Comment by simianwords

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

Buses and trains decrease the number of cars on the road by pooling travellers. Ambulances and fire trucks serve a purpose beyond making individuals travel comfortably. This is a straw man.

Have you ever heard of the term "negative externalities"?

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)

But it is much greater - more than double the odds of killing a kid in a collision, for instance.

Makes sense. And I'm glad I don't have to make that choice. But as mentioned in my edit, I think that the "low hanging fruit" are still plentiful, so we won't have to think about this for a while (talking about pedestrian deaths).