cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/40818280
If there’s anything we should take from Japan, it’s treating cars like second class citizens behind transit instead of the other way around. The cute tiny cars are more a side effect of that.
Please do. Unfortunately, he actually has no intention of doing so and is only trying to get US auto manufacturers over a barrel so he can rape them blind and push his more pollution agenda to make cars worse and less safe. It’s blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention. He says one thing to scare a market into a panic so they bow down and kiss the ring. I can’t believe y’all are this dense?!
I think it’s slightly more nefarious than just narcissism. A bunch of people trading, manipulating the market, trading again, then undoing it.
Tarrifs usually need to be planned a couple of years ahead, since it affects logistics, etc. Trump’s administration irresponsibly announces mindbogglingly significant changes to tarrifs, with almost immediate effect, then undoes it over the weekend because “it was a misunderstanding”, or some other flavor of incompetence.
If you all did even the slightest bit of research you’d see that kei cars are significantly less safe than regular cars and that’s due mostly to their design and size, not just because of the presence of bigger cars on the road.
This community LOVES cars, I’ve never seen such rabid love of cars. You all just hate big cars.
I drive what amounts to a Kei car, it seats 4, it’s about 3.5m long, weighs just over 1000kg.
It’s not so bad if you drive conservatively, remind your family every day that you love them, and update your will every year.
Yeah Fred sucks some years and other years he doesn’t suck.
Maybe a progressive federal tax based on some ratio of weight/seats/length, or some thing like that, with exceptions for commercial use could incentive cars with saner dimensions.
Target practice for all those hamster-dicked macho men in their giant ass trucks which they don’t even use as trucks.
Get rid of the big fucking trucks first
We already have motorcycles. No reason not to brinng in Kei trucks.
The Japanese charmed the fuck out of him.
Imagine a Democrat bringing Kei trucks to America. Fox News would’ve been holding rolling coal rallies with F-450 Super Doody.
Also imagine a Democrat rescheduling marijuana.
Only Nixon could go to China, as they say.
Because if a Democrat had tried to normalize relations between the US and Maoist China the Republicans would have crucified him. But when their own leader tells them to do it, it suddenly becomes a great idea.
If Republicans didn’t have the principle of groveling to whoever’s in charge of their party, they’d have no principles at all.
“It’s easy to want to drive one of these cute kei cars. It’s another thing to put your family in them and travel down the highway at 70 mph between a Suburban and an F-150,” said Tifani Sadek, director of the University of Michigan Law School’s Law and Mobility Program.
Making sure people can’t get small car because of big car does sounds like concern about safety at first, but it’s just a hidden way to say car need to be bigger and bigger, hence throwing safety of everyone else out the window and stop people from having preferences. Where’s the freedom fighter when you need it.
And why do they call her an “expert” when her main job is teaching anf study about law and not safety. Her opinion is not more valuable than mine.
Yeah, but this is a legitimate concern in the US.
In most of the world, safety checks for cars include making sure that they are safe enough for people outside the car. There are rules about crumple zones and sharp edges, that effect how they hit pedestrians, and what they can do to other cars.
You can’t drive a cyber truck in Europe or the UK. In the US, it’s a free for all.
If you want smaller cars/trucks back on the road, you need to copy the safety laws from countries where people drive small cars.
I fucking hate when people say they prefer an SUV or a truck because they feel safer or because of the “increased visibility”. It especially bugs me coming from people who generally hold more progressive views because one of the reasons driving is so dangerous is due to the proliferation of large vehicles, so what they are essentially saying is very analogous to “the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun”.
Different visibility though. When I was younger and everyone drove similar sized cars, you had much better visibility while driving since you could see through or around everything. Now too many vehicles are just huge blocks of steel: cant see beyond the car in front of you, can’t see next to you, can’t see behind you past that wall of steel. It’s an “arms race” to prevent others from blocking your view.
