We should jabe just gone with Nader’s idea of placing an 8", hunting knife sticking out of the middle of the sterring wheel
Republicans will design a car that rapes children to fix this
Just had a bit of a realization on this one. The point of this is for them to do nothing, isn’t it? Specifically blame it one something people will push back on (safety features), so they can throw up their hands and say, “we tried, but they won’t let us bring down the cost of cars!”
Furthering that they are indeed not the “Pro-Life” party but instead the “Pro-Birth” party.
Agree but starting to even wonder about that. I’ve never seen them do anything that benefits births let alone even celebrate it. Seems to be “Pro-Misery especially at others expense”.
That’s where the “the cruelty is the point” expression comes from
“Forced-birth” party
“Brood-mares for more mine yearners” party
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Remember, their cars are the gaint Yukons with a convoy of body guards aren’t safe enough. But your car. It could literally be a gascan strapped to tricycle for all they care.
It could literally be a gascan strapped to tricycle for all they care.
Time to mandate every car’s steering column has a 1.5ft razor sharp spike sticking out of it.
Takata did nothing wrong.
This is kinda misleading, the complaint is that cars are too expensive. They’re not saying cars should be less safe, just that the extra safety isn’t worth the financial cost.
(Still not a good position to take in my opinion)
You’re assuming what they’re saying is true. Many other countries have those same safety features without their cars costing nearly as much
That’s par for the course for Republicans. Are things too expensive? Let them be shittier so they are cheaper.
And the act all surprised when they just get shittiee, but not cheaper.
Then it becomes shittier but the price stays the same while the manufacturer pockets the difference.
and then they buy tacky, gaudy expensive things.
Yeah, and the thing is I’d be a lot more receptive to that argument if they were willing to support funding the sort of road and transit infrastructure that actually make cars less dangerous.
Its not misleading. They could cut costs in multiple areas, but specifically chose safety.
I’d have to argue that cars are less safe when there is a giant tablet bolted to the dash and every setting is buried in menus.
I think we’re finally past the peak of tablet-ification of car dashboards. A lot of manufacturers have finally realized people hate it and newer models are putting all crucial functions on buttons and only putting infotainment stuff on the tablet.
See Tesla front end crash stats.
Swipe…swipe…submenu, press…swipe…crash.
Yeah. Right wing positions are wrong enough without the constant, panicky extremification of them that goes on. It’s not really persuasive to anyone when we distort these positions and then crow about how bad they are. It’s all just part of the outrage-engagement complex that is rapidly rotting all our brains.
it’s not misleading, it’s pointing out the GOPs actual position, which is to reduce costs that the manufacturer can’t avoid to save them money. If safety regs are gutted, manufacturers get to keep the prices the same, but make more money. If instead more regulations are put in that necessitate reducing costs in other areas it will just cost the manufacturers money.
Have they considered moving to a place with better public transportation?
Safety is basically self-certified in the US. What evidence is there that the extra cost is related to safety?
I understand that Republicans are often prohibited by their own belief systems to look at the profit margins of the things they occasionally pretend to want to make affordable, but in the US that’s exactly where a lot of the problem lies.
You can argue with the evidence if you want to but it is offered right there, at the top of the article.
NHTSA says have saved 860,000 lives since 1968.
The amount of lives saved isn’t what I was interested in. I was interested in the purportedly added cost. US car safety regulations are toothless compared to the EU. That’s partially why our roads are filled with monster truck sized pedestrian flatteners.
I see - so you’re arguing with the Republican premise that safety features add cost. It seems obvious that more features will add some cost, but how much is the question. The number of lives saved is also pretty important to understanding that cost, I would add.
Naturally the GOP are trying to deflect general economic outrage at Democrats and “nanny state” regulators any way they can.
Yeah I question it especially because they tend to state shit like this sans evidence, and people just believe them because they are the “small government, fiscal responsibility” themed party.
You’re actually right though that lives saved would be part of the economic calculation if they were doing it, which they are not.
