Europe, USA and the rest of the world can easily turn into what Russia had become, if certain actions are allowed to take place.
If Trump had his way (change constitution/replace/kill his opposition), we could have authoritarian state in USA in 5-10 years. EASY.
Whats happening in Russia should be a contestant reminder for the rest of the world of what happens when you dont have a system of check and balances. When you dont have functioning legal system. When you dont have freedom of speech / freedom to protest.
Eh, it's extremely unlikely that dogs have developed any totally new types of emotions during the domestication process. More like they were easy and useful to domesticate because as intelligent, mammalian, social pack predators, their ancestors were already a good fit for humans, mentally.
There are papers/studies that show that dogs have facial muscles that wolves lack that effectively give them expressive eyebrows. You could argue this is the result of human selective breeding but it does allow them to portray emotion in a way wolves can’t. Not sure how one would define “new emotion” but certainly their ability to communicate emotion to people at least has changed/increased.
Adding on to this, there’s evidence that domestication involved selecting for genetic abnormalities in dogs that are analogous to Williams Syndrome in humans, a disorder which is known to cause pro-sociability, a strong sense of empathy, and relatedly, anxiety.
I’d argue we have pretty good evidence that the emotional processing of dogs has been dramatically altered by domestication.
> It's always interesting to think about who has had the more successful, fulfilling life between Woz and Jobs.
“You smell like a toilet.” This is what Steve Jobs told his daughter Lisa Brennan-Jobs while on his deathbed, she wrote in her new shocking tell-all memoir about her bumpy relationship with her father.
“I was afraid of him and, at the same time, I felt a quaking, electric love,” she wrote.
In her memoir, titled “Small Fry”, Brennan-Jobs says that a lot of her memories with her father were not a typical father-daughter relationship. She talks of him denying paternity despite a DNA match, not sending financial help to her and her mother, and saying mean things to her in the little times that he spent time with her.
Steve's own parents abandoned him (gave him up for adoption) when he was young and so Steve was raised by foster parents. His foster parents seemed to have been really nice people, but perhaps Steve might have had difficulty connecting with his first biological daughter because he couldn't connect with his own biological father. Just speculating of course ...
Even if he couldn't have connected with her emotionally he could so easily have looked after her financially as she grew up. To have left his daughter in poverty when he was so wealthy is just the pits. I can't admire a man like that.
He just seems like someone who was incapable of enjoying anything he couldn’t perfect, including people. I wonder how he viewed his daughter, someone directly from his own matter but so alien to himself.
If that is true he was very shortsighted because he was far from perfect himself. I wonder is that he hated his daughter's mother and couldn't stand the thought of a daughter who was half her's. The daughter didn't count. Anyway he could hurt her was a way of hurting her mother, all the way to his deathbed.
There are only a couple million farmers in the United States, and yet the top 5 manufacturers of pickups sell a couple million trucks every year, and the F-Series is nearly a million of those sales. I guarantee farmers are not buying a new pickup every year! (And yes, in my part of Texas a lot of people just say "pickup" instead of "pickup truck"). I'm a city dweller and there are plenty of pickups around, but I can tell you know tons of Texans in both cities and smaller towns who wouldn't even consider buying anything other than a pickup for their daily driver (and no, they're not farmers).
A lot of people around the country don't realize that lots of commercials are tailored for Texas. A big part of those are pickup commercials, saying they're built "Texas tough" or whatever.
That sounds completely crazy from european POV. I've seen probably less than 50 pickup trucks in my life. How do you drive that thing in a city? Where do you park it?
People in the US are obsessed with cars, and as a result cities have been forced to build expensive, absolutely massive streets and even more expensive parking structures.
There seems to be a bit of growing pushback on this since it causes a ton of deaths and injuries due to speeding, drivers not paying attention, etc.
Although a lot of the larger, more dangerous streets in cities are run by state level Dept of Transportations whose only care in the world is how quickly a car can get from point A to point B, and won't downsize streets even though their standards say it is acceptable.
There are lots of videos, etc out there on the insane size increase of driving lanes to accommodate these massive vehicles speeding through areas.
