Colin Furze had the solution for cyclists three years ago: https://youtu.be/vZFDNR9V5Nc
Trucks are commercial vehicles. You need them for towing, hauling and other construction related activities. License, permit and tax them as such. If you have a huge boat or RV you need to tow, get and pay for a permit. Have the taxes be based on mileage so the more they’re used, the more expensive it is. We invented weigh stations to make trucks compensate for the additional strain they put on roads. Same for these trucks. That’ll help prevent them from being daily drivers.
idk if it’s an American thing, but please stop calling them trucks. Trucks are actual freight hauling industrial vehicles. This is just a family car with a bucket on the back. Call it a ute or whatever.
Ute used to refer to a 2 door vehicle with a bed based on a car chassis. Traditional utes are dying out even in Australia and New Zealand.
The American term “pickup truck” is a better term for these new vehicles built on their own oversized “light truck” chassis.
“pickup truck” is the term that refers to them. It’s pretty unambiguous I think.
Truck is just slang for pickup truck. Ute as a term isn’t really a thing in the US. Coup utilities like an El Camino or Subaru Baja feel pretty distinct from modern American pickups though. It’d be weird to put them in the same category given how different they are in both form and function.
Further, even if you have your boat or RV, relatively “smaller” vehicles can tow them confidently. A Santa Cruz is sized consistently with the pickup trucks of the past and can tow 5,000 lbs. There’s a lot of SUVs about that same size that can tow that much or more, if you don’t need a bed.
Further, the biggest reason these smaller vehicles are constrained on how much they tow is the American expedition that you can slap on your 5,000 lb trailer and drive 75 mph down the road. In Europe many cars have significantly higher towing capacities for exact same model as the American version, owing to the speed limits imposed on trailering.
The ridiculous “must look like a semi” pickup truck situation needs to pass. Those trucks have a purpose, but for it to be a likely “default” choice for a household is silly.
This is literally what the gas tax is for - it’s something like 40 cents per gallon in NC. The worse your gas mileage, the more you pay.
40 cents per gallon, aka fuck all.
Cool. Let’s do another for commercial vehicles and apply it to global warming.
Regulation? That’s communism and we won’t have any of that around here.
This comic was made by a pathetic, jealous shortwalker
we need to give the children SUVs so they can fight back
IRL Rocket League let’s go!
deleted by creator
This is a distinctly North American issue. Pickup trucks either don’t exist in Europe or are not insanely oversized. I mean, pickups often looks North American drivers: bloated, unhealthy, taking up too much room on the planet. Because of the narrow streets in Europe you see tiny lorries managing to carry the same load as the F350s. But how is that possible you ask? Because those giant pickups are all aesthetics for “bigger is better” Americans and has nothing to do with mechanics or functionality.
…my wife’s `97 ranger single-cab was a fantastic utilitarian truck; after the wheels finally fell off we were disappointed that nothing so small + simple was produced any longer, so we replaced it with a glorious mazda 2 hatchback; sadly those are gone now, too, replaced by bloated crossovers…
I know someone who works for one of the American car manufacturers who claimed they couldn’t afford to make small trucks. They are more complex because of the tighter regulations so they couldn’t make them much cheaper than big ones. Who’s going to buy a small truck when a big one coasts only a little more?
I don’t know how much of that is true, but the effects of looser regulations for bigger vehicles are pretty clear
…my wife’s '97 ranger cost $10,000 new from the dealership: bare-bones base model, straight four, stick shift, rear-wheel-drive, air conditioning, and crank windows, which adjusted for inflation would be $19,000 today…by comparison, the cheapest, least-bloated ranger you can buy today starts at $33,000, although a base-model maverick can be had $25,000 if you’re willing to consider a four-foot unibody a pickup truck…
…methinks that’s a lot more about profit margins the manufacturers are willing to accept than what’s technically feasible in today’s market…
that’s a weird way of phrasing “the industry took advantage of regulatory capture to carve out a loophole for larger trucks”
If all the regulators are captured, then it seems rather redundant to state that everytime I talk about something regulators did.
