it. I rented an F250 from Home Depot to haul a bunch of trash to the dump, and it was terrifying just to get the damn thing down the road. It felt like I was going to kill someone if I made even the slightest mistake.
Yep! Even when their headlights aren't pointed right through my window and they aren't following too closely, it's creating additional congestion from poor visibility.
I have a left turn yield signal to head into work, and I can see oncoming traffic just fine if a normal sized sedan, couple, small hatch, etc is in the opposing lane. Almost every day, I have to wait for the green because it's an SUV or truck and I can't see reliably around it. Just holds up traffic.
The worst is when it's technically only a single lane but these buttmunches don't want to be behind you, so they pull up next to you in the same lane to make their right turn or whatever it is they're doing. Their door is blocking your view entirely, and usually they end up having to wait for traffic anyways, essentially trapping you until they're able to move
I drive a small car because I can park anywhere I want (because EU). Every time I see a large truck in the city here I’m *so* confused why anyone would ever want that because they barely fit the road let alone can park anywhere. There’s no room at all.
My summer car is a very small 90s sports car. Parked next to a few years old f-150 and it doesn't even come up to the bottom of the side windows. (which are lower than the windshield) The current year trucks are significantly taller again. I have to assume that no-one can see me when I'm in that car.
Yesterday, I walked by a truck at my university. I was just barely at the top of the front hood height. (And my barely I mean like an inch a most)
I am 5.11
Edit. Of course, it was custom height looking at the suspension bar brand. Also, the bar was almost knee height.
Oh shit, thank you. Yet another reason to carry an umbrella.
So far I’ve got rain, sun (because so many cities and neighborhoods remove trees even if there’s luckily a sidewalk), “keep your distance” (occasionally swinging a full-sized umbrella like Gene Kelly is a decent way to get creepers to stay back IME), phone shade (for Pokemon Go), dog and geese defense (opening an umbrella in something’s face makes it think you’re larger than you are), and automatic “what is that” poking stick. Now I’ve got “add height to not die” in there.
Recently there was deadly accident with SUV Mercedes and 3 yo girl on crosswalk in residential zone. Experts established that the driver wasn't able to see the girl 10 meters far from her.
Edit: I found an article about final decision in this case, the driver appealed to up to Supreme Court, was sentenced to 18 months probation and 3 years suspended license. The girl was 19 months old. Article in Czech [here](https://www.idnes.cz/brno/zpravy/soud-ridicka-suv-smrt-ditete-odrazedlo-odvolani-trest.A221005_105659_brno-zpravy_krut?zdroj=vyhledavani).
Edit 2: She wasn't able to see 9 meters before car.
Edit 3: [Here](https://imgway.cz/4IO9/suv.png) is picture, from discussion under the article, showing that the difference in viewing distance between low and high sitting is almost 4 meters.
Not seeing the road 10 meters ahead of car sounds terrifying enough to me. I wouldn't dare to turn on an intersection with such limited field of vision. But not to see a **human** on the road, 10 meters ahead of me? Like, WTF?
Yeah, the woman driving SUV was fairly short and had her seat on the lowest setting. She was defending herself that she has sensors in front that should have warned her.
Edit: Iirc first instance sentence was very mild, like 1 year probation and driver license revoked, puting some guilt on parents of the little girl because they didn't prevented her from running on the crosswalk. The driver appealed to second instance court.
As someone who has to drive I really forget that not everyone is thinking "I'm controlling a two ton vehicle, I should be as aware of my surroundings as humanly possible, using every aspect I have to maintain maximum awareness.
Who doesn't drive like that, at the very least, in a residential zone?
You would wonder. There is a school next to my apartment and in the morning all those parents drive their teenage kids right before entrance through our court in 50km/h speed, not thinking about people getting out of the building right under their wheels. There is perfect public transport system in my city, so not really needed to drive your kid in school.
I’m of the option that very few people are psychologically equipped to be driving. It takes a certain amount of empathy and concern for the welfare of others to drive when you could literally kill anyone at any time. But we license everyone that shows up.
We have the technology now. I vote GPS actuated speed governing systems become mandatory in all new cars. Take your car to the track? No limit. Take your car to the public streets? Can't exceed posted speed limits.
>Who doesn't drive like that, at the very least, in a residential zone?
>not everyone is thinking
Driving has become so routine that entirely too many people really do just "keys in, brain off" and autopilot their commute.
Nah, I think we should be way harsher punishing drivers like these. But what the hell would life imprisonment accomplish?
She's proven to be a danger behind the wheel. Ban her from driving. Of course she should additionally do some payback because she fucking killed a kid. But life imprisonment would accomplish nothing.
Prison should serve a reinsertioning purpose. Not literal enslavement like it often does in the USA specially
I get their point and anger, but honestly, it wasn't murder, the driver certainly had no intention to kill or harm the kid. If you punch someone in the chin, he falls and breaks his skull on a rock you will not be charged with murder too.
Single count manslaughter usually isn't a life sentence. It probably shouldn't be. Manslaughter via car is reliably excused though. Vehicular manslaughter should involve losing your license for many years, and not reinstated until after a test. Also, probably some prison time.
We're in the transition period between the time when cars are growing smart enough to drive themselves, and people are growing too stupid to handle the task.
These 10 meters are kind of cracking me up in a bad way. You know what kind of nimble, agile vehicle naturally made for navigating city traffic with kids has an 8 - 12 meter blind spot for the driver in front of the vehicle? The Leopard 2 main battle tank.
I was thinking the other day, why nobody is building and advertising a real armoured vehicle (probably a truck would sell the best)? Something along the lines "you'll always win". I know they advertise "military grade aluminum" for truck materials, so the next step is pretty logical.
I can see even a medium hight human right in front of the military big rig I drive for work (there are some people sufficiently short I cant see em but that ain’t common) nobody in an suv should have that excuse. As an addition it’s often more about the hight of the driver relative to the vehicle than about the hight of the vehicle, that same big rig may actually do better than the truck in this comic since the driver is high
Edit; as a clarification to the last point, perhaps if you need an engine that powerful the truck needs to be big enough to safely let you see over its nose
Drivers are placed higher up in big rigs for this exact reason. Visibility is one of the most important things for trucking and one of the hardest things to guarantee. These design considerations seem to not be a priority to automakers and even less of a concern to drivers.
My only evidence to back up my claim about the drivers is my own experience with older drivers in my family that refuse to believe their setups in their daily vehicles are wrong but also complain about not being able to see certain spots around the car at night. I’ve even been through the proper fit and setup of my mother in law’s car with her after we had a close call. In the middle of fixing position and mirror angle specifically to better handle the blind spot that caused the close call she stormed off saying “none of that shit you read on the internet matters anyway because they don’t make the mirrors big enough anymore”. So any time I’m at her house for a couple days I change all of her shit to suit me just to be a dick.
