Dianelos Georgoudis wrote:
> Of course, the safest strategy for society would be to put an upper
> limit to the weight of passenger cars: then we all would drive safer,
What would that have to do with vehicle weight? Knowing our cars would be
tin-and-plastic pieces of **** would we all be mortally afraid to ever
pass anyone? One of the _last_ things we need on the road is an increase
in the number of timid, terrified drivers in gutless mouse-mobiles.
> spend less money on cars,
The amount of money one spends on a car is an individual's choice, up to
their limit--and by the way it is actually _more_ expensive to design a
lighter car, all else equal, than a heavier one. That's one of the main
unfortunate effects of CAFE laws--making large cars so expensive to
engineer that they become uneconomical to produce, so anyone looking for a
large, solid vehicle has to buy a truck, which is much less
crash-compatible and uses far more gas than any similarly hefty car ever
would. The only reason compact cars are less expensive in the first place
is that no one is going to pay more for less metal when they buy a car.
They're actually sold at a loss, by and large. With no large vehicles for
comparison/competition, just exactly how long would _that_ continue?
> spend less on gas, protect
> the environment, and be less dependent on unstable oil-producing
> countries.
Variable cylinder displacement and hybrid technologies will vastly reduce
the amount of fossil fuels vehicles will use, and a switch to hydrogen
fuel cell technology will end its use completely. At that point it will
not matter how much vehicles weigh as far as pollution is concerned, nor
how unstable petroleum supplies become.
> protect others,
It is not the problem of the other vehicle owner if the car you _choose_
to buy will put you at a greater disadvantage in a collision; if you don't
like the odds driving a Geo Metro, don't buy one--I certainly won't.
(This does not hold for light truck based vehicles--many of them override
automobile impact guards, which there is no excuse for.)
> Vehicles that have to be heavy
> (such as trucks, heavy duty off-roaders, buses, etc) should have their
> top speed electronically limited to low levels as to not endanger
> other vehicles on the asphalt.
This does endanger other vehicles on the asphault--much more so than
having them drive at prevailing traffic speeds. It causes irregularities
in the traffic flow as other vehicles are continuously passing them, and
also a much increased hazard for other traffic as they pull out to pass
each other--both immediately, by moving very slowly in the passing lane,
and indirectly, by creating a rolling block leading to further congestion
in the traffic flow. All of which contributes to a significantly
increased likelihood of collisions at those points.
As much truck traffic as is reasonably possible should be replaced by rail
transport--on main trunk routes the latter is much more efficient.
> Limiting the weight of vehicles is a
> win-win-win-win-win-win proposition.
No it isn't, there are and will continue to be far heavier vehicles such
as 20,000-80,000lb busses and semis, that at any remotely reasonable speed
will still have far more impact energy than any car or light truck; the
smaller vehicles will still need to be reasonably sized (e.g. ~4000 lb.
cars, which are rather moderate in weight compared to some that were
rolling off the assembly lines 25 years ago) in order to have strong
enough frames to give their occupants some semblance of a chance in a
passenger vehicle-large truck collision.
--Aardwolf.
-Dave
