I sometimes wonder if the best solution to these sorts of issues is to do nothing.
If vehicles keep increasing in size to the point that they become less convenient then that provides a disincentive to purchase large vehicles.
Similarly, if a thoroughfare becomes less efficient because too many vehicles start using it then that provides an incentive for people to consider other means of getting around.
No street parking where you live? Fine, you can park some distance away, sell your vehicle, move somewhere that does have it, or provide your own off street parking.
Sadly, when towns and cities become dominated by large vehicles that barely fit in parking spaces, can't see pedestrians over their hood and around their enormous pillars, and shine their bright LED headlights directly into the eyes of folks driving more sensibly sized vehicles... everyone pays the cost of the large vehicles.
I've experienced a lot of crosswalks, sidewalks, bike lanes, and car lanes that enormous vehicles have blocked because they don't fit in a normal parking space. It creates dangerous situations very easily. And with the poor daylighting (cross-traffic visibility at intersections) in US cities, these giant vehicles make it even harder to drive, walk, or bike across town because parked or stopped vehicles completely block your view of traffic.
Growing car sizes is a failure of government safety regulation, and unfortunately I don't see much benefit for society from it.
It also sucks for drivers: we have a lot of two way roads which are no longer capable of handling two way traffic because they lost a foot on each side with wider parked vehicles and the passing trucks are wider, too. You only need one parked Canyonero on a block to force everyone to take turns.
It also encourages a doom loop where people using smaller cars feel less safe because of the massive cars around them, so when it comes to buying their next car, they buy a massive car as well, making those still in smaller cars feel even more unsafe.
It's hard to consider other means, such as busses, when low-occupancy vehicles are causing traffic on every road the bus would use. This problem does not solve itself.
Ya, the problem sometimes with the free market is that the general public is far more willing than me to just keep suffering. Case in point would be coach seating on most airlines. If people would just raise their standards a little bit and be willing to pay a little more. I just want an experience that doesn't torture me without paying 10x for business class.
It’s also not a very free market: we don’t tax vehicles or charge for parking based on size, many people live in areas where they’re legally required to pay for lots of car storage, and there’s a somewhat literal arms race where people feel the need to buy bigger vehicles to avoid coming off poorly in a collision with someone else who already did.
Yeah doubt companies will allow parking spots to get bigger, you're talking about coming companies coming up with thousands of square feet of space. And turning a likely loss leader of some sort into a bigger one.
I think there's one thing that needs to happen. NYC and all cities need to pass a law where a vehicle wider than X cannot park on the street, unless they are a business vehicle at which point they are allowed under commercial parking laws.
Ha! Never gonna happen. Lifted truck driving concrete cowboys who live in my area get their rocks off at the stares they receive diagonally parking and taking up 2-3 spots. It’s a hobby for them.
What “other means”? The people in the burbs are never going to support mass transit because it makes it too easy for “those people” to come into their idyllic burbs.
I’m both one of “those people” and I lived in the idyllic burbs until last year. I saw the attitude all of the time.
> It is the subject of much debate whether this was a trend driven by consumer preference or the fact that automakers can charge a lot more for bigger cars where the profit margins are significantly higher and therefore consistently invest billions of dollars a year in marketing campaigns to convince people they want or need bigger cars.
No mention of the CAFE standards that favor larger vehicles by imposing less stringent efficiency goals on large footprints? They were predicted [1] to cause an increase in vehicle size, and it happened.
the 85th percentile method is not capturing the changes
in the car sizes. The size of the 10th percentile car
has exploded. The size of the 50th percentile car has
grown tremendously. The size of the 70th percentile car
has also grown. But the 85th percentile car is essentially
the Ford F-150, which is much taller and longer than it
used to be, but no wider.
...
In 1987, Scheeman says, the design vehicle used for
parking space standards was three inches narrower than
it is today. But, that same year, the best-selling car
in the U.S., the Ford Escort, was a whopping 13 inches
narrower than the best-selling car in 2022, the Ford F-150.
So basically the majority of American cars have gotten bigger over the past few decades, creeping up in width, height, and length. But there's a cap on car sizes because parking spaces are only so large.
Not just American cars. My Mercedes SUV just squeezes between most parking-space lines. It's hard to open the door when other cars are parked in the next spaces.
When it comes to my SUV, I'm afraid I have been hoist by my own petard.
