carmen510
Deity
I know some people who prefer SUVs and minivans as a "safer" car, in the sense that if an accident occurs, your car won't crumple up as much as if you were driving, say, a Volkswagen beetle.
Automobile Trends
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I guess it takes a while for manufacturers to retool their factories so they are still manufacturing big SUVs. They presumably make more selling big cars than small ones.
I don't understand the preference for an SUV over say an estate car maybe it is a perception of safety.
I don't understand the preference for an SUV over say an estate car maybe it is a perception of safety.
So you're just an elitist who cannot possibly understand the problems of people who aren't massively wealthy. Good for you.
Moving is really not that difficult.
1. Not necessarily true, except the extent that bigger is generally an advantage. But over a similarly sized minivan or car, they aren't safer. It's just an illusion people have because they think they look bigger.
2. You add in rollover dangers cars generally don't have, and bad driving that is a problem often the result of people being in a vehicle that they believe will provide the safety for them, so that they don't have to.
Farm Boy
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Danke.
I see you are a city dweller with blinders on.
You're right, it's not. But often enough, it's simply not an option. Though I suppose you could probably fall back on - screw the rural idiots, there aren't enough of them to care about designing policy that works for them. Aren't they supposed to be poor anyways? How else am I going to impress farmer's daughters with my slick, monied, urban veneer?
For most of my life I've lived in towns of 400-4000 people. Only bought a car once I moved to a city.
And? I'm hopeful robo-taxis allow me to sell my car within the next decade.
Farm Boy
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What will they run on? Are the robo-taxis magically going to run bus lines or railways to every group of farms to make commuting to work for, say, health insurance feasible?
Huh? They run on roads, they're like regular taxis minus the driver.
I'm not really sure how that's relevant though? If you live on a farm and are commuting for work, rather than working on the farm, you should move. (Or get a new job that you can do from the farm.)
warpus
In pork I trust
For a family that's living paycheque to paycheque it can be incredibly hard. Plus, a lot of people don't like change. What you're proposing is drastic and won't work.
Farm Boy
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I was thinking the fuel. Are we operating under the assumption that electric energy and batteries are clean? I suppose if it has rails instead of a battery it might actually be a step up for the environment from internal combustion instead of backwards like a Prius(debatable, I know).
Sure sure. Would you like to take a look at the rates of the Chicago Tribune? They're running a special right now and have a discounted rate for 3 months! Oh, I'm sorry, are you eating at the moment? When would be a better time for me to call back?
Interesting to get "boot-strapped" as an argument style. You really believe I haven't looked at employment in my area and what positions offer telecommuting? Not a ton man. And it still doesn't help at all with getting to the mechanic, or the grocery store, or school, or well, fribbin' anything. And they aren't going to run public transit out this way. The idea of taxing fuel inefficient vehicles is a mixed solution. It screws people who happen to need to buy a pickup, for say construction jobs or a farm or any number of things regardless of their driving habits, but taxing fuel is worse. I already buy the most fuel efficient vehicles I can find in my price range. An old Neon and Corolla have been the last two I've gone through. Even taking steps to try and manage those costs having some group of Yuppies decide that people driving to the bar is sufficient reason to tax a lifestyle and demographic group they don't value is still massively regressive. Even on the urban poor who lack safe and timely public transit for jobs they need to travel to "nicer areas" to hold down. Which is fine I guess, if you just assume that moving isn't hard and they should have done it already. Which they haven't, presumably, because they're stupid.
Should be easy, they'll have minimal expenses.
A lot of people don't like broccoli.
Yes, most of my proposals are drastic, I haven't seen any compelling reasons they wouldn't work though.
The idea with robo-taxis is that the cost-per-mile is similar, but you can drastically cut down on the total number of cars (and eliminate capital expenditure by individuals) by minimizing car idle time and maximizing trip efficiency with respect to multiple people/trips.
Not following.
The amount of fuel used for getting groceries and such is pretty negligible, before I started commuting to my current job my fuel costs were ~$5/month.
I'm fine with construction and farm jobs passing on fuel costs with higher prices, if half of North American commuters in cities alone stop driving in favour of public transit/carpooling/robotaxis, they'll save several hundred billion dollars in combined costs.
warpus
In pork I trust
You haven't? You're totally ignoring the situations most people who this would affect are in and would have to go through if this was implemented. That can't possibly lead to a good solution. It'd only work in a video game.
I'm assuming by the way that you're proposing to increase the price of gas fourfold instantly. That's what wouldn't work. What would work is a gradual increase, which is sort of happening anyway.
I'm assuming by the way that you're proposing to increase the price of gas fourfold instantly. That's what wouldn't work. What would work is a gradual increase, which is sort of happening anyway.
People would figure it out and get over it.
