original post: https://feddit.org/post/10733288
Source: [email protected]
“This is why we don’t need #US #cars in #Europe”
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These cars should be banned in Europe. If your car doesn’t fit into a parking spot, it’s too big.
They don’t even fit in the parking spaces in the United States. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to sit in the parking lot for 10 minutes waiting for some dipshit to figure out how to maneuver his monster vehicle into or out of a space.
Guess it depends on how you live. I’m over here like “how do you have spots that don’t fit trucks? Every other car on the road is that size”
Context, I live in Texas.
Also also, I’ve been to the Netherlands and those spots in towns are tight fits for a normal car. Even a large full size German sedan probably wouldn’t fit. But that’s fine because almost everyone parks outside of town and uses public transportation or walks or bikes. You basically can’t drive around in town. This truck driver is just an idiot.
Not so sure about that, given that I’m pretty sure there’s a full sized Mercedes in the back row, and what to me looks like a Volvo in the middle slot, facing the camera.
I’m all for banning pick-up trucks, but @neclimdul has a point. The Mercedes you point at in the back row is literally the smallest Mercedes (A-class) and the Volvo in front row is an older full-sized wagon, which isn’t big in todays standards. A “full size” today, is definitely closer to 5m or even a little over (BMW 5-series). A mid-sized like a C class or 3-series is 4,80. Cars have grown a lot over the years!
But where @neclimdul makes a good point, if you take the largest sedans manufacturers offer, they won’t fit the spot either. For instance: Mercedes S-class is 5,20m long (for the regular version).
Still, the pick-up trucks like pictured are way bigger, for reference a RAM is 5,80m. So in this example, if we’d parked a Mercedes S-class in the same spot, it will cross the line as well, but the tram would still have enough clearance to pass.
I guess my knowledge of cars must have atrophied…
Second that. I drive a Seat Alhambra, and parking in Rotterdam is a pain in the whatever. We have turned to leave the car on the hotel parking lot and use the tram, which, incidentally, seems to be the only vehicle the cyclists actually respect, even when they basically ignore all signs and traffic lights.
Seat Alhambra
Never heard of this vehicle before. Now I want one. Wonder how much it’d cost to import it to Canada…
I use both the ability to fold over the seats and have 2m³ booth (when I do the St. Nicolas tour, or when I move models to and from exhibitions), as well as the complete foldout to seven seats (although I have only used up to six so far).
It’s a great car. And it can tow up to 1.8t in Europe, too.
Yea, I was going to say this. We have to park in the back of a lot with the tailgate over a curb to the truck fits into a space.
deleted by creator
Oh no. Someone gets caught on camera stealing a tailgate and insurance gives the truck owner a brand new factory original one and then sues the thief to recoup the expense.
The horror.
Ain’t no one gonna steal a 55 pound tailgate.
Fuck that. Those cars should be banned here in america.
How else are they gonna haul their 3 bags of groceries AND own the libs?
Don’t forget the most important thing you can do with a Ram: mod the diesel engine to spit out even more black smoke than normal while surviving smashing into something when you’re drink driving on a residential road.
Ban track yem this side of Proxima Centauri
Yeah this is the thing.
If someone can make a case for actually needing the capabilities of this vehicle… fine. That doesn’t mean you can just park wherever you want and complain that the bays are too small though.
Owners of such cars should be required to take extra training about where they can operate them, restricting them like large commercial vehicles (which these try to be)
Let them have them; don’t let them drive them in tight urban areas, don’t let them park in parking places that can’t fit them
Australia is much like America with places designed for motor vehicles. So American light trucks fit here, but many of our carparks do not allow vehicles longer than 5m to enter
longer than 5m
Not car anymore, it’s truck.
A brand new Ford Transit Custom is just over 5m, there’s probably a few station wagons that are the same.
One of the many points that prevent cybertrucks from European roads is actually the requirement for a commercial truckers licence to operate it.
They say everything is bigger in Texas. Apparently not the parking spaces. These ugly trucks don’t even fit in parking lots.
They’re not a car, they’re a truck, and can do things no passenger vehicle can do.
Trying to park a light truck in the middle of a city is entirely on the driver though.
The space in the back is smaller than the trunk a station wagon usually has. So all they can do is tow something, which any run off the mill SUV can also do. For the vast majority of actual work, we tend to use Sprinters in Europe. These trucks are completely useless here.
Vehicles like this are typically a “one Tonne” pickup, meaning they can carry a metric tonne or more in the bed. They can also tow huge amounts, 4.5 tonne or more often.
Whether the owner actually uses that capacity is another question, but they can do things no SUV or station wagon can.
A VW transporter can carry 800kg, a Mercedes Sprinter up to 1.5t and their lengths are not absolutely absurd:
(Pictured is the VW but Mercedes is roughly the same length)
The only thing left then is the towing weight, that’s limited to 2 tons for the Volkswagen, same for the Mercedes Sprinter. But I’d assume that usually people towing more than that in Europe would go for a semi truck anyway.
