The article mentions viewing driving as an expression of freedom. What really ticks me off with that is that it's based in denying freedom to everyone else. As a pedestrian or cyclist you have to make a lot of concessions because laws, either human or of the jungle dictate it. The worst part is, all of that is because of cars. Without notorized vehicles we would literally not need the overwhelming majority of traffic rules, signs and regulations.
Adding insult to injury is the fact that is that this wildly dangerous transportation system is also so incredibly expensive.<p>Compared to the thousands required to buy into using the car based transportation system, not to mention the ever increasing price of gas, the expense of using a bicycle for transportation is practically nil.<p>Unfortunately, as this article shows, cars are so incredibly dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, that unless you're fortunate enough to live in a city where leaders have decided the the investment of safe protected cycling lanes is well worth it, cycling is rarely a safe and viable option.
I’ve always found it fascinating that most (white) Americans I know seemingly manage to find crazy (often highly aspirational) justifications for owning 20mpg giant cars: the alternatives exist, they’re great, and yet a lot of people decide to drive monster SUVs and trucks even though they’re objectively worse to drive.<p>It’s obviously the same people who are always in debt and never understand why, despite their incomes being 2-3x what’d they earn in any other country, they never seen to be saving any money.
The language of US fuel economy standards likely plays a role as well: <a href="https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-are-fuel-economy-regulations-to-blame" rel="nofollow">https://www.thedrive.com/news/small-cars-are-getting-huge-ar...</a>
The article makes a point of blaming "individualism" (apparently the author thinks we'd be safer if we could all just embrace "the collective good" and buy Priuses) but many of these problems can be traced to government policy, or lack thereof. The NHTSA has encouraged carmakers to build bigger with size-based fuel economy standards. Outside of California, subsidies for EVs and PEVs have mostly been limited to the federal tax credits, which are lower than the subsidies I've seen in Western Europe. And some of those European subsidies used to be available for plain old hybrids, which was never the case in America. Pedestrian deaths are made worse by larger vehicles, and also by failures to invest in sidewalks, crosswalks, roundabouts, and other safety infrastructure. Speeding can be seen as evidence of selfishness, but if freeways and school zones were blanketed in automated speed traps then the self-interested choice would be to slow down.<p>I'm not saying there's no culture involved here (the point about Republicans buying more big cars is interesting, but the survey is paywalled so I can't look into it more) but there's no need to go straight to culture when there's a wealth of more practical reasons for the state of the US vehicle market.
The article has linked large cars to increased fatalities without even offering an idea as to how they're related. Why are larger cars more fatal? Is it the hood being higher off the ground? Increased mass leading to lower maneuverability?