[article] EU cave in on vehicle trade rules will cost European lives as US pick-up trucks flood into Europe

I am not saying that you should puncture their tires, but I am saying that they won't be driving much, if their tires are always punctured.

I think, at least in Belgium, emptying tires is actually not a punishable offense, as long as you don't damage the tires. It's something activists have been doing for a while with these types of cars.
Criminal damage now a lentil in a valve cap
https://tyreextinguishers.com/
- Thank you, kind sir

Bring in vehicle weight, vehicle displacement, and engine displacement annual fees at the same time.

Want an asshole vehicle? Fine, pay extra for your externalities of a heavy vehicle, large engine, and/or large vehicle.

Isn't that already handled by fuel taxes?
- Hard to say, I don't know how EU ETD minimums and individual member states works.
  That also wouldn't cover any externality costs from something like a heavy or large EV.

But who is going to buy one? Be a nightmare in many European cities and towns, just too big for places built for horse and carriage. They just drink fuel, so are expensive to run. Plus, everyone will think/know you are a knob head.

Knob heads. Too many of them. Recently I also noticed a trend of craftsmen like roofers driving F150s and modded Amaroks here in Germany. Before, these guys would drive utility vans with 'don't take my diesel' stickers
- They will have higher running costs for their social statement. Hopefully that causes a correction. Especially as fuel costs vs electricity costs get worse.
But who is going to buy one?
Assholes with a fragile ego.
- Assholes with a fragile ego.
  So the same people who buy them in America.
- Kid-killers on four wheels
People will buy them and bitch and moan to their politicians the streets don't accommodate their over sized truck thats is spotless clean with an empty bed.
- Politicians can nothing, the roads are as wide as they can be already, being the hundreds of years of history. Better off just pedestrianizing them.
assholes will
and as such, they should be treated like assholes. treat their vehicle like assholes. treat them like assholes. they are endangering you, they are affecting your life, make sure you affect theirs as well and try to guide them towards not being an asshole by showing them consequences for their actions
As an American, nobody has to buy them at first. "Light trucks" like pickups and SUVs weren't always big in the US, but because they were more profitable, aggressive advertising campaigns turned SUVs from being something mocked for being unsafe, unwieldy, and inefficient into being what nearly everyone drives. I hate it. Infrastructure has shifted to accommodate them to the detriment of everyone else. Don't let it happen to you. The last several years the top 5 best selling vehicles in the US have been pickups. Not because anyone needs them, but because advertising has turned them into a cultural staple, despite their inconvenience.
- It's hard in Europe as everything is constrained by pre-existing buildings. There just isn't the space to expand many roads without knocking stuff down that has been there hundreds of years. In the cities and towns, it's buildings, in the country it is stone walls.
  Though I would also road tax the bloody things extra.
All these points don't seem to stop people from buying ever bigger cars (Edit: at least in the part of Germany where I live). Most of my neighbours park in the street now, because their cars don't fit in the garages built in the 60s and 70s anymore or one car takes up the parking spots designed for two cars in front of their house. A neighbour recently asked me if I could park closer to the wall in our shared underground parking garage, because he has trouble getting into his car when I park in the middle of my spot. It wasn't a problem before he and the neighbours on his other side bought new cars.
They won't give a single shit about anyone else, they finally are the big hard man and no one can push them about. Take that, Scott Murphy! Who's pushing me into dog poo now!

We've made an industry out of exporting weapons.

I wish the EU but some regulations about visibility and nose height before the stupid cars got here

I don't believe so. They are to big for our taste and infra. To expensive in tax and insurance and to fuel inefficient for our fuel prices. Sure, an occasional idiot will have one to compensate other short comings like it is already today, but I can't see them become a common sighting.

Excluding the taste thing, all of the other points apply to the US too. They're too big, costly, inefficient, but fucking morons drive them daily, despite having zero need for a big truck.

Pathetic arse EU.