It has been explained that tow and payload capacity is mostly due to regulations by the NHTSA, but the boxy shape and lifted (by factory) of these new trucks are all american stupid machismo.
deleted by creator
Although I have to say I do see more oversized trucks in the UK than on the mainland.
But then again, many people here would argue they don’t live in Europe.
I’m in the UK, yesterday I saw some guy with an imported F150 in a local supermarket car park. Even in a parent and child space it didn’t fit and he looked like an absolute knob head.
Whoops, that was me for a while because I was too stubborn to sell it before moving to England. It mostly sat in the driveway because it was such a pain to park anywhere and wouldn’t fit through the garage door. I’ve since shipped it back to the Southwestern US where it’s average sized.
I hope someone said “You can’t park there mate” to him.
Imagine that thing coming down one of the many narrow hedge lined country lanes at you.
American greed and gluttony can be quite astonishing sometimes.
It’s becoming an issue in Australia. Most people drive cars that are twice as big as they need to be.
I was in Tokyo last week and the majority of cars were small. The most common had 660cc engines and weighed less than 1000kg.
I’m seeing more and more large vehicles in Japan. I don’t think it will become an issue as much as it is in the West due to less car dependency, small roads and the weak yen making fuel rather expensive right now, but just around Kyoto I keep seeing those stupid Mercedes G Wagon things and some kind of large Jeep all over the place. There is also a large Toyota Land Cruiser thing that I see from time to time, but it’s less popular.
Smaller car SUVs are fairly common though, and just the other day a friend drove me to a barbeque in his SUV thing that he got to replace his perfectly fine and nice previous car. It seemed really unwieldy on many of the country roads he was driving, and he frequently had to pull over to the side of the road in order to pass cars coming the other way. When I asked about it, he said he got it because he often has to drive business customers around, so he mostly just thinks having a stupid big car looks classy and respectable.
I saw a person driving an OG (civilian) hummer when I was in Japan several months ago. The juxtapositions between it and a sea of kei cars was hilarious.
It is crazy and undermining years of progress towards reduced emissions and better road safety. I have no idea why these don’t attract a massive tax.
Vehicle fuel economy is regulated for all new vehicles in the US. There is a curve that as the vehicle gets bigger, the less fuel efficient it needs to be. So cars in the US will continue to get bigger because it is cheaper than making them more fuel efficient.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-are-fuel-economy-regulations-to-blame
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
“But that would hurt businesses who rely on these vehicles to get work done!”
-idiots forgetting that no work will get done if our planet becomes uninhabitable
That was an interesting read. I’m from Europe and unfortunately the trend of bigger and bigger cars has made it’s way here too. Not as much as in the US but still. It really encroaches on both space of pedestrians and cyclists when a dozen of them are parked in a narrow alley/street. Also makes it very hard to see children weaving through the gaps. I think consumer vehicles that are too big should simply be zoned out in inner cities where space is limited as is. Every year the cars grow bigger but the streets stay the same.
I love driving my Renault Zoe into a Costco bay. I can swing the door all the way open and not even come close the car next to me 😂
Europe also got infected with the tiny peewee syndrome. Or at least Belgium has. I see Dodge Rams almost every day. For years you could buy a pickup in Belgium and pay less road tax than someone with a small hatchback. This year they finally changed the rules but the damage is done. And the pickups that were already registered continue to pay the low tax.
I seem to recall seeing a Hummer H2 recently and being astounded that it looked not only “normal”, but even a bit on the small side.
More and more of these are coming into Australia. They carry extremely small dick vibes. They are fucking annoying how much road space they take up. It’s comical watching them drive around a car park. My friend bought a RAM and his personality changed with it in that he actually belittles our cars and kind of acts like we are weak?! He works as a corporate job and has absolutely no need for such a car apart from helping his inferiority complex. Now I can’t help but dislike anyone who has one of these.
