Driving Miss Daisy Crazy

 A few things came together to inspire today’s blog. First, Americans on Xitter constantly complaining about gas prices, second, a new toy called Perplexity https://www.perplexity.ai/?utm_source=onboardingemail1 which not only answers questions but provides sources for the answers and finally, an article in The Economist describing how Americans are killing each other with heavy ‘light trucks’ which include SUVs.

First I will deal with gas prices, driving distances, and fuel efficiency in Canada and USA. All of this came from asking Perplexity the right questions. I didn’t bother with sources. If you want them, play with the app. And my thanks to an Iowa corn farmer from DC for the tip off.

The average gasoline price in Canada as of August 26, 2024, is approximately CAD 1.79 per liter (USD $1.32 per liter or USD $4.99 per gallon). This includes crude oil costs, refining costs, wholesale and retail markups, and federal and provincial taxes, including the federal carbon tax. This is slightly higher than the world average of USD 1.24 per liter.

The current national average gas price in the United States is $3.32 (CAD $4.48) per gallon (CAD $1.19 per liter) as of September 5, 2024. This is down from $3.44 in mid-August, but higher than the 6-year national average of $3.05 per gallon since 2018

In 2023, the average gas price in USA was $3.52 ($4.76, $1.26/l) per gallon, down from $3.95 ($5.34, $141/l) in 2022. The highest weekly national average since 2018 was $4.99 ($6.74, $1.78/l) per gallon in June 2022 and the lowest weekly national average since 2018 was $1.84 ($2.49, $0.66/l)) per gallon in April 2020 during the pandemic.

The average Canadian driver typically travels around 15,200 kilometers (9400 miles) per year, ranging from Newfoundland and Labrador: 18,100 km (11,200 miles), Prairies 15,300 km (9,500 miles) to BC 13,100 (8,100 miles).

The average American drives approximately 13,500 miles (21,700 km) per year or 37 miles (60 km) per day, with drivers aged 35-54 averaging 15,291 miles (24,600 km) per year. Wyoming has the highest average of 24,000 miles (38,600 km) per year while DC has the lowest with only 6,700 (10,800 km). American men average 16,550 miles (26,650 km) per year and American women average 10,142 miles (16,300 km) annually.

The average gasoline mileage for new vehicles in America in 2022 is currently 26 mpg (11.1 l/100 km), reflecting ongoing improvements in fuel efficiency despite challenges in meeting stricter fuel economy standards. According to recent data, the average fuel consumption for vehicles in Canada is approximately 8.9 L/100 km (20.9 mpg).

Canadian fuel economy is roughly 25% better than USA. The reason for that becomes apparent in these articles from The Economist.

America’s Love Affair With Big Cars is Killing Them

When two vehicles collide, it is usually the heavier one that prevails. When a passenger car crashes with a pickup truck or sport-utility vehicle (SUV), the driver of the car is likely to die around three times as often. 

Between 1990 and 2005 the market share of SUVs in America grew from 6% to 26%, pushing up the weight of an average new car from 3,400lb to nearly 4,100lb.

For every deadly crash avoided by an SUV or pickup truck, there were an additional 4.3 deaths among other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists. Studies have estimated that when a car crashes with an SUV or pickup, rather than another car, the driver’s fatality rate increased by 31%. When two cars crash, a 1,000lb increase in the weight of one vehicle raised the fatality rate in the other by 47%.

The Economist compiled ten years’ worth of crash data from across 14 states, including millions of crashes between 2013 and 2023. These data yielded roughly 10m crashes. After dropping observations with missing data, we were left with around 7.5m two-vehicle crashes involving more than 15m cars.

Their data show that heavier vehicles are safer for their occupants than lighter ones. The fatality rate is roughly seven times higher when colliding with a heavy pickup truck than with a compact car. As the weight of your car increases, the risk of killing others increases dramatically.

The heaviest 1% of vehicles in their dataset—those weighing around 6,800lb—suffer 4.1 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, on average but were responsible for 37 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes. Cars in the middle of the sample weighing 3,500lb, suffer around 6.6 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, but were responsible for 5.7 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes, on average. The lightest 1% of vehicles weighing just 2,300lb, had 15.8 “own-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes. and 2.6 “partner-car deaths” per 10,000 crashes.

Vehicles in the top 10% of the sample—those weighing at least 5,000lb—are involved in roughly 26 deaths per 10,000 crashes, on average, including 5.9 in their own car and 20.2 in partner vehicles. For vehicles in the next-heaviest 10% of the sample—those weighing between 4,500lb and 5,000lb—the equivalent figures are 5.4 and 10.3 deaths per 10,000 crashes.

 In 2023 vehicles weighing more than 5,000lb accounted for a whopping 31% of new cars, up from 22% five years earlier. “As you see the vehicle fleet around you getting heavier, then you want to protect yourself rationally by buying a bigger and heavier car.” a Cold War scenario. Such rational individual decisions have led to a suboptimal outcome for society as a whole, as people are rationally concerned about their own safety.

Regulators are ill-equipped to fix the problem. America’s tax system subsidises heavier vehicles by setting more lenient fuel-efficiency standards for light trucks (including SUVs) and allowing bosses who purchase heavy-duty vehicles for business purposes to deduct part of the cost from their taxable income. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), America’s top auto-safety agency only takes account of the safety of the occupants of the vehicle in question, not that of other drivers.

The shift towards electric power is likely to increase their weight further, as battery-powered vehicles tend to be heavier than their internal-combustion equivalents. (Note: as they are virtually friction free they can travel at very high speeds unless speed controls are built into their computer systems. My son has seen them on the Edmonton-Calgary highway traveling at super speeds)

Why American cars are so big

In 1975, in response to the 1973 oil crisis, the federal government imposed fuel-economy standards on carmakers. To ease the burden on small businesses that relied on big vehicles, the government exempted “light trucks”, any vehicle that could be used off road and weighed less than 8,500lb (3855kg). That meant SUVs—typically among the biggest and least-efficient cars—were swept into the category and avoided the new fuel standards.

Because making light trucks held to lower environmental standards was more profitable, automakers marketed big models, including SUVs, enthusiastically. They portrayed them as quintessentially American, embodying freedom, strength and adventurousness. By 2002 light trucks, including SUVs, made up a bigger share of light-duty vehicle sales than cars. By the 1990s gasoline had become cheaper in America than in other rich countries—so the cost of running a big car did not deter buyers. Such models are convenient for suburban living, and consumers see them as safe. 

And EVs are developing the same weight problem as conventional cars. The EPA does not regulate EVs’ indirect emissions, even though heavier models require more electricity to charge, and need bigger batteries, which contain more of the scarce metals used to make those batteries. In 2022 60% of electric-vehicle sales in America were SUVs.

Conclusion

Nothing is likely to change in the near or medium term, though the EPA is tightening the definition of light trucks. Running on a platform of higher gas prices, slower speeds and smaller vehicles is a recipe for political suicide. Canada’s Carbon Tax is about as popular as a skunk at a picnic.