Consider driving up to an intersection, then a huge truck pulls up in the other lane: now you can’t see and may have to wait for him to go just to be able to see. And of course if you still can’t turn, there may be another huge truck pulling up to block your sight linesagain. Very frustrating. UCertainly the fact that stop lines are ignored is part of the problem, but if my car were the same height as yours, at least I’d behave a partial view
Not to mention they will be the one that causing others visibility issue…
Sounds to me like those oversized cars are a safety risk and something should be done about that
And why do they call her an “expert” when her main job is teaching anf study about law and not safety. Her opinion is not more valuable than mine.
Her opinion is more valuable than yours because she’s an expert on crash risk and liability, and she’s commenting on the risk of driving these cars.
Everyone here is overlooking the fact that these cars are significantly less safe. They’re not just unsafe because of the presence of bigger cars on the roads (although yes, that’s part of it), they also have much smaller crumple zones and they lack a lot of basic safety features (e.g., the article mentions that many of them don’t even have airbags).
The article also quotes two economics professors (“experts” on consumer behavior) that say they’re purchased as additional vehicles, not to replace primary vehicles.
So we’d end up with more deaths and injuries from car crashes, more cars on our roads and more demand for parking spaces. But they’re “cute” so I guess it’s worth it.
They are extremely safe in the rest of the world. The problem isnt the car, its other shit
In the U.S, there’s at least one challenge to consider, that you could cross many of the world’s countries in the same time you cross some of our states. Tiny cars work really well in Japan because they have a functioning and modern mass transit system, and not a whole ton of landmass that needs to be traversed somewhat quickly by highway alone.
(Yeah. Quite jealous lol)
I imagine their vehicles don’t really need powerful engines either, to reach practical speeds.
It’s almost like we should have “city/town cars” and rarer “highway-only cars” as separate vehicle classes, but. . .that would likely just lead to the necessity of people having both, and we have too many cars as is lol.
Or even, gasp, transit and walkability
Sure would be freaking nice. I very much wish cities were significantly more walkable and compact, and cars were reserved mainly for road trips!
Going anywhere feels like the traffic commute is a big unpleasant chunk of the day.
The US has pretty low speed limits in most areas.
Most Kei Cars can reach 140km/h (87.5mph), which is faster than any speed limit I can find in the US.
If you don’t have to move a massive amount of truck, a small engine can go a long way.
Btw, my first car was a tiny Peugeot 106 with 42 HP. I had no problem getting up to the 130km/h (81.25mph) speed limit on the highways in my country, and the fastest I have ever gone with that car was 160km/h (100mph).
Modern Kei cars have about 50% more power than that Peugeot 106.
Lol, have fun going 87.5 mph in a kei car. Absolute death trap if you get into an accident in one of those shitboxes at that speed.
Compared to US trucks, Kei cars at least have to pass crash tests.
China and India both prove your ignorant comment completely wrong.
American exceptionalism at its finest, give us all a break.
Ah yes, India and China, both well known for building massive sprawling suburban developments instead of increasing urban density, horrible mass transit, and big box stores alongside Euclidean Zoning regulations which isolate residential, commercial, and manufacturing into their own zoning types which must be removed from each other.
Give us all a break from your ignorant hate-boner and start hating America for the right reasons: the shitty situation that car companies have put the infrastructure of the entire country into that makes small cars impractical for much of the population and any other options a mere dream.
Where I live, things are spread so far apart that we don’t measure things in terms of distance, we measure them in terms of the time it takes to drive there. It’s not 2 kilometers to the closest grocery store, it’s 10-15 minutes without traffic. It’s not 81 kilometers to the closest city from my suburban town, it’s an hour and a half if you’re lucky and more likely two hours away.
Bro his point absolutely collapses and makes no sense. Every single criticism against America cannot be defended due to the countries size, that makes no sense. Especially when you have countries the same size and larger doing many things (especially transportation) much better and more efficiently. America is falling so far behind the rest of the world it’s a joke.
Read my comment again. The point isn’t just the size of the country - it’s the shitty car-centric design philosophy that goes alongside the size of the country.
From a lack of urban density to a lack of basic public transit options to the fact that local businesses have been destroyed in favor of large shopping centers/companies to zoning regulations favoring separating uses into different locations (like moving groceries and restaurants outside of residential areas and into commercial centers), it all combines to make a singularity of a shitty situation.
