Hmm, these huge trucks are killing pedestrians, causing worse crashes due to crash incompatibility, destroying the climate, and now smashing through guard rails and flying off cliffs. We’d better change our entire country’s infrastructure to accommodate them.
Lol you apparently didn’t read the article… it’s calling out EVs because they’re usually heavier than the ICE counterparts. Small sedans are pushing 5k pounds now being EVs. Batteries are very very heavy.
It’s worth highlighting that this study isn’t really about the merits of EVs. After all, you can buy an EV that weighs less than 5,000 pounds. You just can’t electrify your favorite already-large car—or even buy a hulking gas-powered car—and expect guardrails to work as intended. “Weight is a universal problem; it is not unique to electric vehicles,” Stolle said. “We have similar concerns about the compatibility of the biggest gas-powered cars with our guardrail system.” The 6,700-pound Chevrolet Silverado 1500 already weighs too much, based on the result from this research, and the 8,500-pound Silverado EV weighs even more.
Yes but you called out trucks like they’re the only issue. An electric leaf is almost 5k pounds…a leaf…
It doesn’t help that the first EVs most manufacturers are focusing on are their large SUVs and trucks. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 both certainly aren’t small cars in a general sense, but in the land of EVs they are. Both weigh under 4000 pounds which is less than the best selling vehicle in North America, the F150.
Totally agree, but to act like it’s only trucks pushing this weight is silly. The electric leaf is nearly 5k lbs and it’s a very small EV.
Tax the heavy cars much more, they cause more dammage in crashes and way more wear and tear in general.
Fuck that. The problem isnt that people want bigger cars. The problem is that NHTSA’s CAFE standards favor manufacture of larger cars.
CAFE slowly reduces the amount of emissions that vehicles can have, but they fucked it up: the required reductions are greatest on the smallest, most efficient cars, and lowest on the largest vehicles. Manufacturers “comply” with these standards by dropping their smallest cars from their lineup, and increasing the sizes of everything left on the market.
Fix the fucking standards to favor smaller cars, and manufacturers will follow.
It would be great if the standards could be loosened a bit to allow more sedans to exist. A modern crown vic would be awesome, but it’s impossible to make with the current rules.
Isn’t it great that we have to make every single regulation perfect without any possible loopholes because it’s just accepted fact that corporations will spend absurd sums of money to avoid having to do anything that might cut into their profit margins?
Awesome stuff.
This isn’t a loophole. This isn’t an example of inadequate pedantry. It’s not even an example of regulatory capture or corruption. This is straight up incompetence on the part of the regulators. They established an easy to meet standard, and a difficult to meet standard, and they went all Pikachu-face when the regulated manufacturers opted for the easier option.
Regulatory Incompetence like this (and malfeasance, like on the part of Ajit Pai’s FCC) are why Chevron Deference needs to be severely modified. We should be allowed to sue the NHTSA for this egregious a failure.
I don’t see how that’s a better solution than taxing heavier cars…? We can tax the sales of the vehicle directly which negatively impacts manufacturers because in the USA each vehicle dealership is brand associated rather than retailers.
For a tax to be effective for such a purpose, it has to be avoidable. They have to actually make a small car. But the CAFE standards as they currently stand prevent them from cheaply producing a CAFE compliant small car. So nobody gets the tax break on the small car, because there are no small cars to be had.
The tax approach cannot be achieved until the CAFE standards are fixed, but once we fix the CAFE standards to favor smaller cars, the problem solves itself.
CAFE works by requiring a certain percentage of the total number of a manufacturer’s vehicles to comply. Small cars are currently non-compliant. Only big cars are compliant, so they need to sell more of them. When we correct CAFE standards to favor small cars, they will need to sell small cars, and their marketing departments will get to work at adjusting consumer demand.
At least here in Cali we do. My HD truck gets an extra $500~ a year tax on top of the Gas guzzler tax I paid when new. Plus the fuel costs/taxes for that. Compared to my other cars I pay about $600 more for newal on it. The Average car is like $245 a year but the truck is like $840.
Definitely fine with paying the extra taxes though. I use more infrastructure and I also require additional strengthening of crash systems and cause road damage so I’m not opposed.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin I have to pay an extra $100/yr for registration because I drive a hybrid.
Why?
Because, I shit you not, driving a hybrid apparently costs the state too much money, because we have to fuel up less, and so they get less tax.
What the fuck.
Beats my state which passed a DC fast charge tax of nearly $3 per kwh while suspending gas taxes.
$120 in taxes per charge for a fairly normal EV. Yay.
