As an European, I'd rather have a trade war, than bend 90 degrees.

But the EU commission will bend and sell us out, the same way it's selling european privacy to security and data companies lobbying it (just check how many times Thorn, Palantir et al have met with EU officials, lobbying is recorded and publicly accessible).

Trade wars work both ways. So far the US export market is not doing so great. All those tariffs are raising the cost of exported goods as well. And those were already too expensive before the tariffs. If the US wants more US cars on EU roads, it needs to start making better cars. It's that simple. But in the EU, cars have to compete with domestic cheap cars and imported Korean and Chinese cars. It's a level playing field. Hence not a lot of US cars on the roads. A few Teslas (made in the EU mostly), a few Fords (some made on the VW platform), and a sprinkling of niche imports for things like muscle cars and pickup trucks. They are quite rare but you see one or two once in a while.

Maybe the legislation allowing their import should take their special status in to account.

I would suggest mandatory semi (or full) trailer truck drivers' license required for anyone who operates these. In addition, they should be indicated as a new category of "recreational trucks", with harsh penalties specific to them especially regarding road accidents.

For example, if found guilty of reckless driving, or causing accidents, the vehicle would be permanently confiscated. (On top of personal fines, loss of license etc as already sentenced by law.) Perhaps the law enforcement could then be given access to such confiscated vehicles, creating also some incentive to enforce the law.

Fuck it. Let the Americans start another trade war then. This nonsense has been going on long enough, if times need to get tough so be it then, start earlier rather than in 5 years when these misery machines are everywhere and the car arms race is in full effect.

As an American, I have plenty of disappointment in government right now with my own. But it's also incredibly disappointing how many other world leaders are letting Trump roll over them.

The trade wars go both ways. Certainly it can be a bit of a collective action problem when it comes to individual countries that are smaller than the US, but the EU as a whole should be able to negotiate on even-enough footing with the US on these kinds of issues.

See also: Boeing. It is the exact same kind of fuck-up. Regulators should not be in bed with the industries they regulate. That's a hard problem to solve, because where if not in industry would you get the expertise. But these kind of revolving door arrangements are extremely problematic.

When there are more obstacles and hazards on the road drivers tend to slow down and pay attention. Pedestrian deaths in my city peaked in 2025, but they didn't happen in the walkable central areas of the city where pedestrians are common, they happened out in the 'burbs where the roads are wide and pedestrians are few.

It’s not about champagne. It’s about us not making anything like the Patriot air defense system. Or us not having the capabilities to command our disparate militaries cohesively without US involvement in NATO. The whole Western order has been built on the premise of US being the corner stone that ties everything together.

Thank God the French have always been suspicious about it since the Suez crisis, hence we _do_ have at least some independent capabilities.

> Who cares if we sell less champagne??!?

Nobody, but it seems a lot of people care if we sell less german cars.

The US is underwriting European security (and by extension various European welfare states).

Do you really want to block the import of arms and financial aid to Ukraine?

If Europeans were serious about their sovereignty they’d have made very different choices up until now.

It isn’t right that America has so much power in this circumstance, but going back decades the US has been asking for Europe to take defense seriously.

2020 wasn't just the start of Covid, but also the start of BLM. The narrative I always see from the American right is that BLM caused many police forces across the US to radically reduce traffic enforcement, since: 1. traffic offenders are disproportionately black, 2. stops for minor traffic offences can sometimes spiral into violence in various ways, and some viral ones have involved absurdly bad use of force decisions by officers involved, and 3. no force wants to take the blame for another George Floyd

Per this narrative, a significant antisocial tranche of the public has responded to the effective suspension of traffic law in the way that you would expect them to, and that is why road deaths are up.

Why do you think COVID is relevant aside from being a placeholder for the year 2020?

Cybertrucks init (/s)

>They need to prop up dying German car companies

Germany isn't the only economy dependent on the legacy auto sector. France, Italy, Romania, Czechia, Slovakia and Belgium also have a lot of jobs, or had, in the auto industry, before the mass layoff of the last 2-3 years.

