Just had a bit of a realization on this one. The point of this is for them to do nothing, isn’t it? Specifically blame it one something people will push back on (safety features), so they can throw up their hands and say, “we tried, but they won’t let us bring down the cost of cars!”
Republicans wake up in the morning trying to write down that idea in their dream where they hurt people and made money.
Ah yes, it’s definitely the regulations that are making those costs go up, not tariffs or CEO paychecks.
Won’t anyone think of the shareholders?!
Qhy are cars more expensive?
I mean last I checked they fall under the category of “everything”.
What the fuck is with this title? This has zero to do with being “too safe” and everything to do with cost. Inflammatory title.
That said, I highly doubt any cost that’s saved on the car makers side will be passed down to the consumer.
while yes, it is an inflammatory title, it’s kind of the reverse of what the republicans are doing, which is phrasing that cars are too expensive in order to gut safety regs that cost car manufacturers money rather than make them money.
Obviously not. They don’t want to bring prices down, they want to bring profits up. Representatives and senitors don’t give a shit about your safety in a car, but do care a lot about the big three car manufacturers stock buyback options. We’re less than worthless. We’re annoying voters they don’t need anymore, compated to a stock but back you’re a nuisance.
Ted Cruz is blaming life-saving car safety regulations for the rising cost of cars
This is correct. They will be cheaper. The question is not how much money is spent, but it is what you get for that money.
I’m sure if we get rid of all food safety laws there will be cheaper food available as well. It will make manufacturing much easier.
Likewise, if we eliminate the EPA and the huge amount of environmental protection laws we have, manufacturing will be much cheaper and feasible to do in the USA.
Chesterton’s Fence remains in effect, as ever. Fiddle with these rules at your own risk. Consequences don’t care about your feelings and the universe will make sure to pay you back.
But the prices won’t go down. Reductions in production costs are only reflected in sale prices when there’s a market force driving the costs down. Right now, people have to own cars, and the barriers to entry into the matlrket are too high for new competitors. There’s no reason for the auto manufacturers to lower prices if their costs go down. They can just pocket the difference.
They’ll get rid of the safety mechanisms to make the cars cheaper… to produce.
But you and me will still pay the same prices.
Because its corporate profits they are concerned about, not personal savings.
They may be cheaper, but they won’t be THAT much cheaper to make.
Shareholders are the primary reason!
Ah yes, it’s safety that makes newer cars expensive you see. Not the wireless key-fobs, power seats, built in ipad to replace the perfectly fine knobs and buttons, autonomous driving features…
And nobody is selling the basic no frills subcompact cars in the US anymore
From what I’ve heard the lack of buttons is actually a cost saving measure, if you put in an infotainment system anyway
That might be true as I haven’t looked into it in detail. Though even then, if the goal is to make cars more affordable, there’s lots of other features you can cut down on that has nothing to do with safety
Thank god EU is starting to get involved in the matter.
For now it is only that cars only get a 5 star safety rating when they include buttons for a few things form 2026.
I hope there will be laws that follow after.
Yeah, good buttons are ridiculously expensive
That’s a whole extra half cent per car.
You’re vastly underestimating prices of car parts, even for manufacturers, even bought in bulk.
yeah i worked at a vehicle manufacturer a while ago as they were expanding into a new market with a budget model, and getting rid of all the non-critical buttons was very high priority for cost. not only do you save on materials directly, you can remodel the entire driving area which means you can redesign the safety features. less shit in the dashboard means less debris that needs to be crash-tested.
I didn’t even think about the crash testing angle that makes a lot of sense
For the passenger? Very safe.
For the pedestrians that get hit? Ha! They’re literally death machines. At this point, I’m surprised we’re not putting spikes on the front of the car Mad Max style to ensure the pedestrians’ death.
Y’all can buy these right now.
These certainly do have a use on freight trucks but not your urban crawler tho. They help identify loose and rotating lugs and give you a little means to know when you’re too close to a curb. Plus as you drive you can shred other people’s tires.
Edit: these being the silver spikes not the ghetto push on hubcaps
Those look like they’re far more likely to destroy your rims when they tangle up a branch or bundle of fencing wire on the road than ever do you an ounce of good.
