Society’s got priorities wrong.
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most car travels are 1 person or sometimes 2 person
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the majority of car travels are quite short, less than 40km.
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many car travels are just to get some groceries or drop of a little package or just say “hi” to someone, carrying nothing but themselves.
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cars are fucking expensive, to buy and to maintain
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accidents become way worse with heavier vehicles
Microcar is a valid answer to all of these, while still being sheltered from weather.
How are urban places (i’m in Belgium) with almost permanent super heavy road traffic congestion, bad climate statistics, high polution values, very limited available space left, no self-sustaining energy production and high traffic accident statistics still pooring in billions and billions in subsidies year after year into “regular” big heavy SUV-like vehicles instead of these? It’s beyond my comprehension. The only real valid reason i somewhat get is the collective scare of being in a crash and not wanting to be in the smaller vehicle. We could save the climate, we choose not to.
- MICROLINO: 17.990 €
- OPEL ROCKS: 8.699 €
- CITROEN AMI: 7.790 €
- RENAULT TWIZY: 13.000 €
- FIAT TOPOLINO: 9.890 €
A lot of people here casually spend more on a sunday racing bike every few years for fucks sake.
Drive in dense traffic in a vehicle with effectively no crumple zones? Hard pass.
Climate change can’t kill you if everyone else does first
They don’t have much power and don’t go very fast.
the problem isn’t that these ones don’t, it’s that others do
Of course, but I guess this is also a problem with infrastructure. As a European, I think “Great, that’s way safer than a bicycle”. But the US isn’t a place for bicycles either and when you have to share the streets mainly with overpowered SUVs, then of course it’s getting exponentially more dangerous.
What you need is infrastructure that gives space to smaller transportation modes. This is something you need to resolve in politics. In Europe infrastructure for non-cars is a major campaign topic. Politicians care about it, because the public does. If you as voters don’t make it known that you need alternatives to cars, your infrastructure will never reflect that. Hold your politicians accountable and vote accordingly.