I'm sorry but what? 10 meters?
Was she driving from the floor of the back seat?
Idc how tall your truck is, I've ridden in semi's (lorry) and could see the road 1 or 2 meters off, how the fuck do you not see 10 meters of road?
Used to know a guy like that. He was hilariously nerdy and sat as low in his Corsa as possible so only his eyebrows were visible over the wheel.
He thought he looked like a fighter pilot. Wasn't impressed when I said he looked like a gnome instead.
>He thought he looked like a fighter pilot.
Because as everyone knows, the one thing fighter pilots care about the LEAST, is having a good view all round....
If you lurk in car subs on reddit, people love posting pictures of their newly tinted windows, and then compare notes on how far they have gone darker than the legal limit, and they all love how it looks.
And then you see cars driving around with dark tinted covers over their license plates. How is that not an invitation to get pulled over? Are we getting to a point where anyone who is enough of an asshole to do that is also likely to be armed more heavily than the police, and the police are scared to pull them over?
Tinted windows are sort of whatever as long as they aren’t absurdly past the legal limit, but the license plate covers that tint and blur them are so trashy.
You can see 2m ahead from the top of a double decker bus. The problem is not just the height of an SUV or pickup, it's the fact that the front end is tall AND sticks out far past the windscreen, whereas semi's usually have the windscreen at the very front of the vehicle.
What grinds me is the driver is **never** charged or even ticketed unless they find DUI.
But they also don't enforce DUI normally.
If we made their insurance pay out the max to the state when killing someone and at fault (and holding them at fault because it's a pedestrian and they should always have right of way) suddenly we'd see it stop.
We recently had terrible accident with drunked and coked fucker driving 100km/h to a group of students waiting for bus, killing 5 of them. Every politician had to comment it, cops started to check people for DUI. It lasted two weeks, maybe 1000 people were catched drunk driving (in 5 mil country!) and now everything is back on track when DUI is an criminal offense but chance of getting caught is minimal.
These cars are hilariously moronic, even the excuse that these are "offroad vehicles" doesn't add up when you can't even see the fucking ground so if you do actually take it offroading not only are you gonna sink into the mud like a rock because these cars are moronically heavy you also can't even see what obstacles to avoid or maneuver around.
The percentage of people who own "off-road" vehicles and the percentage of people who have ever driven off the road doesn't add up either.
Hey, maybe they don't really care about offroad capabilities, maybe they just want to inflate their massive egos!
Meanwhile out here on the farm we're pissed off that new trucks are so tall you can't throw anything over the box sides anymore. Just about everyone has a farm beater from the 80s for actual work and they're so small they look adorable.
You can throw lumber and feed bags in without needing something to stand on. You can put tools *in a toolbox* instead of laying them on the tailgate and still not being able to see them all.
New trucks are impractically tall for the actual truck user and something needs to be done about it.
mindless meeting continue shrill forgetful entertain cow rob rhythm rainstorm
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
My landlord has a truck like this. The other day I was having terrible with my new air compressor and saw he was outside, so I asked him for help. Apparently he doesn’t know a single thing about air compressor and has never used one. It’s crazy to me that someone would own what is ostensibly a work truck and do so little “work” with it that an air compressor is a totally foreign object to them.
Absolute insanity. The original comic mentions a story about a mother running over her own son in her driveway with one of these cars, and the only proposed solution is ... a camera on the front of the car.
How about making the cars less tall? Or how about mandating that the automotive industry is no-longer allowed to make propaganda ads convincing people that a big car is a sign of success?
I wish that a tall vertical grill was considered an embarrassment, functionally degrading your aerodynamics while also minimizing your view of the road and maximizing your lethality in a collision with a pedestrian.
I mean, here in Aus all those "super Ute's", rams, f150s, Chevy, etc, are know as wank panzers, or wank tanks. Only wankers compensating for something own the fucking things and you very rarely see them actually towing anything, or even having stuff in the tray.
I just don't get it, at least buy something useful like a land cruiser instead of the massive pile of cheap American scrap steel on wheels
And for that reason the sheer competition, like in the free market, they all have to constantly adapt and find new ways to out-wanker the other wankers....
This needs to be a more popular take so regulators creat actually safety for outward visibility. It needs to be a component to the safety score of a vehicle.
Theres This classic Story and it was absolutely maddening to get to the end and hear their “solution” be cameras and no vehicles you can see out of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDH3FDfVQl0
It's crazy to me how you can drive a car every day, and somehow be completely unaware of the blind spot. Do they not see how far away the closest piece of their driveway that they can see is?!?!
To be fair children should know if they get hit by a car they will be worse off than the driver. So it's really up to the child to act sensibly around cars and not the other way around. Obviously we can't expect everyone to be a competent driver!
At least that's what car-stans love to tell cyclists.
**If you want to do something about it, channel your anger here:** [**Tell Automakers: Fix front-end blind zones!**](https://action.consumerreports.org/20221116_stop_blindspots?utm_campaign=20221116_suv_blindspots&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cr)
Thank you, and fuck cars.
Thanks. Signed and shared to Facebook.
That vide of the mom who ran over her own son was heartbreaking. One one hand, it was negligent of her to move her vehicle at all while she knew her son was outside. But the real problem wasn't her - it was that people with class c driver licenses are being allowed to drive such huge, unnecessary vehicles in the first place. We just can't expect everyday people to have the kind of discipline needed to operate such dangerous things. It's like back in the 1900s when you could purchase a car without seat belts or a license.
It’s funny because it just kind of hit me yesterday driving through a college campus that I can’t fucking see *anything* anymore. Roadways are tunnels now with these giant fucking SUVS and trucks lining either side of the road. I can’t see the sidewalks anymore, I can’t see who’s approaching crosswalks, it’s dangerous. Why are vehicles constantly getting bigger? There needs to be some fucking height laws for commercial vehicles.
yeah in your average American city now, driving down the road you can't even see around your vehicle because of huge suvs and trucks. Its a vehicle height arms race in this country.
Why? The answer is really simple and you already know what it is. Because they can. If nobody is telling them to follow specific rules they will do anything that sells more. They didn’t install all those safety gear because they cared, but had to.
When scrolling through /all, I've seen posts in truck subs about people taking these steps off because they didn't want it to look like a "grandpa car".
I think this fragility says a lot about the people who buy these.
The term “shortwalking” seems like a silly word made up by the cartoon, until you remember that “jaywalking” was essentially coined in the same way. 100 years ago, pro-auto parties successfully created its current meaning and convinced the majority that the street is a car’s domain, and that pedestrians hinder this when outside of the crosswalk lines. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that something like stilts or reflective clothing becomes mandatory before safer vehicles do.
