Here in America, we like our vans the way in which we like our novelty belt buckles: Big. We Americans are used to this, seeing each freeway, thoroughfare, and again highway replete with pickups and SUVs that may solely be described as “novelty oversized.” At some level, you simply cease noticing them — they grow to be a part of the surroundings, simply one other extremely giant car.
But our mates throughout the pond don’t have that very same sense of truck blindness. Landing upon our shores, they’re shocked by the dimensions of automobiles that prowl our roads, lurking round each blind nook and behind each hill. When British author for the Financial Times, John Burn-Murdoch, arrived within the U.S. lately, he noticed the identical pattern — however he delved into why our roads are like this.
Burn-Murdoch studied the info on American automobiles — dimension, emissions, crash fatalities for each passengers and pedestrians. He found a pattern, the place fashionable American automobiles are far bigger and dirtier than their European counterparts. These large vans are literally safer for his or her occupants, however much more lethal to the folks exterior: As automobiles sizes grew, will increase in pedestrian casualties far outpaced any discount in passenger deaths.
To Burn-Murdoch’s studying, this all factors to a singular pattern in American automotive buying: Rugged individualism. He blamed a tradition of “driving as an expression of personal freedom” for the ever-growing automobiles, alongside U.S. patrons’ needs for automobiles to be “aggressive” and “powerful.” His full piece for Financial Times is a superb evaluation of the info concerned, although it by no means fairly will get to the true resolution — introducing kei automobiles to the American market.
Source: jalopnik.com