Monster Trucks - Revisited

chances of survival


prius = very slim

truck = most likely walk out with some bruises

 

Actually, I would be willing to bet that vehicles HAVE grown in size more than they have shrunk.
30 years ago how many giant vehicles were there on the road?
Hey, if you need something that can haul or tow so much that it requires a 10,000 lb vehicle, more power to you.
As for the size, one of the reasons I bought the Prius is it has the ability to carry 8' 2x4s which is about the biggest thing I ever need to move around. There are many more vehicles available that are smaller than the Prius.
However, should there be ANY limit on the size/weight of vehicles?

 

Unholy1, you make an interesting argument. Unfortunately it is not based on anything factual. Cars and trucks have not become smaller, they have become much, much bigger. It's all part of the American "bigger is better" approach to everything.

In the last year there has been a tiny glimmer of reversal in this trend, since high gas prices and a bad economy took the wind out of SUV sails and sales. It may continue, but probably won't until gas prices climb again.

While size may improve the safety of a vehicle for the occupants of the larger vehicle, it has the opposite effect for the occupants of other cars on the road. In any public space we need to consider the safety of the public. Public roads are, by definition, public. Allowing one self centered driver to endanger the lives of all others on the road is not a good use of public resources. This is the key point of the concern and the complaints directed toward monster trucks and those that drive them on public roads. Keep them on private land and no one will care.

Tom

 

I don't let some weird paranoia or fear of a potential (rare and unlikely) accident determine what vehicle best suits my motoring needs. If you truly did believe so then you wouldn't drive at all...or drive a army surplus tank. Now please go away troll.

 

Stop picking on these people, they have enough problems - they drive Fords.

 

+100000000000000000000
It's had hugely negative consequences on the handling, braking, and overall dynamic quality of all cars. A lot of the arguments you hear are about crash survivability - I think the best solution is not to get into a crash in the first place instead of living with that kind of fear.

I personally prefer not to enter corners with the fear that my car may be able to handle it rather than live with the fear of getting into an accident. Many times, owners of large trucks and SUVs try to follow my speed and line through a highway onramp (I enjoy maintaining my momentum) - they rarely keep up. I would much much much rather pay a price in terms of the .00000000000001% situation rather than the 99.99999999999999% situation, because my overall survivability will be better. I suppose some of you guys will never understand the pure joy of taking a Lotus Elise full-throttle though a tight apex.

I could give less of a crap about being green. I do give a crap about being exposed to extremely high volatility in gas prices.

 

You're absolutely wrong when it comes to curb weight and size of cars. See page vi of http://www.epa.gov/oms/cert/mpg/fetrends/420r09014.pdf, page iii of http://www.epa.gov/oms/cert/mpg/fetrends/420s09001.pdf and some of the examples given at Minicars? I don't See No Stinking Minicars - Column - Auto Reviews - Car and Driver.

It's already bad enough that people drive monstrosity class SUVs w/curb weights of 5000+ lbs. such as Tahoes, Expeditions, Escalades and even worse monstrosities like Hummer H2s which weigh 6400+ lbs. 10000+ lbs. when you don't actually need it is for legitimate work is absolutely obscene.

Not only are such vehicles TERRIBLE at avoiding accidents due to inherently poor braking, acceleration, accident avoidance (due to poor handling), they are a horrific danger to smaller/lighter vehicles due to kinetic energy ( = 1/2 * mass * velocity ^2) in the event of a multi-vehicle accident. This says nothing about the horrendous use of a non-renewable resource, 60% of which we import, much of which resides in volatile regions of the world and in areas where the people don't like us much.

Sure, you'll probably end up better off than a lighter, smaller vehicle in a multi-vehicle accident but what will you have done to the other guy? But due to your vehicle's inherently poor accident avoidance capabilities, you have a much higher chance of getting in one in the first place, esp. a rollover.

It's obvious you don't care about the consequences (to others) of your actions.

Now please go away, troll!

 

Reply in orange.

 

you guys should be ashamed of yourselves
talking about someone's penis because of the size of their vehicle, calling someone's choice, desire or need to drive a truck "obscene"

truly truly uncalled for, judgmental, and in fact, obscene

hey, i have a prius, and i have an f350, and i have a motorcycle

am i obscene? do you know something about my penis without knowing me? am i endangering people on the road and behaving selfishly?

why don't y'all drive scooters and motorcycles?
do you always have a passenger in your car?
maybe it should be illegal to be so selfish as to drive a car at all on sunny days without a passenger ... ride a motorcycle, scooter or bicycle?

anyone drive their car one to two miles? you should walk.

anyone take an airplane to go on vacation? yeah?
well taking an airplane anywhere for anything other than work or a business trip is obscene! you should only vacation somewhere you can drive, and you shouldn't be allowed to take a truck on vacation, so no towing a boat, no towing jet skis, or atv's or motorcycles and dirt bikes

anyone use air conditioning in their home?
i live in socal, and i don't use an air conditioner or a heater at home. you shouldn't be allowed to either.
if it's too cold, move somewhere warmer ... but don't use a truck
anything too large you have to leave behind

who has a pool ... ?

do you heat it? you do? go to hell.
unless you're a paraplegic and need the pool for therapy.
but even then, use a public pool at the YMCA, it's wrong to heat a pool for just you.

do you shower in hot water? what about on weekends when you have no work? you do? you should be imprisoned and forcibly sterilized so you don't spawn more selfish little you's

seriously ... get a grip

 

I would have no problem with the size of anyone's car or truck IF everyone was paying the true costs of buying gas. But since the true costs of petroleum are subsidized by all taxpayers, I am offended everytime I see someone using gas inefficiently. I am guessing that some of these same people are oppsoed to subsidizing someone elses healthcare.

