> "Individual Vehicle Approval" rules, exempting them from type safety requirements

These rules need to start discriminating between "safe for the passenger who bought it" and "safe for everyone else sharing the public space". Let people easily import some old Model T or a cute kei truck but not something that will kill someone else's kids who they can't see.

Afaik the payout is determined by your insurance, not the opposing party if you are not the cause. They will usually just stick to the standards set by the companies and not argue.

They are all business vehicles as the premiums would be so insane no person would pay it (which is a hint why they should not be in the road). The problem comes when the crash out costs the business and then you get nothing due to type of insurance (pretty much we pay nothing you pay everything yourself), or the ability of companies to fight endless court battles which your insurance likely does not cover.

My way of middle fingering them is reporting them every time they are either on the curb when there is a parking spot (not legal, blocking pedestrian access is only partially legal when there is no parking pace nearby and you leave enough space), or when they overextend onto the road which is a judgement call and up to the enforcing officer.

You also need to keep notice of people trying to get the municipality to widen parking spots and block that.

That is a lot of Dodge Rams. It's a ponderous trend, it'd be interesting to see what is the driver. Is it a particular demographic, or subculture?

My mom who is originally from Bergschenhoek claims her elder brother taught her to drive, in a Dodge truck, probably post WW2 in a model like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_T-,_V-,_W-Series

I don't know whether there are hordes of bejaarden buying Dodges for nostalgic reasons, but that would mean the Dodge brand has some insane staying power. My guess would be that is absurd and unlikely.

I really dig your deadpan sprinkling of Nederlands. Some words have that etymological acuity that makes them irresistible to just deploy. I was always amazed by how many Yiddish and French words there are in Hollands.

Absolutely the same with RAMs in Germany. Big toys for rich guys to compensate something small. Takes at least 2 parking spots and doesn’t fit anyway.

On other hand the RAMs are not relevant for the average citizen. Crazy fuel consumption is a showstopper. And the ones with some extra cash will continue to import with German „Individual Vehicle Approval“ equivalent. In my eyes it’s another useless European regulation. Let poor people import cheap Toyotas from overseas.

This morning in Amsterdam a dog got struck and was killed by one of these vehicles, happend right in front of me. Poor doggo

This seems to be concerning but as a Dutch person who has lived in the UK for a long time the relatively recent home-grown 'fatbike' issue seems to be a much more pressing problem for Dutch road safety than this and isn't being dealt with effectively as far as I understand.

Having said that I think these American pick-ups (and large SUV's, they are part of the same problem) are a common sight here as well and should not be allowed on the road (unless maybe you can show you need one for work or business).

Monster trucks are becoming increasingly popular in Australia too

It should be illegal, but I do think you might just be living close to some people who really love trucks. 5k is not a lot across Europe, popular models sell 10x that.

And don't even mention the Cybertrucks cruising around who knows where. Granted, I've not seen any parked at the Albert Heijn quite yet.

Modern US trucks are an absolute atrocity. I am the demographic that thinks they look cool and might one day have bought one should I end up with more money than I knew what to do with if I hadn't learned that they're death traps.

The tall grill means impact to pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcycles is basically instant death as their head - the only thing above the grill - gets whiplashed onto the rigid tip of the hood. On a normal vehicle you get your legs swiped and rotate your whole body onto an intentionally flexible area of the hood for a much gentler impact.

The visibility from the driver seat is not only much worse than our actual semis, but also worse than actual tanks. You could have half a kindergarten and a small vehicle in front of your car without knowing.

As for the tax, eh - tbf these vehicles are mostly used for business purposes by sole proprietors and the likes, and while they're stupid vehicles they do still do the job. A fully decked Iveco Daily or Mercedes Sprinter is also expensive with little registration tax. Registration tax is a weird (and arguably stupid) system, this isn't really an outlier in that regard.

I roll my eyes more when I see a sports car attempted registered as a van.

These American trucks are driven by Dutch or by eastern Europeans (e.g. from construction industry)? The Dutch cycling culture and urban planning are adorable, but we are terrible selfish assholes especially regarding the cars.

> I moved here to get away from American kindercrushers (among other reasons) and I am profoundly concerned that Europe is being invaded by these machines.

