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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Yea this looks misleading as fuck. Weight graph starts at 3000lbs too. Also no mention of the cars polluting the nearby environment a lot less despite getting heavier. And why measure acceleration instead of measuring brake distance, or pedestrian survivability, or crashes per million miles etc.
"A lot less" is something I'd like to have a source for, especially as the switch to SUVs and trucks is done to a large part to evade the much stricter emission norms for officially classified "cars". Emissions could be a lot lower if the SUV loophole for many of the car norms had not been invented.
SUVs are still popular and large trucks are just awful. It's a big problem in this country. But most of the cars sold aren't actual SUVs. They're CUVs. They're built on car chassis. They are heavier, which means they get worse fuel economy than their car equivalent. And they're less aerodynamic, which means they get less fuel economy than their car equivalent. And that weight means they also erode their tires faster, which of course is just worse for the environment as well as well as their brakes and other components.
That said, the difference in size compared to their sedan equivalent, or even hatchback, five-door equivalent, is not tremendous. Even efficiency, the loss is usually maybe like a couple of miles per gallon on the tests. Though I imagine if you try to hyper mile and you know baby is a throttle you can get more out of the car-shaped vehicle than you can the fake SUV/CUV shaped vehicle.
i think this is about toxic gases emissions vs CO2 emissions. while CO2 emissions have probably gone up somewhat (my guesstimate is +30% since 1970), the toxic gas emissions have almost completely gone to zero. there was a whole lot more toxic gases around in the 20th century industry and machinery, you had to cough constantly, we just don't remember it because it's comparatively clean now.
Toxic emissions have absolutely not gone down to zero. High respiration activities next to a highway still get you a solid dose of toxic stuff. Yes, it would be much worse with 1970s vehicles but it would be much better if the majority of vehicles sold today would not be able to use the regulatory SUV/truck loophole to be able to pollute more. This loophole is not just about CO2.
I witnessed myself what a huge impact on air quality it had on a street to see heavy two lane traffic gone and that had nothing to do with CO2 and it was even without that loophole you have in the US.
do you have any numbers how much toxic emission there is today compared to 1970?
No but I have a nose and lungs and I can smell the difference next to roads with jammed heavy traffic, it ain't the CO2 and I am not simply imagining pollutants.
"almost completely zero toxic emissions" is a fairy tale. Respiratory issues remain to be a bigger issue in cities for a reason.
Toxic emissions from road traffic remain as major health problem in the US: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2107402118 (not the newest data but you are not claiming that in the 10 years since, everything has changed ro the beeter,are you?), even if progress has been made. I can't wait to see those dirty combudtion engines (no matter how much you purify the exhaust) vanish from the streets. In Europe we are on the way at least even if China will ve likely faster
well sounds to me like deaths from toxic emissions sank by roughly 60% from 2008 to 2017. it's not "almost down to zero" in that time frame but a lot has happened between 1960 and 2008 too.
yeah axes should start at zero.