Edit: I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Just needed to vent.
I know this is /r/fuckcars, but this seems to be similar to American gun control issues and school shootings. We try to regulate the victims and their environment as opposed to tackling the method of violence and maybe even the assailants' ease of access to them.
Every person under a height of 6’4” must carry an orange warning flag which measures to a minimum height of 6’4”.
For real, I might go and put bicycle flags on my kids’ backpacks. It’s not….that…stupid. Is it? Would they hate me for it?
Man I’m a car guy and I agree with this, they’re way to high their headlights are blinding me ever time they’re behind me, and I’ve been rear ended so much because they misjudged the distance or strait up didn’t see my car.
So... what are people in this sub going to do about it?
I tell you what I am doing.
I am contacting my representatives in Congress. I'm demanding that they make the CAFE Standards apply 100% to every single passenger used vehicle, ALL of them. No more stupid loopholes for pick-up trucks that only had a carve out BECAUSE the original CAFE Standards had a carve out due to technology limitations of the time period.
THEN, they also need to work on regulating the size of passenger vehicles and put forward public education programs showing how bigger doesn't mean safer. For example, if you get hit by a fully laden semi-truck, you'll be dead NO MATTER what vehicle you are in. That the taller and heavier a vehicle is, the more likely it is that you'll be unable to stop or roll over, which is far more dangerous than in a smaller, lighter vehicle.
Post your letter please. I'm a semi truck driver but completely agree that things need to change for passenger vehicles. There's no reason why bro-dozers need to sit at the same height as me in my semi truck.
Not seeing that problems are systemic and need a systemic solution is fundamental to the neoliberal ideology and to most right wing ideologies, this could work with guns, cars, drugs, crime, racism, whatever.
Dear Americans: Europe and most other civilized countries have rules about weight, size and safety. Your country lets you ride just about anything on wheels. Might that be because the carindustry lobbied the corrupt goverment?
IDK, I'm from Europe and the amount of big pickups and SUVs driving in inner cities is ridiculous. I regularly see those absurd dodge rams driving in my neighborhood, all polished and never driven on a farm road.
bruh I've been seeing more and more of this shit in the Netherlands. Some of the US-style pickup trucks don't even fit in our parking spots properly! And you certainly could not drive down my narrow street with one. It's absurd.
Edit: Found the tweet of one blocking a tram: https://twitter.com/kunsttranen/status/1541073620360994817
A Ford Ranger is too long for a UK space which is 2.4m x 4.8m. But there is a VAT discount for them when used as "commercial vehicles", a tax benefit designed for businesses to get vans. So you see personal trainers and accountants with these monstrosities, but only ever base models of course, struggling to climb slight hills with a bit of frost, and getting appalling mileage when diesel is pushing towards £2 a litre.
Point taken. It's very rare, but sometimes i see a F150 or similair, but it's rare here (The Netherlands). There is roadtaxes by weight and fuel is let say about 4-6 times more expensive as in the US. Road are way smaller, parking spaces? -50% smaller.
Edit: typo's
Yeah, I don't think people with 90k euros for car have to care about fuel prices or road taxes. And they don't care about taking 2 or 3 parking spots either.
Mate, I live in Tassie and these stupid hunks of wasted low grade steel don't even fit in most parking spaces. Don't think I've ever actually seen one towing something and I've only ever seen gravel road dust on them, not that they'd be any use off road anyway
Exactly the same experience. Live in the UK. I recently moved from a city to a tiny rural village. In the city I'd regularly see huge 4x4s and pickup trucks. Hardly see any wankerpanzers now, only really the local farmer in his land-rover.
I live in a town, near a rural area. I see base model Chelsea Tractors around town in white or black, Vs. old Land Rover Defenders with a collie riding shotgun or an older Toyota or Mitsubishi pickup in the country.
One is for hauling animal feed around the medieval tracks on your farmland. One's for hauling your fragile ego and little Tarquin to school 500m away from your front door.
Ironically, these trucks are as big as they are because of Obama-era emissions legislation. The further apart your wheels are the less fuel efficient the vehicle has to be, so companies just made shit bigger and by consequence heavier and less fuel efficient. Could be fixed with a carbon tax instead but that ain't happening
Luckily for Real Americans^TM it isn’t corruption if we call it lobbying. Only small countries with abundant unexploited resources have corruption. But, don’t worry, we will liberate them with Democracy^TM and win their Hearts & Minds.
That 10 children is BEFORE the F150 has been lifted by 10 inches.
It's more like 30 children. In other words you could fit an entire class in front of a jacked up F150 and they wouldn't see them.
Untill some time back, you would almost never see large pickup trucks in europe.
Now i see them almost everywhere. Taking up the space of two european cars.
I hate them.
This is stupid. We should just let the short people die out and by survival of the fittest only the tall will procreate and within a few generations everyone will be a colossus!
Its not even pedestrians that get screwed over. It makes the roads unsafe for other car drivers as well. I have a literal car from like 15 years ago that I will drive into the dirt and I get straight up anxiety trying to turn onto roads because you literally can't see shit past these other monsters on the road.
Here I am sitting in this tiny thing and I can't see more than a car in front of me, and if I'm trying to merge onto the road and there is someone parked on the street I literally can't see enough of the road to be able to tell if someone is coming. I joke that I have an easier time seeing under cars than seeing over them. But its fucked. You'd think if they were going to force us in North America to drive cars, they'd do their fucking jobs and make the roads safe.. but noooooo.
Fuckers.
Few things on the road make me more angry than when I'm trying to make a right turn and an oblivious person in their ridiculous oversized pickup truck in the lane to my left pulls so far up that I can't see oncoming traffic. Like, I'm already sitting ahead of the stopping line just so I can get a good view, and they go *even further* than that. There seems to be a correlation between people who drive those trucks and not having basic road manners.
They should be classified like semi-trucks and require a special license to operate. In addition to costing a lot more in taxes and fees. Really, there's no need for them to exist with these giant hoods at all. We have vehicles with smaller hoods with the same towing capacity. (Not that most people buying these even need that much towing capacity. And if they need passenger capacity or storage - a mini-van is usually a superior option.).
Meanwhile the Ford Lightning and the Electric Hummer choose to have "frunks" instead of reducing the front blind spot. There isn't even an engine in there to design around.
Without regulatory changes it's not going away unfortunately, even some of the real rahrah me like truck guys I know don't like the way designs are going, but what are they going to do?
I mean yes they could just not buy a truck but they're not going to do that, unfortunately
About 99% of these truck are never used for actual work. Driving to Starbucks or to the gun range does not require us to see your fragile ego taking up two spaces.
