{"id":332019,"date":"2010-02-17T12:04:36","date_gmt":"2010-02-17T17:04:36","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.36099"},"modified":"2010-02-17T12:19:39","modified_gmt":"2010-02-17T17:19:39","slug":"how-safe-are-small-cars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/332019","title":{"rendered":"How Safe are Small Cars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the proud owner of a well-used Mini, I feel compelled to weigh in on Ryan Avent’s proposa<\/a>l for single-passenger vehicles that don’t guzzle so much gas, or use so many materials.  He makes a pleasingly contrarian argument that a lot of the problem is government safety regulations, which naturally appeals to me.<\/p>\n

All that said, it won’t work.  First, because you’d be surprised how much room you need for groceries–a full run for the two of us can pack the mini’s back pretty easily.  And second, it’s too dangerous. <\/p>\n

It’s dangerous enough for motorcycles to share a road with cars, but
\nmotorcyles are maneuverable and their riders don’t have big blind spots
\nlike you do in a regular vehicle.  A slightly better-armored golf cart
\ncannot share a road with trucks, which they would have to even in
\ntrain-accessible suburbs.  I am pretty reluctant to drive my Mini on
\nlong highway trips, for just this reason.<\/p>\n

Differential speeds
\nare a major cause of accidents, as is the inability to accelerate
\nquickly. And of course, even in single-car accidents, lighter vehicles
\nare more dangerous.  You’re not talking about American auto safety
\nregulations; you’re talking about the laws of physics; if you’re going
\nto smash into something, you want as much stuff around you as possible
\nto absorb the shock.  In a two car accident, the death rate would be
\nenormous, since even my mini could crush one of these things.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, how many people want to park and insure an extra vehicle?<\/p>\n

Such
\na system would be fine in a country where that’s all that anyone
\ndrove.  But that’s not the country we live in, and even if we did away
\nwith large passenger vehicles, we’d still have to put all the cargo
\ntrucks somewhere.


\n

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As the proud owner of a well-used Mini, I feel compelled to weigh in on Ryan Avent’s proposal for single-passenger vehicles that don’t guzzle so much gas, or use so many materials.  He makes a pleasingly contrarian argument that a lot of the problem is government safety regulations, which naturally appeals to me. All that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":80,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-332019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/80"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}