Originally published at: Tourist vehicle gets stuck in giant drive-thru redwood tree | Boing Boing
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So they should lower the road, right? Maybe put up a warning sign and some lights. A water curtain or bump bar might help.
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Frankly, I’m more worried about damage to the tree.
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A treemendous idea
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None of that will help. Because as is the case with the truck-eating overpass, dumb people are still driving the cars.
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You’d think that such a full feature vehicle would come with a gear marked “reverse”.
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Wherein we learn, once again, most people are not good drivers.
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Not surprising when you consider that, thanks to Americans’ infatuation with bigger and bigger vehicles, some are now as large as WWII Sherman tanks. American Trucks And SUVs Are Nearly As Large As Some WWII Tanks
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That’s a funny statistic, but not especially meaningful. Tanks were built for many different tactical use-cases and thus in all sizes (some quite small). The little Grant tanks for example, were small on purpose because they were maneuverable and cheap to build. The Allies basically Zerg-rushed the Nazis because we couldn’t compete technology-wise with the monsters like the Tiger. Turns out Zerg-rushing is a better strategy anyway, if you have the industrial base for it. It’s a lot easier to out-produce your enemy than to out-fight them.
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Impressive knowledge of tanks and WWII tactics, but your command of it seemed to have cause you to Zerg-rush past my point. Which was not meant as a comment on the varieties and tactics of WWII armor, but on the absurdity of the behemoths found on American roads.
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I had to replace a mirror sacrificed to that tree once (for the record, I was not driving or even present when the incident occurred). If the people who run this tourist trap were smart they’d open an automotive mirror repair business just outside the exit.
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I’ll absolutely agree that we’ve long ago passed the point where oversized novelty vehicles are being coming the norm on American roads. (Although to be fair, it may be more of a case that vehicles previously considered purely work trucks are now being used for standard commutes – don’t you dare get dirt or a scratch on them!)
However the point that @VeronicaConnor is making is that comparing current vehicles to WWII tanks isn’t a useful comparison since tanks varied so much. “My cat is bigger than some dogs.” While this is true, it doesn’t actually mean much, since a dog can be a 5" tea cup poodle or a 30" Newfoundland. (Never mind the varying size of cats!)
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The comparison being made is specifically to the Sherman tank, though. (the M4 Sherman medium tank)
Some quirks in EPA fuel economy calculations may also contribute to this.
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You seem to have missed my point, that comparing vehicles to tanks to say they are big doesn’t make any sense because many tanks are very small. The headline was literally “Some cars are bigger than some tanks” which is a zero information statement.
Yah. Have you seen a Sherman tank? They really aren’t that big. America was new at the idea of building tanks in WWII. Even their main battle tanks weren’t huge. People imagine tanks as always being huge, but go to a WWII museum sometime and actually look at the US ones. They look like cars with tracks and armor.
I’m not arguing cars and trucks have gotten huge again (I say again because they were huge in the mid-20th century too). I’m arguing that stupid comparisons are stupid.
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for the lay person, i see it as a way to make them pause and think.
whether it’s strictly true in all cases, it’s a reminder for people who have gotten used to the pedestrian crushing behemoths occupying our roads that this current situation is neither normal or good.
hyperbole as startle mechanism
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I get it. My point is I’m tired of hyperbolic headlines. Especially when they are various flavours of incorrect, misleading, or functionally meaningless.
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