I’ve had to park the truck in downtown San Francisco a half dozen times. I’m pretty good at fitting into tiny spots, but it devolved into Austin Powers-style 100-point turns a few times. That’s with cameras, proximity sensors, power fold mirrors, sticking heads out the window, etc. I take the car instead of the truck whenever it’s possible.
As someone who’s visited Europe a few times, I can say that your big city delivery truck drivers make it look easier than it is in the US. I’ve seen more than one back down an alley at speed after folding back their mirrors to make the truck fit!
An American pickup truck is comparable in size to a European-style delivery van. (Eg: the common Mercedes ones, or the things where the driver sits over the engine.) US delivery trucks are much larger. Our streets were made after automobiles were common, so they’re wider than they should be (I prefer to walk!). That makes driving a truck easy.
Parking spots tend to be under-sized, however. Also, there aren’t consistent rules regarding “compact” or even full-sized parking spots. Some compact spots can’t fit an American sports car (it will be over the lines on both sides, but other compact spots are 2 feet wider and 4 feet longer than a full sized pickup truck.
Parking spaces and roads average significantly larger in the states to accommodate pickup trucks, SUVs, etc. Americans love their big cars for the flexibility it affords.
We used to have this mentality back home: Normal cars- only German made , if you can't afford normal car- buy Japanese,as a second best option,which really is the worst option. And the rest of the brands? Nobody really buys them unless they are crazy.
Funny, I guess we the low-rent version growing up: Chevy cars and Ford Trucks. Oh, the comments when the redesigned Dodge RAM showed up and some folks bought it. Now if I had to choose, I would probably buy a taco (Toyota Tacoma).
I'm not sure why that's the case.I'm having hard time imagining that most buyers really use it as a truck: transport tools, equipment,and so on. They probably don't look so bad on American roads,as they are much wider, however every time I see one in Europe, it's almost 100% that some brash jackass is behind the wheel. Even those who buy them for work tend to follow the rule.
Many have a comparable cabin to SUVs for two rows. So essentially if you buy the "Crew Cab"-style you're buying an SUV but instead of a traditional indoor trunk, you have a much more flexible outdoor one.
I'm not saying everyone needs a pickup truck, but what I am saying is that it makes just as much or as little sense as a similarly priced/sized SUV, and maybe more in certain circumstances. Even for non-pros (assuming a smaller/cheaper pickup, like the F150).
I've lived in both places, and in Europe the default assumption is that you'll have no way to transport stuff (e.g. Ikea furniture, large TVs, DIY supplies, etc) so everyone offers inexpensive delivery. In the US, a lot of places won't deliver or it will be expensive so either owning or having a family member own a pickup is very valuable.
It is one of those things you cannot know until you live in the US.
>I've lived in both places, and in Europe the default assumption is that you'll have no way to transport stuff (e.g. Ikea furniture, large TVs, DIY supplies, etc) so everyone offers inexpensive delivery. In the US, a lot of places won't deliver or it will be expensive so either owning or having a family member own a pickup is very valuable.
This is a very valid point.In Europe the default expectation for anything that weights more than 10kg is that someone will deliver ro your door and most often put it where it need to be( furniture, washing machine). That's why I don't know a single person who has a house and needs a pickup truck. In the worst case scenario, people simply hire a trailer,which solves 99% of transportation issues. Also in Europe,most things are close to you and a thought of driving two hours for some shopping is almost surreal.
Most of the passenger minivans sold in the US have removable seats so they make a great alternative to a truck as long as you don't need much ground clearance. Honestly if I could get two more inches of ground clearance in a Toyota Sienna that would be my next vehicle. It's rare that I would want to carry both 6 people and a half rack of plywood at the same time. But if I want to drive to a trailhead and go hiking or something I'd like to bring some friends.
There's also those fold into floor seats in some minivans, and you can buy a correctly sized mattress online to turn them into a sleeper. They're definitely very comparable to cargo vans in Europe, and I've seen small businesses use them as delivery vehicles with no modifications.
I had a loaner pickup for a while when my car was in the shop for a month (different story) but it definitely had some value. I found myself able to conveniently do a lot of things that I’d have needed a trailer for otherwise specifically because I wouldn’t want to get the inside of an SUV dirty.