Hell, even our city cores are basically desolate and dying because they’re all offices and strangled from any other kind of traffic by highway infrastructure that cuts the city’s central districts off from where people actually live, so the only time businesses see customers is basically from commuters on their way in or out of work and buying lunch.
So it’s not “American exceptionalism” that says that these cars wouldn’t work here because the country is so big, it’s that the shitty urban planning with its focus on cars and low population density has made it incredibly difficult to live without a big car. In most other countries, people often live within 5 minutes of a grocery store because they’re generally inside a residential area. In the US, grocery stores are so out of the way that most people go shopping for groceries in a trip specifically for that purpose once every week or two. It’s just generally impractical to do otherwise unless your commute happens to pass by a grocery store. The closest place to buy groceries for me is 10-15 minutes down the highway, the next closest is 20-30 in the opposite direction, and my only other option is a sandwich shop/deli.
That’s an interesting point to consider, actually.
I was in the frame of mind of comparing the U.S vs. Japan’s situation, since that’s mainly what the article was about.
Do China and India both have a large market for tiny vehicles for interstate travel? Do those have airbags and adequate crumple zones and such? (I think that might’ve been a separate thread) I’d like to see how they handle it.
You didn’t need to be a smug ass about it to a total stranger though. :) The internet isn’t strictly a friend-or-foe dichotomy. Sometimes people are just incorrect. Lol
Anyway, thanks for your insight. Hope you have a good one. <3
Have you heard of the Tuktuk class? That’s the most popular kind of car in India, and it’s much smaller than Kei cars.
Do China and India both have a large market for tiny vehicles for interstate travel?
Depends on the province and even the city, some highways ban 3wheelers/slower cars, but in general yes, and the random models I just looked up had airbags, idk about crumplezone effectiveness.
4 wheel EVs are more common in China than the classic gas-powered Kei van these days, but you see those around too.
They typically max out at ~100kmh, I dont think they have huge range, but at least 90 minutes on a charge. They’re more spacious on the inside than they look.
Did you even read my comment? These cars are unsafe because of their design and the fact that they lack a lot of basic safety features.
This community really is a bunch of whiny children.
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Now replace the word kei car with toddler/pedestrian and compare your big car data. I think you have something new safety issues to campaign for. Congratulations
She was specifically talking about high speeds on the interstate - if there is a toddler or pedestrian in this situation, then even something as small ad a motorcycle could cause a deadly crash.
I am also anti-big car, but if there are things that the manufacturer can do to make these kei cars safer (e.g., increase crumple zones and add airbags) then I don’t see why they shouldn’t do that. Those are reasonable asks
In fairness, these cars were designed for environments with narrow, winding highways, not large straightaways like US interstates. They’re going to be better at sharp turns and fast braking than an F150.
I think as long as drivers go in aware of the risks (like motorcyclists) it should be fine, but I don’t think we should ignore that those risks exist. I would absolutely get one of these cars, but I am also a careful driver and don’t have to get on the interstate for my daily commute. That doesn’t fit every US driver.
@UltraMagnus @frizzo One thing we need to do is allow cities to ban personal vehicles over a certain size within their dense urban cores to cut down on crash danger, property damage, and congestion and other nuisances due to oversized vehicles parked where they don’t fit. That way someone who lives an urban lifestyle could choose a minimalist car with less concern about mixing it up with monster trucks on their daily errands.
That sounds tricky to implement, but I’m not strictly opposed. I’ve always been more of the opinion that some streets should just be converted to people-only altogether, at least in my downtown (there’s one street that gets closed to traffic once/week for the farmer’s market anyways…).
In Europe there are quite a few cities that ban cars that don’t meet certain emmission standards. Most big trucks likely fall under these bans, but it would also not hard to ban cars larger than a certain size.
These European citizens usually have exceptions for professional use and stuff like that, so that’s not too hard to do either.
Same goes with pedestrian zones, which are also very common in most European cities.
@UltraMagnus @frizzo Particularly for 2+ car households, a family could trade one of their midsized sedans or SUVs for a kei car and use the bigger one when they go on a weekend road trip or one of them travels out of town on business.
