The US government of yesteryear recognized a problem, so they drew up legislation intended to improve fuel efficiency, and thus reduce emissions. But they recognized that certain trades required large vehicles that could never be that efficient. So they built in a loophole for vehicles over a certain size not counting towards the requirements being placed manufacturers. Manufacturers being the crafty hogs they are realized if they just increased the size of everything they wouldn’t have to follow any of the rules. Now you have a company like Ford that only has one actual car ( a muscle car at that) in its lineup. Everything else are trucks suvs and crossovers.
The government of today could rewrite these rules to make the loophole require business licenses or something else, but half of them refuse to see there’s a problem at all, and half of what’s left are in the pocket of the problem makers.
What’s more interesting is that if you go overseas and look at the same brands, you can see companies like Ford and BMW selling station wagons and normal-sized cars without a single truck, if any, available for purchase.
Challenging this. Maybe the problem is the constant appetite to change your car every year? Maybe if there was a push to have consumers keep the same car for 10 years (I’ve had mine 11 now) it would be overall better for the environment. I’d argue the biggest impact on the environment around automobiles is the energy taken to create it, not to use it once it exists. This is what worries me with the push to electric. Perhaps we shouldn’t be pushing people to continue the same model of disposable vehicles except now they’re electric. Maybe we should stop people treating vehicles like they’re disposable.
This is my same belief with phones, computers, etc.
We have an underlying problem with how we treat things as disposable.
It takes significantly larger amounts of pollution, energy, resources to produce these ridiculously large vehicles that are in many many use cases not the best tool for the job of transporting 1 to 5 people. Driving a vehicle for a longer time doesn’t change this. Drive a regular sized car for 15 years or longer.
Correct me if I’m wrong but most of times when they dispose of a vehicle they sell it someone else to use right? So the only waste for that person be the rapid loss in car value after buying it new. Or are a lot of these cars ending in the dump?
Cats are a drop in the climate change bucket, once again pushing responsibility onto consumers rather than the industries that cause the majority of carbon emissions. Eliminating SUVs isn’t going to solve climate change any more than banning plastic straws.
Cars are absolutely not a drop in the climate change bucket.
Industries do cause the majority of carbon emissions and we should take them down. In the meanwhile, consumerism is still what empowers them. You cannot be an ecologist and think we will keep the same wasteful lifestyle.
I don’t think big cars are especially bad. Imho the issue is at-will vehicle license. We should give them to people who need it for work or really can’t do otherwise.
This would straight up not work for the vast majority of the US. Public transit in most areas of the country is an absolute joke. That sort of policy would basically be tantamount to revoking poor people’s ability to travel any meaningful distance.
Seriously how first world can you be? A car alone cost more money than most of the world yearly salary. Only westerners would think it’s necessary to live.
I don’t care that much about americans. They are a lost cause with 100x the footprint of a normal person. Most countries have trains. I’m speaking about normal countries, not settler-colonialists ones who covered the land they emptied with low-density labyrinth like suburbs.
But what about my truck that is 65 tonnes of American Pride?
Unexplained fires are a matter for the court!
The problem isn’t only the cars, but the people who drive those cars also tend to not respect the rules.
Bigger cars need to have more harsh road rules applied. Had a dodge ram 1500 go the wrong way around a round about as an example the other day and nearly hit me on my scooter.
If I get hit by a hatchback, I’m fine (it has happened before). Dodge ram? I’m dead
Simply requiring a truck licence and applying different rules would be enough
God I get triggered by these monstrosities. Something tells me that’s exactly why the people who buy them, buy them.
Pass the pedestrian crossing extra slowly.
Report any of them for any minor parking violation.
Make them eat shit. If I could.
Not to mention they’re tremendously dangerous for everyone who isn’t inside. The fear of dying in a car crash meets the illusion of safety, when it’s being forced to ride or drive in a car that puts your safety at risk to begin with.