I don't think it would particularly matter in the long run.
For the sake of being practical, I'd give 6 and 12 months notice to doubling of prices, and use the extra revenue to compensate homeowners for lost home value due to the increased gas prices.
Farm Boy
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Interesting. Those costs aren't negligible for me. I already minimize trips for that sort of thing. It took my wife, far more "townie" than me, some adjustment time to realize that you need to build up a massive grocery list and only drive every now and then. It still doesn't cost anywhere close to all of five bucks a month. And that's just us, and that's just groceries. Daycare, doctors, errands of all sorts. I have to drive to most of those sorts of things. Again, not negligible in my budget. I get it, it's a lifestyle you don't value, it's possibly one you find undesirable, and you believe the world would be better off if we just quit and moved and lived like how you think we should. I think you'd probably want to look at how things would restructure though. Do you really want only mega-corp farms owning basically all the food production on this continent, busing around migrant labor and setting them up on in seasonal camps? Or say screw it, you want to be rural? There is a big-arse tax for that. You're supposed to be poor, peasant, get back to your shanty and don't come out? If you have a ton of grass, maybe go buy a horse?
It kind of works like that and it kind of doesn't. Insofar as fuel rises in cost for production, which is almost entirely diesel for machinery and LP/Natural gas for grain storage, crop prices also increase(random aside: LP/Natural gas increases sometimes actually make prices more volatile, higher or lower depending on who you are talking about, as grain storage becomes too expensive for a small operation to risk playing the market on, so more bushels will get dumped following harvest regardless of if the market price is crappy, the elevators then play the storage game. Basically high storage costs wind up costing money to the end consumer, but decrease the total average price obtained by the producer - yay for middlemen!). Not in proportion though. It straps the business expenses really significantly. Insofar as fuel rises in cost for personal transport, it really doesn't. So that money comes out of what you live on for the year.
warpus
In pork I trust
Yeah.. what would happen is people wouldn't move. They wouldn't look for new work. They're too set in their ways.
There would be a huge backlash and your project would fail. You need to keep people in mind when making decisions like these.
Naval Power
Sailing the Seven Seas
I'm fed up with those people because as it stands their huge SUV's would obliterate my car and half the cars on the roads in an accident and result in more fatality. SUV's (and trucks) also grind my gears by how much they restrict visibility. It's not an enviable position to be the only car on a road full of SUV's and trucks, you feel unsafe and you cannot see. None of this is made any better by the fact that many many drivers feel its safe to operate their phones regardless of the situation. Their one second lapse of attention could kill the driver and anyone on board his/her car when their Porsche Cayenne t-bones them doing 70mph.
/rant
galdre
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I'll admit, it's easy for me to forget the effect of higher fuel costs on those living in rural areas, and while I'm in general for higher fuel costs to pay for public transpo I would not want to punish those who don't have public transpo as an option because they live in a rural area.
How about if fuel costs were only higher in urban areas? Those in rural areas pay less, and those in the cities could pay more to fund the public transpo they could/should be using.
How about if fuel costs were only higher in urban areas? Those in rural areas pay less, and those in the cities could pay more to fund the public transpo they could/should be using.
Farm Boy
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If you pass public transit-oriented fuel taxes at the city and township level instead of the state and federal it mostly sorta works for people outside those areas, though you get profiteering bleed as fuel near high-tax areas increases in price as much as it can to increase margins. But rarely do we hear wide-spread clamoring for city and township legislation. We hear it for the wider state and federal units.
Actually, I need to qualify that, because not all the people this would impact are rural. It only works for the urban less-than-well-to-do if those taxes actually result in meaningful public transit improvements that they can use. Public transit that can take them to jobs they can actually get and pay enough to live on, as just one thing. You can't really get past the impact it has on their ability to save up for wider range travel every now and then. If you eliminate clunker cars from being affordable to the marginally lower/middle class, you also truncate their ability to take mini-vacations/travel to regional sites/family not on the beating path for trains/buses and they probably can't afford planes anyhow. Not sure if this is a necessary evil in the equation if you're trying to do this, but you shouldn't discount it entirely.
Actually, I need to qualify that, because not all the people this would impact are rural. It only works for the urban less-than-well-to-do if those taxes actually result in meaningful public transit improvements that they can use. Public transit that can take them to jobs they can actually get and pay enough to live on, as just one thing. You can't really get past the impact it has on their ability to save up for wider range travel every now and then. If you eliminate clunker cars from being affordable to the marginally lower/middle class, you also truncate their ability to take mini-vacations/travel to regional sites/family not on the beating path for trains/buses and they probably can't afford planes anyhow. Not sure if this is a necessary evil in the equation if you're trying to do this, but you shouldn't discount it entirely.
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