Good EU regulations

> "Nowadays, you're looking at €30k+ for a new, small car precisely because of the safety regulations"

Not really. There are many reasons why new cars are more expensive than they used to be. But safety features like AEB and lane assist are a relatively small part of it. Adding AEB specifically is estimated to cost $100-$300 per vehicle in the US, and it wouldn't be much different in Europe.

And AEB is proven to work: reducing the rate of accidents by 40% or more. A small price to pay if it prevents the car getting damaged even once in it's life, let alone preventing an injury or death.

Also, it will depend on your location specifically, but there are plenty of new, entry-level vehicle models sold in Europe for well under €20k, including taxes and on-road costs.

Because you're potentially moving several thousand kilos at huge speed, and the people that can find themselves in front of them should not have to trust your judgement of how safe you'll usually need the machine to be.

Safety regulations are not why cars cost 3x more than 10 years ago. Emission standards have some impact, but the biggest cause is bog standard inflation and corporate greed.

Most price increase over last 10-15 years is not safety equipment. Regular inflation was massively compounded by the covid chip shortages / missplanning / greed / whatever ratio of factors one subscribes to.

Note, while I do not expect we will convince each other via interwebs, every safety advance from winter tires to abs to safety belts to airbags to glass that doesn't shatter etc has had a "but I don't need it because I don't drive much | I am awesome driver | it could not happen to me | etc". I don't think it's binary, I think regulation over reach is a definite thing, I just don't think massive increase in car prices over last 5 years is because companies are forcing safety equipment on awesome drivers who don't need it.

Case in point, I got the last kia rio model with all the fancy equipment and detection and even wireless carplay for 18k before they dropped the model. They don't sell a car like that anymore. Next cheapest car kia sells me right now is 26k or more - with absolutely no more safety features to justify / blame the massive price jump :-(

For your use case, the Citroen Ami is comfortably sub 10k.

But perhaps you are making a larger point about "things I consider unnecessary adding $$ to the base cost of every vehicle." I would say, to that, that

- your governments and voters consider them important for societal reasons, e.g. airbags so you can walk away from a crash, or cameras to help crushing a child when reversing. Presumably you are ok with this..or not?

- the car manufacturers in the EU are politically powerful and absolutely fearful that if the EU allowed the full range of global vehicles into the European market, they would be crushed overnight. Why buy a VW when you can get any number of Chinese minis, or Indian econoboxes, or even a cheap kei car. I guarantee that China keeps Daimler-Benz and VW execs up at night and that they have the full support of their workers when they spend money to lobby against low cost foreign imports...

"I don't need a curb cut or a seatbelt, so I won't benefit from society having them" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_cut_effect )

I agree with everything you wrote. But the real harm with most of these regulations are the unintended consequences, and second order effects.

Say you don't really think <10k cars belong on the road. Sure. But that could just lead to more dangerous forms of transportation like e-bikes or scooters. Or people are restricted to where they can work and live.

An example in the US is Obama era fuel efficiency standards for sedans had lower standards for SUVs. Fast-forward 20 years, nearly every car is an SUV. But it takes a few steps to figure out what the effects actually are.

Cheapest Fiat Panda seems to go for €14,700[1], so colour me sceptical on that "€30k+ for a new small car". In a quick check, it seems it was about €10k in 2011.[2]

The price increase is more than inflation, but you can't just assume that it's primarily due to safety regulations and emission standards.

[1] https://www.fiat.it/omni/configuratore/#/customize?color=CL-...

[2] https://supercarblondie.com/how-much-the-fiat-panda-has-incr...

Pets remove plastic and instead poison ourselves.

  A 2023 Belgian study[0] tested 39 brands of straws (paper, bamboo, glass, stainless steel, and plastic):

  Paper and bamboo straws most frequently contained PFAS, sometimes at high levels.

  Plastic straws also contained PFAS, but less consistently.

  Stainless steel straws were PFAS-free in that study.

