Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2006/04/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Don Dory wrote: > As a sidelight, people wonder why Americans drive such large cars with > relatively huge engines, costs are much, much less here. If you live > in a > normal city and work for a largish company then your costs would be > Porche 911: 62000 to 85000 > Insurance: 1800/yr > Gasoline/93 Octane 0.82/litre > Parking: generally free at work and home > Parking: events might vary from $5 to $10 > Tolls: in Atlanta 0.50 each way on the only toll road for several hundred > miles > > With costs so low compared to a lot of the world, no wonder we drive > so far, > so fast(Nathan, the normal speed on Interstates in Georgia is > 130-140Km/hr), > in such large vehicles. I was not going to comment on this thread, but since my name got mentioned (or is there another Nathan in the bar?), I will just briefly make a few points as someone who has lived both in the US and Europe for many years. - Don is right that Americans drive big cars because they are cheap, fuel is cheap and there is lots of space. In Europe gasoline has been expensive since the early 1970s, and it is by design. Most of the EUR 1.40/litre I pay here in the Netherlands is tax. And it is a sound principle to tax activities that are harmful, such as driving cars that consume lots of fuel. The result is not, as some Americans think, that everyone drives tiny cars. I have a station wagon and my wife has a Toyota Previa minivan, identical to the ones sold in the US except that it has a smaller engine (2.4 l) and manual transmission, both of which contribute to better fuel economy. As I look around in my suburban subdivision, I do not see many VW Polos; the prevalent cars are various shades of Audis, BMWs etc. that would be perfectly at home in American suburbs. In Amsterdam and other cities there are of course smaller cars, because incomes are lower and the places are more crowded, but that is normal. - when comparing costs of the other aspects of driving (insurance, parking etc.) then Europe is almost always more expensive than the US, but that is simply a function of the fact that most European countries are small, crowded places compared to the US. The population density in the Netherlands is greater than New Jersey (NL is about 50% bigger but has twice as many people as NJ). So of course anything that requires space--whether it is parking or housing-- is going to cost more here than in, say, Atlanta. Having said that, I must say that because drivers are better and society less litigious here, insurance is considerably less here than I paid in New Jersey; and parking the centre of Amsterdam at 3.60 EUR/hour is cheaper than I paid in NYC when I visited there in 2004. So there is quite a bit of local variation within the US as well. - the ironic thing is that speeds on the motorways are considerably higher in Europe than in the US. When I lived in the US (until 1995) I used to consider 80-85 mph "fast"; now I drive that when I must, i.e. when the road is crowded or there are speed cameras about. When I go on a longer trip, like to Denmark last week, my normal cruising speed on the Autobahn is between 160 km/h (100 mph) and 180 km/h. More or less the same is true when I drive in France or Spain. Here in the Netherlands conditions seldom allow driving at those speeds. When I go to visit the US nowadays, I always come home with a speeding ticket, since rental cars do not have a radar detector... Nathan -- Nathan Wajsman Almere, The Netherlands SUPPORT FREEDOM OF SPEECH, BUY DANISH PRODUCTS! General photography: http://www.nathanfoto.com Picture-A-Week: http://www.fotocycle.dk/paws Seville photography: http://www.fotosevilla.com Stock photography: http://www.alamy.com/search-results.asp?qt=wajsman http://myloupe.com/home/found_photographer.php?photographer=507 Prints for sale: http://www.photodeluge.com Blog: http://www.fotocycle.dk/blog