#and 15+ of each of the SUV models lmao it sucked!!
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I feel like there was another long thread going around a while back about how the current designs for trucks and SUVs (being taller and larger and having a flatter/more vertical front end rather than a sloped/pointed one) were more dangerous for pedestrians?
Like even aside from the mindset of the drivers. Even someone who was very mindful and was a good driver was more likely to kill a pedestrian, because the front end of the vehicles were at chest-to-head height. So if one hits you it's running directly into your very squishy and vital organs, as opposed to shorter vehicles, which are more likely to hit your legs (still causes injury, but it's more likely that they'll be survivable).
And the sloped fronts of most sedans (a word I'm using here as a catch-all for non-truck and non-SUV vehicles, for convenience) would allow the person to roll up and off of the vehicle, whereas the flat fronts of trucks and SUVs would push the person to the ground and/or under the vehicle, causing further injury.
And that's without taking into account how the design of trucks and SUV reduces the driver's visibility of the area immediately surrounding the vehicle and the actual pavement of the road (being higher up allows them to see over other cars, and therefore see more of the condition of the "road", here meaning traffic/ other cars, not the surface of the road itself).
I can't remember if it was real or just perception, but there's also the idea that the passengers and driver of a truck/SUV are safer in a collision than they would be in a sedan, which makes people want to buy them, especially with there being so many trucks and SUVs on the road. It's easy to look at and SUV and a sedan and think "if these two vehicles crashed, the sedan would be destroyed/the sedan would 'lose' and the SUV would 'win' the crash", so it feels like you're on more even footing with other drivers if you also get a tall car.
So trucks and SUVs become more popular due to the perception of personal safety (the safety of people outside your vehicle be damned), which leads to other people buying the tall cars to level the playing field, but it also leads to car manufacturers making more of the tall vehicles, and offering fewer sedans.
With fewer options for sedans, people are less likely to find one that they like, and more likely to look into SUVs. So even more people buy the bigger cars, and even less people buy the sedans, so car manus lean even harder into making more tall cars and fewer short cars.
It becomes a cycle, and the sedans are straight up disappearing.
And *that* isn't taking into account that, being larger and (often) having more features than sedans, manufacturers can charge more for an SUV/truck, so they make more profit if they sell more big cars. So there's even more of a financial incentive to produce more trucks/SUVs than sedans.
So even if you aren't one of the people with a "run the fuckers over" mindset, it's easier than ever to get a car that you're more likely to kill someone with (even in the case of a genuine accident), and harder to get a more reasonable and safer-for-the-public vehicle.
#sorry to commit the sin of adding to the body of a post rather than talking in the tags#i ended up running out of tag space lmao#personal anecdote that i didn't want to include in the main rant tho:#i wrecked my car last year (slid on ice. went off the road and into a ditch and smashed ass-first into a tree. which totaled my poor boy)#so i needed to replace it. and i didn't have a ton of time to find a good used car#and i did have the luxury of a paycheck that could afford certain new cars#so i ended up looking at the current vehicle options. and there were like. max 3 sedan options per manu#i ended up getting a subaru crosstrek which is technically an SUV (a 'crossover' which is like. a compact SUV?)#because leasing it was cheaper than most of the sedan options for other brands#(and i absolutely couldn't afford to buy anything but the lowest end cars. and i wanted all wheel drive!)#i *could* have gotten an impreza for less but for personal reasons I didn't#but even then. they had fewer options on the lot for imprezas 😭 there were like 5 imprezas#and 15+ of each of the SUV models lmao it sucked!!#the point is. there were soooo many more big cars to choose from that even if you pulled a random make and model out of a hat#youd be waaaaay more likely to pull an suv than any other vehicle type#i feel like out of the suv options i got one of the safest. bc its still fairly low to the ground and has a more sloped hood?#like its similar in shape and size to my old car (2009 nissan versa hatchback)#and while its ground clearance is higher the top of the hood is still fairly low#but I'm still like. UGH about contributing to the SUV 'popularity' problem#but yeah. manufacturers are favoring SUVs and trucks for multiple reasons#and they probably are pandering to the 'run em over' selfish pricks to a degree#bc lets be honest. richer ppl tend to have more of that mentality anyway#and also the assholes are WAY louder and have more of a consensus on what they want than the more reasonable folk#as is often the case#there are many ways to be. so reasonable ppl take many paths. but being a selfish prick usually follows a smaller number of paths#so each of the relatively small number of asshole paths get more traffic than any individual reasonable path
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