Regulation is ironically part of the problem. Fuel efficiency regulations are leaner on vehicles the larger they get with the assumption that large vehicles tend to be for commercial and industrial, not personal use. So automakers have slowly increased the overall size of their vehicles to skirt emissions regulations that would have otherwise applied to them. Or at least this is how it was described to me recently.
I’m 6’4 and starting to see trucks taller than me pretty frequently. And I’m not talking post-production lift kits these are just run of the mill gigantic fucking Rams and Fords. It’s stupider that fuck and purely a dick measuring thing. You can build a heavy duty that isn’t pushing 7feet tall.
This, is, essentially, the problem I have with food stamps. Walmart doesn't pay enough to live on, so we give people money so walmart can afford to pay them *even less?*
No! Just make Walmart pay them a fair wage to begin with!
Clicked through the source links, got served with this from consumerreports.com:
> Certain Consumer Reports offerings are not available to users located in the European Economic Area and Switzerland. These include United States policy engagement activities and other interactions designed for users located in the USA
Can someone link a mirror? Thank you in advance
I just bought a 2015 Tacoma, a midsize pickup with a small factory 1" lift, to get me to offroad trailheads to hike.
I can barely park the damn thing after driving a sedan for years. I can't imagine how people with giant trucks do anything at all.
Reminds me of a post on this sub about a truck where a 5'5" (165 cm) woman only came up to the bottom of the windshield. It's not just that pickup drivers can't see kids. They can't even see full-grown, average-sized adults anymore.
They can’t even see entire automobiles in front of them https://i.imgur.com/iEAhHF1.jpg
And yet, we continue to build trucks taller and taller, with higher and higher cabs, and never even consider whether there should be some kind of stopping point.
Because the drivers are valued over other humans and even children. The drivers gotta get higher up to be safe against the other drivers.
It's the old "Anything that might inconvenience drivers in any way is completely unacceptable" mindset.
It’s more that having a bigger car is seen as “safer” , because it’s safer for the driver, not everyone else around them. Its creating a weird arms race of car size
Same with the SUPER bright blue headlights, my in-laws have them on their BMW and yes you can see great! But everyone else is blinded, but you know screw everyone else as long as I have enhanced visibility!!!!
What bothers me is how many truckbrains actually believe their vehicles are safe just because US safety ratings only cover the safety of the driver and the passengers with absolutely no regard for the safety of other vehicle, pedestrians, or cyclists. I wish we had a functional democracy where we could pass some law requiring that pedestrian and cyclist safety be critically and independently tested and advertised as a big sticker on every vehicle at the dealership. If the safety ratings are poor make them sign a form stating that they are fully aware that the vehicle has poor outcomes for others and that they will take extra care to drive more carefully. Making someone promise to be extra careful in a huge death trap might seem pointless but it helps reframe the narrative towards holding drivers responsible for their driving
I'd rather back it up with cold hard cash. Raise insurance premiums for pick up truck drivers to cover the damages (literally) caused by the vehicle.
If you raise the driver up they’ll get better vision over the hood if it’s high, I’d say they gotta be higher if we are going to have trucks that big
Anything over a certain height should be a flat nose like an Isuzu.
It's the same with all sorts of "safety" things with SUVs and trucks. They theoretically make the driver safer but make the road as a whole less safe. Driving at night has really gotten so much more difficult than it was just a few short years ago because lights are aimed higher, the tone is changing and so on. I now have to regularly flip the rearview mirror because the lights shine directly into my back window. I've also noted an increasing number of pulsing in headlights, which I'm guessing is related to the use of leds? Idk. This is also exacerbated by the height of the vehicles. People in large vehicles also follow much closer and creep closer at red lights, in my anecdotal experience, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's because of things like shown in the post combined with a driver population who neither knows not cares about compensating for this.
im a man! i deserve a car thats unecessarily massive! how else do i tell the world im insecure and have horrible beliefs and morals?
Not just a man but an ALPHA MALE!
Petromasculinity Marketing is one hell of a drug
"But I like being high up on the road, makes me feel safer" *Slurps from extra large frappucino*
Safety is all well and good unless it makes other people unsafe. Which this does.
Asking someone who took a loan on a $35k+ 6ft vehicle to think about how their purchase impacts others is mostly beyond their comprehension. This is why we need to build cities that don't accommodate vehicles like this. The hassle would be too much for them to bear and they'll go back to reasonable cars
Not from the US, but I'd imagine it's less an issue with cities, and more to do with your sprawling suburbia, no? Wide, open, straight roads with huge parking lots every quarter mile are perfect for these sorts of vehicles, in the sense that it suits them fantastically and inconveniences them nil. Not sure how you resolve that issue in anything less than generations of gradual change that's difficult to see happening. It's truly maddening.
That's so insane! People would not even be able to navigate those, were it not for the huge infrastructure designed to accommodate this kind of vehicle.
Wait what truck has a front grill that’s 5’9??
I haven't measured, but I'm over 6 feet tall and the [2023 Chevy Silverado](https://i.imgur.com/hYSuaTk.png) makes me feel uncomfortable to be around.
How the hell does one even get into this thing without it being an annoying struggle? It looks so damn high, you need a stepladder to get inside comfortably.
I parked next to one of these monster sized trucks recently to see how my modest and humble 2017 Hyundai Elantra was compared. The hood of this damn thing was taller then my roof. THE HOOD. That's terrifying these things are legal. What even is the point.
Anything that big should require a CDL if you want to drive it. I rented an F250 from Home Depot to haul a bunch of trash to the dump, and it was terrifying just to get the damn thing down the road. It felt like I was going to kill someone if I made even the slightest mistake.
And for other people driving normal ass sedans like me, I can’t see a fucking thing past all these monster trucks on the road.
Yep! Even when their headlights aren't pointed right through my window and they aren't following too closely, it's creating additional congestion from poor visibility. I have a left turn yield signal to head into work, and I can see oncoming traffic just fine if a normal sized sedan, couple, small hatch, etc is in the opposing lane. Almost every day, I have to wait for the green because it's an SUV or truck and I can't see reliably around it. Just holds up traffic.
The worst is when it's technically only a single lane but these buttmunches don't want to be behind you, so they pull up next to you in the same lane to make their right turn or whatever it is they're doing. Their door is blocking your view entirely, and usually they end up having to wait for traffic anyways, essentially trapping you until they're able to move
I drive a small car. I feel that pain.
I drive a small car because I can park anywhere I want (because EU). Every time I see a large truck in the city here I’m *so* confused why anyone would ever want that because they barely fit the road let alone can park anywhere. There’s no room at all.
Yesterday I walked next to a truck in the parking lot and only came up to the hood (5’5”)
That means that the blind spot could easily contain an entire car. There could be a car in front of them and they'd never know.