For many decades, I used to throw shit at urban drivers of monstrosities like SUVs. Serves me right, that we were forced to get an SUV so we could put my wife's mobility-scooter in the cargo area. My personal preference is for small, nippy cars with tiny turning-circles that can fit in anywhere.
The thing with pick up trucks is that they're actually really fucking practical. For people who want to be self reliant and can afford one, they're a no brainer. You've got one vehicle that can function as a car, a van, a camper van (with a demountable pod) or tow a trailer. They can go off road, and they've got enough power to help other people out if they've got into a sticky situation.
Environmentalists can protest all they want but people, particularly outside of cities, do need them for very valid reasons. Inside of cities, yes you're not taking it off-road regularly, but you could well need one if you do lots of DIY projects, spend time out in the country regularly on weekends, or just don't want to be reliant on other people or renting a van every time you want to move something large or buy furniture. Smaller versions, because they really are too big for UK parking spaces, are catching on this side of the pond but primarily because of tax advantages rather than practicality reasons.
Sure, some people use them for real stuff. Most of them are mall-crawling status symbols. I'm pretty sure 7/10 of the trucks on the road here are piloted by people that can't competently DIY a hamburger, they certainly don't DI anything that would justify a truck, moreso a lifted diesel with modded exhaust and a roll coal tune. It's just canon male identity, that's why they're rolling around with that shit.
They’re practical for certain tasks but it’s not like they’re the only thing which can go off road or tow something. The bigger thing is that you’re giving up fuel economy, ride quality, seating, and handling so it really depend on how often you need those extra things versus the cost you’re paying all of the time. For many people a rental (or delivery) the times they need more construction supplies than fit in a car but not enough to need a bigger truck, or want to go car camping, will be a significant savings.
Mostly, I wish we’d stop subsidizing them - let every pay the same taxes, add a pollution tax, and charge for parking by the square foot. That’d bring back the smaller trucks which did the job for years, but since they’re a popular lifestyle accessory in certain circles there’s basically no chance of that.
You certainly don't sacrifice ride quality with most modern pickup trucks. They are usually built on the same chassis and suspensions that the manufacturers use for their luxury SUVs. And most pickups seat the same number of people that a family sedan seats. But yes on the other stuff.
Are they they much more capable now that they’re enormous than 15-20 years ago when they were normal sized? I do not remember a pickup truck having a grille above the head of the average pedestrian when I was a kid, and I have a hard time believing that this is somehow important to any of other functions other than intimidating (or actually harming) other road users.
A 230- to 255-hp big-block Chevy Silverado 454 SS cost about $40k adjusted for inflation, at 194" long x 77" wide x 70" high. That was a big truck 30 years ago.
Why in the hell is a 2022 Silverado 20 inches longer, 4 inches wider, and 5 inches taller? What purpose does that serve? Especially being wider of all dimensions? It has a 2L-smaller engine but somehow weighs 200 lbs. more?
Part of the increase in the size of trucks is that people want big vehicles... for reasons... but part of it is just safety. Crumple zones, force deflecting shunts, and attempts to lower the weight / improve gas mileage lead to lots of foam and plastic -- which makes it look larger.
How often do you go off-road? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? How often are you buying large furniture or moving something large? Daily? Weekly? Monthly? Yearly? Is it worth spending $10000+ extra for a truck + extra on fuel + extra pollution over a car to save a few hundred on delivery fees?
Some people need trucks for sure but I think a lot more have them than need them.
I live 10 minutes from a Whole Foods, and don’t own a trailer or a boat (which is pretty common here in exurban Maryland). I probably go off road a couple times a year. Then haul junk a several times a year. Then tow something a couple of times a year. Then buy something big and awkward a couple of times a year. And then a couple of years ago there was that snow storm and it was nice to be able to tool around past abandoned Teslas. It’d be annoying to go out and rent a pickup truck every other month to do those things. It’s not the money it’s the convenience.
No but there isn’t really a service to get one for a reasonable price when I need it. Rentals can be had but not for a reasonable price or when you need it. Let’s say I need a truck 14 days a year that’s probably at least 2k in rental fees.
The truck is cheaper than a suv and probably 10k more than a sedan
Or $280 at Home Depot, which is less than the extra cost of gas - much less the average $20+k the vehicle costs relative to a sedan or station wagon. The average truck sold for $45k last year and I’d be surprised if even 20% of the buyers ever do something a $28k Subaru couldn’t do.