Clearly not the onion. My right wing father (not Republican because we are not American and he’s technically a monarquist) complains that cars are too expensive due to the mandatory security features. Features that he has on his fully equipped Porsche because he wants to be safe, obviously.
as someone from the country where porsche is native and where it owns their own political party… owning a porsche is one of the clearest signs one can send that they are a massive asshole lol
That’s true in other countries too. Or a bmw.
bmw is like every fourth car here. you can joke they come without turn signals but its just a run of the mill car brand for all kinds of people
only a certain kind of personality gets a porsche
That tracks in America too, but a better example here is pickup trucks.
There a similar effect with Mercedes in the US: they mainly export their high-end cars here, not their economy cars. Therefore Americans associate the entire brand with rich assholes. It’s true enough within the US, but may not hold outside it.
This is the only excuse for the massive inflation of new car prices vs. rate of wage increases over the decades. I will give auto engineers props for this accomplishment; cars are so much safer now than 30 years ago.
Dont sleep on either “many new cars are electric” or “cars last a fuckton longer”.
Per-capira “total cost of ownership” for a car from purchase to retirement hasnt increased nearly as much as first-sale price would suggest. (Though the “financing cost” of the one-or-more transactions is a separate matter.)
Never buy new. Let someone else deal with the frequent hassle of getting all the problems fixed “under warranty” while the lemons get sent to salvage. Give me the vehicles that survive. Case in point, I bought my first car for $500, drove it for 24 years, and the biggest age-related expense was rebuilding the front end for $600. I sold the car in 2011 for $1000. I bought my current SUV in 2009 and the biggest mechanical failures have been replacing the power steering pump and the 4WD short axles.
I had a friend who insisted he needed to spend all his money buying new cars. He tried to tell me how much money he was saving because the dealership was fixing all the problems for free. I pointed out that he had barely even driven his new car because it was spending more time at the dealership every week or two and he was constantly wasting his own time taking it back for yet another problem.
Good advice, though not really germane to the topic.
Somebody has to buy the new cars for there to be used cars for you to buy, and the price you offer has to be more valuable to them than the car they’re selling.
FWIW, A good argument for buying new isn’t “look what the dealer’s fixing”, but rather “I don’t want hidden surprises”. Private party sales can very much be caveat emptor, and even getting a dealership to stand by their claims can be unprofitable.
That’s what rich people are for – to suffer for the benefit of the working class.
For the high end. Sure.
And poor, financially illiterate people buy up the low end.
But who buys the middle?
Imo that the sweet spot for leases. People who want modern safety/reliability/warranty, and resigned themselves to the fact that they’ll always have a car payment if they prioritize these things.
What year was that? I don’t believe a $500 car would last 24 more years. These days you can’t even buy a 24 year old car for $500
It was a '74 Pontiac LeMansthat I bought in 1987. And sorry, I did forget about one thing… I had to replace the transmission a couple times, but back then you could get them from a junkyard for cheap, and it only took a couple hours to replace. Probably would have lasted a lot longer if I’d taken the time to rebuild the clutches though. Of course it’s not like you can drive any vehicle forever, there was the maintenance as things like bushings and alternators wore out. For this discussion though I don’t count things that you have to do on any vehicle with 300k miles on it. Everything wears out eventually, and yeah even the motor was starting to smoke by that time.
Yeah kinda burying the lede on this. Cars built in the 70s had a much more simple, serviceable construction.
By the time you let it go, it was also probably grandfathered in to emissions requirements because it’s a classic car.
Anything from the 90s- 2010 will not hold up like that one did.
My secondhand 1999 Crown Victoria went 284000 miles over 19 years. I had to put some work into it, but when I traded the car in, everything still worked, minus the trunk lock (super glued by frat boys) and the driver door handle (snapped off in my hand, twice, replaced with channel locks clamped onto the remaining nub).
I mean, my SUV is a 2004 and seems to be holding up pretty well. I give it full synthetic oil and take it off-road occasionally, so it gets a wide range of treatment. Maybe I’m just not as bothered as other people are by the occasional bit of maintenance. I just replaced the thermostat this Fall, which was certainly a lot harder than on the old car because this one is buried down along the side of the engine, but it was still a pretty simple job.