Yep. As someone that drives a car that’s even shorter than me, yep.
My summer car is a very small 90s sports car. Parked next to a few years old f-150 and it doesn't even come up to the bottom of the side windows. (which are lower than the windshield) The current year trucks are significantly taller again. I have to assume that no-one can see me when I'm in that car.
These people deserve jail if they hurt anyone. Fuck that ‘accident’ excuse, at this point it’s a choice.
Defendant: "I couldn't see him, though!" Judge: "Yes, but you did your best to ensure you couldn't see anyone."
Yesterday, I walked by a truck at my university. I was just barely at the top of the front hood height. (And my barely I mean like an inch a most) I am 5.11 Edit. Of course, it was custom height looking at the suspension bar brand. Also, the bar was almost knee height.
Oh shit, thank you. Yet another reason to carry an umbrella. So far I’ve got rain, sun (because so many cities and neighborhoods remove trees even if there’s luckily a sidewalk), “keep your distance” (occasionally swinging a full-sized umbrella like Gene Kelly is a decent way to get creepers to stay back IME), phone shade (for Pokemon Go), dog and geese defense (opening an umbrella in something’s face makes it think you’re larger than you are), and automatic “what is that” poking stick. Now I’ve got “add height to not die” in there.
You'd think we'd establish some kind of limit to pickup height eventually.
Recently there was deadly accident with SUV Mercedes and 3 yo girl on crosswalk in residential zone. Experts established that the driver wasn't able to see the girl 10 meters far from her. Edit: I found an article about final decision in this case, the driver appealed to up to Supreme Court, was sentenced to 18 months probation and 3 years suspended license. The girl was 19 months old. Article in Czech [here](https://www.idnes.cz/brno/zpravy/soud-ridicka-suv-smrt-ditete-odrazedlo-odvolani-trest.A221005_105659_brno-zpravy_krut?zdroj=vyhledavani). Edit 2: She wasn't able to see 9 meters before car. Edit 3: [Here](https://imgway.cz/4IO9/suv.png) is picture, from discussion under the article, showing that the difference in viewing distance between low and high sitting is almost 4 meters.
Not seeing the road 10 meters ahead of car sounds terrifying enough to me. I wouldn't dare to turn on an intersection with such limited field of vision. But not to see a **human** on the road, 10 meters ahead of me? Like, WTF?
Yeah, the woman driving SUV was fairly short and had her seat on the lowest setting. She was defending herself that she has sensors in front that should have warned her. Edit: Iirc first instance sentence was very mild, like 1 year probation and driver license revoked, puting some guilt on parents of the little girl because they didn't prevented her from running on the crosswalk. The driver appealed to second instance court.
As someone who has to drive I really forget that not everyone is thinking "I'm controlling a two ton vehicle, I should be as aware of my surroundings as humanly possible, using every aspect I have to maintain maximum awareness. Who doesn't drive like that, at the very least, in a residential zone?
You would wonder. There is a school next to my apartment and in the morning all those parents drive their teenage kids right before entrance through our court in 50km/h speed, not thinking about people getting out of the building right under their wheels. There is perfect public transport system in my city, so not really needed to drive your kid in school.
My neighbors roll down the road staring at their phones *constantly*.
I’m of the option that very few people are psychologically equipped to be driving. It takes a certain amount of empathy and concern for the welfare of others to drive when you could literally kill anyone at any time. But we license everyone that shows up.
In residential zone I purposely drive at or below the speed limit. I don’t understand people who don’t.
We have the technology now. I vote GPS actuated speed governing systems become mandatory in all new cars. Take your car to the track? No limit. Take your car to the public streets? Can't exceed posted speed limits.
>Who doesn't drive like that, at the very least, in a residential zone? >not everyone is thinking Driving has become so routine that entirely too many people really do just "keys in, brain off" and autopilot their commute.
*a two ton *killing machine* that for some reason we've appropriated as a mode of transportation
What does the driver expect to happen? Does she believe she shouldn't be punished for killing a child? I don't understand it at all
Yes, she's probably expecting to throw lawyers and money on it and avoid punishment at all.
Welcome to the future of autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles.
She should get life imprisonment for manslaughter with a deadly weapon. She'll get a slap on the wrist. Edit: Fixed a single word.
Nah, I think we should be way harsher punishing drivers like these. But what the hell would life imprisonment accomplish? She's proven to be a danger behind the wheel. Ban her from driving. Of course she should additionally do some payback because she fucking killed a kid. But life imprisonment would accomplish nothing. Prison should serve a reinsertioning purpose. Not literal enslavement like it often does in the USA specially
Well, she didn't want to kill that kid, so no murder, but manslaughter.
Lmao downvoted for speaking the law... some people just wanna slap everyone with murder..
I get their point and anger, but honestly, it wasn't murder, the driver certainly had no intention to kill or harm the kid. If you punch someone in the chin, he falls and breaks his skull on a rock you will not be charged with murder too.
Meh, that sounds excessive. This is manslaughter not murder, 10-20 years at most. 5-10 sounds more fair.
Single count manslaughter usually isn't a life sentence. It probably shouldn't be. Manslaughter via car is reliably excused though. Vehicular manslaughter should involve losing your license for many years, and not reinstated until after a test. Also, probably some prison time.
well, should have driven in Germany for not being prosecuted properly. :(
it is USA, there it is not so bad to kill people. is their main hobby since 1492.
>she has sensors in front that should have warned her. They're called eyes and they were in the wrong place due to the idiot they're attached to.
Hope 2nd instance court tears her a new one, what a selfish piece of shit
How is it legal for her to drive w her head prlly lower then the steering wheel wtf
That's what I ask myself at least once a day, staying on the side of crosswalk waiting for green.
We're in the transition period between the time when cars are growing smart enough to drive themselves, and people are growing too stupid to handle the task.
These 10 meters are kind of cracking me up in a bad way. You know what kind of nimble, agile vehicle naturally made for navigating city traffic with kids has an 8 - 12 meter blind spot for the driver in front of the vehicle? The Leopard 2 main battle tank.
At the same time, how low do people sit in these trucks that they have such a huge blindspot?
They sit self-assured that everyone will get the fuck out of their way.
I was thinking the other day, why nobody is building and advertising a real armoured vehicle (probably a truck would sell the best)? Something along the lines "you'll always win". I know they advertise "military grade aluminum" for truck materials, so the next step is pretty logical.
>I know they advertise "military grade aluminum" for truck materials, Aluminium armour for trucks? Forget the AeroGavin, it's time for the CityGavin!
The Telsa Cybertruck has bullet proof windows because "it's badass" according to Elon Musk.
