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this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
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They are wrong but there is a grain of truth to this. NTSA regulations about fuel efficiency and emissions are part of the reason that car manufacturers made vehicles bigger and more expensive. It is significantly harder to meet emissions standards and fuel efficiency standards in the US in a sedan or small compact car and on top of that car manufacturers know that people aren't generally buying compact cars for $80-150K so it's a win win for them. It's greed, and them gaming the system in order to use the fact that larger vehicles aren't beholden to the same emissions standards or fuel efficiency standards. So car companies convinced consumers they don't want small cars, that instead they want SUVs and trucks and perhaps crossovers. And they lobbied to game the system and to continue pocketing money doing it.
https://www.distilled.earth/p/the-loophole-that-made-cars-in-america
yeah its all done to avoid the law. more free dumb.
but since so many of these oversized vehicles are technically 'work trucks'...
start giving out tickets when they are doing activities unrelated to a form of work (groceries, kids, etc.) or park in residential areas that are not a job site.
The problem are not the emission standards, the problem is that authorities allowed the huge loophole which allowed to ignore them but only if the vehicle is extra large, wasteful and dangerous.
I'll do you one better. Our laws about lobbying need a significant overhaul, so that's at least part of the problem. But also it can be more than one thing at a time.
Not gonna argue about the lobbying. That doesn't mean though that emission regulations were bad, not what was required was bad, what was exempted from that regulation was terrible. They allowed loopholes so huge, you could drive the entire car industry through it.
Loopholes are a problem with a standard. But a problem that probably needs revision rather than just scraping the standards.
That I can agree to.
This is just another way of saying the policy lead to bigger vehicles.
No That is like saying that outlawing a cancerous die in fruit juice but not in lemonade lead to unhealthier diet because lemonades were exempted and remained exempted even when it became obvious that there was a huge loophole.
You say, the problem was that they outlawed that cancerous substance in fruit juice, rather than that the problem was that authorities failed to include lemonades in that ban and insisted on not expanding it either. That is not the same because your position implies one should not ban that cancerous substance because that only pushes lemonade sales.
The problem is not too much regulation it is deleberitely or by incompetence, too little regulation (vast exemptions)
No regulation is a problem, and incorrect regulation is also a problem. Both led to terrible outcomes.
That I can agree with. But in this concrete case, the regulation on cars was not what was off, it was the lack of extension of that regulation on oversized personal vehicles, ie private SUVs and pickup trucks. That is a key difference.