Right here in America, we like our vans the best way we like our novelty belt buckles: Huge. We Individuals are used to this, seeing each freeway, thoroughfare, and again highway replete with pickups and SUVs that may solely be described as “novelty outsized.” In some unspecified time in the future, you simply cease noticing them — they develop into a part of the surroundings, simply one other extremely massive car.
However our buddies throughout the pond don’t have that very same sense of truck blindness. Touchdown upon our shores, they’re shocked by the dimensions of autos that prowl our roads, lurking round each blind nook and behind each hill. When British author for the Monetary Instances, John Burn-Murdoch, arrived within the U.S. not too long ago, he noticed the identical development — however he delved into why our roads are like this.
Burn-Murdoch studied the information on American autos — dimension, emissions, crash fatalities for each passengers and pedestrians. He found a development, the place fashionable American autos are far bigger and dirtier than their European counterparts. These large vans are literally safer for his or her occupants, however much more lethal to the individuals exterior: As autos sizes grew, will increase in pedestrian casualties far outpaced any discount in passenger deaths.
To Burn-Murdoch’s studying, this all factors to a singular development in American automotive buying: Rugged individualism. He blamed a tradition of “driving as an expression of non-public freedom” for the ever-growing autos, alongside U.S. consumers’ wishes for vehicles to be “aggressive” and “highly effective.” His full piece for Monetary Instances is a wonderful evaluation of the information concerned, although it by no means fairly will get to the true resolution — introducing kei vehicles to the American market.