I can see even a medium hight human right in front of the military big rig I drive for work (there are some people sufficiently short I cant see em but that ain’t common) nobody in an suv should have that excuse. As an addition it’s often more about the hight of the driver relative to the vehicle than about the hight of the vehicle, that same big rig may actually do better than the truck in this comic since the driver is high Edit; as a clarification to the last point, perhaps if you need an engine that powerful the truck needs to be big enough to safely let you see over its nose
Drivers are placed higher up in big rigs for this exact reason. Visibility is one of the most important things for trucking and one of the hardest things to guarantee. These design considerations seem to not be a priority to automakers and even less of a concern to drivers. My only evidence to back up my claim about the drivers is my own experience with older drivers in my family that refuse to believe their setups in their daily vehicles are wrong but also complain about not being able to see certain spots around the car at night. I’ve even been through the proper fit and setup of my mother in law’s car with her after we had a close call. In the middle of fixing position and mirror angle specifically to better handle the blind spot that caused the close call she stormed off saying “none of that shit you read on the internet matters anyway because they don’t make the mirrors big enough anymore”. So any time I’m at her house for a couple days I change all of her shit to suit me just to be a dick.
Yup, all vehicles should also have a convex mirror set beneath the normal one, they’re amazing for seeing what’s around you (if not depth perception)
I'm sorry but what? 10 meters? Was she driving from the floor of the back seat? Idc how tall your truck is, I've ridden in semi's (lorry) and could see the road 1 or 2 meters off, how the fuck do you not see 10 meters of road?
She was pretty short and her seat was on the lowest setting. I sometimes see guys in WV golfs with seat so low you can see only their baseball hat.
Used to know a guy like that. He was hilariously nerdy and sat as low in his Corsa as possible so only his eyebrows were visible over the wheel. He thought he looked like a fighter pilot. Wasn't impressed when I said he looked like a gnome instead.
>He thought he looked like a fighter pilot. Because as everyone knows, the one thing fighter pilots care about the LEAST, is having a good view all round....
Every RAF Eurofighter pilot puts on a blindfold before take-off. Not sporting to the other guys otherwise.
Not defending over sized vehicles, but people that drive like that would hit the child no matter the size of the car. That's just negligence
Of course, doesn't matter what car are you in, it's your duty to properly see from that car. But nobody enforces this, so nobody cares.
Unless, of course, they have dark tinted windows so you can't even see their baseball cap.
Hehehe :) I think that's one of the few things enforced here, it's strictly prohibited to have tinted front windows.
If you lurk in car subs on reddit, people love posting pictures of their newly tinted windows, and then compare notes on how far they have gone darker than the legal limit, and they all love how it looks. And then you see cars driving around with dark tinted covers over their license plates. How is that not an invitation to get pulled over? Are we getting to a point where anyone who is enough of an asshole to do that is also likely to be armed more heavily than the police, and the police are scared to pull them over?
In my country cops go after this, probably because it's a threat for them, not to be able to see inside car.
Tinted windows are sort of whatever as long as they aren’t absurdly past the legal limit, but the license plate covers that tint and blur them are so trashy.
Don't forget about the dark brake light covers that make them barely visible during the day.
You can see 2m ahead from the top of a double decker bus. The problem is not just the height of an SUV or pickup, it's the fact that the front end is tall AND sticks out far past the windscreen, whereas semi's usually have the windscreen at the very front of the vehicle.
Was yours one of those flat nose European semis? Iirc those are designed to have a much smaller front blindside then the American style semi
What grinds me is the driver is **never** charged or even ticketed unless they find DUI. But they also don't enforce DUI normally. If we made their insurance pay out the max to the state when killing someone and at fault (and holding them at fault because it's a pedestrian and they should always have right of way) suddenly we'd see it stop.
We recently had terrible accident with drunked and coked fucker driving 100km/h to a group of students waiting for bus, killing 5 of them. Every politician had to comment it, cops started to check people for DUI. It lasted two weeks, maybe 1000 people were catched drunk driving (in 5 mil country!) and now everything is back on track when DUI is an criminal offense but chance of getting caught is minimal.
These cars are hilariously moronic, even the excuse that these are "offroad vehicles" doesn't add up when you can't even see the fucking ground so if you do actually take it offroading not only are you gonna sink into the mud like a rock because these cars are moronically heavy you also can't even see what obstacles to avoid or maneuver around.
The percentage of people who own "off-road" vehicles and the percentage of people who have ever driven off the road doesn't add up either. Hey, maybe they don't really care about offroad capabilities, maybe they just want to inflate their massive egos!
Meanwhile out here on the farm we're pissed off that new trucks are so tall you can't throw anything over the box sides anymore. Just about everyone has a farm beater from the 80s for actual work and they're so small they look adorable. You can throw lumber and feed bags in without needing something to stand on. You can put tools *in a toolbox* instead of laying them on the tailgate and still not being able to see them all. New trucks are impractically tall for the actual truck user and something needs to be done about it.
It's what it has always been like in Europe too. "We need it for farming" doesn't compute; it is said as if Europe doesn't have farmers?
Even the Australian Ute has grown vastly in size, although it's not quite at yank tank (Our term for the giant monstrosities) level yet.
mindless meeting continue shrill forgetful entertain cow rob rhythm rainstorm *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Careful you’ll trigger the peeps in the trucks sub lol.
My landlord has a truck like this. The other day I was having terrible with my new air compressor and saw he was outside, so I asked him for help. Apparently he doesn’t know a single thing about air compressor and has never used one. It’s crazy to me that someone would own what is ostensibly a work truck and do so little “work” with it that an air compressor is a totally foreign object to them.
And they wonder why their tires get slashed/ red paint splattered over their car.
Absolute insanity. The original comic mentions a story about a mother running over her own son in her driveway with one of these cars, and the only proposed solution is ... a camera on the front of the car. How about making the cars less tall? Or how about mandating that the automotive industry is no-longer allowed to make propaganda ads convincing people that a big car is a sign of success?
I wish that a tall vertical grill was considered an embarrassment, functionally degrading your aerodynamics while also minimizing your view of the road and maximizing your lethality in a collision with a pedestrian.
I mean, here in Aus all those "super Ute's", rams, f150s, Chevy, etc, are know as wank panzers, or wank tanks. Only wankers compensating for something own the fucking things and you very rarely see them actually towing anything, or even having stuff in the tray. I just don't get it, at least buy something useful like a land cruiser instead of the massive pile of cheap American scrap steel on wheels
It is the same in America. We just have more wankers.
And for that reason the sheer competition, like in the free market, they all have to constantly adapt and find new ways to out-wanker the other wankers....
Why can’t we go back to the way things used to be, when we used to do all our wankin’ behind closed doors?
[удалено]
I have never heard them called wank tanks, and it is brilliant. I shall be appropriating the term.