The biggest downside to a truck is frankly meh fuel economy. The F150 for example is currently 21 city / 28 highway, which in 2020 is not competitive (e.g. Subaru Outback/Nissan Rogue get 26/33, and Toyota RAV4 26/35).
Creature comforts are comparable to SUVs, the driving/handling is "fine," and while the prices start out higher because they sell more there're more deals to be found too.
I could see myself driving a hybrid Crew Cab-style truck.
> the default assumption is that you'll have no way to transport stuff (e.g. Ikea furniture, large TVs, DIY supplies, etc) so everyone offers inexpensive delivery.
But cars have tow hooks, and IKEA and the hardware store lends you a trailer for free. Or you can rent one for $20 for a few hours. Where in Europe do people not want to use trailers? I (Sweden) wouldn't buy a car without a tow hook, because they are hard to resell.
This is what I don't get about pickups: all the time that I'm not hauling stuff I'm still hauling around that big space.
Granted, towing a trailer to get a sofa from IKEA isn't the best experience either, but it seems to be pretty good compromise for aerodynamics/cost/weight.
> This is what I don't get about pickups: all the time that I'm not hauling stuff I'm still hauling around that big space.
By that logic you'd buy a vehicle with no trunk, since you're hauling around that "big empty space." Or a vehicle with only a single seat for when you have none or fewer than capacity passengers.
You're just arbitrarily distinguishing an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag: Making it more fuel efficient for its relative size.
The complaint reads like: "It is different to here, therefore I assume it is wrong."
As I said I've lived in both for tens of years, what is popular in the US makes sense for the US, and what is popular for Europe makes sense there too. Without considering the big pictures (e.g. size of roads, size of homes/apartments, parking, quality of public transport, etc) it is difficult to grasp.
> By that logic you'd buy a vehicle with no trunk, since you're hauling around that "big empty space." Or a vehicle with only a single seat for when you have none or fewer than capacity passengers.
It's a compromise for all vehicles obviously. Ideally you'd want one that didn't have those empty seats - but that's not practical. If you want to minimize weight/drag/cost/fuel consumption while at the same time hauling x cubic feet and 5 people, then that is an optimization problem. I don't know what the optimal solution is, but I doubt it looks anything like the traditional pickup (A cybertruck possibly comes closer). The optimization problem becomes differeent if you add more constraints, for example ability to tow X thousand pounds.
> an outdoor trunk space from an indoor one, and claiming one is wasteful without actual justification. If anything an outdoor trunk has less vehicle side panels, glass, mechanics, and weight therefore less drag:
Drag is a shape coefficient, not a weight coefficient. Most modern cars, even SUV's, have drag coefficients in the low .30's. Most pickup trucks don't come close, even in marketing values (One of the lowest claimed values is the Ram 1500 with .36, and the Cybertruck will be lower). An F-150 is north of .50 in testing [1]
Gas is cheap, and trucks are useful. I don't often need to move a bunch of lumber or whatever, but when I do, it's nice not to have to go rent a truck from Home Depot.
And when I'm not doing that, it's basically a spacious luxury vehicle on the inside. What's not to like?
The deaths and injuries caused from allowing any average person to drive a vehicle with a 6’ high hood with massive blind spots on crowded public roads.
No, I don't know the exact dimensions of your truck and I am not picturing you in an 18-wheeler. It's well known that the F150, as well as many other SUVs and light trucks have massive blind spots that prevent kids, disabled people, and just generally anyone shorter than 5' from being seen and ultimately have been responsible for many unnecessary deaths and injuries in the US.
Oh, I see what you're talking about. "Blind spot" usually refers to something on the sides of the vehicle that isn't visible in the side view mirror. You're talking about something in the front/back.
You’re asking for a citation on the impact SUVs and trucks have on injuring and killing people in the US? A few simple google searches on ‘traffic crashes USA’, ‘SUV blind spots’, ‘pickup truck blind spots’, etc... will take you 5 seconds and give you all the information you need.
The average house parcel size is .2 acres or 768 square meters. For those living in rural areas 1-2 acres is extremely commonplace. For home improvements on such a large lot it tends to make sense for a lot of people to own a truck.
Also if you want to haul toys like jetskis, boats, quads, motorcycles, campers, you need a truck. Tons of rural americans have those.
