The people who drive these things here in the UK are mental. I got smashed by one once overtaking me on a slip road because I wasn't going fast enough for him. I followed him all the way to his golf club and confronted him about it. His tank was barely scratched while my driver side door was totally fucked.
Yeah even the SUV would be uncomfortably wide on some UK roads, end yet they're getting really common. They're almost all driven by people who don't need a large vehicle.
I've seen a small woman driving a Hummer in Ware (Hertfordshire UK) of all places, can just about see out of the windows (that's another thing that pisses me off, don't people know you can raise the seat to let you see out of the windows?), can't park in normal bays as it's too big (and she can't see) and it has a plate something like V8 HMR. FFS.
i will never understand the inability for people driving vehicles like this to say shit like "never buy a small vehicle, this 3 ton truck saved my life, it's basic physics"
Yeah, and if i'm rolling a freight train and someone gets in my way, i won't even notice, it's basic physics.
American "I got mine" mentality at its finest. Too much lead poisoning (my leading hypothesis. You don't elect someone like Trump unless there is something seriously wrong) to realise it's a race to the bottom. When enough people do something at the expense of others, what a surprise when others also do it at the expense of you, and it all turns to shit.
It's this absurd country of "Christian" values, except not the part of caring for others, "fuck that socialism hippie shit, except for Russia, which is cool now because they meddle in our elections... Or, they meddle in favour of my team! We need to do something about the socio-economic situation! What, unions? No fuck that Marxist shit you commie!"
Etc. It's all just too dumb. Hence, lead poisoning hypothesis.
Australian "I got mine" mentality at its finest. Too much lead poisoning (my leading hypothesis. You don't elect someone like Pauline Hanson unless there is something seriously wrong) to realise it's a race to the bottom. When enough people do something at the expense of others, what a surprise when others also do it at the expense of you, and it all turns to shit.
It's this absurd country of "Christian" values, except not the part of caring for others, "fuck that socialism hippie shit, except for China, which is cool now because they meddle in our elections... Or, they meddle in favour of my team! We need to do something about the socio-economic situation! What, unions? No fuck that Marxist shit you commie!"
It's still an example of the American Christian mentality, even if this example is in Australia. Like Trump supporters are examples of the Nazi mentality even though they aren't actually--ok bad example there.
It’s this absurd country of “Christian” values, except not the part of caring for others, “fuck that socialism hippie shit, except for Russia, which is cool now because they meddle in our elections…
Yeah, they don't like that be nice to others, love thy neighbor, turn the other cheek stuff anymore.
the lead poisoning would only really apply to people 50 and older, i would think, based on my assumed timespans of leaded fuel and continual exposure to it.
a lot of other countries around the world do have bells on some of their freight lines, but it seems to be primarily US import freighters, though there are domestic manufacturers outside of the US that do use bells. I hear they're relatively common in canada as well? Makes sense frankly.
I wonder which vehicle is legitimately safer. I think crumple zones are a big part of why wrecks are so much more survivable now. I don't think it'd be a simple as most mass wins, but more how the vehicle transfers that to occupants.
I know I got rear ended by one of those beasts and it totalled my car, but didn't seem to bother the tank that hit me. I was shocked at the damage because it didn't really feel that bad. Of course I don't really know anything about vehicle safety so I could real easily be wrong.
the reason why mass matters is because if you have more mass, let's say twice the mass of a sedan for example, you transfer significantly more energy into the smaller vehicle, and the smaller vehicle transfers significantly less energy into the large vehicle.
go find a video of a freight training crashing into a car or something at a crossing. There's a reason freight trains don't have crumple zones.
Aside from the lift, there may be use cases for the truck where it requires moving multiple people and smaller heavy loads (or pulling a trailer). However, the sad reality is that the heaviest load it'll likely be moving on a regular basis is the fat ass of the solo passenger in their way to/from fast food and groceries
you know it's funny, they made crewcab long beds in the 80s and 90s. They were just long and looked a little goofy, had normal proportions otherwise, these have been vertically stretched and widened to compensate for the absolutely bizarre form factor that they ship in. i genuinely have no idea what they're doing with the front suspension to require the hood to be that high off of the ground. A fucking hummer has more ground clearance with a lower hood.