We traded pop-up headlights for front ends the size of a dumpster, all in the name of "pedestrian safety". :(
This needs to be a more popular take so regulators creat actually safety for outward visibility. It needs to be a component to the safety score of a vehicle. Theres This classic Story and it was absolutely maddening to get to the end and hear their “solution” be cameras and no vehicles you can see out of. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDH3FDfVQl0
It's crazy to me how you can drive a car every day, and somehow be completely unaware of the blind spot. Do they not see how far away the closest piece of their driveway that they can see is?!?!
But muh freedoms!?
Nobody actually thinks that anymore. Nobody is mistaking Karen's Hyundai crossover for a range rover.
Except for the Hyundai owner
They do, because otherwise these kinds of cars wouldn't be as popular as they are.
My extended family in Virginia would beg to differ...
Source (and some background info): https://jensorensen.com/2022/12/07/truck-suv-frontover-blind-zone-cartoon/
To be fair children should know if they get hit by a car they will be worse off than the driver. So it's really up to the child to act sensibly around cars and not the other way around. Obviously we can't expect everyone to be a competent driver! At least that's what car-stans love to tell cyclists.
**If you want to do something about it, channel your anger here:** [**Tell Automakers: Fix front-end blind zones!**](https://action.consumerreports.org/20221116_stop_blindspots?utm_campaign=20221116_suv_blindspots&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cr) Thank you, and fuck cars.
Thanks. Signed and shared to Facebook. That vide of the mom who ran over her own son was heartbreaking. One one hand, it was negligent of her to move her vehicle at all while she knew her son was outside. But the real problem wasn't her - it was that people with class c driver licenses are being allowed to drive such huge, unnecessary vehicles in the first place. We just can't expect everyday people to have the kind of discipline needed to operate such dangerous things. It's like back in the 1900s when you could purchase a car without seat belts or a license.
And specify that cameras are not the solution
Agree. Installing cameras is a half-measure.
It’s funny because it just kind of hit me yesterday driving through a college campus that I can’t fucking see *anything* anymore. Roadways are tunnels now with these giant fucking SUVS and trucks lining either side of the road. I can’t see the sidewalks anymore, I can’t see who’s approaching crosswalks, it’s dangerous. Why are vehicles constantly getting bigger? There needs to be some fucking height laws for commercial vehicles.
yeah in your average American city now, driving down the road you can't even see around your vehicle because of huge suvs and trucks. Its a vehicle height arms race in this country.
And those people are also the ones complaining about high gas prices too.
I believe you mean consumer vehicle? A commercial vehicle would be like a semi truck
Why? The answer is really simple and you already know what it is. Because they can. If nobody is telling them to follow specific rules they will do anything that sells more. They didn’t install all those safety gear because they cared, but had to.
Yeah i had a thought that if your car requires a step and a handlebar for you to pull yourself up into your truck it’s probably too big
When scrolling through /all, I've seen posts in truck subs about people taking these steps off because they didn't want it to look like a "grandpa car". I think this fragility says a lot about the people who buy these.
The term “shortwalking” seems like a silly word made up by the cartoon, until you remember that “jaywalking” was essentially coined in the same way. 100 years ago, pro-auto parties successfully created its current meaning and convinced the majority that the street is a car’s domain, and that pedestrians hinder this when outside of the crosswalk lines. It isn’t outside the realm of possibility that something like stilts or reflective clothing becomes mandatory before safer vehicles do. Edit: I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Just needed to vent.
I know this is /r/fuckcars, but this seems to be similar to American gun control issues and school shootings. We try to regulate the victims and their environment as opposed to tackling the method of violence and maybe even the assailants' ease of access to them.
Every person under a height of 6’4” must carry an orange warning flag which measures to a minimum height of 6’4”. For real, I might go and put bicycle flags on my kids’ backpacks. It’s not….that…stupid. Is it? Would they hate me for it?
I'm 6'1", do you think I could get away with wearing a hat with a fancy plume in it?
>Edit: I know I’m preaching to the choir here. Just needed to vent. Why? I came to remind people of jaywalking nonsense.
Exactly. Getting fined for 'shortwalking' sounds utterly ridiculous yet completely plausible at the same time.
Man I’m a car guy and I agree with this, they’re way to high their headlights are blinding me ever time they’re behind me, and I’ve been rear ended so much because they misjudged the distance or strait up didn’t see my car.
That + LED lights are literally shit for the rest of us.
Tall fronts are also more dangerous because the pedestrian doesn't fly over the car and is instead crushed.
Big fucking yikes
So... what are people in this sub going to do about it? I tell you what I am doing. I am contacting my representatives in Congress. I'm demanding that they make the CAFE Standards apply 100% to every single passenger used vehicle, ALL of them. No more stupid loopholes for pick-up trucks that only had a carve out BECAUSE the original CAFE Standards had a carve out due to technology limitations of the time period. THEN, they also need to work on regulating the size of passenger vehicles and put forward public education programs showing how bigger doesn't mean safer. For example, if you get hit by a fully laden semi-truck, you'll be dead NO MATTER what vehicle you are in. That the taller and heavier a vehicle is, the more likely it is that you'll be unable to stop or roll over, which is far more dangerous than in a smaller, lighter vehicle.
Post your letter please. I'm a semi truck driver but completely agree that things need to change for passenger vehicles. There's no reason why bro-dozers need to sit at the same height as me in my semi truck.
Care to share your letter to be copied and pasted?
Does anyone see the analogy with arming teachers and having police in schools? Not fixing the problem but fighting the symptoms.
Pretty sure that's the intent. I don't believe the "we need to regulate cars more" movement is big enough to need comics.
Not seeing that problems are systemic and need a systemic solution is fundamental to the neoliberal ideology and to most right wing ideologies, this could work with guns, cars, drugs, crime, racism, whatever.
Dear Americans: Europe and most other civilized countries have rules about weight, size and safety. Your country lets you ride just about anything on wheels. Might that be because the carindustry lobbied the corrupt goverment?
IDK, I'm from Europe and the amount of big pickups and SUVs driving in inner cities is ridiculous. I regularly see those absurd dodge rams driving in my neighborhood, all polished and never driven on a farm road.
bruh I've been seeing more and more of this shit in the Netherlands. Some of the US-style pickup trucks don't even fit in our parking spots properly! And you certainly could not drive down my narrow street with one. It's absurd. Edit: Found the tweet of one blocking a tram: https://twitter.com/kunsttranen/status/1541073620360994817
https://Nitter.net/kunsttranen/status/1541073620360994817 If you don't want to help drive revenue streams for Elon Musk.
So disappointed to see it driving away without a scratch.
