Yeah I was going to say, phones are currently growing bigger after hitting a sort of "peak small" lol.
They're getting so huge that it's hard to find a small one without ordering an old model. I like to be able to see things and all but at a certain point they don't fit comfortably in my pockets
On a modern phone, the display is almost the only thing a user really interacts with. It makes sense to have a large display so that it can show/"do" more stuff.
With cars, on the other hand, "size" and "weight" are basically the two values you want to reduce the most. They make the vehicle slower, less maneuverable, increase drag, braking distance, fuel consumption, accident severity and overall cost.
The function of autos is to transport things from point A to point B. Unless the size of these things has increased dramatically in recent decades, it is downright idiotic to increase these two values.
Sitenote: I renovated my entire apartment with a Volkswagen Up! Unless people ludge around fully assembled sofas all the time, the smallest vehicle offered by modern car manufacturers is sufficient.
It's a mix of the CAFE laws and consumer habits based on decades of unsafe street design pushing consumers to larger vehicles which makes them feel safer and anyone outside them less safe, which makes them lean toward larger vehicles to match. Viscous cycle and arms race. Point being policy is part of it, but consumer behavior isn't blameless.
What I find the most funny and ironic personally is the fact that the old BMW looks like it has a lot more space for passengers than the new oversized one.
Not to speak up for this ludicrous inflation of motor vehicle dimensions, but often the shrinking of cabin space on modern cars is often in pursuit of crashworthiness and safety.
It doesn't help that carmakers get incentivised to go big by fucked up fuel standards. Here in the US the CAFE standards were gutted during their creation to carve out looser standards for obese pickups and hummer-sized SUVs. The bigger they get even within a given segment, the less stringent the requirements are.
Plus people "feel safer" and all that other jazz when they drive them. It's just... It's so stupid to have to watch people continuing to chose shit like this.
IMO it's such a multi-faceted problem that at this point about the only thing that makes sense is to switch lanes (heh) and focus on other transit methods. More people will take transit or bike if it's easier than parking their mile long farm vehicles in tight urban spaces and being helplessly fumigated by standstill traffic.
Most usb-c charging capable laptops will charge off large external high powered usb-c batteries. Allowing you to optionally choose to just buy a reasonably priced one to leave in your bag.
Safety standards caused passenger cars to get larger more than anything else (trucks got bigger because of weird fuel economy regulations).
Roll back safety standards and we can have small cars again. It’s probably worth the amount of excess deaths it will create, but someone should do a study.
Safety standards is the stated reason, but the actual reason is that weight is unregulated and can always be increased in pursuit of any more profitable dimension. If weight was the taxable dimension, we'd live in a much better world.
yeah in europe (obviosly it varies a lot cross-country and rural/urban) but lots of places with high safety standards , and high emissions taxes. Still lots of small cars around .
Mostly due to parking in big-dense-cities though probably.
US does come out badly on deaths per billion pax-km: 8 ish vs 3-5 for most euro countries
So on the face of it small cars dont sem to correlate - but these data look a bit hodge podge, so not sure to read too much into it without knowing the underlying sources.
Other factors like the "stroad" thing might be an issue.
And a lot of European municipalities give the elderly free public transport, and have ok bus service, so many doddery old coots have a viable option.
I remember that southpark episode about senior drivers, with the jaws music . . .
Maybe not as funny when you look at that US death rate. To quoe Father Maxi: "No god needs complex irony and subtle farcical twists that seem macabre to you and me, all that we can hope for is that god got his laughs . . ."
This meme is bad because what you're doing is false equivalence. Your claim about thr first two is very wrong. Those "fat" laptops were superior to the metal turd we buy today. I'd honestly consider buying an old Thinkpad X220 because of how irritated I am at this point. Those bulky dumb-phones are sturdier than the silicon paperweight, and they all come in 6 inches, which is too big for my tiny fingers - but no worries, I can buy a cheap Chinese Android phone, root it with a custom ROM and be done with it. And moderns cars, well, just fuck them for being bad and ruining the landscape with concrete jungles.