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My siblings in sin, American cars and street scapes are dangerous for everyone.
American safety standards have led to an insane game of cat an mouse wherein I need my car to be bigger to keep me safe. But my bigger car is more dangerous to you. So you need a bigger car to protect yourself from my dangerously large car. But now I need a bigger car to protect me from your giant car.
And 30 years later everyone is driving around a 60 thousand dollar crumple zone so tall it can't see pedestrians over the hood and needs a 6 liter engine just to move.
Same for child seats. Planning on having 3 kids under 10? Better plan on a truck or van with a 3rd row, because somehow, you can't fit seats 3 small children in the back seat of a family sedan or crossover.
I agree with you that this has happened, but it is far from the only reason that vehicles have increased in price. Now almost every vehicle comes with power windows, power locks, power mirrors, at least one if not multiple built in tv screens, wireless locks and keyless ignitions. Not to mention alot of manufacturers building in computer hardware/software to track user information and installing propietary parts/hardware/software designed to keep your local mechanic from doing repair work and forcing you to use dealership mechanics at 3-4 times the cost.
All of it is being done because it makes more money. Mark my words, if they repeal safety regulations, it will definitely reduce the safety of our vehicles, but it will have little to no effect impact on prices. I would wager my left nut that auto manufacturers are chomping at the bit to get this deregulation put through so they can reduce their cost of vehicles by increasing the danger of the consumer, but wont reduce the prices by a fraction of what they are "saving," then will proceed to have record profits while using lobbyists to pay off our crooked politicians.
Is it really the safety standards? I thought it was a combination of all the stupid "truck" exceptions and our equally stupid culture where the iamverybadasses choose their 3-ton grocery and kindergarten shuttles out of fear because they want to "win" any collisions.
This
The really sad thing is your bigger car isn't even really safer for you. It's just cheaper for the manufacturers (since they can classify it as a truck which has less strict safety and efficiency regulations) and a danger to others.
Cars can never be too safe. What I want is a car with no computers or telemetry whatsoever. I want a car that is private with how I use it. Like what they were pre 2000s. Just a hunk of metal to go from point A to point B.
Those cars were absolutely more dangerous than the ones on the road now.
True self-driving cars would be the epitome of safety, because humans are the most common reason for failure in most systems.
Do those safety features need extensive geolocation storing data and constantly listening to me and monitoring everything I do and keeping it on record?
No? Then remove the monitoring part. I also don't care one bit for the infotainment crap.
I never said anything about extensive geolocation, storing data, or constantly listening. What are you on about? Most safety sensors aren't connected to the infotainment system.
Putting advanced safety technology in a car and putting spyware in a car are two different conversations.
I just want cars to stop spying on me, just because I sit in the passenger seat does not mean I give permission to track and sell data about me
To be fair, you really shouldn't be driving from the passenger seat
I’m sure others in the thread are having a tough time embracing that they agree with Crus a little on this.
Stop shoving shot down our throats. That’s what I want to say to car companies.
ZERO computers!
I want MANUAL WINDOWS!
Manual locks.
ZERO SCREENS!!
I drive the last car mass produced with manual windows and manual locks.
It has 150k miles. Runs great.
There is zero tracking agents on it.
It’s just a car.
I was thinking about this the other day. I don’t need a car that goes over 40mph. I could get to work and get home. A literal Model T would do.
We need to look backwards for common sense.
Pay them enough bribe money and they will do just that (aka: lobbyist money), no joke. 😕
If we took every conservative on the planet and put them on an island together, how long do you think it would take before the cannibalism and incest kicked in?
Holy moly this has literally become reddit.... fuckin hell.
Because of anti-right wing rhetoric?
Are you aware that Lemmy was originally built by people who wanted a more open and free alternative to Reddit so they could discuss Marxist-Lennism and communism and stuff? Lol
That's my understanding, at least
It would start before they got dropped off.
Tbh, it would be kind of nice if sensors weren’t put in easily damaged areas of cars. They’re part of why bumpers and tailgates are so much more expensive. I wonder if cars could have all the safety features using a couple little LIDAR and camera packages instead of chips on every piece of plastic.
Yep I've recently learned that a crushed bumper can total a car, there's thousands of dollars of electronics in there somehow, it's insane. I miss that car.
If you want cheaper cars, that's easy: drop the tariffs on Chinese cars and let them flood the market. Now you have cheap cars and your car makers are dead.
Or you can just announce that if the car average price has not dropped by N % by 202x, you will drop the tariff, and see that your local carmaker are perfectly capable of proposing cheaper vehicles.
And in parallel, given you figure people can no longer afford cars due to salary crunch by inflation, you can develop public transportation.
Oh well… except if the whole thing is just an excuse to deregulate for the benefits of your rich and powerful CEO pals and their shareholders…
Every day i thank the whole world i wasnt Born were these people rule.
The mandatory safety features are required because the mandatory fuel economy features mean more aero dynamic cars with worse visibility. We have mandatory fuel economy on cars so dumb big ass trucks can just guzzle gas like there's no tomorrow. We can't have regular sized trucks that get decent fuel economy for some reason that has to do with chickens.
The safety requirements have gone up because the average size of the vehicles in the US has gone up. Has nothing to do with aero, and everything to do with rollover protection. Hell, even the dreaded "giant iPad" era of interior design is due to the requirement for backup cams on all cars, due to the reduced visibility, due to the increased size of structural pillars, due to higher strength to pass rollover tests due to increased weight of the vehicle duetolargertrucksandsuvsduetotheautomakerstargetingthemostprofitablevehiclesizesduetothechickentaxonimportedtrucks.
Exactly.
I don't know, the Crolloa, RAV4, and CR-V are among the most common cars have good fuel economy without sacrificing visibility.
If you want not so big trucks, there's the Maverick, Ridgeline, and Santa Cruz that can all get decent fuel economy.
None of those have nearly the visibility of their older versions. Lower slanting roofs, chunky pillars, less visibility.
All those trucks are small for modern times but not small. All modern trucks also sacrifice bed size for cab size because most people aren't using them for truck stuff anymore. They just want a truck.
You mean the group of people that are okay with schools being used for target practice thinks cars are too safe?! I am shocked.
Monkey's paw curls: Car goes into reverse, runs over MAGA.
Buy motorcycles. Problem solved.
Clearly not the onion. My right wing father (not Republican because we are not American and he's technically a monarquist) complains that cars are too expensive due to the mandatory security features. Features that he has on his fully equipped Porsche because he wants to be safe, obviously.
as someone from the country where porsche is native and where it owns their own political party.. owning a porsche is one of the clearest signs one can send that they are a massive asshole lol
That's true in other countries too. Or a bmw.
bmw is like every fourth car here. you can joke they come without turn signals but its just a run of the mill car brand for all kinds of people
only a certain kind of personality gets a porsche
That tracks in America too, but a better example here is pickup trucks.
They aren't even save for anyone outside the vehicle, to the point that death are increasing already. not just bikes video
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Definitely Not The Onion material. Heck, you could almost convince me that this is The Onion.
The Onion ate the GOP.
Car Companies: "the regulations are so big and heavy and workers cost so much munnies. Pls let us do less QA on the vehicles mandatory to live in america."
Republicans: "CRUSH MORE CHILDREN, who would dare inconvenience these poor sweet automotive corporations?!"
Anyone paying attention: "Yall know aside from oil companies, car companies are the most ridiculously subsidized companies on earth?"
Who would have thought that the Orphan Crushing Machine was just a stock Ford F-150 this whole time?
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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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