Just ban all personal cars from city centers, replace every 5 banned cars with 1 electric taxi and make it free for people with a public transportation subscription.<p>Boom, every single "cars in city" problems solved. I'm sure that even with 100% state subsidised taxi rides it would still be a net positive if you consider costs of health, pollution, accidents, insurances, &c.
What the article doesn't mention: the "SUV" was a Porsche Macan, a compact SUV that's smaller than most german station wagons and about the size of an average family van.
They just say 'Porsche SUV', and most people think it's the more common Porsche Cayenne.
> an SUV drove into a sidewalk<p>As usual, this us worded as "the car did it", also known as the "absent driver" style. More examples here <a href="https://twitter.com/absentdriver" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/absentdriver</a>
It’s same political show playing people’s fears. Same insanity with disabling nuclear power plants (ready to be downvoted!). Jealous people now will vote for the good party proposing to punish the bad riches with SUVs. SUVs are also problem number one during climate warming, another reason to ban them according latest headlines in German newspapers.<p>I was believer of the democracy, but this behavior of politicians is just ugly. Play with fears, go with the trend punishing riches and save the poor! That’s the recipe to win next elections. This is easy way! Providing laws for working from home and reducing traffic is beyond competency of these people.<p>Plus don’t forget aging population, I am always scared when I see these 75+ years olds driving big powerful cars. In fact I have friends in this age group and I would like to see them in a taxi instead with their own cars.
Germany was the country of the eatates(Kombi) since they were the cars of the working class family man, economical and practical.<p>Don't know what changed in the last decade but they're a rare sight these days, everyone seems to only want SUVs of all sizes instead which are less practical and less economical than estates.<p>Heck, even Volvo's famous practical <i>boxy</i> estates are nearly vanished and replaced with its more expensive SUVs.<p>What happened to European drivers? Maybe it's the perceived "better safety".
I wish people's first thoughts when a tragedy happens wasn't to have the government ban something. This ban idea came up because one person driving an SUV killed some pedestrians in a horrific accident. What actually happened there? Would the same accident not have happened if the same person was driving an economy car rather than an SUV? Was it the great size of the SUV that made the accident happen? What was the root cause of the accident? Could something be done to make it safer for pedestrians in the future, whether it's from SUVs or smaller cars, that didn't involve banning one entire class of vehicles?
There may be sound environmental reasons for restricting SUVs in city centres, but <i>all</i> types of motor vehicles are just as capable of harming pedestrians if misused, driven carelessly, or the driver suffers a medical event. This could just have easily been a garbage truck, delivery van, taxi, or private car and the result would have been the same.<p>The solution that will really improve safety is advanced AEB (autonomous emergency braking) which can detect pedestrians and cyclists, lane departure, etc and automatically apply the brakes to prevent a collision or reduce its severity.
This happened 200m from where I live. It was pretty bad. I think they initially considered this might have been a terrorist attack and they basically sent everything with wheels and sirens to the scene. I'm not joking. Dozens of police vehicles; fire trucks, and ambulances. The whole area was blocked for traffic most of the night.<p>It's not yet clear completely what happened but knowing the street and local situation, I can make an educated guess that this guy was looking to make it past the green/orange light for the pedestrian crossing, swerved left to avoid some traffic/obstacles near the construction site on his side of the road before the crossing and then lost control before plowing over the traffic light (destroyed completely) into four people waiting to cross. One possible reason for him having to swerve left may have been some traffic emerging from the side road (no traffic light there). This would be hard to see if you are driving way too fast. Also there's a construction site with some scaffolding right before that crossing; which further reduces visibility. They had an temporary traffic light there for a few weeks recently but it was removed again.<p>The problem is not SUVs as such but a culture of unsafe driving being OK and the police looking the other way as a matter of policy (because car lobbies).<p>The accident happened 150m from a police station on the same street. If the driver knew that; he apparently did not care and in all likelihood was speeding anyway. Cars in Berlin jump red lights, double park, and speed throughout the city with a very low chance of getting caught. So, this is not unusual. On an average bike ride through the city you'll see all of that happening multiple times. Most crossings with traffic lights don't have cameras. I've never seen a speed camera in Berlin; I'm not even sure there are any at all. The local culture is "it's all fine". Drivers behave accordingly. Also, the fines are pretty low if you do get caught compared to other countries.<p>Another issue is that Berlin does not seem to have safety very high on the agenda when doing construction work. The road in question went through a lengthy and expensive reconstruction project that took something like five years that was only finished a few years ago. This was a great and missed opportunity to make the road safer. This crossing definitely was poorly designed. You have two roads crossing each other there without traffic lights and then a traffic light right after the crossing just for the pedestrian crossing.
Recently I visited a historical hydro power plant, which is still operational. The operators were in the process of adding huge shields and fences around the flywheels due to safety regulations to protect visitors. Apparently they had been only fenced off by a rope and the faith in humans‘ self preservation instinct for the last 100 years. However, when i saw those fences, it struck me as very odd why this is not mandatory on every road. The amount if kinetic energy of those flywheels is certainly comparable to a 1-2 ton car moving at 30+ km/h.
This is somewhat a logical reaction, when realizing that a smaller car would have reduced the fatalities.
In this regard I believe there is going to be an inflection point in the adoption of autonomous driving. As soon as autonomous driving is becoming safer than the <i>worst</i> human drivers, there should logically be calls following to ban "non-computer-assisted human driving", especially within densely populated cities.
Similar of how gas stoves without flame failing device have been banned.
From the article.<p>"You can't just say: SUV is basically more dangerous than [other types of vehicles]," accident researcher Siegfried Brockmann from the Gesamtverband der Deutschen Versicherungswirtschaft (Association of the German Insurance Industry) told DPA.
Small car or large car, both will do damage to people. Yes it’s harder to stop a large car, but a person or persons will not stop the travel of a small car either.<p>I’m not a fan of those monstrosities but I think banning them is a psychological overreaction to this incident.
> after veering onto a sidewalk<p>Am I the only one seeing a problem with someone driving on the sidewalk? Did this somehow become acceptable?<p>I've driven large trucks and not been forced onto a sidewalk. Maybe I'm missing something.
Ein dicker, fetter SUV und der Direktor der Deutschen Umwelthilfe am Steuer! Das passt ja nun auch nicht so wirklich! Wie sagt man: Sie predigen Wasser und trinken Wein! So sind sie, unsere auch so tollen Saubermänner, die uns als Vorbilder verkauft werden!