cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/31244231
Ian Brossat, a former Paris councillor and now a senator representing the French Communist party, called for SUVs to be banned in Paris. “This is not the first incident of its kind, and the dangerous nature of SUVs has already been pointed out on several occasions. We owe it to this young man to realise the scale of the problem and draw all the consequences,” Brossat told the Nouvel Obs.
SUVs are a plague. They should never have existed, much less be sold in Europe.
There are some rural places, such as northern Canada where am SUV is practical. With the amount of snow that falls there, a small car just doesn’t work well.
But in Paris, yeah, ban them.
It’s the light truck classification that has driven this trend. Before the SUV you could just get a Bronco, Wagoneer, or such. Moving people around in off-road conditions has always had a niche, but bad rules have reshaped the market to an unhealthy condition.
This seems completely unrelated to the story at hand… an SUV isn’t any better at running down a cyclist than a truck is.
In British English, a truck is a lorry, or artic. I think you mean a pickup, which used to be called a pickup in US English, but changed to truck because of insecure, tiny-penis people
Truck drivers are professionals, which doesn’t make them perfect but at least trained in driving large vehicles. SUVs are oversized hormonal toys for insecure, wealthy people who hate rules and other people. They’re even specifically marketed towards that group, just like the modern F150s and RAMs you see now on our narrow roads.
In theory, yes.
In practice, trucks are possibly the greatest hazard to cyclist, and the don’t are ridiculously low. In one case, the driver list good license for a month and had to pay a fine of 4500 euros.
Initially, he called the judgement “too harsh” and that he wants to appeal, which it seems he retracted.