Ridiculous
They’re popping up here in the UK too. Our winding pre-industrial roads really aren’t big enough for these road tanks, they constantly get in the way. They’re even too big for a lot of parking spaces, you see them spilling over all the time.
Regulate the market? What are you, some kind of communist?
This shit is the direct consequence of regulation, not lack of it!
I’m talking about both CAFE standards that encourage manufacturers to build big vehicles to fit in the “light truck” loophole, and (infinitely more importantly!) the zoning regulations that led to all the car dependency in the fucking first place!
The problem is that the regulations drop off in this one particular niche that requires/encourages larger vehicles, not that the regulations exist in the first place.
What part of…
and (infinitely more importantly!) the zoning regulations that led to all the car dependency in the fucking first place!
…did you and the idiots who upvoted you not understand?
Ironically, trucks have gotten larger precisely because of regulation. In particular, emissions standards are tied to vehicle size. So if you make your vehicles bigger and bigger, you don’t have to make them more efficient.
Also, regulation makes it difficult to import small Japanese kei trucks, and regulation is the biggest reason that the Ford F series truck is the single most popular model of vehicle in the US. In particular, we’ve taxed foreign-built trucks at 25% since the mid 60s, so there’s dramatically fewer models of truck than SUV or cars.
And the Hilux isn’t available in the US. I use one as my daily driver. Seats four, has a useable bed, hauls anything I throw at it, gets car MPGs, and is narrower than a Camry. It is as much pickup truck as pretty much anyone really needs.
The Hilux and the older Tacoma are basically the same truck with different trim packages.
In particular, emissions standards are tied to vehicle size
this definitely goes on the short list of “most idiotic laws ever”, courtesy of your local car industry lobbyist
Yet more evidence of how effective big government is when regulatory capture is a thing.
the difference between regulation and jokes passed off as regulations
Meanwhile, builds the largest highway network in the world, many even in cities; maintain shitload of free parking; also enforces minimum parking requirements, all at the expense of tax payer.
People without cars are literally forced to pay to make everyone’s life worse.
FREEDOM!
Don’t forget the Freedom™ zoning laws that make sure it’s illegal for any American to build any filthy communist multi-family homes on their own private property! It’s communist to grant private citizens freedom and property rights!
And even when they can build stuff on their PRIVATELY OWNED TERRAIN, they damn better follow the rules and make their house look EXACTLY EQUAL to every other house on the street. Now that’s real red-blooded 'murican capitalism’n freedom, baby!
You know it’s freedom when you’re not allowed to express yourself or be unique in any way whatsoever! Creativity is communism! I ain’t no special snowflake who needs to be unique and special like those dang woke libs commies!
Doesn’t most of that come from taxes on fuel?
In some state, yes, if by “most” you mean “more than 50% of road expense is paid by toll and car related taxes”.
But that is still a huge percentage not covered by tax for car users, requiring other foundings to cover them. The highest percentage paid by user tax and toll is not even 70% in all the U.S. states.
Not to mention many state dont even cover 50%; some only cover as low as 19% or even 12%.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/mapping-how-u-s-states-pay-for-roads
Well, we all benefit from the road system even if we ourselves don’t drive, so I guess it’s fair.
It depends, in a country where the road system makes sense, sure. In rural area where every road serves a purpose: connecting business to transport goods, sure.
But excessive roads in cities and suburbs? No. Many roads in city and suburbs of the U.S. should be closed for cars, and be bike, bus, and emergency vehicles only. Since cars either don’t use them that much or just don’t have good experience on them because of the congestions. This also saves road maintainance, enables a smoother experience in transport and emergency vehicles, controls emission, and encourage a health life style in general.
It is again about the right tools for the job. A loaded van to transport fruit to the local farmer’s market, emergency vehicles, these are times where cars are the right tools. On the other hand, F150 is not the right tool to get a Mcdonald’s drive through for one.
When I found out about this after Climate Town’s video on the subject, I was so furious!!!
