Comment by sigmoid10 3 hours ago
>EU vehicle safety regulations have supported a 36% reduction in European road deaths since 2010. By contrast, road deaths in the US over the same period increased 30%, with pedestrian deaths up 80% and cyclist deaths up 50%
I didn't know this, but it is absolutely crazy. Every EU politician who tries to subvert car safety should be dismissed and tried for endangering public safety.
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).
It's a tactic, agree to the deal, the US ignores us. Allow the deal to get destroyed in parliament and the courts and it has no effect. The deal was a means by which to get enough time to figure out the correct response. We've been doing this kind of thing for decades.
This is the way. The current US administration is a 2 year old with ADHD and shiny distractions abound. Agree to deals and let him claim wins, and then bury it in bureaucracy and common sense.
This is, essentially, how the US government survived Trump 1.0, and is why Trump 2.0 has been so concerned with gutting bureaucracy and placing vapid yes-men in the cabinet, but they can't really do that in Europe.
It's one of the few times where EU bureaucracy is a huge advantage.
I mean, the commission said it "intends to accept". Given the EC's legendary lightning-fast speed, that presumably puts the timeline long after ol' minihands is out of office, and thus irrelevant.
Even when the EC actually _wants_ to do something, it typically struggles to get it done in under a decade.
> long after ol' minihands is out of office
The EC is not that slow when it comes to the American trade wars. The timeline suddenly shrinks to months instead of years because this stuff could majorly disrupt the economy (and safety) across the European continent.
The EC may not fear the (mostly disinterested) European citizen body, but it does fear immediate actions by world powers.
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.
> threatening to start a new trade war if the EU doesn't permit their murdermobiles on the European roads
The strange part is that those car can be sold in the EU markets already. They just have to comply with the same pollution and safety standards as other cars. What would justify an exception?
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.
Decisions are still made by our local polititians, not by Americans, who should take responsibility for those, especially in such a serious situation as this.
Pressure from Americans - who have no say in how we live in Europe -, remote or suspected, transient consequences on costs and conflics, all have lower, much lower priorities than keeping the population safe and healthy. Dead people need no cheap fuel, need no prompt conflict resolution, need no short term tariff settlements, and do not care what Americans think. Dead people are just dead! EU polititians should let people stay alive foremost of all! The rest come aftre that.
And all because these stupid huge trucks. Not even close in importance! Does not worth it.
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.
It’s tough when there’s a war going on and the EU countries don’t really want to pay the true cost for their defense.
It doesn't matter how much is this repeated by politicians: it's a lie to suggest that the EU does not spend enough for defense.
We spend multitudes of times more than our only realistic threat. And that threat can't even wage war with Ukraine, you expect Russia to be able to fight Poland, yet alone the rest of the European countries?
Also, just a reminder: US servicemen have not been sent to fight a war for European souls since almost a century. Whereas European soldiers are actively deployed even now in the middle East for wars that Washington started.
Please start looking more at facts and less about propaganda. Of course Europe should step up in being more independent defense-wise, but you'd be a fool if you think the US does not enjoy and leverage the current status provides.
This is a bogus statement. EU countries have met or surpassed defense budget goals, usually the ones that don't have the contracts in progress but the full payouts not done yet since they are still in progress. Percentage of GDP to military spending has been criticized as a bad way to measure how much military spending is done and needed. Additionally, the European countries are paying for the war while the US is taking that money and the optics of providing certain military supplies. This whole situation is just exploitation of the EU with the benefit of the US' companies.
A correct statement would be that the Europe didn't want to pay for US equipment for its own defense.
The US has previously discouraged Europe from building out its own defense industry, the current situation is due to that a dovish view of Russia therefore less of a need to spend money on equipment and troops for a land war.
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.
Any war goes both ways, but that's not the point. The point is: can you win a war against your adversary? Can the UK win a trade war against the US for example?
The thing is, nobody else wants trade wars. Both sides of a trade war lose in a system of otherwise free commerce, the "winning" party is the party that is willing to sacrifice the most to make a point. Everyone but maybe the super wealthy are worse off. Americans are paying the price for their government's idiotic tariff game, but the real cost will come over the following years, and in some cases decades.