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The cheapest car I ever owned was listed on Craigslist for $1,000 but I managed to talk it down because it had a broken fuel gauge, only lasted me about a year. It was a 1993 Dodge Dakota, so we’re in OBD1 era here. I’m currently driving a late 90s Honda with almost 300,000 miles, it burns oil but it’s still drives fine. I’m going to drive it until it dies and then hopefully I’ll have enough money to buy something on Craigslist. In my experience $500 would only buy you a mechanic’s special. I first got my driver’s license in the 2010s and I live on the west coast, if that makes any difference
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Electric cars are still kinda expensive because they are new, and not yet the majority. But wow they are going to be so much cheaper in the long run. Fewer parts and easier maintenance. It’s surprising how much longer something lasts when it doesn’t need to contain numerous miniature explosions per second.
Everything is a special model these days which makes the price higher. You don’t see mid range, average cars anymore.
Don’t forget CAFE abuse. It incentivizes the boom of CUVs and SUVs we have now, and makes it challenging to have a good coupe/sedan platform. Pretty much killed the 3-door/5-door wagon, imo the superior car.
Instead of patching over the rising costs, maybe we can move to living in communities that aren’t so dependent on such a costly, depreciating asset for every home?
How dare you suggest we consider living more efficiently as a society. Straight to jail.
Replace seat belts with piano wire and make air bags with 50x the explosive charge but replace the airbag with ball bearings.
Ford pinto
Funny thing about the Pinto…most US cars were made with that gas tank design and the Pinto had about the same number of fires from rear collision.
Yup pinto accounted for almost 2% of cars on the road and just about 2% of fatalities due to fire. Plus it has a way smaller death rate per car due to fire than the cyber truck. Sold over 3 million cars and there were 27 fire deaths. I think the cyber truck fire deaths are in the 5-10 range for roughly 20 thousand sold.
Ah yes the Tullock Spike
Exactly! Except I make Lemmy shitposts for shits and giggles and am not an economics professor who never gets invited to parties.
Why do you want millions of people to die? That’s pretty weird.
Millions dead? Are you crazy? 3 months of my 2 point auto safety plan and everyone will drive very very carefully all the time! I’m SAVING LIVES!
Reads as rather blantant satire to me. Perhaps you’re the weird one weirdy.
If we were on fuck cars that wouldn’t be satire. Didnt realize we’re on not the onion instead.
Natural selection has been removed. Now republicans are trying to reintroduce it.
They’ll (mainly) be the ones affected. I say let it happen.
Then again, I don’t like most people.
That wasn’t what was proposed
Car Companies: “the regulations are so big and heavy and workers cost so much munnies. Pls let us do less QA on the vehicles mandatory to live in america.”
Republicans: “CRUSH MORE CHILDREN, who would dare inconvenience these poor sweet automotive corporations?!”
Anyone paying attention: “Yall know aside from oil companies, car companies are the most ridiculously subsidized companies on earth?”
Who would have thought that the Orphan Crushing Machine was just a stock Ford F-150 this whole time?
Republicans: “CRUSH MORE CHILDREN,
That’s not realistic. You want to grind up that soft flesh first.
American safety standards have led to an insane game of cat an mouse wherein I need my car to be bigger to keep me safe. But my bigger car is more dangerous to you. So you need a bigger car to protect yourself from my dangerously large car. But now I need a bigger car to protect me from your giant car.
And 30 years later everyone is driving around a 60 thousand dollar crumple zone so tall it can’t see pedestrians over the hood and needs a 6 liter engine just to move.
Same for child seats. Planning on having 3 kids under 10? Better plan on a truck or van with a 3rd row, because somehow, you can’t fit seats 3 small children in the back seat of a family sedan or crossover.
Is it really the safety standards? I thought it was a combination of all the stupid “truck” exceptions and our equally stupid culture where the iamverybadasses choose their 3-ton grocery and kindergarten shuttles out of fear because they want to “win” any collisions.
There’s no one thing. I’m sure everyone is trying to game regulations.
But, I’d wager a Honda Civic is not getting a truck exceptions. Yet a 2025 Honda Civic is 20% wider and 25% longer than a 1978. The weight has gone from 800 kilos to over 1400.