Yet it is the EPA regulations on emissions by vehicle wheelbase that have led manufacturers to continuously increase size rather than reduce emissions. Great job…
That’s because the auto industry realized there was a lucrative loophole in the regs and has since successfully lobbied to keep it in place. Basically it’s a type of regulatory capture.
It’s almost as if government regulation is a problem.
You’re partly right. The implementation of government regulation is a problem. Lawmakers are, for the most part, absolutely incompetent when it comes to making effective regulation.
So perhaps the idea that government regulation will go as expected is what’s wrong.
Perhaps when new regulation is considered, one should try to imagine ways it could go wrong, if implemented by fallible people in chaotic organizations.
It is always a problem.
It’s not that simple. In the US at least it’s more of a case of standards that created an accidental loophole, which could have been closed quickly, but because car manufacturers found it so profitable they have fought ever since to keep the rules from being revised. When the original cafe standards were passed trucks were actual utilitarian vehicles and CAFE did a lot to raise average mileage. It’s time to stop exempting trucks and SUVs.
It’s always some particular thing, but the pattern is clear. Government lacks the agility to correct its own mistakes, and they get carved in stone and last for years or decades before the mistakes are corrected.
Government is like a child who places his hand on the stove, and then must get consensus among every neuron in his brain before removing the hand. Someone then says “government tends to burn its hands on the stove” and someone else says “yes but only because of how stupidly the reflex was handled”.
In reality, a child who puts his hand on the stove benefits from the decentralized nervous system. The decision to whip the hand back off the stove is made at the spine, before the brain is aware.
Excessive government regulation mandates not only constraints and goals, but methods of implementation. And again, and again, and again, our society ends up with third degree burns as a result of government ordering the hand onto the stove, then lacking the efficiency to bring it back off again.
It is, but largely because money in politics and regulatory capture have made the machine work against the people.
Are you saying government regulation as it is now is a problem, or are you suggesting that in a truly free market the car companies would stop making giant trucks despite it being their bestseller?
I’m saying two wrongs don’t make a right.
Incoherent
Word
Generally speaking, government regulation has the property of producing problems like this one: it slices the world into categories, and those get set as rigid law.
But real world success comes from real time modification of categories, the merging and splitting of categories into whatever’s most useful. To kitchen designer, a cabinet is either a wall or a base cabinet. To a gunfighter, a cabinet is either solid cover or insufficient. To a cat, a cabinet is either rough enough to hook his claws into and climb, or not. To a kid, a cabinet is either a good place to hide during hide-and-seek, or not.
Categories need to be variable based on the goals at hand.
This thing with the truck design forced to fit a local maximum of value within the constraints created by those categories, is yet another example of the same thing happening.
In simpler terms, people need to be free to make decisions in order to produce value and things that work well. Excessive government regulation prevents those choices or makes their context artificial. The result can be absurdity at best, and utter failure and ruin at worst.
Yep, that’s it exactly!
Directly regulating the size isn’t the only possibility though, huge cars are really rare in the EU even though there isn’t anything prohibiting you from buying them. You just won’t fit anywhere with one if you do :)
Thing is, the size is already regulated. The bigger the car is, more emmisions are allowed.
This cars are getting bigger because of regulation.
American perspective: The RAM fits just fine, shame that that railcar doesn’t fit.
Depends i see, every suv as needlesly huge. And you definitly see them everywhere
Ahah love the pic u linked of one blocking a tram. The regulators would surely be on their ass for blocking stuff like that.
Sad thing is as these become more common they’ll pressure the right people to change the infrastructure around their bigger cars.
I’ll just leave this here…
When Michael Winslow drives a cruck!
This arms race applies to the vehicles themselves, too. Gotta get a big enough truck so I can see the road around traffic!
Literally people feel safer in larger vehicles because of all of the large vehicles on the road. It’s a positive feedback loop
Marge Simpson did a rollover knowing an SUV can’t corner to save the day in that episode