Also a truck getting 10 mpg is giving 5 times as much US Dollars to the terrorists than one that gets 50 mpg. Of course I would not expect a bunch of redneck trolls from Texas to understand that concept.

 

Wth

if you say the truck drivers give money to terroist, then you are also giving them money. $1 or $5, doesnt matter on the amount. the act of giving money to them is the same.


plus the gas engine is inefficient.

if you are so hell bent on a hybrid, get a diesel hybrid. they will out last any gas hybrid

 

A diesel hybrid is a good idea. I am not aware of any available.

 

I'm assuming you can provide a whole of life reliability study to confirm this? That is comparing a Prius to a fictional diesel hybrid.

 

I agree that our society as a whole subsidizes low gas prices.
However, I disagree that all large vehicles are bad just because they are large.
Yes, I am offended by the yuppies that buy Ford Expidition, or Escalade, or other huge vehicle simply to show off as a status symbol.
But if someone works on a ranch and Needs to haul or tow stuff, then they should buy the appropriate vehicle for their job.

 

I do like the concept, it would have been even better to know about them before buying my car. Anyway, we still have a camry that needs to be traded in sometime, any idea where I can get one?

 

Big rigs are driven by people w/far more driving experience (in hours) than typical consumers and their drivers go through special training vs. getting a standard driver's license. Their numbers are much smaller than people buying "light trucks" (vans, minivans, pickups, SUVs all with GVWR <8500 lbs.). The F350 doesn't even qualify as a "light truck" since its GVWR is >8500 lbs.

The key point though is that they have an actual justified NEED for them, to carry large amounts of cargo for WORK vs. some random guy who just wants to have a massive vehicle that consumes horrendous amounts of a non-renewable resource, is far heavier than the average vehicle (posing a danger to himself and others on the road), and belching out obscene amounts of greenhouse gases and pollutants.

As for "I'm curious as to how it is obvious owners of larger vehicles do not care about consequences?" It seems like you don't get it.

Oil is a non-renewable resource (well, at least the rate at which it's been replenished is puny compared to our consumption). See Oil: Crude and Petroleum Products - Energy Explained, Your Guide To Understanding Energy for US stats. As I stated, we import ~60% of our oil. We also consume almost 25% of the world's daily oil production while being <5% of the world's population. Countries like India and China have >1 billion people each and a rising middle class that want cars and have economic growth that will dictate higher oil consumption and potentially lead to shortages.

A large % of the world's oil goes through choke points like http://www.eia.doe.gov/cabs/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/Hormuz.html. What happens if nut jobs like Ahmadinejad start shooting at oil tankers going through there?

Here are where some of the world's largest oil reserves lie and some top exporters:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Saudi_Arabia/Background.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iran/Background.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Iraq/Background.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/Kuwait/Background.html

Ever hear of or experience the [ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis"]1973 oil crisis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame] and 1979 energy crisis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia?

Visting http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/country/index.cfm and clicking through the 4 tabs near the top along w/the 4 tabs on the right might be eye opening for you.

As for don't care, well, you don't care because your obscene demand for oil increases prices for everyone. You don't care where your money is going to. Also, remember some recent wars that we had are aren't finished with? Most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi Arabian citizens.

Your heavy vehicles wear out and tear up the roads more than others. You don't care about the safety of others on the road by buying vehicles w/poor accident avoidance capabilities and high mass. So, you're more likely to get into an accident and then more likely to do serious harm to others on the road by simple physics. Your raised vehicles pose additional danger due to height incompatibility with the rest of the vehicles on the road. In a crash, some of these trucks are so high that instead of striking an energy absorbing area such as the trunk or engine compartment, you end up striking the passenger compartment and windshield area.

To put some numbers on accidence avoidance, if you go to http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/types/performance-comparison.htm (you'll need a CR subscription to view the table), you can see 60 to 0 mph braking distances and "AM max" (the maximum speed at which they could complete their accident avoidance maneuver). There are 314 entries in the table.

The top AM max performer was a Porsche 911 Carrera S w/an 59.95 mph and the worst were a bunch of vehicles at 44.0 mph such as the F-250, Tahoe, Yukon, and Hummer H2. (They reviewed nothing larger than the F-250). The median was 51.5 mph and the average was 51.53 mph. I see no passenger cars (non-light trucks) w/worse than 49.5 mph. The bottom ~80 entries are so are pretty much all "light trucks" (SUVs, picksups, minivans and vans.).

For braking the range was 112 feet at best (held by a Porsche Boxster) and the worst was 171 feet being held by the Chevy Silverado 2500HD turbodiesel and GMC Sierra 2500HD turbodiesel. The median was 137 feet and the average was 138.12 feet. The bottom 40 entries are so are pretty much all "light trucks".

You don't care about greenhouse gas emissions (let's assume man made global warming is a crock and throw that out for argument's sake). Since your vehicles aren't even "light" vehicles, they're held to very lax emission standards (of pollutants, this isn't debatable).

I'm not suggesting that everyone drive hybrids or Priuses rather than people drive vehicles more commensurate w/actual need vs. "I can buy whatever the hell I want, consequences be damned!"

Can you imagine what condition are roads would be in and what our oil demand situation would be like if everyone adopted your thinking of buying the largest guzzler they could, just because they could?

 

Oops followed the link and read the article - I should do that before posting :blabla:. Was an excellent idea though.