Saw these idiotic rims on a smol penis indicator the other day.
I like to call them “Plus Sized” they get much more annoyed than calling them small pp mobiles
Dead cyclists and pedestrians less likely to sue.
Give credit where credit is due. Death race 2000 came out 4 years before mad max.
The average Lemmy user seems to want more dead car owners.
Also, this thread has a lot of people voicing their opinions about what they want in a car. I too would prefer a much more basic auto for a cheaper price. But what do normal people actually want? They want all the bullshit. Auto makers also make great money on the bullshit, so they want to sell it to us. They also make great money when the bullshit breaks so they make more money on the back end.
American safety standards have led to an insane game of cat an mouse wherein I need my car to be bigger to keep me safe. But my bigger car is more dangerous to you. So you need a bigger car to protect yourself from my dangerously large car. But now I need a bigger car to protect me from your giant car.
And 30 years later everyone is driving around a 60 thousand dollar crumple zone so tall it can’t see pedestrians over the hood and needs a 6 liter engine just to move.
Same for child seats. Planning on having 3 kids under 10? Better plan on a truck or van with a 3rd row, because somehow, you can’t fit seats 3 small children in the back seat of a family sedan or crossover.
Is it really the safety standards? I thought it was a combination of all the stupid “truck” exceptions and our equally stupid culture where the iamverybadasses choose their 3-ton grocery and kindergarten shuttles out of fear because they want to “win” any collisions.
There’s no one thing. I’m sure everyone is trying to game regulations.
But, I’d wager a Honda Civic is not getting a truck exceptions. Yet a 2025 Honda Civic is 20% wider and 25% longer than a 1978. The weight has gone from 800 kilos to over 1400.
Crumple zones need space to crumple into. Side curtain airbags require bulkier pillars. Impact beams need space making bodies wider. Instead of a sheet metal box on a chassis we have a frame reinforcing the entire cabin. We need room for crushable hood braces and plastic engine shrouds for when we hit pedestrians. It’s all good stuff, but you have to buy an inch or two for this, an inch or two for that…
Eventually a 2025 Honda Civic is both longer and wider than a 1990 Toyota Hilux pickup.
Ah, yeah it’s affected everything across the board. But with the US context and you talking about giant vehicles, $60K vehicles, and 3 rows, I thought we were focused on the larger end of the population as a whole.
I bet the crash safety design of the current honda civic was definitely influenced by the truck regulations and that whole market driving the large end even larger.
Funny enough, I am eagerly awaiting the official announcement of the 2026 MX-5 of all cars.
pretty sure a lot of that is due to american’s needs to pack a bunch of stuff into their car. we prioritize cabin space. European cars meet the same safety standards and yet aren’t nearly as large.
Not as large but still growing.
This
I agree with you that this has happened, but it is far from the only reason that vehicles have increased in price. Now almost every vehicle comes with power windows, power locks, power mirrors, at least one if not multiple built in tv screens, wireless locks and keyless ignitions. Not to mention alot of manufacturers building in computer hardware/software to track user information and installing propietary parts/hardware/software designed to keep your local mechanic from doing repair work and forcing you to use dealership mechanics at 3-4 times the cost.
All of it is being done because it makes more money. Mark my words, if they repeal safety regulations, it will definitely reduce the safety of our vehicles, but it will have little to no effect impact on prices. I would wager my left nut that auto manufacturers are chomping at the bit to get this deregulation put through so they can reduce their cost of vehicles by increasing the danger of the consumer, but wont reduce the prices by a fraction of what they are “saving,” then will proceed to have record profits while using lobbyists to pay off our crooked politicians.
Yay capitalism, right?
“On a long enough time line, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero.”
I noticed the current admin has contempt for anything that benefits the common man, and is looking for financial excuses to remove any “subsidy” type of regulation that could be protecting people from dying for the crime of being poor and/or having weak genes
The really sad thing is your bigger car isn’t even really safer for you. It’s just cheaper for the manufacturers (since they can classify it as a truck which has less strict safety and efficiency regulations) and a danger to others.