I can’t imagine an average Subaru runs much less than mid/low 30s right now. It’s only a 10k difference. Home Depot changes 20$ for 90 min but good luck actually getting one when you need it and you can’t really use it to tow a boat or trailer. You can’t even use one for Craigslist pick up because it’s never available
$28k if I take the first offer from Costco Auto, and the mid-Atlantic region isn’t exactly the cheapest.
Compare to $41k average for mid-sized pickup trucks or $60k for full-sized and you could make a fair number of rentals. Since most of the ones I see are in showroom condition I am skeptical that the p75 owner would come anywhere close to that many over the life of the vehicle. The people I know who actually need them don’t need you to guess about this - one look at the truck is enough.
It's not the car's shape that is contentious, it's their size. Nobody is complaining about pickups from 30 years ago. It's these modern monstrosities that have people annoyed and concerned. IMO it's because:
1. They are extremely inefficient (gas-wise). That means more pollution, more CO2 emissions, just overall a worse environment for everyone.
2. They are built with large front grills that limit visibility. Being high off the ground might feel nice, but it's dangerous for everyone else (pedestrians, cyclists, even other drivers).
3. They are super heavy, which results in much faster road degradation.
I think if we taxed heavy vehicles more fairly (IE, tax proportionate to the damage to roads, extra deaths from impractical and dangerous designs, and tailpipe emissions) then I think people would be less annoyed.
But as it stands, the modern pickup truck has extremely problematic externalities that everyone (including the pickup driver, though not directly) is paying for.
When I was younger, pickup trucks were a great way to meet girls: they would ask you for help when they needed to move. I can see the utility in that, we all need a friend who has a pickup truck so we can get their help when we eventually need it.
Compact pickup trucks (like the Ford Ranger) were way more common in the 90s (and 70s and 80s) than they seem to be today. I owned a yellow 1976 Datsun pickup truck in the early 90s.
Trucks are great, but is there any practical reason for a general purpose vehicle larger than a 2004 Toyota Tacoma? Truck cabins can be smaller without losing any functionality.
I just checked and if I needed to get a sheet of plywood from Home Depot, it would be about $50 for a pickup truck from U-Haul but at least around here, you can't usually leave your car at the rental place, so I would need to enlist someone to drop me off and then of course after the pickup and dropoff of the payload at my house, another ride to pick me up. I probably need the bed of my pickup once a month on average. I'm not sure how much I would pay to avoid that hassle and time sink, but probably more than the savings of having a small car.
Exactly. Where I grew up, you had to either burn or bury your garbage in your back yard or haul it to a collection point every week. No one wants to put leaky trash bags in the back of their Civic.
Filling our cities with pickups is a ridiculous solution compared to having a few local authority (not big gov / federal) garbage trucks do the rounds.
I feel like I'm being gaslit. Here in Austin it's the parking spaces that have been getting noticeably smaller. I have a modest sedan that's not even midsize and it barely fits in the lines in most spaces.
I think it is both. I've driven the same car for the last 5 years and lived in the same region for much longer.
I've noticed new parking space are smaller than before and it seems to go by age of development. There is a grocery store nearby with undergound parking built around 2005 with comfortable parking spaces. It roughly has 4 columns for every 2x4 block of spaces. Down the road there is another built in 2018 with tight but doable spaces and columns every 3 spaces. Across the street is a building finished in the last year or two where the spaces are small enough that every other is usable. That one has columns for every 2 spaces. I no longer park there because frequently people park in a way that effectively claims 2 spots.
I have noticed the same. I too have a sedan and usually cannot find a space which is not at risk of having the doors bashed in by some careless prat parked next to me.
But then I wouldn't be able to buy lumber once every 3 years or a couch every 10! And how to do you expect Billy to get to school?? It's so unsafe on the roads these days. /S
The real problem with the old, smaller pickup trucks was that it was possible for people to steal your lumber without climbing up on top of the bumper or rear tires.
Also, the beds were bigger back then, which was a waste of space.
>the beds were bigger back then, which was a waste of space.
What? The entire point of a pickup truck is bed space. If you don't need bed space, get any other kind of vehicle. Extended cab pickups are an abomination.
You can't fit "lumber" or even a bicycle in most pickups today. The F150 is just an SUV with a wet trunk, the original el Camino was a more suitable truck.
