Car ownership has long been integral to the American dream. But as automakers slash the production of inexpensive models to cater to customers who can afford oversized pickups and sport utility vehicles, buyers find themselves facing sticker shock at the same time they are already frustrated by the lingering effects of high inflation.
Consumer prices rose 3.3% in March, the biggest yearly increase since May 2024, while new car prices were up 12.6% from a year ago, the Labor Department reported Friday.
New vehicles now sell for an average of nearly $50,000, up 30% in six years, and average monthly payments — based on 10% down and a 6-year note — recently hit $775. Looking for something on the cheap end? The share of vehicles listing for less than $30,000 is about 13% — down from 40% five years ago, per the car review site CarGurus.
Are there actual studies proving that the risk to your life is truly meaningfully increased, more than lets say by voluntarily mildly speeding or being distracted by talking to others in the car etc? To me this sounds a lot like paranoia where people are readily increasing the lethal risk for others (pedestrians, especially children, cyclists etc) for mildly reducing their own risk and then they use all kind of feel good ideas to justify that to themselves.
Honestly, people driving huge vehicles are usually distracted by their phones and the amount of accidents dt that are pretty high. They hit pedestrians and cyclists (both bicycles and motorbikes) as well as other autos. One has to be very alert. There are also the assholes who speed weaving in and out of traffic cutting you off that you have to be alert to. Additionally, we have a lot of drivers under the influence since pot became legal.
That relativism is just false. There are very meaningful differences between tall oversized SUVs and non-oversized regular cars. First of all, sight is significantly worse, seeing pedestrians, especially children is harder and when an accident occurs the likelihood of the victim being pushed below the car instead of landing on the hood is much higher. All of that leads to significantly higher lethality rates with SUVs, not because people in there are more distracted but because SUVs are more deadly in case of accidents and make it harder for drivers to avoid accidents.
I don’t feel like one should need a study to tell them which will win between a 2000lbs car and a 4000lbs truck that sits higher. But here you go:
Source
That’s not a study, it is a quote from a local news source (that can’t even manage to be not blocked in Europe). The quote is also oddly unspecific and the subsequent example given is of an outdated car with lacking safety features, not sold like that anymore.
Anyhow, if big cars are the problem, than the solution is not to increase the problem but to regulate deadly big cars. Why do you think car traffic lethalities in Europe are actually decreasing, even though cars are getting bigger, while in the US there is a stark increase in road lethalities even though most people are driving oversized and overweight cars?
Kelley Blue Book isn’t a local news source, or even a news source at all. They specifically deal with cars.
The article was about a yearly study done by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
Here is an even more primary source.
Since I control the world I’ll get right on making sure everybody else has a smaller car and not doing what I can currently to about my wife’s safety on the road.
Seriously, why are you even taking this position?
Ad 1: It is blocked in the EU. Usually only local offers with little international presence can’t be bothered to be GDPR compliant and block their site for the EU.
Ad3: Have you looked at your source? It looks quite a bit different from the undifferentiated claim that driving small cars leads to a “high” chance of death in an accident. Even the smallest cars have not become more dangerous than in the past. The opposite is the case, they have gotten safer even with all the oversized cars around and are nowadays safer than big cars were in 2000. What is also shown in the graph is that the longest cars (relative to width) had lower death rates but only the very longest. 2/3 of the graph show no change that looks larger than the fluctuation. The trend line is having a very poor correlation with the data points.
At the same time the death rates due to traffic accidents are exploding recently in the US. So you are trading a bit of extra safety for yourself for more deaths of others on the roads. No you don’t need to control the world. Driving safely in a car of any size is what signficantly reduces your risks for you and for others. All modern cars are very safe. Moderately oversized cars are not safer at all, extremely oversized cars are a bit safer but much unsafer for everyone else. Your choice.