My siblings in sin, American cars and street scapes are dangerous for everyone.
I say YES!
GOLF CARTS FOR EVERYONE !!!
Cheap, light, small, no computer, natural airflow, what else?
This but without the sarcasm lol.
I’m 100% for light electric vehicles.
Golf cart is for the lol but it really checks all cases and for now all LEV are no more than fancy expensive golf carts, see Citroen Ami or la Bagnole.
Really hope to see more of those things riding the streets. Maybe in the future, cars will be banned from cities and let in the large open spaces where it belongs (where trains can’t go), and those LEV will complete the offer for inner city transportation in the form of short time rentals, like scooters and bikes do currently.
I wonder if the donald has a specially designed golf cart with a gas powered engine. I can’t believe that he daily drives an ev
I mean there are still just lots of gas powered golf carts around.
Cars can never be too safe. What I want is a car with no computers or telemetry whatsoever. I want a car that is private with how I use it. Like what they were pre 2000s. Just a hunk of metal to go from point A to point B.
As long as you don’t get a touring bike, most motorcycles don’t track you.
cars like that already exist. you can’t afford them.
Besides kit cars or deliberately older designed cars like a Morgan Stanley, what modern cars have no driver tracking? The only one I’m aware of is the Slate EV.
I have a 2012 Nissan Leaf in Australia. It uses the 2G network for all telemetry. Australia just turned off the 3G network.
I think its pretty safe to say the telemetry does not work anymore.
Agreed, but a 13 year old Nissan leaf is rather old at this point (which is a good thing!), and is affordable. The person I was responding to implied that there are current production cars without tracking, but they are just unaffordable to most, which I found confusing, as I struggle to come up with a modern current production vehicle that doesn’t track the user regardless of it being basic affordable transportation or a Ferrari.
Those cars were absolutely more dangerous than the ones on the road now.
True self-driving cars would be the epitome of safety, because humans are the most common reason for failure in most systems.
Edit: people seem to think I’m endorsing the use of a telescreen… I mean infotainment system, in cars. That’s not what’s happening. Safety technology in cars and spyware in cars are two separate discussions. It’s a fact that vehicles today are safer than they were 20 years ago due in part to advancements in safety technology.
And a fully autonomous vehicle would need all of the sensors and processing to be local, so there’s really no need for the Internet to be involved at all.
I’d 100% trust a purpose built system that can do millions of sensor reading and calculations a second with a full 360° view more than I would a human who can get tired, intoxicated, distracted, or bored. The technology just isn’t there yet.
It’s a fact that vehicles today are safer than they were 20 years ago
The difference in safety over the last 20 years is nothing compared to the difference in safety over the 20 years before that, and again in the 20 years before that. We’ve pretty much plateaued as far as (occupant) safety goes. We’ve somewhat regressed as far as other road useres’ safety goes…
Do those safety features need extensive geolocation storing data and constantly listening to me and monitoring everything I do and keeping it on record?
No? Then remove the monitoring part. I also don’t care one bit for the infotainment crap.
I never said anything about extensive geolocation, storing data, or constantly listening. What are you on about? Most safety sensors aren’t connected to the infotainment system.
Putting advanced safety technology in a car and putting spyware in a car are two different conversations.
OK I think we’re having some miscommunication here.
When I say I want a private car and no computers, I was referring to data storage and telemetry and geolocation communication. Perhaps I was wrong to say ‘no computers’ since the sensors and LIDARs and automated warnings require some computers. So to be specific, I do not want computers with persistent data storage. I read about a case in Canada where the police seized a vehicle’s blackbox after a car crash and they mentioned that the blackbox only stored data for 5 seconds (which is enough time to get information on a car crash) and no more, and it does not contained any stored data about the owner or driver of the car and their driving habits/location history. I can actually live with that.
We absolutely can have cars with as much privacy as the old hunks of metal of old without sacrificing the safety aspects. Of course there are tons of other privacy invading things when you are driving a car. Automated license plate readers and traffic cameras and cameras all over the place, but having the shit removed from within the car is important.
The infotainment is still shit I would get rid of. I don’t want it.
They just want their goons to be able to break their victims windows out easier
