Here in the US, we love our trucks the same way we love our novelty belt buckles: Big. We Americans are used to this, seeing every highway, highway, and back road rife pickup truck And SUV that can only be described as “novel extravagance”. At some point, you don’t notice them anymore – they become part of the scene, just another part. huge car.
But our friends across the pond have no such blind feelings about trucks. Landing on our shores, they were shocked by the scale of the vehicles on our roads, lurking around every corner and behind every hill. When British writer for the Financial Times, John Burn-Mudochcame to the United States recently, he saw a similar trend — but he dug in Why Our road is like this.
Burn-Mudoch studied data on American vehicles – size, emissions, crash fatality rates for both passengers and pedestrians. He discovered a trend in which modern American vehicles are much larger and dirtier than their European counterparts. These giant trucks are actually safer for the occupants of the vehicle, but far more dangerous for those outside: As vehicle size increases, pedestrian casualties increase far beyond any level. any reduction in passenger deaths.
As Burn-Murdoch reads, all of this points to a single trend in American car buying: Certainty individualism. He blames the culture of “driving as an expression of individual freedom” for vehicles to grow, along with American buyers’ desire for “aggressive” and “powerful” cars. “. His Full version for Financial Times is an excellent analysis of the relevant data, although it never quite comes to THAT’S RIGHT solution — introducing the kei car to the US market.