Okay. But you've posted 12 times already in this thread that isn't even an hour old, mostly emotions and hyperbolics as quoted above. Kindercrushers?

Please don't yell at any truck-driving strangers in the parking lot ("car park" for Brits) because I'm getting that vibe.

The article is equally light on actual details to support its case (ADAS is mandatory in the US, even on econoboxes), and for all we know the life saving equipment never mentioned but used to bolster their case could be... rear fog lights... or removal of the ability to shut off DRL, a largely useless feature that shortens the life of your headlamps.

>NotJustBikes

No conflict of interest there, no siree!

> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety.

The problem is coming from the other side, the Americans are threatening to start a new trade war if the EU doesn't permit their murdermobiles on the European roads.

IMO pedestrian safety should still come above all else, but this is not an initiative coming from some EU representatives who want to own a Cybertruck. Blocking these cars can have impact on the war against Ukraine and the prices of fuel and other import products on the short term.

> with pedestrian deaths up 80% and cyclist deaths up 50%

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC9a3GR1HJY&t=371s

> I said there was no way this truck would pass a pedestrian impact safety standard. Now, I wasn't wrong that the truck won't pass a pedestrian impact safety standard, it won't! And that's why they can't sell it in Europe. [...] But I didn't realise that America has no pedestrian impact standards. [...] America actually allows companies to self-certify a variety of aspects of safety.

And that is not counting in the fact that there far more pedestrians on the street in EU than in the USA. If there were the same amount of pedestrians in the USA as in the EU the statistics would be even worse.

The general problem is the US are a bully and Europe just caves, always. We should put up a serious fight. Block all US imports, starting with tech, and see what happens. Who cares if we sell less champagne??!?

> I didn't know this, but it is absolutely crazy.

It's crazy because the numbers don't line up with the theory. If you look at US traffic deaths by year, they were basically flat in terms of vehicle miles traveled between 2010 and 2019 and then took a big jump from COVID which is only now starting to come back down.

Meanwhile in Europe road fatalities were also fairly flat up until 2019, and then went down significantly from COVID.

Now we have to guess why the responses to COVID had the opposite effect in each place, but it's pretty obvious that the difference was a primarily result of COVID rather than differences in vehicle safety regulations, unless the vehicle safety regulations all changed in 2020 and everyone immediately replaced the installed base of cars everywhere overnight.

I'm with you regarding the argument, but want to nitpick:

"dismissing" a politician sounds like an easy fix but we probably don't want hyper-polarized dismissal wars where politicians are "shot down" immediately after being elected. That's why there are other mechanisms such as not re-electing, public shaming, transparency fora etc. ... we need to work on strengthening those, the accountability and transparency.

I think it's hard to say for sure that it's only the safety regulations on the car that that have resulted in these reductions, and by contrast those increases in the US. There are so many other things not related to the regulations on the car. My guess for example is that us have a lot less bike roads than europe does and traffic rules are not affected by the regulations on the cars and so on. for sure European European car regulations are probably better than American ones from a safety perspective. but I think it's hard to to say that without them we would have an increase, it would have a smaller reduction.

I kind of agree but this is missing a big part in my opinion. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation?

There might be certain number of deaths we can accept for increased cost but how is it so obvious that this tradeoff was worth it?

What if cars got 2x costlier in EU due to the regulations to give you a .01% increased chance in safety?

Edit: here are some back of envelope numbers from chatgpt

A single, ordinary car ride carries an extremely small chance of death:

USA: ~1 in 7.7 million

EU: ~1 in 20 million

Its not super clear that optimising these numbers is obviously worth the increased costs.

You can't really compare the two. Vehicle safety regulations might not be able to make up for the USA having stroads and in general bad design. For the same reasons trying to move safety standards over could make things even worse than the USA due to them not fitting the conditions.

At the risk of sounding contrarian, do we have any idea what the drivers of this are? Is this actually about car design, or is it other bits?

Just as a starter for ten, is that 30% increase distributed around the US or concentrated in certain states? I can't imagine we've seen the same increase in New York than in rural Alabama (and if that's the case, how much of it is really attributable to car designs)?

They need to prop up dying German car companies, and are OK with using European lives as collateral.

> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety.

Yeah, so that would be rampantly anti-Democratic authoritarianism... Peaceful transfer of power is pretty much at the core of why democracy works in the first place, and once you start engaging in political persecution because you don't like some trade-off involving safety ... yeah, that's no longer a democracy but something else.

I second that!

> Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety.

No. Every EU politician who doesn't support BANNING all cars should be dismissed and tried and executed! Look, I'm even tougher on pedestrian safety than you are!

Numbers of km driven in the US has increased by circa 10% [1] over that period while decreased in the EU by circa 10% [2]. Add to that in european cities the multiplication of bike lanes, and the permanent manufactured congestion of certain cities. There are many reasons that can explain the movement, and car design is probably a small factor among many small factors.

[1] https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-kilometers-0

[2] https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-secto...

It's odd, on one side the USA is very car-centric, and western Europe is very bike centric, and then stuck in-between is the UK which has no idea which one it is.

Local governments here try to encourage cycling by putting in as many dedicated bike lanes as they can, but they never seem to get much use (where I live they're used almost exclusively by bike delivery people and a few people like myself).

The roads can be lethal and many drivers have a great deal of animosity towards cyclists (probably helped to no good degree by the likes of people like Jeremy Clarkson / Top Gear which spent a decade joking about and belittling cyclists).

> I was stopped by police while taking a walk and shouted at and treated like a criminal when walking in to a Wendy's drive through

I live in a very bike friendly country, so culturally closer to Europe in terms of transport, but if you walked into a drive through you may well be stopped by police.

Drive throughs have long since stopped serving pedestrians.

Generally anyone trying this is inebriated.

I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of the things you mentioned are specific to the Netherlands.

The non-convex side mirror almost got me into an accident the first rental car I drove in the US. I was expecting to see more of the road than I did.

  such as indicators in the same color as the rear lights, are perfectly legal.

I think the indicator color laxness is dumb, but I don't really get when people are so up in arms about it (and yes, I've heard Alec from Technology Connections rant about this many times, and usually agree with the things he says). I have literally never been confused by this. A blinking red light is very different from a solid red light, at least to my eyes.

These regulations are very odd as the third/center break-light is a US thing that come into Europe.

The way these imported cars are parked and driven don't really seem to indicate any masochism. The drivers mostly seem to make their oversized car everyone else's problem, not taking lanes too seriously, double parking by default, and of course blocking both the road and the sidewalk with the overhang of their trucks.

This is not masochism. This is rectified pure egoism and dominance. Usurping the public space and pushing others aside, making one's ego everyone's problem.

Chances are you landed at Heathrow or Gatwick, and thus would rent a car and be on a motorway straight away, no need to go to London.

Why were you even driving in London?

> I can only conclude that anyone who drives an American-size vehicle in these places is a masochist. It cannot be fun.

US soldiers/DOD etc PCS'd to EU manage (not always well).

And, us EUians get the advantage of seeing just how disgracefully oversized US cars and trucks are.

Aside: No yellow indicators? I'd rather US red ones than the 1"x3" mini-yellow-indicators that are becoming more common.

Some municipalities are also working to enforce a limit on the size of cars that can get into the city. Good luck diriving those American cars in Europe.

But still, I wish they would ban them.

The EU was bending over backwards for Russia until they invaded a neighboring country for being too friendly to them. The fact that relationships aren't good there is entirely on Russia.

You think EU should go back to building good relationships with Russia when there is an ongoing war of aggression started by them? If you really believe that and you're an EU citizen I can't help viewing you as traitorous to very foundational values the EU was created for. Absolutely disgusting.

> I think EU should go back to build good relationships with Russia

Kinda hard with someone trying to expand, starting wars and engaging with genocide. Literally.

Being accommodating to Russia is how we got here.

> Dutch car taxes are based on CO2 emissions and weight, these 'cars' from the US will be pricing themselves out of market anyway.

Look at the license plates of these "tokkie tanks": they all start with a "V" (https://www.anwb.nl/auto/autokosten/grijs-kenteken) meaning the owner pays reduced tax.

In France those asshole put those cars on a company books to avoid paying the CO2 overcharge and the VAT.

