BigJohnnyHines

Whether rightly or wrongly, without a body on frame construction they were never really trying to sell that to traditional truck consumers.

How do you get to that conclusion? I clearly state I believe it to be a major factor. I just don’t get why this place is so vehemently against confounding variables. It reads the same as US propaganda but opposite. Yeah, trucks bad, US bad. It’s just clearly not so simple. The US is huge and a rural town and major city have little in common. The trend is everywhere.

You can believe what you want but data from the ETSC (European Transport Safety Council) and ERSO (European Road Safety Observatory) is pretty clear. Reducing it to little cars is really slighting what Europe has accomplished. Car size is important but there has been so much more done. Little things like moving money from heavy vehicle corridors to raised sidewalks have both immediate (like visibility of pedestrians) and emergent effects (like driving culture changes).

This place is getting worse than Reddit.

Road speed has definitely increased since then. Cars are more powerful than ever and easier to drive blindly.

Road conditions have also changed. Europe has invested heavily in well designed infrastructure with a clearly stated goal of reducing road deaths.

Large vehicles in North America are clearly a major part of the problem but trying to be this reductionist seems pretty weird.

So many other variables though. European cities are designed so much better for pedestrians and cyclists. I’d argue that the driving standards are also higher in a lot of areas. Speeds often slower too since infrastructure is designed for mixed use. In North America the actual design of most roads is almost hostile to pedestrians. It’s clearly a mix a factors.

It’s super frustrating because if you talk to anyone in a blue collar or rural area they all tell you they wish they still made small trucks. The manufacturers keep upping the size and cost adding shit nobody even asked for.

Yep, not just audio either. There is a reason the tech companies are pushing into glasses with cameras and it isn’t to make people’s lives better.

Much like how Facebook includes non-users in their social graph.

By ~~bribing~~ lobbying local politicians. As always, laws are only real when they’re enforced.