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0 pointsVogonPoetry3y ago0 comments

Half width vehicles ignores the following issues.

- Busses. How do you make them half width? (or perhaps, uncharitably, do you think public transportation is worthless?). If busses stay the same width how do you write the driving regulations for mixed width vehicles and retrain the driving public so that fatalities do not skyrocket.

- Bulk delivery vehicles. Same as above.

- Half width means less vehicle stability at speed. Reducing vehicle height is constrained by human size. Worse stability means reduced speeds to reduce fatalities. Consider San Francisco, where a large proportion of the city cars are from commuters traveling 30-60 miles per day. What are the rules for commuter roads with mixed width vehicles?

- Reduced width would likely mean smaller wheels, increasing rotational speed. Tire and brake pad wear is now a non-trivial factor of car pollution. Half width vehicles would / could make this worse.

0 comments

april_223y ago

very unsure if half width vehicles will become a thing, but what's for sure is that micromobility will expand. We will see more electric scooters, ebikes etc. They solve so many traffic and environmental problems in cities.

ianai3y ago

I wish there was something to make smaller vehicles more palatable. Where I live everyone drives huge vehicles. They need the AWD or 4wd for traction in the winter. They probably don’t need to be F150 size and above for that though. I’m thinking like a weight/size tax on registration.

WorldMaker3y ago

Many US states have weight/size taxes and fines that are still "on the books" but haven't been enforced in decades. Maybe as gas taxes drop below certain funding goals they will re-evaluate enforcing them.

fullstackchris3y ago

but this is just a bandaid on a much larger problem: our cities and highway system were designed and built in eras where the amount of cars on the road was a fraction of what it is now. I-95 has become a complete abomonation, and some e-scooters and bikes wont fix that

albrewer3y ago

I really wanted to get an electric motorcycle, but the current market leader charges $20k for something that can get to highway speeds and go 70-80 miles on a charge. I'll have to stick to my $9k ICE motorcycle for now, unfortunately.

flemhans3y ago

You just have the existing big lanes but limit them to buses, emergency vehicles, maintenance, and deliveries.

Or public transit becomes an enormous fleet of half-width on-demand driverless microcars

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