Australians have gone mad for expensive US-style “pick-up trucks”, and your kids will never again be able to ride their bikes safely. Sales of RAM trucks and Chevrolet Silverados have exploded in Australia, as the next chart shows.
These are US vehicles that have come onto the scene in Australia since the demise of local manufacturing. Ford and Holden utes are no more, replaced by international models that make enormous profits for their parent companies.
The left-hand drive vehicles are re-manufactured into right-hand drive for local sale. The irony is that the departure of Ford and Holden from local manufacturing led to these enormous US pick-up trucks flooding our market, which led to car manufacturing reopening in Australia, albeit at a small scale.
The price of the cheapest new RAM is $91,000, and they go up to $180,000, but they are proving very popular.
“The acceptance of full-size pick-up trucks by Australians is just phenomenal,” Bob Graczyk, head of RAM International, said last year while visiting Melbourne from his headquarters in Detroit.
“When we first looked into the business opportunity seven years ago and asked how big the market could be, no one really knew what to expect, maybe 3000, 4000 — perhaps 5000 units. It has completely exceeded our expectations and 10,000 vehicles is now realistic — who knows, we could go up to 15,000 or 20,000 units.”
The vehicle size inflation is a well-known phenomenon and not limited to these mega pick-up trucks. Ford Ranger and Toyota HiLux are also super-sized now, although they look much more modest compared to the new US behemoths!
The situation has the characteristics of an arms race: anyone who wants to be safe in a collision or see where they are going on the road needs to buy a bigger vehicle than they might have otherwise. The individual choice is individually rational, but it creates a collective situation where everybody is worse off. Arms races are bad for all, and the usual approach is to use rules to prevent them from getting out of hand. But Australia has, so far, not taken action against vehicle size inflation.
We are on the US path and at this point our opportunity to turn back and adopt smaller vehicles is probably over. Instead of adopting EU rules that make cars like the Fiat 500 commonplace, we will probably adopt US rules that demand shopping centre carparks be bigger in order to fit huge vehicles in.
That’s great news for carmakers, but bad news for people who walk. In the USA, 17% of road deaths are pedestrians. In Australia in 2020 it was just 12%. But our pedestrian death toll is rising and is set to rise further.
Why do pick-up trucks kill? Best practice for pedestrian safety is a system where the pedestrian rolls up onto the bonnet and the bonnet absorbs the impact. Like this.
These systems are common in European cars, because the EU has high standards for pedestrian protection. America has no such rules — because they don’t suit the US vehicle fleet.
If the bonnet is higher than the pedestrian’s chest, all that happens is the pedestrian is smashed down onto the road and goes under the wheels. These are called “ground impacts” and as the Monash University Accident Research Centre points out, “a greater proportion of pedestrian injuries are caused by ground impacts arising from LTV collisions than from passenger cars.” (LTV stands for light truck vehicle.)
Risk of death after being hit by a full-sized pick-up truck is 3.4 times higher than from being hit by a passenger car, holding impact speed constant, according to research published in the UK by the British Medical Journal.
Research shows that it is the shape of the bonnet rather than the mass of the car that makes the difference to pedestrian survival, at least up to weights of 1.4 tonnes. Above that the extra force transferred by the heavier car seems to matter as well. Which is bad news for anyone whose child is hit by the 4.5-tonne RAM 2500.
This analysis only looks at survivability after the big vehicle hits the pedestrian, not whether the visibility and stopping distance from bigger vehicles makes an impact more likely.
Completely unsuitable to our roads & an unnecessary luxury. Tax the hell out of them!
Yes, and why the hell is this not happening? Oh, no, not another lobby…
bogons want these Yanky Tanks more – made by minions buying up our raw resources for the cheapest” market ” price Benefitting by distance so where’s the local sovereign peoples’ benefit in the Albo smarter economy; in the top 1%. Neo lib zombies failed to invest or save our sovereign manufacturing jobs in car manufacturing – they let blokey ugly cars designed old fashioned blokey stinky utes and bogon mobiles ; wheres small cool Local manufactured electric autos just in case we need the security ? Context 178 billion defence subs ? Where would we go to access our goods in that calamitous hypothetical ? rich bogons and phillistine brigade
I get tired of politicians making generalisations about “Australians doing it tough” while sales of these sorts of W@nkertanks keep going through the roof. Seems to me there are plenty of people in Australia who are not doing it tough in the slightest. If some blokes have a lazy $120k to indulge their short appendages then they should be paying a higher quantum of tax to be redeployed for those Australians who are doing it tough.
Aside from the psychopathy, I wonder about that. I’m over median income, but have never spent more than $10K on a car, and no way could I spend anything near 100. Fingers crossed on fuel going up I guess.
They’d be a tax deduction for the tradies who are buying them.
Look for the EOFY write-off ads.
Got it in one, cyberfish! Thank the scumbo govt for their naked political suck-up to the tradie cohort which has saddled the taxpayer with providing a free ute to whoever wanted one. 100% tax deduction.
Tradies buy practical utes, not these. Anyone with an ABN who buys a ute, classed as a commercial vehicle, gets the tax benefit. Which is why there are so many utes with big luxo cabs and tiny trays.