And yeah you didn't risk tearing your rotator cuff loading and unloading them. That's actually a feature.
Not sure I understand where you're coming from. I have a Santa Cruz and the bed isn't exactly huge, but it can still fit a bike and I still carry lumber in it. It isn't illegal to lay down the tailgate either. I've carried 8x12 timbers in it, and it has specific cut outs so you can fit 4x8 sheets of plywood (tailgate down).
It is very capable as a truck and also nice as a general road vehicle.
> I wouldn't be able to buy lumber once every 3 years
My Subaru Outback, with split-folding rear seats and a flat-folding front passenger seat, is great for lumber. Better than any pickup truck, except for payload capacity.
There are several long bed pickups that can carry a 4x8 sheet flat with the tailgate closed. Your Subaru can carry lumber more conveniently than those trucks?
Let’s be honest. You don’t have a truck with an 8’ bed. If we go by midwestern dealership inventory, less than 5% of F150s have the 8’ bed. Of those, 70% are XL work trucks. 0 are above the XLT trim (does Ford even let you do that?).
The vast majority of trucks are SuperCabs with 5.5’ beds. That’s what all my siblings have. Because, you know, the dimensions are exactly what will fit in the standard suburban garage. As long as you don’t lift it.
I keep a bunch of nylon straps in the Subaru, the ones with the metal buckle at the end for cinching them down. With the the integrated roof rack built into the Outback, the straps, and two 2x4s that I would also buy at the hardware store, I can easily carry 4x8 plywood on the roof, securely. There are videos on YouTube of people demonstrating how to do this on Porsches. It’s easier on an Outback ;)
Again, a truck has a tremendously larger payload capacity!
I’ve used trucks a lot. I paid for a lot of my college tuition doing stuff with a truck that a Subaru can’t do! I’ll pick the outback any time I need to go buy lumber and will gladly need to lift things maybe 2” above my knees.
The thing with pick up trucks is that they're actually really fucking practical. For people who want to be self reliant and can afford one, they're a no brainer. You've got one vehicle that can function as a car, a van, a camper van (with a demountable pod) or tow a trailer. They can go off road, and they've got enough power to help other people out if they've got into a sticky situation.
Warn vs. ban is affected by a number of variables including account age, how badly and/or frequently it has been posting abusively, whether it's primarily posting abusively, whether there's evidence of past abuses with other accounts, and probably some others I'm not thinking of just now.
Our double garages (two cars side by side) are limited to 6m by 6m.
My wife's Tucson makes it with some space to spare to walk around it and have some cabinets, but I don't think going to a larger Telluride/Palisade type of SUV is going to be possible.
Ford once sold the F150 models locally - it is bloody HUGE compared to the Ranger sized pickups folks normally drove.
Large cars impose negative externalities that a gas tax doesn't capture, like greater danger and less space for other people who share the road. In the case of large electric vehicles, a gas tax also doesn't capture the cost they impose in terms of the wear and tear of the roads.
What's needed is a road use tax predicated on the size and weight of a car, and how congested the roadways it uses are. The latter point implies paying less tax if you use the car at times of the day when roads are not congested, or use routes that are less congested.
Tax vehicles by weight? Those of us who choose to drive a sedan or a subcompact should be rewarded for wearing the road less and more efficiently using space. Large vehicles are fine to use for trips and jobs that require that large vehicle... but clearly gas prices aren't enough to disincentivize a huge chunk of American suburban residents from owning 4runners and F150s.
The government can already track your movements (you have a nice big identifier on the side even if you don’t have various wireless devices) but congestion pricing doesn’t require identifying people. Anonymous vehicle sensors can tell how congested an area is and they can charge you to enter that zone.
Parking spots in cities have also been getting smaller. No, you can't park your huge SUV in a compact parking space :p. My parking spot in my house is restricted to a compact size car (or I guess small SUV).
I don't remember things being so tight when I was growing up in the suburbs.
If vehicles keep increasing in size to the point that they become less convenient then that provides a disincentive to purchase large vehicles.
Similarly, if a thoroughfare becomes less efficient because too many vehicles start using it then that provides an incentive for people to consider other means of getting around.
No street parking where you live? Fine, you can park some distance away, sell your vehicle, move somewhere that does have it, or provide your own off street parking.