Hmm, these huge trucks are killing pedestrians, causing worse crashes due to crash incompatibility, destroying the climate, and now smashing through guard rails and flying off cliffs. We'd better change our entire country's infrastructure to accommodate them.
It's the good Christian thing to do
Amen
Isn't this just the road trying to solve the problem for us? I say we should have more ditches and guardrail barriers!
Lol you apparently didn't read the article... it's calling out EVs because they're usually heavier than the ICE counterparts. Small sedans are pushing 5k pounds now being EVs. Batteries are very very heavy.
It’s worth highlighting that this study isn’t really about the merits of EVs. After all, you can buy an EV that weighs less than 5,000 pounds. You just can’t electrify your favorite already-large car—or even buy a hulking gas-powered car—and expect guardrails to work as intended. “Weight is a universal problem; it is not unique to electric vehicles,” Stolle said. “We have similar concerns about the compatibility of the biggest gas-powered cars with our guardrail system.” The 6,700-pound Chevrolet Silverado 1500 already weighs too much, based on the result from this research, and the 8,500-pound Silverado EV weighs even more.
It doesn't help that the first EVs most manufacturers are focusing on are their large SUVs and trucks. The Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3 both certainly aren't small cars in a general sense, but in the land of EVs they are. Both weigh under 4000 pounds which is less than the best selling vehicle in North America, the F150.
Tax the heavy cars much more, they cause more dammage in crashes and way more wear and tear in general.
At least here in Cali we do. My HD truck gets an extra $500~ a year tax on top of the Gas guzzler tax I paid when new. Plus the fuel costs/taxes for that. Compared to my other cars I pay about $600 more for newal on it. The Average car is like $245 a year but the truck is like $840.
Definitely fine with paying the extra taxes though. I use more infrastructure and I also require additional strengthening of crash systems and cause road damage so I’m not opposed.
Meanwhile in Wisconsin I have to pay an extra $100/yr for registration because I drive a hybrid.
Why?
Because, I shit you not, driving a hybrid apparently costs the state too much money, because we have to fuel up less, and so they get less tax.
What the fuck.
Rather than tax them a bit more, which won't actually improve safety if people just opt to pay the tax and drive them anyway, why not just straight up legislate weight limits for private vehicles, with commercial licensing as done with cargo trucks expanded to fit more conventional vehicles driven for commercial purposes that have to be large and heavy? Car companies will start making smaller cars again real quick if they're not allowed to sell them otherwise
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds
Seems like yet another case of a flawed study or a flawed article based on a misunderstanding of the study.
Statements like the quote above make no sense as "withstanding a 5,000lb vehicle" makes no sense. A 5k lb vehicle traveling at 70MPH is carrying several orders of magnitude more energy than a 5k lb vehicle traveling at 5MPH. Likewise a direct, perpendicular hit will impart more energy than a glancing parallel blow, so what are they really rated for?
In any case, these guardrails are used in places where 100k lb semis are traveling at highway speeds, and there have never been any other doom and gloom articles written about that. I don't think we need to completely rebuild our highway system simply because heavier cars exist.
And they're not meant to stop cars but rather redirect them
It would be 5k lb at high speed. I would say higher than the speed limit just to be safe. There would also be specs for height, etc.
Maybe car sales taxes should scale by vehicle weight.
If you consume more of the road, you pay more
In the Netherlands you pay a road tax every 3 months. The amount is based on weight (because a heavier car does more damage to a road) but also on eco label. So an electric car that has the best eco label can have less tax than an old (but much lighter) diesel car.
we obviously need to take money from Amtrak and public transport grants to rebuild the interstate system. Guardrails upgraded everywhere, new lanes would be added to reduce congestion
New lanes don't reduce congestion. When you add new lanes, drivers who had previously avoided those routes suddenly think "oh more lanes, it'll be less congested" and it just fills back up to capacity. Except it's worse because there's even more cars now in the extra lanes you just built. Adding lanes makes congestion worse, not better.
What we need to do is get people off the roads and onto public transportation. That's how you reduce congestion - get people off the roads. Unfortunately that means actually investing in public transportation, so that'll never happen in the US.
The guard rails are pretty good enough as is. When you hear of something like this it's very often caused by lack of maintenance/poor installation/assembly. There is a guy on youtube that has videos of a whole bunch of guardrails that are simply unsafe because they are missing bolts or were assembled incorrectly.
And remember - guard rails are meant to slow you down enough to try and prevent a worse situation rather than always turning you back into the roadway to create a larger accident with other traffic or stop you completely.
I know America has an obesity epidemic, but did it really have to be extended to our cars?
fuel eff requirements tied to weight
just another oil company + car company scam
They should regulate the weight of cars. There's no reason passenger vehicles should be as heavy as they are. For EVs they honestly shouldn't have as much range as they do. 150 miles and improved charging infrastructure, make charging easier for folks who park on the street, is a better way to go. Folks who need to drive more than that a day should have a hybrid or ICE vehicle. Ideally a small fuel efficient one. Folks who need pickups for work should be able to buy the small European versions or work vans.
150miles is no where close to enough range for people who travel regularly. In a 3 hour trip I can do 150 miles. Depending on weather, battery degrading, and elevation that trip now requires charging multiple times which just isn't acceptable. Let alone if you were trying to do a real road trip where you drive 1000+ miles, the amount of charge time is insane. And I want an EV for those road trips, extremely convenient for car camping.
250mi is a good number. Enough to do a lot of errands and medium trips in a day and charge overnight.
Bolt EV/EUV has that and it's a compact.
Better to charge higher registration fees by weight.
Folks who need a pickup truck for work should be required to file a permit request for pirchase of said truck.