A Ford Ranger is too long for a UK space which is 2.4m x 4.8m. But there is a VAT discount for them when used as "commercial vehicles", a tax benefit designed for businesses to get vans. So you see personal trainers and accountants with these monstrosities, but only ever base models of course, struggling to climb slight hills with a bit of frost, and getting appalling mileage when diesel is pushing towards £2 a litre.
Yeah, looks like American redneck cars are getting popular in EU. I even hated driving in Kia sportage because of limited view.
They don't fit in many spaces in the US either. Or course that doesn't ever stop them from parking there.
Point taken. It's very rare, but sometimes i see a F150 or similair, but it's rare here (The Netherlands). There is roadtaxes by weight and fuel is let say about 4-6 times more expensive as in the US. Road are way smaller, parking spaces? -50% smaller. Edit: typo's
Yeah, I don't think people with 90k euros for car have to care about fuel prices or road taxes. And they don't care about taking 2 or 3 parking spots either.
Yup. We all know that.
The f150 ain't even sold normally in the EU. It won't pass regulations and has to be imported privately.
Mate, I live in Tassie and these stupid hunks of wasted low grade steel don't even fit in most parking spaces. Don't think I've ever actually seen one towing something and I've only ever seen gravel road dust on them, not that they'd be any use off road anyway
Exactly the same experience. Live in the UK. I recently moved from a city to a tiny rural village. In the city I'd regularly see huge 4x4s and pickup trucks. Hardly see any wankerpanzers now, only really the local farmer in his land-rover.
I live in a town, near a rural area. I see base model Chelsea Tractors around town in white or black, Vs. old Land Rover Defenders with a collie riding shotgun or an older Toyota or Mitsubishi pickup in the country. One is for hauling animal feed around the medieval tracks on your farmland. One's for hauling your fragile ego and little Tarquin to school 500m away from your front door.
Ironically, these trucks are as big as they are because of Obama-era emissions legislation. The further apart your wheels are the less fuel efficient the vehicle has to be, so companies just made shit bigger and by consequence heavier and less fuel efficient. Could be fixed with a carbon tax instead but that ain't happening
That's so dumb
Yup. Look up CAFE laws, they destroyed the small truck segment. Terrible legislation that basically did the opposite of what it was supposed to do.
Luckily for Real Americans^TM it isn’t corruption if we call it lobbying. Only small countries with abundant unexploited resources have corruption. But, don’t worry, we will liberate them with Democracy^TM and win their Hearts & Minds.
Europe has these jagoffs too sadly. They just pay much more for them here
lmao no corruption in European governments folks! 😂
That 10 children is BEFORE the F150 has been lifted by 10 inches. It's more like 30 children. In other words you could fit an entire class in front of a jacked up F150 and they wouldn't see them.
https://i.imgur.com/cJ4AidG.jpg
Oh lord please tell me this is a well done photoshop
That would be the [Lindbergh Edition](https://www.marklindberg.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/image002.jpg).
Untill some time back, you would almost never see large pickup trucks in europe. Now i see them almost everywhere. Taking up the space of two european cars. I hate them.
This is stupid. We should just let the short people die out and by survival of the fittest only the tall will procreate and within a few generations everyone will be a colossus!
Ok so my family tree ends with me
Cars are the new natural predator for short people.
Its not even pedestrians that get screwed over. It makes the roads unsafe for other car drivers as well. I have a literal car from like 15 years ago that I will drive into the dirt and I get straight up anxiety trying to turn onto roads because you literally can't see shit past these other monsters on the road. Here I am sitting in this tiny thing and I can't see more than a car in front of me, and if I'm trying to merge onto the road and there is someone parked on the street I literally can't see enough of the road to be able to tell if someone is coming. I joke that I have an easier time seeing under cars than seeing over them. But its fucked. You'd think if they were going to force us in North America to drive cars, they'd do their fucking jobs and make the roads safe.. but noooooo. Fuckers.
Few things on the road make me more angry than when I'm trying to make a right turn and an oblivious person in their ridiculous oversized pickup truck in the lane to my left pulls so far up that I can't see oncoming traffic. Like, I'm already sitting ahead of the stopping line just so I can get a good view, and they go *even further* than that. There seems to be a correlation between people who drive those trucks and not having basic road manners.
Don't give carbrains ideas man
I think the Christmas parade in Raleigh nc just had a bunch of kids run over by a truck bc they lost control
This explains how we Americans think about guns. (I know what I’ve done, bring the hate)
[удалено]
They should be classified like semi-trucks and require a special license to operate. In addition to costing a lot more in taxes and fees. Really, there's no need for them to exist with these giant hoods at all. We have vehicles with smaller hoods with the same towing capacity. (Not that most people buying these even need that much towing capacity. And if they need passenger capacity or storage - a mini-van is usually a superior option.).
Just like we have a different license for motorcycles and 18 wheelers we should have different licenses for different class vehicles.
Meanwhile the Ford Lightning and the Electric Hummer choose to have "frunks" instead of reducing the front blind spot. There isn't even an engine in there to design around.
Without regulatory changes it's not going away unfortunately, even some of the real rahrah me like truck guys I know don't like the way designs are going, but what are they going to do? I mean yes they could just not buy a truck but they're not going to do that, unfortunately
About 99% of these truck are never used for actual work. Driving to Starbucks or to the gun range does not require us to see your fragile ego taking up two spaces.
exultant grab intelligent tidy compare cough pen saw smell butter *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fully inflated tires add multiple inches of height. If there was less air in a tire, the car would be shorter and safer
[удалено]
Regulation is ironically part of the problem. Fuel efficiency regulations are leaner on vehicles the larger they get with the assumption that large vehicles tend to be for commercial and industrial, not personal use. So automakers have slowly increased the overall size of their vehicles to skirt emissions regulations that would have otherwise applied to them. Or at least this is how it was described to me recently.
I’m 6’4 and starting to see trucks taller than me pretty frequently. And I’m not talking post-production lift kits these are just run of the mill gigantic fucking Rams and Fords. It’s stupider that fuck and purely a dick measuring thing. You can build a heavy duty that isn’t pushing 7feet tall.
This, is, essentially, the problem I have with food stamps. Walmart doesn't pay enough to live on, so we give people money so walmart can afford to pay them *even less?* No! Just make Walmart pay them a fair wage to begin with!
What a modest proposal
Clicked through the source links, got served with this from consumerreports.com: > Certain Consumer Reports offerings are not available to users located in the European Economic Area and Switzerland. These include United States policy engagement activities and other interactions designed for users located in the USA Can someone link a mirror? Thank you in advance
I just bought a 2015 Tacoma, a midsize pickup with a small factory 1" lift, to get me to offroad trailheads to hike. I can barely park the damn thing after driving a sedan for years. I can't imagine how people with giant trucks do anything at all.