As much as German car companies suck it's not them that are road killers

If this were comparing absolute numbers I'd agree. But this is only the relative change over a few years, the road design hasn't seriously changed in that time. So those differences should affect these numbers directly.

Many places in Europe has bad design as well. This is not a uniquely american thing.

Do you actually think that is the case? Because you have big streets and cars, small cars and actual safety standards would make it less safe?

That's the most American sentiment I've heard today

Dismissing a politician because you don't like them is the entire point of elections.

I think that's a little bit of a weird way to look at the probabilities. Sure, for a one-off activity I might look at 1 in 7,700,000 and decide that's an acceptable risk. But many people in the US take several car rides per day.

At, say, 4 rides per day, that's about a 1 in 5300 chance of death over a single year. That's still small, but not that small. Someone in a decent-sized town or city could expect to lose someone they know once every few years with those odds.

I think if you want to make this argument you can go look at the stats. Look at the relative cost of vehicles in the EU over the past 25 years, compare to the cost of vehicles in the US over the past 25 years.

Obviously the lack of difference there wouldn't prove much (if I had to bet I'd bet cars in the US have gotten way more expensive faster than in the EU, just from labor costs), but the lack of a major difference would complicate the theory that new regulations in the past 15 years have massively improved costs, absent a theory that some other thing the EU is doing but the US is not doing is also kicking in to similarly counteract that.

The numbers exist, this isn't in the abstract. Just a question of doing the legwork

Zero pedestrian or cyclist deaths are acceptable just for someone to get a cheaper (or much worse, larger) car. Zero.

There is a vast number of reasons why we need and must reduce private car modality share as much as possible. Making cars more expensive is a feature, not a bug.

The Americans didn’t get cheap cars, they just got very large cars which is obviously detrimental to anyone but perhaps the driver.

> penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation?

The question works both ways. How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in the US due to lax regulation? How much is each toddler ran over worth, exactly?

That’s the same flawed reasoning Kirk flaunted when discussing gun laws. It ultimately proved to be wrong; as in it’s all fine and “Vulcanian Logical” until you or your close ones become the statistic

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

Ah, yes, the old "what if [totally absurd scenario]" argument. That's not what anyone is talking about.

Making cars 2x as expensive would massively improve safety simply by reducing the number of cars. And it would make cities much nicer places to exist in general.

With the huge hoods these things have the driver has a hard time seeing what is right in front of them, and when they hit a pedestrian (kid or adult) they are much more likely to die.

https://www.carscoops.com/2024/12/suvs-and-pickup-trucks-2-3...

> How can we quantify the penalty faced by consumers in EU with to increased costs due to regulation?

I really hate that everything has to be seen from the consumers' lens, especially the consumer of luxury goods (I'm talking SUVs and the like, cheap cars exist in Europe).

What if we didn't just look at it from the POV from people who buy or want cars? I don't own a car, nor do I plan to. I have to pay for roads, which I understand to an extent. But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper?

Edit: Also, looking at "cars" without distinction really just obfuscates the real issue. The most dangerous cars (for pedestrians) are the biggest (and sometimes the fastest) ones. Plus most pedestrians die in cities, not on a Highway. So yeah, if you want to drive an SUV in a dense city, then I'm all for making it 10x more expensive for you, because it makes no sense (to me) and puts me in danger :)

Those numbers are for occupants. Not bystanders. And also do not include the injury adjusted lifetime rates as they say a lot more.

I'm not going to argue the cost numbers are they are so far out of the ballpark it's not even funny.

Making cars more expensive disincentives car use, which is a good thing.

The fewer cars, the better.

It's worth the cost if it's your child or relative being killed by a car, these regulations don't make a car 2x costlier than the USA so it's ludicrous to start with that assumption.

> car design is probably a small factor

That probably is doing a lot of work here. A truck with a driver sitting so high above the street they can't physically see a child or bicycle in front of them is just an inherent risk to pedestrians and cyclists, no matter how you twist it. And don't even get me started on Cybertrucks, which are pretty much designed to cause accidents with casualties.

Even if the causal link is more complex than the numbers make it seem, acting like putting heavier and bigger vehicles with less restrictions on streets won't cause accidents is just plain dishonest.