The F150 has an EV variant that will probably be affordable by Dutch road standards, given the general price of the average EV.

It's time to also take into account area when it comes to vehicle tax in my opinion, even European "cars" (SUVs) are bulging out of normal parking spaces these days.

Agree with your points. Trucks are a tragedy of the commons kindof thing. I just dislike that you’re singling out Cybertruck. It’s not bigger than the Doge Ram, F150 or a Hummer.

Big trucks happen to be a popular market in the US. If you build cars in the US, you’ll have to serve that market. Even more so if your goal is to prove that an EV can be anything that an ICE can be, and more.

I dunno about the last 15 years, but my sense is there is a fairly widespread perception that drivers have become more reckless and oblivious since COVID. This isn't just about car standards (although there is probably a connection terms of things like touchscreens becoming more and more prevalent in cars) but it's a thing.

European living in the US here. Around my mostly suburban area, I see mainly SUVs and crossovers with a few vans and pickups sprinkled in. Outside the urban areas, pickups and other monsters like nine seaters seem more common.

I also see a lot - and I mean a lot - of people holding a phone while driving, even in dense city traffic. Add to that non-walkable streets in some places and unsafe rules like legal right turns on a red light. Cyclists often have to squeeze into a narrow bike lane that is level with the car lanes instead of raised onto the sidewalk. That adds up to a much higher amount of latent dangers than in Europe.

There's something you can learn from the broad scale, but SF has pretty decent tracking and perhaps there's something you can learn from looking at one city too. SF has a Collisions Report[0] and also traffic citations data is open data[1] so you can see how enforcement has changed. Subjectively, I notice a lot more red-light running, and objectively the red-light camera near my apartment illuminates the ceiling of my home office every day.

I'm now a father so one cannot discount the amount to which my tolerance of bad actors has changed, but my experience has been that the lack of enforcement for violations (right-turn red lights in SF are rarely obeyed) is definitely taken advantage of by many drivers. However, the collisions report does make it somewhat clear that a non-trivial amount of the new fatalities are due to new traffic modalities: people now have the stand up OneWheels, and there are many more food delivery drivers on e-bikes.

But one gratifying thing is that the newer parts of town where people are having children have a lot more safety construction. I was walking home from the gym here in Mission Bay when I saw a group of kids between 6 and 12 on their little scooters.

[0] https://www.visionzerosf.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/San-...

[1] https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/car-traffic-pede...

People driving "Brodozers(tm)" can't see shit near the vehicle due to both the big hood and being super high up, while the gigantic, flat front grille kills people rather than crumpling them over the hood.

And while I call them "Brodozers" to be derogatory, a significant number of really tiny females are driving them as well in the name of "safety". And they REALLY can't see anything over the hood.

The combination of gigantic blind spots and complete energy transfer is good at killing unarmored people.

Americans want big cars.

American regulations created a dichotomy where there's no middle ground. Big car or sour cream dollop with no space and no power.

Americans want big because big means "safety". An SUV feels safer next to the semi than a Smart car. They also want big to haul the occasional furniture between moves, go on the occasional road trip, bring all the gear when camping, or bring back a massive shopping haul.

American housing is way less dense outside the cities. There's no reason for a compact car if you live in the burbs apart from gas mileage.

At the same time, more and more people want to build bike lanes and people infra near roads. "Strong Towns" movement, etc.

We're putting more bicyclists on the roads next to big cars now.

I would guess it is a tariff thing rather than NATO. Is anyone in Europe really believing the USA still has our back?

The cybertruck is not approved in Europe. Some people manage to use individual loopholes to import them but Tesla doesn't sell them here.

Guaranteed new deaths everyday instead of possibly, maybe, USA president will not back out from a conflict on a whim or by getting offended and go full sulky kid due to some remarks on his patheticly idiotic personality (I hope he will never get here, I do not want to be carpet bombed because of a comment).

I'd say keep everyday life better and buy some stupid US military airplanes instead, to keep this deteriorated stupid smug child satisfied!

The EU representatives shall remain adults!!

The five year old just needs to stay at least 2.5m [1] away from the driver and there aren't any problems!

[1]: Based on the chart in this old meme https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/140dgn8/many_popu...

They can't.