The EU is trying to minimize the damage for its constituents, they're not interested in a stupid power play. Threats of reciprocating in trade wars are meaningless if the leadership you're threatening doesn't care if their people starve.
Playing tough doesn't matter anyway, the American voting public will just blame the EU for all the bad things that happen if the EU's actions do have an impact, laugh at the EU if a diplomatic solution is found, and the American leadership will repeat whatever the last guy to verbally jerk off Trump said for at least the coming three years.
In a way, it's kind of impressive. The EU was not ready for America to devolve into this level of clown politics this fast, and that left them unprepared.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
For those who don't know, the French (and British) instigated the Suez crisis. It was a highly illegal attempt at regime change in Egypt and the US along with the USSR and United Nations rightfully pressured the French to stop. Bizarre example to illustrate the need for military independence.
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.
Europe should certainly increase its defense spending (and actual capabilities). But the reason NATO exists isn't just to please Europe. The US have a direct interest in containing Russia; I don't think they can afford to simply stop caring about the rest of the world. And I'd be willing to test that theory.
> 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.
Funny because the last time I believe that it was the US that requested help in Iraq and Afghanistan and not the other way around.
> Do you really want to block the import of arms and financial aid to Ukraine?
Umm... yes? Since this whole debacle started, the EU has been shooting itself in the foot with all the sanctions that hurts its industries.
On the other hand, the US did the smart thing and did not give out weapons for free, it charged for them.
In the end, the US will be the winner of this war and Europe will come out of it incredibly weak economically. And it will have to turn to the US for help. Again.
> 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.
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.
COVID happened in the year of the discontinuity and caused major changes to commuting behavior as a result of remote work, people afraid of infection avoided mass transit, many people moved out of cities or lost their jobs, people bought cars who didn't used to drive and now there are more new/inexperienced drivers with cars (and it's easier to get a license in the US than Europe), etc.
Also, the numbers for at least the US are apparently just wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in...
1.27 fatalities per 100M VMT in 2023 (the latest year with data), 1.11 in 2010, that's a difference of 14%, not 30%. Even the peak during COVID was only 24% above 2010. The only way I can see to get 30% is to use the during-COVID number for only the total number of motor vehicle fatalities without accounting for population growth or vehicle miles traveled, which is not a great metric for making comparisons.
Keep in mind that the US stats are derived from cities that are designed around personal automobile transportation, so they're likely muted.
Europe on the other hand has a much higher level of intermingling between pedestrians and vehicles. This puts pedestrians more often in harms way, and likely will lead to out-sized dangers that aren't seen as frequently in the USA. Pedestrian safety is a key requirement for European car safety.
If the EU is politically forced into accepting the US standards: The slack will need to be picked up by European insurance companies, who should charge extreme premiums for unsafe designs, effectively blocking the sale of the vehicles from dangerous, young, or casual drivers and limiting those designs to those who truly need them (which I suspect is very few.)
This should also go a long way in addressing inexpensive Chinese vehicles that ape the American designs. Since that is more likely going to be what is on the roads.
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.
They need to prop up dying German car companies, and are OK with using European lives as collateral.
>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.
True, France does too of course, but Germany has been particularly stubborn. There's infighting within Europe, for that matter - note Polestar opposing Merz's attempts to weaken Europe's phase out of combustion vehicles. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/newsbirmingham/volvo-and-pole...
Stubbornness to change is part of Germany's national identity, more often than not towards its own detriment.
But also, Merz is not alone in this, but a lot of Eastern Europe can't afford EVs at current EU prices so the EU has to make some concessions. People in Romania or Bulgaria can't afford to buy a Polestar like people in Netherlands can.
EU leaders needs to account for the massive disparities of purchasing power between places like Nordics and Romania/Bulgaria for example when they make sweeping legislation like that.