I kindaaaa get it from the states side. The problem they’re suffering from is just shitty taxes though. Rather than taxing gas they should be taxing based on vehicles and potential infrastructure usage. Given PHEV/BEVs don’t use gas they don’t pay as much into the system for roads. Since most roads are funded through fuel taxes. Which is clearly not going to work. I’d love a system rework of registration and gas taxes to solve this as we go into an electric future.
That said, here in Cali no one is also having a conversation about smog check stations that are state mandated on gas vehicles, but soon they could be a thing of the past and I worry about the economics of keeping smog stations alive when most cars don’t “pollute” the same way anymore.
Rather than tax them a bit more, which won’t actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they’re not allowed to sell them otherwise
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
Tax heavy cars severely, and bring the smaller cars we have in Europe to the US, getting the VW Transporter and MB Sprinter would offer smaller, lighter and cheaper utility vehicles with more useful features to the US.
Why not make it a two peonged attack against heavy vehicles?
If we correct the perverse CAFE standards that push manufacturers to increase the size of their cars, the problem largely solves itself, without pissing off consumers.
The standards currently require proportionally greater decreases in emissions on smaller vehicles than larger vehicles. Manufacturers are deliberately increasing the sizes of their vehicles to qualify for the easier standards.
Requiring smaller decreases on smaller vehicles will reverse this trend. Manufacturers will need to spend considerable resources on R&D to improve the economy of larger vehicles, or slim them up so they qualify for a smaller category.
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds
Seems like yet another case of a flawed study or a flawed article based on a misunderstanding of the study.
Statements like the quote above make no sense as “withstanding a 5,000lb vehicle” makes no sense. A 5k lb vehicle traveling at 70MPH is carrying several orders of magnitude more energy than a 5k lb vehicle traveling at 5MPH. Likewise a direct, perpendicular hit will impart more energy than a glancing parallel blow, so what are they really rated for?
In any case, these guardrails are used in places where 100k lb semis are traveling at highway speeds, and there have never been any other doom and gloom articles written about that. I don’t think we need to completely rebuild our highway system simply because heavier cars exist.
That could have an adverse effect. There are processes in place for this.
The transportation administration in your area determines speed limits using several factors. Before I moved, the city I was in adjusted speed limits for several roads over a year long period. They reduced crashes by raising the limit on a handful of roads. They needed less policing for enforcement and traffic flow improved. After the study was completed, it stayed. Another example is a road they lowered the speed limit on resulted in higher crashes. So they put it back to what it was originally. And interestingly, in a construction zone where they had to lower the speed limit for the crew, they found that the lower speed limit overall, even when the crew went home, resulted in reduced crashes. For that area they just decided to keep that limit after construction was complete.
Maybe car sales taxes should scale by vehicle weight.
If you consume more of the road, you pay more
An extra 30-60 lbs is only like +1% to the weight of the whole vehicle though. You could get a larger swing by just filling up the tank in a gas/diesel car.
I’m not sure that person meant that the obese should be made to pay more in automobile taxes specifically, but rather in health insurance premiums, or some other kind of fat excise tax.
I’m of the opinion that, assuming that a licensed medical provider has performed an appropriate evaluation that excludes the diagnosis of an underlying metabolic disorder that specifically causes one to be obese, there should be remuneration made to the health system for the consequences rendered by their behavioral decisions.
Theres already precedent for this with tobacco use.
we obviously need to take money from Amtrak and public transport grants to rebuild the interstate system. Guardrails upgraded everywhere, new lanes would be added to reduce congestion
New lanes don’t reduce congestion. When you add new lanes, drivers who had previously avoided those routes suddenly think “oh more lanes, it’ll be less congested” and it just fills back up to capacity. Except it’s worse because there’s even more cars now in the extra lanes you just built. Adding lanes makes congestion worse, not better.
What we need to do is get people off the roads and onto public transportation. That’s how you reduce congestion - get people off the roads. Unfortunately that means actually investing in public transportation, so that’ll never happen in the US.
OP should have mentioned that railings will be upgraded with anti tank obstacles that way irony would have been more apparent 😅
!(for real though, I was reading your comment first and even so almost missed OP’s sarcasm)!<
It’s called induced demand
The guard rails are pretty good enough as is. When you hear of something like this it’s very often caused by lack of maintenance/poor installation/assembly. There is a guy on youtube that has videos of a whole bunch of guardrails that are simply unsafe because they are missing bolts or were assembled incorrectly.
And remember - guard rails are meant to slow you down enough to try and prevent a worse situation rather than always turning you back into the roadway to create a larger accident with other traffic or stop you completely.
