In progressive circles, the latest explanation for everything from increasing numbers of pedestrian deaths to climate change to that annoying seam in your underpants is the phenomenon they call “car bloat:”
Not only are the cars getting bigger, but other countries are actually getting safer, so it’s got to be our big-ass SUVs, right?
I’ve never really liked this as an explanation. Yes, some of us are driving some moronically large vehicles, and certainly the overall size of our vehicles isn’t helping. Plus, a lot of cars today–even small sedans–seem to have terrible visibility and make you feel like you’re sitting in a closet with a louvered door. I rented one of these the other day and don’t even know why they bother with the rear windshield at all:
But what bothers me is that, after a gradual decline, pedestrian deaths started going up again in 2010:
Meanwhile, the switch from cars to SUVs didn’t happen overnight; it happened gradually. (A cursory Internet search suggests that in 2010 the average car on the road was 10 years old.) Furthermore, “SUV” is a lazy-ass term, and there’s a big difference between a Chevy Tahoe and a Toyota RAV4, the car which in recent years has replaced the Camry as the bestselling “car” in America. (The bestselling vehicle of course has long been the Ford F-150.) Many of the cars the David Zipper types call “SUVs,” and the ones people are buying now, are really what the car publications call “crossovers” that evolved from the sedans that preceded them, and are basically just hatchbacks and sedans on botox. The people who once would have driven around in Taurus wagons now drive around in Escape crossovers, which doesn’t seem to be sufficient to explain the sudden reversal in pedestrian deaths. Certainly an F-150 is bigger now than it used to be, but even so, the idea that all of America suddenly hopped in jacked-up trucks in the span of a year strikes me as a convenient mischaracterization.
But you know what did change almost overnight around that time? The advent and widespread adoption of the smartphone:
And what about “weed bloat?” Not only is marijuana increasingly legal and socially acceptable, but it’s also now exponentially more potent than it used to be and consumed via electronic delivery devices in quantities that will instantly melt your face. Plus, it’s often consumed while driving, and certainly in New York City you can smell it wafting out of pretty much every other car–I can even smell it from other cars when I’m in my own car on the highway. Between the phones and the weed, it seems like if you’re interested in understanding why pedestrian deaths are increasing that this is something worth considering, as wise people have noted:
Alas, you’re not really allowed to question the pervasiveness of marijuana in progressive circles, so nobody ever implicates it–though it does sneak in occasionally, as in this recent Streetblog article:
This driving instructor’s observations would seem to indicate that we are indeed in the midst of an epidemic of stoned and distracted morons:
But that doesn’t really fit the “cars are evil” narrative so we just keep hearing about “car bloat” instead.
By the way, contrary to the “car bloat” article, Europeans are absolutely driving SUVs too:
They also have smartphones, though I have no idea if stoned driving is as commonplace over there as it is over here.
Meanwhile, “bike bloat” is definitely a thing, as tires keep getting fatter thanks to the gravel pheonomenon (or, in Gravel-ese, the GRVL PHNMNN). In fact, gravel is getting so bloated that the races are getting banned:
This is pretty much the same thing that happened with mountain bikes decades ago (municipalities and land managers banning bikes from trails), and yet another reminder that gravel is not new or original in any way. In this case, the biggest “problem” seems to be in Ireland, where the races are now banned altogether:
Gravel likes to sell itself as the feel-good inclusive alternative to road cycling, but there’s a dark side to it all, and apparently it involves shitting on people’s lawns:
This happened at SBT GRVL, which raises another important question:
If gravel is so inclusive, why doesn’t it allow vowels?
Anyway, it’s really too bad all the gravel grinders are running out of places to grind together in large numbers:
You hate to see it. But at least the bike industry keeps figuring out new places to put batteries on bikes:
I’ve lost count at this point, but I’m fairly sure this takes the number of batteries on a mountain bike into the triple digits:
Finally, at least one Craigslist seller hopes that the vintage BMX bubble has yet to pop:
Though his neighbor across the street is banking on the strength of the road bike market:
That is the wildest garage flex I’ve ever seen in a Craigslist ad.