Written by someone who owns a truck
Trucks haven't always been the fucking obnoxious beasts that they are now.
I'd love a truck... The size of a '93 ford ranger. I don't need or want a goddamn castle on wheels. I want a low vehicle, doesn't need two full rows of luxurious seats, with a box, with a footprint SMALLER than a fucking Nissan Altima. Yes, that is the '93 ford ranger.
The crime was artificially creating the false dichotomy.
I can think of no better way to kill EV adoption than to intentionally make their usage less appealing than the alternative.
The current version of MGS was developed to withstand cars weighing a maximum of 5,000 pounds, but many of today’s SUVs and trucks exceed that threshold.
MGS being what I've known as W beam guardrail.
But he noted that in the real world, a guardrail is much more likely to be placed next to a steep [drop-off] than a concrete barrier.
Thankfully it was a test, but there's probably already instances where an over-weight vehicle has smashed through safety devices.
There's a guard rail guy on YouTube who investigates how the guard rails have been fitted. They often have bolts and the tension wire incorrectly installed so much so that they don't even effectively stop small vehicles. That guy lost a family member to this type of accident and so is on a crusade kinda.
My kinda superhero
https://m.youtube.com/@TheGuardrailGuy
It's sad because you can hear the frustration in his voice that for the sake of better training lives could be saved.
I'm willing to bet the super tall pickups and SUVs are more likely to hop over those steel guardrails, too. Related: Those sloped concrete dividers that have a slightly shallower slope at their wider bottom? Those are super effective, because that bottom slope deflects the vehicle's front wheel, causing it to turn slightly away from the barrier instead of continuing to smash through it.
It's called a Jersey barrier.
They have other issues though. They cost more to produce, cost more to install and cost more to maintain. They also accumulate snow, which would otherwise blow through an open W guard rail.
A third option are wire guards. They're cheaper on all accounts, don't get tagged with graffiti and statistically save more lifes. They work best on long straight stretches, but because of the flexibility, they are not ideal for inner city streets where it's best to avoid any lane breaches at all.
Guardrails, much like the crumple zones of cars, are designed to give way to dissipate energy. This is a safety feature which saves lives. There isn't going to be a one-size-fits-all-traffic guardrail. It's about statistically improving outcomes, but unfortunately they aren't going to help in all cases. Maybe they need to be updated, but it's going to take time to adjust to changing average vehicle weights.
Velomobiles weight 35kg (77 pounds) and offer very good protection compared to normal bicycles. Theoretically you could design single seat cars not much heavier. Of course for higher speeds you'd want more protection and a little bit wider.
I imagine the ideal self driving car or robo-taxi to be two seats that face each other, so when you get one alone you have plenty of space to stretch your feet or put your groceries. It could be totally luxurious, simple to call and use and fast too. And the embodied energy would be very small and the "mpg" would be insane.
It's just sad how badly we are tackling climate change by just letting the free market run wild.
In a better world roads would be closed for cars which exceed the capacity of those guard rails. Just put up a sign, do some enforcement and people will start buying smaller cars when they can't use them.
Vehicles that weigh more than 4 tons make up a significant amount of road traffic right now.
Literally everything you purchase in a store, your food, your toiletries, your clothes, any consumer good you have every purchased traveled on a road at some point in a vehicle that far exceeds 8 tons.
Ambulances weigh more than 8 tons, fire trucks weigh more than 8 tons, mail is transported in vehicles that weigh more than 8 tons.
7,000lbs is an extremely low failure point for a guard rail given the number of vehicles that exceed that weight on the road today.
Require a CDL for the big vehicles. Maintain stringent requirements for the CDL.
Do you still want that electric Ram?
Commercial driver's license? I AM TRAVELLING AND NOT ENGAGED IN COMMERCE
In an even better world, policies wouldn't be manipulative shitstains aimed at consumers and instead be regulation on those actually creating the thing that needs to change...
What would we do about semi trucks, delivery vans, busses, dump trucks, etc. etc. etc. Personally I've seen some pretty short busses but never a sport compact model.
Pretty much all of those vehicles require a CDL.
Seems like vehicles over a certain weight requiring a special license classification is a pretty straightforward and reasonable requirement.
But we can't do it without simultaneously addressing mass transit, bikeped, and our general absolute psychological fixation around designing all of our society around cars first and people second.
Eh, non-issue. Just slap a surgeon general warning that the car will go through guardrails if it is over 5k lbs. And put a big roadway improvement tax on pointless large SUVs, minivans, and massive trucks, which nobody actually needs. We've had smaller variants of vehicles for decades. Even kei vans can hold many grown ass adult men.
All this aside, we have ultra heavy truckers whose trucks already would and do go through guardrails. We should be de-emphasizing car and highway investment anyways, putting more funding towards rapid mass transit and rezoning metro areas to be walkable. Fuck $30 / hr street parking.
new vehicle weight tax to fund the new guardrails
EVs are extremely heavy too.
Yes, but they wouldn't have to be, if not for people wanting a giant SUV with 400 miles of range. The weight goes up nonlinearly, because people aren't willing to compromise on lifestyle for the benefit of those around them. And then they expect us not just to tolerate their lifestyle, but actually subsidize it.
I'm in Texas and will have to pay a $300 registration tax on my ev for it being "heavy and destructive and not paying fuel tax". My ev is a 2018 Fiat 500e and weighs 2900lbs. I'm tired of this argument especially when plenty of trucks weigh anywhere from 4500lbs (for the smallest examples) to quite literally 80k. Raise the fuel tax and you'll solve heavy vehicles virtually overnight.
Before anyone gets on my case I'm fully aware that not all evs are as light as mine, but plenty are lighter than an f150.
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