I keep saying it, you don’t need trucks. Maybe 1 out of a thousand. No, that isn’t you.
Tell that to every dipshit in the US South…light kit, brush guard, spray in liner, knotted tires, extra fancy box in the back, and a pristine winch. The dirtiest it’s ever gotten is when it rains
And out of the people who do need them, vans are still a much better way to go for many of them. Vans which have at least a margainally better field of view with their short, sloped hoods.
I have a large family and we drive a Transit 350 van.
One day we needed to move a pair of beds and mattresses. We asked my father in law to help us since he has a F150. But it soon became apparent how much more we could fit in the van (with the two back seats removed) than we could fit in the truck, which couldn’t even fit one mattress in the truckbed without hanging out the back of the tailgate.
From what I’ve seen my van is far superior to a truck in almost every need I’ve had. It can carry more stuff and it can do so in the rain keeping the cargo dry.
The one thing a truck could do that my van can’t is pick up a scoop of mulch or gravel dumped from a loader.
I know someone who insists that a pickup truck is more practical and her example is “you can lift a bookshelf over the side of a pickup truck instead of having to put it in the back like a van”. Apparently it’s more practical to lift something like 4 feet off the ground to the side of a pickup truck bed instead of like 1 foot to the floor of a van
Similarly, I know people who bought F-150s for motorycles after going to the track only one time. We worked with actual consistent track-goers who each had vans. I used one of theirs to move my bike to the shop, and it was really funny watching them struggle with a small Ninja 250.
People with truck brain are so fuckin’ stupid.
The problem is, most people can only afford one vehicle (per adult, sometimes household) as such, they shop for something that will meet their edge cases and not their “90% of the times” cars. Annoyingly is also why you see hesitation for EVs.
Rather than saying “I can just rent a truck for the 1 day a year I need haul something” (and most likely would be cheaper), they think “well what if I need to haul something? Then what?”
Not saying that’s right, but edge cases are usually what drives their decisions.
And those who actually need them would be far better served by a VW Transporter with an aluminium bed.
This is true, but there’s also a real lack of small pickups on the market. The fuckers just seem to be getting bigger and bigger. I used to have a Proton Jumbuck and it was really useful. Used it a lot for hauling wood and soil, it was small enough to get around and park easily in the city. I got rid of it eventually because it was so hard to find parts, shame, it was a handy little machine.
this is now typical…
One of the guys in my police academy class would rib me for being less of a man because I didn’t drive a truck.
A couple months later, he would go on to commit a felony on duty in front of a half dozen of his peers, including me. Nobody bothered to report him but me, even after we had a meeting about someone from a neighboring agency doing nearly the exact same thing that had been fired and arrested for it. Being a brand new deputy, I thought it was an integrity test so I was more than willing to report it. IA dropped the case.
In hindsight, that was a clue I should’ve started applying elsewhere or quit, but I had three more years to put in before I wouldn’t have to pay back my academy pay, not to mention I naively trusted there was some other interpretation of what happened I hadn’t considered that the agency’s brass and legal team had; I wasn’t about to be the Apprentice telling the Master he’s full of shit.
Years later they’d fire me for some complete BS. He still works there as far as I know, and the US Army promoted him to Captain.
The best way to kill a person and get away with it in the US is to hit that person with a SUV when they are walking. A jury of lifted truck owners will return a not-guilty verdict. Even better if the target is on a bicycle, you’ll get a pat on the back by the judge.
Or worse, motorcycle!
-seethes with rage at the very notion of vehicles with less than four wheels-
I wonder what the front collision/auto braking feature will do to this trend. Hopefully it’ll erase it. Isnt it mandatory on US cars made after X date now?
This is probably caused by a combination of big vehicles and distracted driving (including smartphones and infotainment).
I wonder what the front collision/auto braking feature will do to this trend.
not much, many pedestrians get side swiped and dragged under to their death by the Tonka wheels and lifted suspension.
plus, these are 100% legal.
And you’re basing “not much” on data and not Feels/anecdotal evidence?
Not being able to see someone walking in front of you is a god given right.
Doubly so if they’re a toddler.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to protest at an abortion clinic because killing children is immoral when a woman does it.
I saw a chart that showed a much stronger correlation with smart phones
Why not both?
If phones are causing more collisions… then bigger vehicles have more kinetic energy, hence more deaths…
The kinetic energy difference between a 180 pound person and a 3,000 pound vehicle or a 6,000 pound vehicle is completely irrelevant. The height of impact from a truck or suv is what makes it worse.
Either way, it’s surely more like 90% cell phones distracting drivers than it is vehicle type.
A 3,000 punt vehicle will have a lot less braking distance than a 6,000 pound one.
A big vehicle like that has a lot more horizontal blind spot, it’s been a major thing with drivers of those monstrosities literally not seeing kids, people in wheelchairs etc.
Most people are out of their depths with such big vehicles in many ways, they should require a specific license because it’s such a different thing compared to a normal sized car in so many ways.
It’s a real bad combination of way to big cars with all the negatives + phone and in car touch screen use. It’s absolutely not 90% either of them, it’s a combination.
This is also mostly American, no other country has cars like that in those numbers (per capita), and Americans also have a higher phone usage while driving percentage than most of the world.
*In the US.
It’s just such a fucking constant thing everywhere online, anything about America is just written like it’s a worldwide thing because most Americans need to be told that the rest of the world exists for their broken brains to remember that.
It’s so fucking tiring just seeing the never ending “here’s a thing” that’s very specifically about the US but posted everywhere and never titled or talked about like it’s a US specific thing.
It’s not just titles either, it’s the articles those posts link to, the videos, the everything all the way that not a single person thought “oh, this is US specific and should probably be shared as such”.
75% more than what?
More than in 2009.
So in the course of seventeen years (since 2009), fewer than twice the number of people have been killed than in 2009 alone? That’s either a massive improvement, or something terrible was happening in 2009.
Math is clearly not your strong point. Or logic.
No, the problem is that I can actually read.
“Since 2009” would refer to the span of seventeen years since 2009.
75% more implies an increase of 75% (meaning a total of 175%, equivalent to 1.75×, or just shy of 2×) over some other quantity.
What is that other quantity? Surely not the deaths just in the year 2009. Is it the seventeen years prior to 2009? Something else? The article never appears to actually specify.
No, the problem is you’re taking a very niche stance in service of an interpretation of an ambiguous title that probably meant something entirely different, presumably because you enjoy a fight?
Everyone else but you went with the “probably” instead of this war path you’re on against the person who wrote the title for not being clear enough.
I’m asking what’s being compared. It’s unclear and not specified. I don’t want to make a poor assumption. That is all. Why are you offended by that? What are you imagining I’m asking?
As I said, we all know it’s unclear, but the rest of us made a reasonable conclusion as to what they meant.