What are people in the US towing that weighs that much regularly?
Boats and caravans, same reason the most popular new vehicle where I live is the Ford Ranger.
Also, the person I replied to was talking about station wagons, which most definitely cannot carry 1.5 tonnes.
The thing is that large vans can also carry all that stuff and they can lock it up, protect it from the elements, and access it more easily because the floor is lower than a truck bed. They can also carry a wider variety of things since the inside of a work van is much longer and has walls to support various items. The entire benefit of a truck bed compared to a van can be defeated easily by a laying down a tarp(say, if you’re bringing in gravel) except for if you’re trying to tow a fifth-wheel or have converted the truck to be a tow-truck. I guess you could make an argument for carrying a single, small hay bale but I c’mon that’s like an American saying they need forty-five guns in case the government goes crazy while actively electing the craziest government officials; it’s clear they don’t know what they talking about and just think they’re neat but can’t simply admit it.
I watched coworkers here in Canada buy two F-150s after they attended a single track day for motorcycles. The coworker who raced regularly, though, drove a little Ford Transit and the coworker who had a small race team and actually built parts for motoGP teams had a Mercedes Metris. Watching people struggle to get a little Ninja 250 out of the F-150 was hilarious and getting my Ninja 1000, a couple hundred pounds heavier, into the Metris one time was super easy. They could have just bought a trailer like my dad did and which we towed with a Subaru Outback, later a VW Golf, and now a Subaru STi.
Trucks are largely worthless and the people who buy them very rarely use them for anything they are the only option for, often using them for things they are, in fact, greatly ill-suited to handle.
I own a 2008 Dodge Sprinter. You can put two full size round hay bales in the thing and close it, or about 15-20 of the rectangular hay bales.
Trucks only have the advantage of the ability to install and use a fifth wheel towing mount.
I’m imagining that actually getting those large haybales in there is probably a whole thing, no? Either way, the little ones would be fine for sure like you say and I’m willing to bet that even farmers aren’t exactly hauling any of it around in their trucks anyway.
Just pick it up with a special forklift attachment, and load it in the back doors
Someone in my city did this. Their car blocked the tram. The tram company ordered taxis for all passengers, and the car owner had to foot the bill.
amazing
They could just take the brightline approach for dealing with vehicles on the track.
@conditional_soup @shadowtofu
Would that mean that since the tram has the right of way on the tracks it can simply push the offending driver’s property off the tracks and any damage is legally the fault of the idiot driver?Not only that, but Brightline helpfully disassembles the offending vehicle so that any parts that are damaged in the move can easily be identified along the debris field.
Brightline is Florida’s highspeed rail line between Orlando (Theme Parks) and Miami. It opened recently and has destroyed many cars and trucks that sit at stoplights on the train tracks.
Me and the wife like to drive down from Tallahassee real early so we can spend the entire day riding the Brightline. They got a special car for those of us that buy the all-day passes. Its like tailgating at the ball game, people bring their coolers and sometimes a small grill. We always have a couple spotters watching for cars on the track ahead of us. If the cars linger on the track too long then we all start the war chant. It started out as BL! BL! BL! SMASH!, but now it has kind of morphed into BALLER! BALLER! BALLER! SMASH!
It’s like driving in a demolition derby but at like 125 mph and you don’t have to spend any time or money getting a hoopty running.I want to believe this is real but it sounds too good to not be a meme. People ride trains as a hobby in Florida?? Pics (video) or it didn’t happen.
I admit at first we all felt like filthy communists, but the rush you get from the sound of the steel wheels sliding on steel rails followed by the sound of a train obliterating a Nissan at over 90 mph is god damn addictive. Occasionally, we’ll catch a lifted pickup that has stalled on the tracks (ironically it’s almost always a Dodge Ram) and man those dumbasses universally want to blame the train, so we all get to “Stand out ground” and riddle that truck with so many bullets that it doubles in weight. Hell, that’s how I met my bff Harlan. He was working off his community service time for his 3rd DUI right there next to the track picking up litter. Next thing you know him, me, and the train engineer are seeing who can spin the rear tire of some upside down Dodge the fastest. Harlan is a damn good shot, but since he was serving community time he wasn’t allowed to carry anything bigger than a 9mm, so he definitely lost that one.
Just Florida things
Did the offender actually pay the bill? Did the tram company have to sue to get the money? Do you have a news article?