Yes a lot of employee tradies or sole traders have practical utes. But if you observe a subcontractor who employs upwards from 3-4 tradies then the chances are they’re a pretty big part of the target market for the American monstrosities.
Correct. Retired now, so I can state all my employees had a company van each including myself. One female employee had a small one so the dog could travel in the back. Ethical – hell NO but why should one sacrifice when the Tories get all the benefits. Yes I still despise the little rodent for what he did to the country.
you put it better than me
whatever the buyer was generally a bloke – look at the messaging – maybe its the owner of the tradie business – a suit – maybe its a wonan – but mostly its a bloke – I love men just not paternalistic top down oppression
Interesting, we say the govt., but someone lobbies the govt. and ATO for such changes, but ignored by most including many concerned about the environment and vehicle usage.
Not sure about that, Drew. I think Scummo came up with that idea just like most of the others. Or maybe Bridget McKenzie suggested it…
Ideas? 🙂 I suspect some influence of the petroleum and vehicle sector, possibly via their own lobbyists &/or insiders, rather than direct, let alone Morrison or anyone thinking it up all by themselves (see how many policies & talking points are imported directly from the US).
yep anyone seen these some of them even set em selves up as a charity ( go to charity australia see the profits, capital, assets , Ndia board , just never ending conga line of middlemen makin zip here – just skimming peoples and Australian sovereign independance and our smartz – Gladys found to be seriously corrupt according to ICAC and Kean says its not fair ! FAIR – The assumption you cant get work after 50 and then middlemen get these contracts via irresponsible malfeasance by minister like Robert – as seen in Robodebt – no human Services just top down systemic abuse to line the pockets if really bad business – pushing data collector corporations like ( sounds like ” Soho” If you agree to a small business work plan to assuage Services Australia you have to use the third party informational technology companies pro- forma soft ware … seriously illegal or immoral
stuart Robert for example with Morrison ( Jesus in the temple wept)
with those Contracts with aged care, jobs provider middle men and their few female apparatchiks / “partners in srlf serving parasitic models of creaming public resources – endenturing women at any one they may enslave to benefit the bottom line of the top dogs
wheres the incentives for the majority of females represented in the Arts and angel professions? Women do not get child care tax deducted ie for shift workers the real costof caring for kids and being home for rearing teens ! What a scam
Its not the uppermiddleclass even thoughthats true its the profiteers at the top off shore who are the benefactor/ recipients of the so called govt incentives ; Morrison labelled em as the “havin a go brigade”
Oh god no, I’ve seen these things in the US & Canada and they are bloody awful – visually and physically dominating. And presumably adding to carbon emissions. They should be banned in urban areas.
These vehicles should be referred to as ULV’s – Unnecessarily Large Vehicles. Several years ago, I saw a ULV pull up behind a car and trailer at traffic lights, it stopped behind the car, unfortunately, it drove up the trailer because the very small driver couldn’t see it. Shopping centre carparks are becoming a nightmare.
There are studies on the lack of visibility of objects relatively close to the front of these vehicles that confirm what you say. With some cars the driver can see a typical 8 year old child even when the child is in front touching the vehicle. With one of these monstrosities the child cannot be seen at all unless it is several yards away. But looking on the bright side, the driver will barely notice the bump as they collide.
and the noise is detrimental too
How about we ban them from carparks? Should be easy to implement.
Agreed. The easiest way of banning them from being sold to people who don’t need them (ie people who don’t need them off-road or on worksites) would be to legislate to restrict the size of parking spaces in car parks etc so that the drivers can’t park their behemoths anywhere.
Funny you mention car parks, Wayne. If you look online at forums these guys join, you’ll find them all whinging about the car parks being too small for their vehicles and insisting things change to accommodate them. Some of the places I’ve seen these things parked in demonstrate the contempt these guys have everyone else very clearly indeed.
Funnily there is a lot “..insisting things change to accommodate them.” about these days of meMeME.
Morbidly obese people demanding larger airline seats without extra charge, junkies whining about inadequate publicly funded treatment, recalcitrant smokers complaining about lack of lung transplants and the folie-du-jour, the tranzx brigade requiring changes to grammar, history, public behaviour and reality itself.
obese people maaaaste are not the greedy mongrels at our resources – its not dumb self centred cashed up bogons fault ( they are ignorantly myopic) It is multinational lobbists investing/ buying up our sovereign assets and resources and failing fair safety and environental production standards
thst eould mean less revenue for all the investors who have coopted public spaces and our free parking like Secure or Wilson .. crazy prices for a family to visit a small business not multinational shopping town or Gandel owned/ shopping centres with 5 % loading for the house on every register purchase – So much for Hockey’s empty posturing for the little business owners
Who is “we”?
these things are KID KILLERS and the people who sell them and drive them should be constantly reminded of the fact
Let’s hope that nickname catches on.
Kid killing w4nker tanks.
Yes spot on akin to Pokie machines designed to harm with technology mesmerizing user ( billions spent for the desired hypnotic affect/ effects… But Look at Crowns lives aged care and the ex property current developer directors and huge recenues harming our sovereign held wealth
Sadly the most frequent “kid-killers” are mums and dads reversing family cars – of all kinds – out along their driveways.