There is almost no reason for a truck like this to exist, especially when you consider it's interior is "luxury"
I live in Germany, and I spotted one of these trucks recently. It looked huge compared to every other vehicle on the road, and one of those was a delivery van. And it was too big for its parking spot. It also had a confederate flag in the back window.
It'd be some tasty schadenfreude to put parking fine after parking fine. Or even just straight up impound it. It would surprise me if there isn't some German law or regulation that forbids such cars, same with the Cybertruck.
Want your stupid preference that is a detriment to everyone around you? Sorry, we don't do that here.
Someone in the dorm I lived in had a Ford Ranger. Even though it's one of Ford's smaller pickups, it looked very oversized compared to everything else in the parking garage.
i think the confederate flag, or a very similar flag often confused for the confederate flag is often related to UK history? Still doesn't explain why it's in germany, but it makes more sense, at least.
Some of it has to do with CAFE standards using vehicle footprint to determine the target MPG. Some of it is because of better safety standards. Some of it is just because that's what a certain portion of the market wants, and the profit margins on the large vehicles are higher, so they spend more money marketing them (creating more demand).
if you actually look into what the insurance industries do for crash safety testing it's actually kind of fucked up.
Because they basically started with full frontal impacts at n speed, that was met, so a decade later they were like "half frontal impacts are a thing now" and turns out most cars performed pretty bad on that, so they fixed that, and like a decade later again, they were fine, and then they were like "oh no, now quarter impact frontal is bad now" and then that's what they've recently fixed.
So most of car safety seems to be for pretty specific, though i suppose "more likely" impacts.
That's not true. Kei trucks have comparably low load and towing capacity. They have the same bed dimensions of the most common pickup truck bed size. Most people with trucks don't hail around stone or heavy machinery though.
What a vehicle carries on average is unrelated to its actual capacity. Regardless my point is you see a kei truck you'll almost certainly see the bed packed full, you see a Sierra 2500 chances are it's need is totally empty aside from oftentimes boots and beer cans.
One pretty big factor to these getting bought is due to safety and for that reason I feel like we as a society has prioritized driver safety that we have sacrificed pedestrian safety
... occupant death rate was 6% higher in SUVs than in conventional cars, and 8% in the biggest ones.
... children are eight times more likely to die when struck by an SUV compared with an average passenger car.
... “These figures suggest that SUVs were probably killing around an extra 3,000 people in the US a year at that time – more than died at 9/11,” write Simms and Murray. Roughly a third of those died in SUV rollovers, and another third from being hit by one. The final third were being killed by respiratory problems because of the extra pollution caused by SUVs.”
Eh most of your points kinda proves my point of how we have been sacrificing pedestrian safety for driver safety the only considerable counterpoint you brought up is how SUVs are more prone to rollover and from what I understand about cars getting bigger is so crashing is less deadly but by being bigger you also make crashing more inevitable so I guess that's a bit of a stalemate argument
I'd argue that it sacrifices the safety of any other car that's smaller than it too, with sudans being the most vulnerable. No way a bumper difference of feet allows for the smaller car's safety features to work as intended if not bypassed entirely.
especially when lifted, if you're driving a corolla or some shit and get hit with a tonka truck you're getting mostly lower suspension, luckily it's still an engine block in front of you, but it's still fucking horrifying.
I've also heard that these things almost never get insured because they're a fucking mess.
Yeah crumple zones are enforced by the bumper so when you lift a car you're making the colliding car smash into the other above the bumper and gliding above the crumple zone if I recall the Ford pento was unfairly judged because the cars that were used to rate it's rear end crash safety had their front ends waghted down to simulate heavy breaking however it caused the cars to not only have more weight than normal but they also ramed into the pento going under the crumple zone and directly into the gas tank so I guess you can also make a argument for lowered SUVs and trucks to be just as bad as lifted trucks and suvs
it's not safety, i mean, well, it is safety, at the cost of the poor sod that you crash into and fucking kill. Or the children that you're statistically more likely to run over and even more statistically likely to kill if you do hit them.
You know what else is safe? Not ramming your car into a brick wall.
I'm just talking about car safety for the first bit here, not even pedestrian impacts.