@rabber @shadowtofu
Tram company makes money by moving people. When the tram line stops moving, they lose money by the minute. 1000 Euros per minute plus the standard fee for a parking ticket seems fair. That should make the driver pay attention in the future.I mean I’m all for fining them but there’s no chance they’re getting 1000 euro/min lol
It’s a network. It’s not just the people in that tram. But all trams on that line and all people connecting through that line that are effected. And that specific track might actually run multiple lines as well. Depending on the country they might be applicable for an reimbursement fee. And lets not start about all the costs the passengers might incur… So €1000/min seems fine for me for this shit head
@mac Get found to be intentionally delaying a train in Japan and they bill you a huge amount of money. Not just for the train you delayed, it’s also all the trains on the line behind it that also get delayed. 1000 Euros a minute seem reasonable considering the lost money for the tram company and the lost time of thousands of riders. Plus reduced reputation for the reliability and punctuality of the service causes incalculable loss to the train / tram company.
I’m not going to defend this ridiculous vehicle and the extremely poor parking but there’s just no way a court would award 1,000 euros a minute.
It’s an absurd number you just picked that seems commensurate with everyone’s hatred for these cars.
Intentionally delaying a train is not analogous to parking your car on a tramway. Intent is important. Also a train might contain several hundred passengers while a tram might have a few dozen at most.
The reduced reputation as a result of this happenstance will be infinitesimals. No judge would award losses for reputation over this.
You’re really missing the whole point that these kinds of delays propagate through the whole network. All trams after this point have to stop or they start congesting the roads. So all lines that share the same track and switchovers might have to be stopped too if there aren’t enough alternatives (which tram tracks usually don’t have a lot). This can easily halt a huge part of the tram network depending where in the network this congestion is.
And when the congestion is finally resolved it might still take a long time for everything to finally run smoothly again. You’re also looking at worker overtime, depending on how long it took the car to get removed. They might not be allowed to drive further anymore because they are over their time limits, so now you have to shuffle around tram drivers too adding to more delays.
No judge in the US? Or no judge in the EU?
Bear in mind that Finland, for instance, has day fines, and a speeding ticket in 2023 netted a businessman a €121,000 fine. So expensive fines are not unknown in EU countries.
@null_dot
{Also a train might contain several hundred passengers while a tram might have a few dozen at most.}
True but what about the next one and the one after that etc etc? This driver didn’t just block the tram they blocked the line. Intent is proven by the obvious tracks that are being blocked by the car that the driver would have to have driven over to get to the parking space.Okay, how about a large fine based on wealth, 1 year community service, and a lifetime ban on owning a vehicle and driving?
Public transportation is expensive here
That’d be cool but I think people are interested to know if this actually happened
Not the case I was thinking about, but here is a similar case:
[translated] Parking in a stupid way can be expensive. In Frankfurt, the regional court has ruled that a car driver must pay for the use of 28 cabs.
[…]
The cabs collected people waiting at the stops and drove them to other stops along the route. This went on for an hour before the car parked not far from a “Please keep enough distance from the track” sign was towed away and the route was free again. […]
When the VGF then demanded 973.13 euros, 25 euros of this was a lump sum for their own expenses - and the rest was the cost of the rail replacement cabs. The court ruled out manipulation by the cab company after hearing witnesses, and the court was also unable to recognize any dilly-dallying during towing.
The car driver did not have any legal grounds for not paying for the cabs, this only went to a court because they tried to accuse the cab company.
I get why people are annoyed but I wish my truck had a sunroof.
“This is why we don’t need #US #cars in #Europe”
We don’t need this shit in the US, either. I hope that tram just rammed the fucker.
I hope the city seized the truck, auctioned it off, and fined the owner for littering.
In Estonia, at your second
speedingdrunk-driving violation they confiscate your vehicle - and if it’s an SUV they send it to Ukraine.For backstory, see latest episode of the podcast The Urbanist Agenda.
I heard this was if you get caught for drunk driving the second time, they stepped up their game damn.
You’re right, I meant drunk driving, not speeding.
But some countries take speeding pretty seriously too (as they should). In Norway you get a short jail spell for something like a 30kmh excess. In Switzerland the fines are adjusted for income so that rich speeders pay more - one guy paid over €1 million! Same system in Finland too, I believe.
Speeding and drink driving play a big part in traffic deaths and also the cost of fixing all the people who do survive is totally preventable so I am all for it. Progressive fines sound very fair too, misbehaving companies in some cases also pay a percentage of their profit so why not citizens as well.
My wealthy ex’s family would just pay the tickets, so he never learned.
I’d beg him not to go 40 in school zones.
Could be that their wealth caused them not to care about fines, if they had to pay 5% of that wealth every time they would definity take it easy in school zones.
Don’t you get deducted points for speeding? Like after a while wouldn’t he lose his license, regardless of how much he pays?
Clarification: titled “Let’s Send our Pickup Trucks to Ukraine (with Build the Lanes)”
https://podcastaddict.com/the-urbanist-agenda/episode/196176727
Since, y’know… in a few weeks it won’t be the latest one anymore.