Crumple zones need space to crumple into. Side curtain airbags require bulkier pillars. Impact beams need space making bodies wider. Instead of a sheet metal box on a chassis we have a frame reinforcing the entire cabin. We need room for crushable hood braces and plastic engine shrouds for when we hit pedestrians. It’s all good stuff, but you have to buy an inch or two for this, an inch or two for that…
Eventually a 2025 Honda Civic is both longer and wider than a 1990 Toyota Hilux pickup.
Ah, yeah it’s affected everything across the board. But with the US context and you talking about giant vehicles, $60K vehicles, and 3 rows, I thought we were focused on the larger end of the population as a whole.
I bet the crash safety design of the current honda civic was definitely influenced by the truck regulations and that whole market driving the large end even larger.
Funny enough, I am eagerly awaiting the official announcement of the 2026 MX-5 of all cars.
pretty sure a lot of that is due to american’s needs to pack a bunch of stuff into their car. we prioritize cabin space. European cars meet the same safety standards and yet aren’t nearly as large.
Not as large but still growing.
This
I agree with you that this has happened, but it is far from the only reason that vehicles have increased in price. Now almost every vehicle comes with power windows, power locks, power mirrors, at least one if not multiple built in tv screens, wireless locks and keyless ignitions. Not to mention alot of manufacturers building in computer hardware/software to track user information and installing propietary parts/hardware/software designed to keep your local mechanic from doing repair work and forcing you to use dealership mechanics at 3-4 times the cost.
All of it is being done because it makes more money. Mark my words, if they repeal safety regulations, it will definitely reduce the safety of our vehicles, but it will have little to no effect impact on prices. I would wager my left nut that auto manufacturers are chomping at the bit to get this deregulation put through so they can reduce their cost of vehicles by increasing the danger of the consumer, but wont reduce the prices by a fraction of what they are “saving,” then will proceed to have record profits while using lobbyists to pay off our crooked politicians.
I noticed the current admin has contempt for anything that benefits the common man, and is looking for financial excuses to remove any “subsidy” type of regulation that could be protecting people from dying for the crime of being poor and/or having weak genes
Yay capitalism, right?
“On a long enough time line, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.”
The really sad thing is your bigger car isn’t even really safer for you. It’s just cheaper for the manufacturers (since they can classify it as a truck which has less strict safety and efficiency regulations) and a danger to others.
You mean the group of people that are okay with schools being used for target practice thinks cars are too safe?! I am shocked.
Jesus fuck! What the fuck is it with these fuckers!?!? really? Cars are too safe!??! WTF?
I am guessing they want to deregulate the safety laws so that they can take the money that they spend on it and stick it into their pockets and still keep the price of cars the same!
Ah yes, it’s safety that makes newer cars expensive you see. Not the wireless key-fobs, power seats, built in ipad to replace the perfectly fine knobs and buttons, autonomous driving features…
From what I’ve heard the lack of buttons is actually a cost saving measure, if you put in an infotainment system anyway
Thank god EU is starting to get involved in the matter.
For now it is only that cars only get a 5 star safety rating when they include buttons for a few things form 2026.
I hope there will be laws that follow after.
Yeah, good buttons are ridiculously expensive
That’s a whole extra half cent per car.
You’re vastly underestimating prices of car parts, even for manufacturers, even bought in bulk.
yeah i worked at a vehicle manufacturer a while ago as they were expanding into a new market with a budget model, and getting rid of all the non-critical buttons was very high priority for cost. not only do you save on materials directly, you can remodel the entire driving area which means you can redesign the safety features. less shit in the dashboard means less debris that needs to be crash-tested.
I didn’t even think about the crash testing angle that makes a lot of sense
That might be true as I haven’t looked into it in detail. Though even then, if the goal is to make cars more affordable, there’s lots of other features you can cut down on that has nothing to do with safety
And nobody is selling the basic no frills subcompact cars in the US anymore
They aren’t even save for anyone outside the vehicle, to the point that death are increasing already. not just bikes video
I watched this, and was surprised to see this article. Like what timing on both ends.