From the US here. They have uses as work trucks but the majority of these bro-dozers are pristine and have have never hit any water deeper than a pothole in the road.
Everyone I know in the US that owns trucks like what op shared are all work trucks for general contractors or were bought to pull their giant campers. I know the bro-dozer community you're talking about but those trucks are not usually new trucks like op's. This is in rural America tho not the suburbs so maybe it's different in other areas.
Yeah I'm no mechanic but I think it's from the way their doing the suspension to increase tow load. I can't remember the truck models but it was the largest model vs the 2nd largest model had the exact same engine size and sp3cs but the larger truck had a way larger low weight than the other and I was told it all came down to the differences in the transmission and suspension. I 100% agree tho I have worked jobs that had trucks with beds that were so fuckin stupid high it turned loading/unloading to a 2 part or 2 person task. Once onto the tailgate. Second to move to front of bed when normally we could just give a good toss and load the truck in fraction of the time.
Work vans are the superior work vehicle for the majority of use cases. Lower bed/floor height to make loading easier. Covered rear so your tools/product doesnt get wet or dirty. Able to carry a ton of equipment, taller models you can even stand in and use a workbench in the van. The side of the van is large and flat making it easier to print large letters and numbers to advertise the company. Most modern work vans have better visibility than similarly sized trucks.
people keep saying that they have uses as work trucks and i'm not sure i believe them because they made smaller trucks in the 90s and 80s and those trucks were still for work?
I mean i've seen one of these things towing 5 fucking cars. I can't think of the last time i had to load up 5 cars on a shipping trailer and then ship them on my fucking daily driver. Honestly i didn't even think that was possible, but apparently it is, and i have no idea why people own these things as daily drivers now.
to be clear, my issue here is that saying they have uses is underselling the problem. You can hire a semi with a flatbed to ship a bag of sand. But that's fucking stupid.
Personally I live in Colorado and most people who drive trucks that size here use them for offroading. Given the gas mileage they're very impractical for day to day.
You know what's fucked, Standards Australia annouced they were considered increasing the minimum size for parking spots and gave only 3 weeks for public comment.
So many comments against, but I bet the car lobbies get their way anyway.
I've used huge trucks for bush work. Like we're talking going mudding just to get to work. This line of work basically put me in the position that is the subject of commercials that try to convince suburban dads that they need a huge truck in case one day their family goes on a fictional camping trip to the middle of a swamp.
Anyways, you know what I learned? These fucking things suck at off-roading.
They have shit visibility. You sometimes need to get out of the truck to see around corners, especially if you're cresting steep hills
They have a dangerously high center of gravity (I saw a bunch of coworkers roll theirs) that is only amplified if you carry large loads in their truck beds
Over-complicated features like traction control will actually kill your power if you're doing some technical driving, which will make you get stuck when you don't need to
There's no good reason for these pieces of shit to exist.
Get a properly sized pickup truck covered in dings and scratches showing you actually utilize the thing. Your penis is huge and you've got balls of steel! A paragon of masculinity!
This line of work basically put me in the position that is the subject of commercials that try to convince suburban dads that they need a huge truck in case one day their family goes on a fictional camping trip to the middle of a swamp.
This is so on point.
So many defenders go, "It helped when I had to haul shit to the dump" or "I bring wood back to build my shed".
What about the other 95% of the year? Because I rent a van to move shit and I'm happy taking the bus.
Or do what I did and pay cash for a beat up old truck to do those things with. Mine didn't even have a radio, the heat barely worked, but it hauled hog feed and garbage well enough. And I wasn't paying a grand a month in a car payment and insurance.
I volunteered driving ambulances. Started in high school, 2003-2004. Our rigs at the time were a '97 Chevy van with a box and a '99 F250 with a box. They were the biggest things I'd driven at the time.
Moved away, did life, came back a decade later. Newest rigs were now 2015 F450 Super Duty with a box you could legit stand up in. Thing was unnecessarily large. All the things you're saying are correct. The rig we purchased while I was there ended up being a slightly larger mod, but came with front, side, and rear cameras, because you're absolutely right, can't see shit. Blind spot in the front is legit 10-15 feet from the bumper.