Thank you for the podcast tip, I’d like to learn more about what you described!
This was a great episode, and was great to hear this way to use trucks…
More like melted it down for scrap
and turned it into a new tram (because it’s almost the same size as the fkn tram)
I don’t think we necessarily need to melt down the owner…
I know we’re being hyperbolic here but hard disagree – how awful would that be for everyone on-board? And absolutely not worth the damage to public infrastructure. There’s an established procedure for dealing with blockages, and I hope that process irreparably damages the truck and results in a hefty fine for the owner
Puts down Molotov cocktail… Are you sure?
Stand down, soldier. It is not yet your time.
Jump down the shelters to get away
The boys are cockin’ up their guns
Tell us general, is it party time?
If it is, can we all come?
Not great for adjacent vehicles either
Yeah exactly. Even in jest I loathe this unquestioned impulse to punish the offender without any thought to collateral. This driver’s primary offense is being oblivious to their impact on others – what message is sent if the reaction is just as oblivious?
Okay I’m done policing morals.
I hope too. But because the news headline would be “Dodge Rammed”
Driver comes running over to move the car just in time… “Ram Dodged”
The Most Holy Ram Dodge
And the orange man doesn’t understand why Europeans don’t want to buy American cars. :\
hey. we zijn allemaal Van Oranje!
Why would you even do that? Give that asshole a fat ticket for doing something like that
Trust me, if I were in charge of tramway clearance management, I would sound an annoying alarm at the vehicle, before having it be towed. Trying to tell the owner that they have until the tow truck arrives to remove the truck.
This is 100% illegal, even if there was no tram rails. City would
toetow this car if they were quick enough to respond too.They might even give it the whole foot
No i meant push it away with their toe obv
That tram could give it a good punt
I love the thought of this bozo having to pick up his wanktank from the impound yard every week because he was improperly parked.
It’s not even the fines or the embarrassment, because I’m sure this is some rich asshole who cares zero about others, but the inconvenience of having his car towed constantly would bring me so much joy…
This looks like a show down.
Tram be like:
"You’re big because the single person inside you is insecure.
I’m big because there are 100 people inside me.
We are not the same."
there are 100 people inside me.
😳
Found Annabel Chong.
Extremely fucked up. Not the quantity of men (it would have probably been extremely painful a couple hours in though. and even more so if she took a break in between), but the fact that she wasn’t paid and wasn’t fairly informed about risks.
TIL
I’ve said both in a single day. The look on the first guy’s face when the 99 others walked in was priceless.
Bro, read the room.
I’m in the US and have a 1970 Fiat 500. That little car can handle quite a few of my needs. I sometimes use it for work, when I only have estimates. Normally I drive a full size Ford E150 van.
I appreciate the Fiat because it’s so different from everything on the roads here, just fun to drive, (I’m 54, so at an age where things like lumbar support and other creature comforts are nice) and it’s just uncomfortable enough to make me really appreciate our more modern and larger vehicles (the For van, a Mercury Cougar convertible, a Dodge 2500 4x4, and a Volvo XC70).
The only real bad side is that between it’s age and the fact that they were never freaky imported into the US, parts aren’t readily available. The last time I used it for work, it broke down.
This reminds me of my sister, who hooked a 6’ trailer to her civic.
I see someone parked their emotional support truck in the normal car parking spot.
That will be expensive.
And dumb, how can you not see the tracks?They can see the tracks - they just don’t know what they are lol
(/j)
Could be partially true if they are actually from America. Lots of places have old tracks that are not in use but left in places like downtowns (sad and ironic). Definitely not an excuse but possibly some context.
I live near a (US) town that has an active trolley line down the center of the main street. People block that fucking thing all the time.
No joke, I nearly died walking across Waterlooplein a few years ago. I had no idea there were even trolley tracks there. I heard or maybe just felt something, stopped walking and turned my head - to see a trolley whizzing past about an inch away from me.
Just like how they can’t see kids when they’re peeling off their driveway.
I worked the ER for a smaller hospital in the past and one evening I was called in because a father had ran over his own son with one of those pickups. The kid ran out to greet him but the father couldn’t see his own kid because the lifted pickup’s hood was too high.
I sincerely hate those wanktanks with all my heart and soul
I will be using wanktank going forward, maybe adjusting it to “yankwanktank” for the especially egregious American monstrosities.
wank tank for the vehicle, wank tank yank for the zealots that drive them
Bloody hell, that is just sad :(
The kind of people who would just drive on when there’s no witnesses
Dodge Ram. Making bank off insecurity
Gender affirming vehicle.
Gender reaffirming vehlcle.
For some, it is doing the full job of affirmation.
Micropenis compensatior
There is something poetic about this image and how the USA “fits” in with the rest of the world.
How do you park that, feeling like you’re done, and just walk away?
There are narcissists everywhere.
