Giant utes and SUVs are taking over Australia's roads - and that’s a problem
Giant utes and SUVs are taking over Australia's roads - and that’s a problem
They need to be taxed more and held to a higher efficiency requirement.
118Yes, this. The only reason they even became a thing in the US is loopholes in regulation. They're completely impractical too, they have as much bed capacity as a Kei truck, sometimes less. People only think they "like" them because car companies marketed them as big strong men's cars.
I'm glad this is being talked about, I've noticed them everywhere and it's getting really concerning, especially as a parent with children who could hide under those massive hoods.
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Please don't call pickup trucks "Utes". From an American perspective, Utes are small trucks based on cars, like the El Camino or Holden Ute. They're way more space efficient and I'd imagine a lot more fuel efficient than their pickup cousins. Utes are dead in the US because they got eaten up by giant pickups, but it'd be cool if they made a come back.
27Please don't call pickups "trucks". From a German perspective, trucks are way bigger than pickups (above 3.5t) like the Atego or TGL. They are way more spacious and I'd imagine a lot more useful than their pickup nephews. Pickups are niche in Germany because they are too small for most business use and worse than a station wagon for families, and I hope it stays that way.
38Please don't call suburban penis replacements "pickups". From a rural American perspective, most people who drive these four door, crew cabin, near useless short bed, almost always washed and waxed, with oversized, underutilized engines driven around the city is just sad and pathetic. I saw one of these when I was vacationing in Bonn and I just laughed with my wife and went "damn, I guess male penis compensation is universal".
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From an Australian perspective, presumably where OP is from, Ute apparently is slang for pickup...
24You'd imagine wrong. El caminos had the same motors and gearing as the pickups.
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I believe the new term is "Wankpanzer"
25also in the netherlands
15Driving a smaller SUV and the number of vehicles whos headlight are at my eye level really sucks. There's also some study out there about the unnecessary raised hood that does nothing but increase fatalities and lowers visibility of the 10 meters directly in front of the vehicle.
14What is a ute?
13Aussies created the category of vehicles with trays. Ute = UTILITY VEHICLE. Yanks fucked it up and morphed it into "trucks" - the monstrosities of emotional support vehicles you see today.
11Uterus
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If y'all figure out how, please let us know back here in America. A lot of us hate these goddamn things too.
7Always boils down to the "If I buy a bigger car I'll be safer!" fallacy. If I buy even bigger shoes I'll be safer from injury in running! If I buy bigger and better trousers I will get less injured at work! If I buy a bigger phone I will get scammed less!
I hope people in all the countries facing their initial "Yank Tank" fevers will vote someone in that is responsible enough to reverse this process. I recently sold my 2003 "Combi"-style car because it was simply too big, looking for something smaller has me left wanting but I'll make do without a car for the time being.
6What? You don't like being killed by a giant tank size vehicle? You don't want your kids being run over? What kind of person are you?
It used to be you could only back over your kids accidentally but now you can front over your kids. That's a real term frontover. It was invented for these type of vehicles by the manufacturer. Of course they know!
4Thats not a yank tank
-12You're right it's a wankpanzer
Edit: deleted comment was on the lines of: "This isn't a yank tank' or something like that.
12Is your objection that it is too small? Cause there are some stupidly massive pickups in IB
3
I love how 4mpg and safety is the hill you all choose to die on, rather than sane enforcement of laws.
-19Though to be fair to Australia, there is no way to make an efficient public transit system for the whole country.
-47Yes there is?
Basically half of us live in 2 cities as it is and we’re more urbanised than the US, UK, France, or South Korea.
Very few people live in the vast expanses of land, and rural towns are shrinking. We all live in very few cities overall. It’s easy to cater to that if we bothered to.
52If you can build a road you can build a railway
33Nonetheless, even if we conceded that one needs a car to get by in Australia, the cars don’t need to be as large, and with such lethally poor visibility as in the US. While the US is (outside of small pockets) a dog-eat-dog society where you either project dominance or are dominated, Australia still has some semblance of a social fabric, an existent if somewhat threadbare welfare safety net and the fabled ideal of “mateship”, meaning that we don’t need our cars to look preemptively threatening.
22Yes, these trucks don't do any job particularly well. They don't have big bed capacity, they have terrible visibility, they're extremely dangerous, and they're not even particularly good offroad because they're not built for that. They're built to exceed certain weight limits in the US's EPA regulations to reduce their cost. There's no point doing that then adding a bunch of expensive suspension components. You're much better off with a 20 year old Hilux in that regard. They only look like utes because you can't sell a 4 tonne family sedan, because people would notice it was useless. The tiny bed in back is a fig leaf.
10
Not Just Bikes covers this same misconception about the US thoroughly in a great video.
10The vast majority of Australians live in a densely populated strip on the east coast. It should have high speed rail from Melbourne to Brisbane decades ago.
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