That’s all kinda the story. Many don’t fully use them but they like the idea that they can. However, and this is important, one common misconception about America is that it’s all like NYC or suburbs. The country is positively huge and generally very sparsely populated in the middle. Many people own trucks because they have a farm or an ATV or do their own yard-work or construction or the like. Plus historically, pickups used to be the only AWD vehicles in the past and much of America involves harsh winters or off-road driving. But yeah, the other half of the market just buys them because they like them.
Countries often implement backdoor protectionism through things like vehicle emissions regulations.
In America, the American auto makers weren't competing effectively for anything smaller than an SUV - and when CAFE standards were set, requirements for SUVs and trucks were made much laxer.
And the auto companies' marketing responded rationally: If you're paying for the hero in a movie to drive one of your vehicles, better make it the SUV or truck if possible.
Europe, meanwhile, had auto makers who were disproportionately successful at making diesel cars - and promptly set emissions standards that were barely possible to achieve unless you knew that everyone else was cheating and you needed to cheat too. And decided tax gas and diesel by volume, when diesel happens to have 20% more energy per unit volume and higher emissions.
A lot of folks. Anyone who is in construction and has to work on a house being built usually relies on a gas powered generator or shares plugs with the rest of the trades off the post in the yard. It's why cordless tools became popular, but unlike corded tools they sometimes lack the power required for the job.
Can you imagine having this vehicle in an emergency where there is no power. It could power a refrigerator or a small space heater if necessary. It could help out camping for sure.
Pickup trucks are no longer just work or farmer trucks. They are as luxurious as a high end Lexus with just as much room or more. My brother has an F150 and it is just as comfortable as my wife's Lexus ES350 with a better view out the windshield. The gas mileage is pretty good these days also.
I daily drive a Tesla, but my wife daily drives our F150. It's a great do-everything truck. Hauls the kids and sometimes their friends. Fits their bikes in the back. Hauls bark dust, gravel, big things, etc, whenver we need. Tows our travel trailer a couple times a month. And it does all of this very comfortably.
It's really a great all around vehicle for a lot of families.
Most people who drive pickups don't actually need them. Financially they'd be better off renting one on the rare occasion they actually use the bed or towing capacity.
This applies to all the vehicles. Most of the people own cars that they actually need, and 95% of the time, their needs would be satisfied with much smaller, simpler and cheaper cars.
> Most people who drive pickups don't actually need them.
On threads like this, that gets repeated often. There are probably dozens of nearly identical posts here already. It's just about as common as insinuating the people who drive trucks must have small genitalia. Awful lot of projection going on.
So, can you back that up with something other than your intuition? All of my neighbors have pickups. and we all use them routinely for things only pickups can do. Please don't suggest that it would be financially better for me to rent a pickup every two weeks to tow my RV. I've already done the math.
“ 75 percent of truck owners use their truck for towing one time a year or less (meaning, never). Nearly 70 percent of truck owners go off-road one time a year or less. And a full 35 percent of truck owners use their truck for hauling—putting something in the bed, its ostensible raison d’être—once a year or less.”
Screw the math. Renting a truck twice a month, even if cheaper than owning, is a huge hassle.
In other words, you probably are fine paying a little more to not have to get a ride to the rental yard, fill out the paperwork, decline the damage waiver add-on, etc. Then have to do that all again when you're done with the truck.
I don't own a truck, and it sucks sometimes when I want to do some yard work, or buy a large appliance/furniture on craigslist. If I add just one more use case to my life (more frequent camping, or larger projects), I'm going to go buy a truck and eliminate another hassle.
Uhaul allows pickup via app now. Not as smooth as Zipcar, but it does work. The added $1/mile adds up super quick though, and seems antiquated compared to all other types of car rental.
People self-employed like appliance repairmen, plumbers, fishermen, farmers, carpenters, roofers, grass cutting, snow removal.
Here in Canada it's a great vehicle due to snow and rugged terrain. Even in small towns snow is on the ground 25% of the year but in some places nearly half the year.
I don't care if the truck is gas or diesel as long as it moves. But electric would be preferable for efficiency as long as it can haul a trailer or carry a load.