Sure it would be nice if all of EU was like Norway with only EVs everywhere, but this way you'd basically be bankrupting and turning against you the people in the poorer countries of the union who are already disproportionately affected by the CoL crisis of the EU, who are effectively paying German energy and grocery prices but at Eastern EU salaries and pensions. This is not sustainable.
Not to mention the disparity in public transportation infrastructure where a car is basically mandatory for commuting outside big cities in place like Romania.
Yes, but in France Renault just made a new Twingo, to be electric, for 20,000 euro, and they're starting to make electric sports cars (A290, future electric A110), so I wouldn't call that 'legacy auto'.
As much as German car companies suck it's not them that are road killers
Among other issues, Volkswagen killed roughly 1200 people by cheating on their emissions tests.
https://lae.mit.edu/2024/06/28/study-quantifies-premature-de...
Besides the whataboutism, this is 1200 premature deaths (of mostly frail people). As much as I'm sensible to the topic of air pollution, putting that number closer to the number of, I dunno, premature deaths attributable to Coal power plants will give a more realistic view of the problem
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.
Whether they like it or not, American cars have become a lot more European over the years. I wish I had figures to back it up but from my own anecdotal experience when we traveled to the US when I was young almost every car was different and, for me at least, this made it feel strange and exciting.
Taking my own kids back there this year, most of the normal cars were common, or at most variations of the ones from Europe. Even many of the vans and work vehicles are now common European shapes, occasionally with a different badge. Trucks and full size SUVs were the last hold outs of US specific models.
Which makes me wonder, are the pedestrian deaths really heavily weighted towards these models?
For what it's worth we hired a full sized SUV. There was one point where I was about to drive out of our Villa's driveway when my partner shouted "wait!" There was a 8ish year old kid walking down the sidewalk towards where I was about to cross it who was completely invisible from the driving position. It was actually safer to forward park that thing because the visibility in the reversing camera was much better than driving forward.
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)?
> 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.
Yes, and? Are they tried for making politician decisions someone (e.g. the next people in power) didn't like? This doesn't engage at all with what I talked about, and I already explicitly acknowledged that peaceful transition of power is important. What is the point of this comment? Why rebuke something I never even remotely said?
> 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!
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.
Edit2: people can make the choice to buy Volvo cars that are ~40% safer. Why isn't every car buyer buying only Volvo?
The assumption you have to make is that regulation would make it much cheaper to buy a safe car than just buying Volvo. It is somewhat true but not sure on the extent.
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.
We know what the rate of deaths are: 1 in 8000; roughly 40,000 over 320,000,000.
Slightly less than the rate of suicide; and slightly more than half the number of fentanyl deaths. And a smaller fraction of medical mistake deaths. (Of course, none of the risk is evenly distributed.)
As a systemic problem, I’m not convinced that cars are the worst. Or outside what we accept in several areas.
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
I think we should not compare EU vs US costs but rather predict what would be the decrease in costs (relative to EU itself) due to reduced regulations in EU.
Huh, but this is a terrible comparison.. the cars in both unions have been made the same, of course they cost similarly. In other words the US buyers partially pay for the R&D cost to keep to EU standards. And the US population also get the EU regulated-safety requirements (although only partially, since the US also allows Cybertrucks to drive around).
A comparison would be comparing a car that can ensure the survival of their passengers, proven with test crashes, vs e.g. Chinese-made cara for the local market that have terrible crumpling when crash-tested..
> the cars in both unions have been made the same, of course they cost similarly
I'm really not sure what you mean, many of the most popular cars in the EU aren't even sold in the US (Renault, Dacia, Opel, Peugeot/Citroën although they have taken quite a hit in the last few years) and they are generally cheaper than US cars.
And quite a few US cars aren't available in the EU either (although they can sometimes be imported privately, which bypasses the regulations somewhat) which is the very topic we're discussing.
As for Chinese cars, the recent ones are performing adequately in crash-tests.
A bit off-topic, but lots of the top ranked Euro NCAP crash tests have been chinese-built cars for a few years now. Their industry has evolved insanely fast, that perception of low standards is long gone.
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.
