LIFTED TRUCKS ARE THE DEVIL'S WORK AND HONDA CIVICS EXIST PURELY TO MY DETRIMENT

CAR RANT POST:


I find that the cars that I see on the road today feel like such a blatant product of capitalism and individualism in a way that I do not have the education required to effectively describe.

1) Why are they all so damn big?

I'm aware that a large part of it is marketing. Pickups are huge in North America, and to my knowledge a good part of it is that in a lot of areas cars/trucks that hit a certain weight/size limit don't need to follow certain environmental regulations. This is really cheap for car companies, hence a giant, multiyear marketing campaign convincing North Americans that everyone and their kid needs a truck/SUV. NO ONE WHO LIVES IN A SUBDIVISION/WORKS IN A OFFICE NEEDS A PICKUP. Families survive perfectly fine without giant SUVs. You can find storage solutions that don't involve BLOCKING MY VISION OF THE ENTIRE LIFT SIDE OF THE INTERSECTION AND THE LANE IN FRONT OF ME. I get the need for crumple zones, but good Lord.

2) WHY CAN'T I SEE OUT OF THEM???

Can't see the road, because A), I prefer a smaller, more fuel effective car, while the MAJORITY OF COMMUTERS ARE IN TRUCKS AND SUVs. I CAN SEE THESE PEOPLE IN THEIR CARS, IT'S ALWAYS ONE DRIVER, NO PASSENGERS, AND NOTHING STORED IN THEIR PRECIOUS CARGO SPACE. B), they're often either huge with little to no visibility in the back, or tiny and so cramped that I just can't see in general. I feel like they're designed assuming I'm going to only check my back up camera before reversing, which in general is bad practice, but becomes particularly bad in areas with heavy mud/slush issues. Recently, I've been driving some old model of honda civic, which had the wind shield PERFECTLY slanted so that the frame blocks my entire vision of the left side of the road when I turn :/ I can barely see out the back without a rearview camera because...?? They wanted less window? Idk?

3) If I ever meet a car designer who thinks touch screens are a good idea, I'm going to prison.

Thankfully, All the cars I've driven either didn't have touch screens, or only used touch screens to change settings that usually don't need to be fiddled with while driving, like the time, and the playlist folder you're listening to. I wish, for the love of all things holy and unholy, that I could vaporize all cars that have their main UI exclusively touch screen. I should be able to feel how much I want to increase the air flow in my car, not look down and get into an accident. In the same vein, I think we should stigmatize the use of taking calls via bluetooth, and make it an emergencies only type of situation. I don't have the mental capacity to place WHY it feels so much more distracting than a regular conversation between two people in a car, but there's something wrong with it.

4) They ugly, bruh. I've never really been a huge fan of car design, but, like..? They've got to have some weird utility function set up to optimize cheap, lazy design and whatever makes the average consumer not offended enough to not buy the car. They look like computer mice from amazon basics.


In short, they all seem to be designed as big and "safe" as possible, creating some weird individualistic arms race of gas guzzling titans that'll flatten any reasonably sized commuter car. Visibility is sacrificed in the name of wrapping people up in oversized aluminium bubblewrap, and is replaced with automated sensors and cameras, which we wouldn't need as much if cars had better visibility and drivers had extra regulations to ensure that the people on the road can ACTUALLY DRIVE (This ties in to a rant about car dependence and public transportation in North America that I also have on the burner, but I'm not getting into that right now)



MY IDEAL CAR (assuming such a thing exists) would be a little 70s-80 volvo hatchback type car, converted to be electric. I some kind of car very similar to one of these (though not quite the same?) today, and it baffled me because the top/ sides were 99% window. No shitty plastic blocking your view, the rear was almost completely flat, so where your rear view window was is ALSO WHERE YOUR BUMPER IS!! Reversing would be so much easier if I wasn't guestimating the gps coordinates of my car's ass cheeks all the time. The hood was flat, so I would be able to actually see where the bumper was, and not the edge of some weird horizon curving off into no where. (I've had this issue in multiple cars. I would like to see the edge of the bumper, and not just the top of some random curve in the hood of the car's shape) The ONLY downsides to fitting an old car like this would be the AWFUL mileage (lack of aero dynamics, heavy car, etc.) and maybe the mid tier safety set-up. In an ideal world I'd set up a solar farm to charge my car, and only use it for commuting so I wouldn't feel as bad about the km/l.