That was the first one for me as well and I was surprised they included it. I have never seen a disposable straw that does the job well, except for plastic. I actively avoid restaurants that use the cardboard straws because of it. That's how bad they suck. I can't believe the EU was foolish enough to ban plastic straws when there just isn't an actual viable alternative.

The actual text is "Bans the worst beach‑litter plastics (straws, cutlery, sticks) and cuts pollution" and the tooltip says "Targets the most littered plastic items with bans, design and collection rules, and extended producer responsibility to clean up coasts and waterways."

I looked a bit further, it bans a long list of plastic single-use stuff: plates, cutlery, certain food containers, certain cups, and a bunch of other things. It also regulates some labelling for other single-use products.

It claims that "80 to 85% of marine litter, measured as beach litter counts, is plastic, with single-use plastic items representing 50% and fishing-related items representing 27%".

Saying it's just a "plastic straw ban is" ... eh, well, a straw man. And single-use plastics are a substantial source of litter/pollution (I didn't investigate the accuracy of this claim in-depth).

In conclusion, this seems about as accurate and good faith as the ol' "EU bendy banana myth".

I agree. It would be one thing if they did an independent analysis on the outcomes of each regulation and arrived at an evidence-based conclusion (and even then it would still be very difficult or impossible to achieve objectivity).

But from what I can tell, it basically boils down to "let's just read the bullet points for each one and put it on the list if they sound good", which is misleading and even dangerous. Chat Control should be on the list by those standards.

It really should have been that.

The relevant commission is supposed to re-assess and come up with new recommendations every 5 years.

If someone comes up with a better method for charging, they can get all the big device manufacturers in the room, convince most of them that the new method is better, and then the commission will likely adopt a new standard.

This is not far-fetched. All the players relevant to internet, for example, collaborate to determine how web standards should evolve. It works pretty well. It's more or less the same companies who need to collaborate to build something better than USB-C.

> fewer chargers, less e‑waste, less drawer chaos.

care to mention what negates those things to make it a “not good” regulation?

as a consumer, i think it’s a good thing to not need Nx different charging cables / plugs to go away for a weekend. usb-c is basically the de-facto standard for charging all but apple devices anyway.

hardware manufacturers might have a different opinions/motivations (but that was kind of the point really wasn’t it)

I hear your concerns, but the future is probably wireless charging and wifi communication

What would be the next better feature for a plug? It seems USB-C has it all except for being expensive on the port side with the muxers. Anything different would require tossing a bunch of still useful things. It supports fast charging and good data rates.

Sounds like someone should make a US version of the site. (I genuinely think it would be very helpful)

I don't think the point of it is to show that these regulations are exceptional or anything. Seems to me to just be highlighting the number of regulations that we have that can make life better.

Sometimes a regulation is bad before it’s good. For example: toilet flush volume.

We used to have 5 gpf toilets. They worked okay. They clogged on occasion but not too often. When they clogged, they would overflow after 1-2 flushes. 5 gallons was enough to keep the poop and toilet paper flowing through the drain pipes once they made it out of the toilet. They used a lot of water (5 gallons per flush!). They had basically no interesting technology to speak of.

Then regulations required less water, and the new toilets were bad. They were basically the same designs, using less water, and they regularly failed to flush, they clogged frequently, and they even contributed to downstream clogs because 2-ish gallons of slowly draining water didn’t get all the waste moving adequately.

Now, after years and years of bad toilets, the industry caught up. Modern toilets use even less water (often under 1.3gpf), but they use that water effectively. They flush well, generally considerably better than the old 5gpf toilets. They rarely overflow. They send the waste through the pipes forcefully. And they use less water! The industry even has standardized testing for flush performance.

I wonder if better regulation could have managed the transition to avoid the interim terrible toilets. Perhaps the performance tests should have come first, then a period of financial incentives for toilets that outperformed legacy toilets along with mandatory labeling with the water usage and performance data, and only actual requirements to use less water after good enough toilets were available.

*actually good site :p

up for me — maybe try the vercel domain? https://actuallygoodregulations.vercel.app/

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