There are lots of self employed people that own nice trucks, but the primary sales target of the F150 is a wealthy office worker who lives in the suburbs. By far their biggest customer base is people who like the aesthetics of the truck but do not need a truck, and do not use the features of the truck beyond its size.
If you drive through suburbia, you'll probably find one in every other driveway. Very few of them are being used regularly for anything that requires a truck.
Having one truck for an extended family to share is really convenient. (EDIT: E.g. one truck per 4-6 households.)
And let's face it -- cars in general are completely unused at least 95% of the time (EDIT: probably an exaggeration). And you could just as easily say that most of the seats in a car go unused most of the time, even when in use.
So it's really about the gas milage rather than the fact that it has an open bed. Sports cars and SUVs fall into the same category. It's just that a bunch of empty truck beds on the road are more visible than empty seats or over-powered engines.
> Can it be addressed with, say, liability insurance premiums (and is it already)?
if it's priced in already, I would guess that it's in a way that doesn't really discourage driving heavy vehicles. if you get in a collision in your SUV but you're not at fault, the people in the other vehicle are more likely to have serious injuries but your insurance doesn't have to pay for it. if anything, the risk is probably distributed across everyone's premiums, unless SUV drivers are more likely to be at fault for some reason.
frankly I'm not sure how best to deal with it. there are a lot of people who would do just fine with a small sedan but are unwilling to drive one because they (correctly) perceive it as less safe. this is of course a negative feedback loop where the average vehicle gets heavier and the incentive to buy a heavy vehicle for yourself increases.
perhaps there could be an additional tax for vehicles over a certain weight with an exemption for people who genuinely need it for work or have a large enough household to justify it.
Is there a good explanation why pick up trucks are so popular in the US, but no in Europe? Coming from Europe I've always wondered this and only ever have gotten reasons that would be valid in Europe as well. Uses cases of farmers and construction workers should be largely identical. Yet in Europe these get covered by tractors and vans. For farmers I wonder if the larger areas in the US make the difference.
As I just alluded to in another comment, a lot of it is marketing of a macho image, e.g. commercials in Texas are customized to tell guys how the pickup being marketed is tough enough for Texans. So plenty of people I've known buy them because they associate them as being the most appropriate thing for a man to drive, whether they ever use the truck bed or not.
It's got little to do with the width of the road. The Model X is quite popular in Europe, and the difference in width vs the F150 is literally 1 inch.
The biggest reason is probably purchase price. An F150 Raptor (the only model I could find a price for) is $100k in Britain, versus $60k in the US.
You do see quite a few pickups in Europe, especially as commercial vehicles. But the Toyota Hilux, Mitsubishi L200, VW Amarok etc. outnumber the American trucks at least 10:1.
And very few trucks are owned by "regular" people. Much better to get a Land Rover Discovery or a Toyota LandCruiser, and throw the big unwieldy stuff you need to move in a trailer.
(As an aside, we used to have a Chevy Avalanche with the 8.1L Vortec. That was a fun car, I'll agree, but you had to close your eyes while filling up with petrol.)
More than half the retail price at the pump in much of western Europe is tax. If you take the base price of the fuel in both Europe and the US, exclude taxes, then the price isn't actually all that far apart.
I prefer narrow roads which leave space for pedestrians, businesses like cafés and shops, properly walkable cities, etc. And I would like fuel to be even more heavily taxed (or other more progressive schemes for taxing personal car use).
Everyone has their own use case, obviously. But remember that a pickup can easily have a canopy, or even just a bed cover. A van cannot take the roof off to haul junk, dirt, gravel, etc.
My point is that a truck is arguably the most versatile, not that it is the best choice for all use cases.
It's cultural, mostly. There are technical or economical reasons both current and historic (Truck Tax, Size of roads, cost of gas...), but mostly I think it's just cultural.
A similar cultural thing made wagons not cool in the US 30 years ago, and they didn't come back (Which is a shame).
A number of my whitewater paddling friends favor minivans (and larger vans) for trips--in part because they're better for shuttling than SUVs. Personally I've had an SUV for decades because they're a bit better on rough back roads--although there have been 4WD minivans for a while now.
