745
Feds target SUV, truck size to save pedestrian lives — ‘one of the last frontiers of vehicle safety’
(chicago.suntimes.com)
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
745 points (99.2% liked)
News
23376 readers
1977 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Since the fuel efficiency standards are based on the vehicles footprint, going a few inches bigger allows for a slightly more powerful but also slightly less fuel efficient engine. So the car is roomier, more powerful, and doesn't get penalized for lower mpg.
Small trucks are penized for not being fuel efficent enough. I really wish that lead to smaller electric or hybrid trucks like the Maverick, but people have been conviced that those smaller efficient trucks are bad.
I wish the standards were not based on size, but by vehicle type. Same end result for trucks being popular, but at least smaller trucks would be viable alternatives to sedans again.
Or hell, just base it on straight up fuel efficiency. If there's a small car that's already more fuel efficient than everything else on the market, there should be no disincentive to sell more of them, even if that fuel efficiency doesn't improve over time.
A larger vehicle is only better if it's being used to move more people (that would otherwise be using another vehicle). Maybe instead of mpg (miles per gallon) it should be pmpg (person miles per gallon), where it not only depends on the vehicle itself but how many people are expected to ride in it regularly (which the manufacturer can add seats for but is more dependent on the owner).
Going by seats would encourage the already annoying four door pickup trend since it means every truck needs to be longer to compensate. I mean, wouldn't a smaller two seater truck that gets better mileage be an improvement over a full size four door truck?
A small two door pickup that gets mileage close to a similarly sized hatchback would be awesome. But it would be hard to do in the US right now because of mpg standards being tied to size, which are also the reason so many tiny cars are underpowered to squeeze out that last few mpg.
That's what I meant about it being more dependent on the owner rather than the number of seats. You can't tell at the point of sale how many people each buyer is going to be transporting regularly, but it plays a huge role in how efficient that vehicle will ultimately be.
A four seater truck is horrible if it's just the owner riding alone in it, but pretty good if it's full and being driven instead of 4 single occupier trucks.
Though a 4 seater sedan is even better, so I was referring mostly to higher occupancy vehicles, like vans that can seat 7+. One of those could replace two sedans if filled to capacity. Or a 50 seater bus, or a 300 seater train (or whatever capacity mass transit options have).