Pick which you would rather me run over your loved one with. Ford 150 raptor with brush guard or a kei truck. The next question is kei truck or a scooter. I’m sure it would destroy our economy to switch to safe reliable public transportation. But keep on thinking the same way your government education propagandized you, how are those school shootings coming along? Better now? I imagine the numbers are lower? /S
Did you read what I wrote? I am in favor of Kei trucks. I just want them to put in better crumple zones and airbags first.
Do you disagree with airbags? I really don’t know what you’re getting at. I know you threw on the /s at the end but that still doesn’t make your post make sense.
Yeah, but at that point, don’t you have something like the Honda fit? Cars that already are sold in the us, but don’t do well? We don’t need a new class of vehicles as much as we need to encourage better choices among the ones we already have
I do disagree with airbags cars should be less safe for drivers.
Even then, it’s really typical “it won’t work here”, which imo she’s right, because it’s the US of the A and american culture is one huge problem. Kei car is popular in Japan, yet the traffic fatality is waaaaaay lower than USA. Kinda makes one wonder what is actually the problem there.
It’s more an indictment of the average American driver.
Even broken clock is right once a day…
Assuming it’s a 12 hour clock, a broken clock is right twice a day
A stopped 12-hour analog clock is right twice a day. A broken clock can be right any non-negative integer number of times per day.
And Trump also helped finish off the penny, so that makes twice anyway.
I loved these little boxy cars when I was in Japan. I’m all for this!
I just want something akin to my late Honda Element. Loved that vehicle. (Even if it was a pain to work on!)
They refuse to make another like it!
I see a lot of boxy cars like that which seem to be Japan-only! I’d like to see more come here. (Maybe they could upsize a tiny bit for the REALLY long drives in the U.S haha.)
They refuse to make another like it!
Unfortunately, thank CAFE regulations. It’s basically impossible to make a tall boxy car in the US that meet the regulations, because fuel efficiency targets are based almost purely on how long and wide the car is. It’s way easier to make a car bigger than it is to make it more fuel efficient, so unfortunately that’s what manufactures have to target.
While I’m all for efficiency regulations, CAFE is so unbelievably stupid that it desperately needs to be reworked.
I don’t hate the idea of making Kei cars available for niche needs. I live in a small town and I can commute and get groceries without ever going on the highway. The town is too small for public transit to be any good (seriously it takes a 1 hour bus ride with transfers for a drive that would take 12 minutes in a car). But a kei car would be perfect for this.
Also kei trucks are amazing. If it can convince some people to not daily drive a huge pickup truck just in case they need to move a couch one day it would be worth it.
When I was in nyc a few weeks ago, I saw Amazon delivery cargo bicycles/tricycles that seemed to work great in that environment, and despite the weather. I’m sure a big part of it was the protected bike lanes are everywhere, but delivery by those must be much faster and safer than trying to navigate a truck across Manhattan. Some of those were as big as Kei cars
I find that people who own big trucks are also happy when they get the opportunity to use the big truck to help others move furniture. It’s like a boat - always better to know someone who owns a boat rather than own the boat
Really? They’re not too cute? 🤔
Sounds very America first.
I’m actually not sure if you’re being sarcastic or not. Because it would be a huge boon to America if we could bring kei cars here - along with adjusting our manufacturing to produce them.
Oh those cars don’t go 70 mph very easily. Yeah maybe you could do it if you have a turbocharged one and then your engine will be fried in a few months
Eh it’ll sit in traffic like the rest of ‘em just fine.
Nah, i frequently see a 1000cc non-turbo car goes at around 100/110kmph on highway. They’re pretty much capable to do that. Not stable though.
I know someone with a Ford Ka+ (1l/1000cc with around 80hp), can easily do 140km/h without feeling unstable. But it definitly is bigger than a kei-car, and I think kei-cars are limited to 660cc?
I’m mostly refer to daihatsu mira, a kei car that sometime fit with 850cc and 1000cc engine. Narrower than ford ka, which explain the stability. Very popular in my country at the time. Used to drive the L200 with 660cc engine and it’s pretty wobbly on 120kmph, and you can feel the turbulence when someone overtaking you. Fun car though, great for city driving, parking with this is never a problem.