Expensive

This is not directly related to Gasoline cars. See Cybertruck.

>European consumers want livable cities with smaller (and more affordable) cars. Thanks.

Provably false.

https://www.acea.auto/figure/new-passenger-cars-by-segment-i...

Retract your statement. Thanks.

Sure you can. I'm not even sure why I need to support this statement. You can have any kind of trade you want.

In the longer term, these sorts of things are governed more by demand than anything else. Sure, some governments might sometimes enact protectionist policies, but if most people in a country think the cars made by their domestic car companies are garbage, they're going to end up with a government that allows cars from other countries in.

Free trade. Any products that fulfil local safety standards should be allowed to be sold. Just because USA doesn't want to make cars that fulfil European standard does not mean they should be able to get away with those.

This is nothing to do with trade.

If region X happily produces and sells rotten meat, no other region is obligated to trade with them. But region X might choose to import non-rotten meat if they want.

Because of safety standards? It’s the whole point of the article.

You can absolutely have unidirectional trade, countries produce a different array of goods and these are not bartering deals.

If the US can build safer cars for everyone, the EU will have no objections.

If the EU cars aren't "safe enough" for the US then sure. Some of it is political silly buggers and protectionism but at the end of the day countries (or unions of countries) can set their own rules.

If the US wants to sell cars to the EU, they can. Plenty of countries export cars to the EU just fine. It's not the EU's fault that American car manufacturers make dangerous vehicles. It's also not American car manufacturer's fault that European cities and roads are often smaller and Europeans have less appetite for road deaths. But it is their fault if they want to export to that market without making any effort to design suitable cars for it. American exporters aren't granted a God-given right to inflict American standards in the rest of the world.

I drive a 2014 Ford Fiesta. Every car feels huge in comparison. I had a Nissan Qashqai parked next to my car, it looked like a tank. I had a look inside, it didn't seem particularly spacious.

Same when I flew to Bilbao. I booked late, the only rentals left were in the luxury segment. I drove off in a mild-hybrid Lexus NX, where I struggled to fit the luggage that fit reasonably well in the boot of my car on the way to Schiphol.

Even Volvo has made the newer XC models have a much more obstructive, flat, high bonnet. I drove one as a rental and it was disconcerting how little you could see. You can't see anything in front of the car, whereas the old style was still a (stupid, IMO) crossover, but the front was basically like a normal car-shaped car with a down-sloped front.

I don't know why anyone who isn't a complete psycho would actually prefer being more limited in forward vision (though I imagine it allowed more space for dual-motor engines).

Honestly if I were the government, I'd require a downward sightline such that you can see, with your own two eyes, a child of a certain height standing against the front bumper. No visibility, no sales, no imports, no excuses. Let the car manufacturers figure out how to build a car that meets it or settle for "only" being able to sell car-shaped estate cars.

https://ibb.co/dw7QmTTr

Yeah, it’s a big topic in France too. I just saw the current pinacle of this stupidity: a camera in the grille at the front of a Peugeot car.

Despite all the bs you’ll read here, Europeans also want bigger cars. For me the proof is that poor people car brands like Dacia no longer sell sedans.

I think the reason you don’t see many big cars is that we are generally so poor that we can’t afford what we would like to buy. At least where I live… Also our roads are old and narrow which makes it impractical.

Yes, it's infuriating.

The extra dumb thing about it is that I don't believe the numbers in the US really even strongly support that preference. Yes, you're less likely to die in a big SUV than in a sedan if you get into a crash, but the difference isn't that large, and the risk of death in general is low enough that it's not worth worrying about.

I drive a sedan, but I'm only really worried about getting killed by one of these monster vehicles when I'm out walking, as a pedestrian, or while I'm on a bicycle.

Tragedy of commons.

What a time to be alive!

(For Europeans)

Wow, that's a false equivalency if ever there was one. Stricter safety standards != starting a trade war because of "hurr durr trade deficit".

Yes but that is due to the vastly different population density.

The USA has 34 people per square km while Germany has 234. So pollution per capita would be a better metric.

Air in populated cities or air in general? Air quality seems a bit harder to compare across countries than road deaths, considering the US has so much sparsely populated land.

The average air quality in all of the US is not as bad as in some European countries?