You know what didn't change in that interim? People's windy, tiny driveways. I won't toot my own horn but I'm a good driver, I frequently tell my wife "You could fit a Mac truck through there" when she's driving and won't squeeze through a gap. So when it came time to back these rigs up these narrow, curving driveways, up a hill, it was difficult. I'd have my crew get out generally and go begin assessment so I could get the rig in place for takedown. Problem is that I couldn't drive all the time, and so the rig would frequently get left down on the road. And I don't blame anyone, they were difficult maneuvers. I knew a few members who outright refused to drive the newer rigs becaude they were so massive, so now we've neutered our manpower.
There's no good reason for these pieces of shit to exist.
So did you start taking an old civic to the in-the-bush job site then or what?
Edit: Or a midsize pickup or SUV or something? Helicopter? The down votes here are pretty absurd lol. I'm trying to figure out what vehicle to take to in-the-bush job sites in the future that can better handle the conditions, which the person I replied to specifically pointed out.
Or just a regular sized pickup truck, which I've also used for plenty of sites. But honestly I prefer the mules because they hold all the stuff I need for work and can fit through most forest understory. And in the rare chance that you happen to turtle them it's possible to pull them off/out of whatever they're stuck on. If you get a giant truck stuck in the mud you're donezo.
I also took my Toyota Prius to plenty of sites, although I'd never off-road with it when the ground is swampy or sandy it did fine on plenty of rough roads and open fields. I'm sure a Subaru or other small all wheel drive sedan could handle lots of off-road work sites.
Thank you! Makes sense. I think I was sort of misreading your statement initially. And I guess I never really thought about the 350s and aboves useful applications (or lack thereof lol).
I'll add my Honda Element did surprisingly well for many 1000s of km of rough logging roads once upon a time.
My uncle did a four wheel driving day in his Subaru Forrester one time and it could climb hills others couldn't because it was so light.
I've also heard stories of farmers with tiny 4x4s like a Suzuki Jimny using them during floods because they don't sink in the mud like the massive ones do
I prefer driving smaller cars in heavy snow because they're light enough to sit on top and not get bogged down. Back when I had a commute in my tiny little Scion xA I'd drive by bro-dozers and SUVs stuck in the snow thinking their four-wheel drive would save them from being idiots.
Not to mention they don't even fucking fit in off-road situations half the time. Unless you're in a wide open field or have giant cleared roads (in which case why do you need an ultimate off-road machineTM), most off-road situations in the eastern US are going to involve trees. Try driving around trees in that thing and you'll be stuck in a matter of minutes.
For all the actual off road work I've done, the best vehicle has always been those little utility off-road vehicles (we call them mules or gators but I'm sure they have a real name) or just a regular-sized pickup truck with 4 wheel drive and low gears.
For all the actual off road work I’ve done, the best vehicle has always been those little utility off-road vehicles (we call them mules or gators but I’m sure they have a real name) or just a regular-sized pickup truck with 4 wheel drive and low gears.
UTVs, side by sides, i've seen stuff like that used to refer to them in a more generic manner, shockingly those are so good primarily because they weigh nothing and have comparatively huge tires with way more surface area, while also having equivalent power if not more, just due to the size.
Anyways, you know what I learned? These fucking things suck at off-roading.
no shit, they're running live axle suspension, no amount of lift kit is going to get your diff case unstuck from the mud LMAO.
Doesn't help that these idiots also put small tires on big rims to get that bafflingly stupid look on them, which lowers the ride quality, and lowers the axle even more.
I'm convinced you have to be brain damaged to own a bro dozer, let alone think an f150 with live axles can get around in mud. Bro almost nothing can, a humvee might do it, but it's also literally built to do it. It's got full independent suspension, nice large tires with high sidewalls, portal axles for increased clearance. It's got a low cab, set next to the engine and transmission (that's why they're so wide) They're short, so they can get around trees and shit and likewise have a low CG.
And f150 looks like it was built to be a parody of a hummer, and it's no surprise that they drive and handle like shit as a result.
Completely. Give me a light Geländewagen (and I’m talking about the utility version that armies buy, not the blinged up Chelsea tractor version), with triple differential lock and it’ll out-drive these monster trucks any day, on any terrain, pulling the same weight.