And how exactly fixes that pedestrian deaths? But I know your answer; put people not driving a car into jail too, right? Eliminate sidewalks too, use the space for an additional lane. Exiting your car anywhere except in parking lots and private property should be prohibited!
Sounds like a lovely place for sure.
To get to zero you must eliminate cars completely and I don't buy into that kind of logic.
It’s not some mystical thing, but a matter of smart urban design. Oslo and Helsinki have managed to achieve zero road deaths in a year without eliminating vehicles. You don’t need to accept a certain amount of deaths as some sort inevitability or a necessary sacrifice.
That's not what GP said. Zero deaths caused by cheap/large vehicles.
You can eliminate deaths by that cause by eliminating those types of vehicles, not by eliminating all cars.
Not saying that's feasible, but let's not argue against something that nobody said in the first place.
Is it ever acceptable to have pedestrian or cyclist deaths to have buses, trains, ambulances, fire trucks?
What a strange question. The answer is of course 'rather not'. But those are for the most part unavoidable without society paying a (potentially) much higher price. So we have decided to accept those risks.
In this case it is another country trying to impose their 'way of life' on the rest of the world, or in this case, the EU, which has a different set of values.
That doesn't really have anything to do with having buses or trains vs cyclists, it is not a personal decision and there are many alternatives compared to US vehicles that were never designed for European (or Asian, for that matter) traffic in the first place. The USA is very car centric to the point that walking is frowned upon (I got picked up by the police in North Dakota for walking). The EU is simply not like that, and that's fine. The USA should set their own standards for car safety and so should the EU, if that leads to incompatible products I think the mantra is 'let the market sort it out'. The Japanese seem to have figured out how to make vehicles for different markets, there is no reason the USA can not do the same thing.
The specific regulations here
> EU officials must revisit the hastily agreed trade deal with the US, where the EU stated that it “intends to accept” lower US vehicle standards, say cities – including Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, and more than 75 civil society organisations. In a letter to European lawmakers, the signatories warn that aligning European standards with laxer rules in the US would undermine the EU’s global leadership in road safety, public health, climate policy and competitiveness.
They point to many things and not only the size of cars - like fewer approvals, lower pollution controls, fewer safety measures.
Some of them increase utility (like people might prefer bigger cars) and others decrease cost.
The problem with these sorts of things is that they discriminate against lower-income folks. In cities with good public transit and affordable housing (such that people can live near their jobs) this is maybe not such a problem, but that unfortunately describes precious little of the US. I bet it could work in many places in the EU, though.
For some reason we decided to put a great deal of jobs in the city centers. Commuting to the edge of a city and then taking public transport to office doesn't really work, unless massive amounts of money are pumped into trains, busses and trams.
There's this weird perception that Europe has excellent public transport, while in reality it only works, sort of, in a few larger cities. Everywhere else functioning in society really requires a car or assumes that you're living within biking distance of work and daycare.
People that need cars don't tend to have large cars, unless there's some tax benefits (someone in the village has one of those 5 seater dumper trucks because they can write it off as a business expense but can't write off a Toyota Aygo or Citroen C1 which would far more sensible)
That doesn't align with my experience. I grew up in Belgium, in a place where you'd be lucky to have a bus an hour. The closest place to get groceries, by foot, was half an hour away, most of it 5% uphill on the way back.
If you need a car, then you need it for everything. You need to be able to fit the two kids you picked at school, the gear for the sport activity you'll drop them at, the mom you picked at the train station after work, and the weekly groceries you picked from the supermarket on your way back. From experience, you aren't doing all of that in a Hyundai i10.
Now I live in the Randstad. Groceries get delivered, mom rides the bus for 8 minutes to come back home, and I pick the kid by bike. The car is optional and pure convenience, so I can get away with a small one.
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...
Why isn't everyone buying Volvo cars if they are 40% more safe?
> 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 :)
I agree with everything you said but
> But why should my life be at risk from people wanting to buy SUVs cheaper?
What if the risk is not that much greater? That's what I'm questioning.
Volvo cars are 40% safer. Then why don't people buy only those cars and choose to buy more unsafe cars at the same price?
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...
> 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.
> 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.