One of the
features of living in a corporatocracy is that weird distinctions get drawn to exploit loopholes. In 1975 CAFE became a thing, and light trucks had their own, more lax standards. As the government has led us to more fuel efficient cars, the automakers led us to bigger cars that they could call trucks to get around those standards. The reason SUVs became a thing, and were heavily marketed towards soccer moms, is that they're cheaper and easier to build to modern regulatory standards. The intention was to give Farmer Ted and his 30 year old pickup a break, but some twat in the suburbs is getting that break by driving a 4 ton Denali.
However, as Americans have been
guided to bigger vehicles we've ignored the safety ramifications of them. If your 4 ton Denali plows into somebody's Ford Fusion the Denali will win every single time, and who cares about those guys driving their tiny little car. America's most popular vehicle, the F150 is surprisingly destructive. It would seem weighing 5,000 lbs, having flat front that's 4' tall and entirely front-loaded tends to fuck up pretty much anything it hits, at exactly the same time people stopped paying attention to anything related to the road they're driving on. Not to mention the enormous blind spot in front of the thing. Now we have those goofy-ass Cybertrucks. Six thousand pounds, wedge shaped, made of stainless steel, and designed to go 0-60 in just over 2 seconds. What could possibly go wrong? These are essentially the vehicular Ivan Dragos. "whatever he hits, he destroys."*
My point is, why aren't insurance companies basing liability insurance on the destructiveness of the vehicle insured? If I hit somebody with my Accord they're just going to ignore me; like
The Crusher. Even high end sports cars aren't hugely destructive by virtue of being light weight and designed to crumple on impact. Seems to me that if you're going to drive a "truck," your insurance should reflect driving a truck. Collision and whatnot is a different thing--I get that. You base that on cash replacement value. That varies wildly. It just seems that liability doesn't change much, and when it does it's based on assumptions about the driver, ignoring the car (except for how it relates to the driver) and that's pretty backwards thinking. Hell, just basing liability on gross weight would be an improvement, wouldn't it?
*The good news about the Cybertruck is that it'll be just as dangerous to the people who drive them, as they are essentially the crumple zone.
Topic: Anything related to automobiles (Read 107210 times)