What I don't care for are the SUV designs that have basically recreated the minivan with 3 seat rows and they're really not as good for hauling people as a minivan is.
I don't know exactly who or why, but the answer is certainly A LOT of people are buying them.
"Cox Automotive data shows Middle America, with household incomes of $50,000 to $99,000, was the segment of buyers who stayed in-market mostly for new pickup trucks and SUVs, while upper- and lower-income buyers shied away,"
It's probably because if you're low income, you likely can't afford the lower MPG or expensive things like tire replacements, and if you're upper income, you just hire people to do work that requires a pickup. I think middle-income people are in the sweet spot for trucks and SUVs where they can afford the extra costs, but can't afford someone to do manual labor for them, so they actually use the truck to haul things so they can do the work themselves.
Many people buy trucks. I imagine for some it’s the ground clearance, others the actual utility, others the looks, etc. There’s the fleet buyers too. They do make sense, too, if you live anywhere rural or with roads that aren’t paved or get weather and aren’t well maintained. Near me, trucks possibly outnumber cars for as far as the eye can see.
They fit a niche. I saw plenty of trucks and other big vehicles driving around a city of greater than 2 million people.
Well, when the truly bad weather hits, its very nice to have an actual 4x4 truck. They are very useful vehicles. I would have killed in high school (well, in college too) for a truck with a generator. So many times helping a buddy would have gone a whole lot easier. Never mind pulling people out of the ditch. Going to rent one is not a realistic option in many parts of the country.
Right? People arguing about home ownership is hilarious.
I have hauled multiple loads of mulch, other landscaping stuff and animal feed when helping my parents at their home/small farm in the summer.
I have moved in and out of college dorms/houses with all of my belongings (including my TV, kitchen equipment, lots of electronics lab equipment that I purchased to resell as a side-gig in college...)
Ah right, I forgot that there's no animal feed or landscaping supplies that come in bags conveniently packaged for light usage relevant to homeowners.
If you need literal truckloads of bulk supplies often enough to justify owning a truck then congratulations you're probably running a landscaping company or something so you might need a truck.
And that's clearly not what I'm talking about at all in this thread.
I used to own a Chevy Prizm and packed it with all sorts of stuff – including carrying a huge whiteboard on the roof – so I agree that strategy works.
But what's nice about having a truck now is that I don't really have to try. I can just plop most things in the bed and go. You're right that it's not 100% necessary, but it's a great tool when you need it. That's one of the reasons they're so popular where I'm from (Georgia).
Or you know, to do the regular and never ending series of tasks result from owning a home, and which can only be completed (or far more conveniently so) by use of a truck.
In 2019 I spent 1400$ on deliveries and truck rentals. If you own a property, not having to set a 60$ delivery on a 30$ load of bark becomes a major convenience.
Good for you. I personally know plenty of people who buy trucks who have never put anything in the bed that couldn't have been put in the trunk of a hatchback.
I'm not sure why you're being downvoted. If you've lived anywhere in the states where pick-ups are very common, it's pretty obvious that few people actually need a pick-up truck very often. It's definitely a status/lifestyle thing for many.
I would agree with this for 'new' trucks but going into my 4th year of home ownership, I bought a 3k light duty pickup. If I own it for ~2 years, it will have paid for its self in dump runs and material deliveries alone (not to mention the convenience of being able to do so on my own time).
There are definitely some homeowners who actually need a pickup. But there are tons who have a pickup, but would be better served by a van/SUV, or don't need a large vehicle at all.
I used to live in Alabama, a common enough thing was that a guy who recently graduated high school, if they got a halfway decent paying job somehow (e.g. a local factory), they'd rush out and buy an F-150 or similar. They had no real use for it yet, but it made them look and feel more adult.
I vaguely thought about pickups when I bought my current SUV about 10 years ago. A pickup would be handy now and then but I've never actually needed to rent one and, for weekend getaways, I prefer having the interior space.
If Trump had his way (change constitution/replace/kill his opposition), we could have authoritarian state in USA in 5-10 years. EASY.
Whats happening in Russia should be a contestant reminder for the rest of the world of what happens when you dont have a system of check and balances. When you dont have functioning legal system. When you dont have freedom of speech / freedom to protest.