3167: Car Size

Car Size

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Title text: 'They really shouldn't let those small cars drive in traffic. I worry I'm going to kill someone if I hit one! They should have to drive on the sidewalk, safely out of the way.'

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Explanation

This is one of 52 incomplete explanations: This page was created BY A CAR WITH AN ICBM. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

This comic demonstrates one reason why vehicles have gotten progressively larger and more powerful, due to a type of arms race between drivers. When vehicles of different sizes share the road, passengers in the smaller ones will usually be more at risk in collisions, since the body construction and lower inertia generally provide less protection. So, for safety reasons, people have an incentive to buy larger cars. According to the comic, this causes a cycle of cars for increasingly selfish owners, which reaches a point of absurdity due to the cost and mass of giant cars, implying a never-ending vicious cycle.

In the "Soon" panel, Randall has extrapolated this to adding spiked armor and weaponry to large cars, and other drivers will need to outdo this to compete on the road. This scenario is reminiscent of the vehicles from the Mad Max franchise, and of the Slag Brothers from Wacky Races. Unfortunately, the whirling spike club scenario is problematic (not just in terms of injury or death but even in the happy path): if all the cars on the road have whirling spike clubs, as soon as your car comes in contact, your club will be destroyed or at least damaged. This will make you prey for the cars who have not yet been in an accident.

The title text views this from the opposite perspective. The owner of a large car is worried that they'll kill people in small cars, so believes that small car drivers shouldn't drive on the road at all and should be restricted to the sidewalk for their own safety. Driving the smallest cars in pedestrian spaces is obviously absurd, but follows the prior trend of separating bikes from car traffic "for cyclists' safety" and often having them share pedestrian spaces due to "practical" constraints. While this reduces conflicts between cyclists and drivers of motor vehicles, it results in cyclists and pedestrians becoming an inconvenience and danger to each other instead. In the car-centric view, it is not worth creating separate infrastructure for bicycles and similar small vehicles, so the title text's extension of the trend is to classify small cars as bike-like vehicles, even though this endangers both smaller vehicles and pedestrians.

Biking on sidewalks is illegal in some jurisdictions, with a greater number banning small powered vehicles like e-bikes. Where either kind of bike is allowed, laws generally require that the rider take precautions like riding at reasonable speeds when near pedestrians, alerting pedestrians when passing, and yielding to pedestrians when needed. Small, low-speed carts do routinely share some larger pedestrian spaces, such as golf courses and large airports, but even these would have trouble safely passing on regular sidewalks. Smaller single-occupant electric vehicles (mobility scooters) frequently share pedestrian spaces, but their limited speeds reduce the frequency and potential severity of impacts.

Transcript

This is one of 27 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[The comic is made up of four panels, beginning with Cueball talking to Megan and then alternating with each panel, both of them surrounded by progressively larger vehicles.]

[Panel one is labeled "100 years ago." Cueball and Megan are standing with a bicycle to the left of them and an old-fashioned car to their right.]

Cueball: It's too dangerous riding a bike with these cars around. I should get a car, too.

[Panel two is labeled "50 years ago." Cueball and Megan are standing between a small hatchback (right) and a slightly larger sedan (left).]

Megan: Small cars are less safe in collisions with larger vehicles, so I should get a bigger one.

[Panel three is labeled "Today." Cueball and Megan are standing between a large SUV (left) and an even larger SUV (right).]

Cueball: Everyone has huge SUVs now. If I don't get the biggest one, I'm putting my family at risk.

[Panel four is labeled "Soon." Cueball and Megan are standing to the left of a massive SUV with metal plates bolted to its side, spiked panels attached to the front and back, spiked/off-road tires and two giant spiked clubs hanging from a rotor on top of the car. An even more massive spiked club is visible coming from the left of the panel, presumably attached to a similar (even larger) car. Megan has both arms on her side.]

Megan: If I don't install more whirling spike clubs, I'll be destroyed by all the other drivers who...

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Discussion

It is I, broseph. Broseph (talk) 19:45, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

MY LETTERS ARE BIGGER THAN YOURS!!! --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 20:15, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

tears of the kingdom be like 128.135.204.243 20:49, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Did someone say Not Just Bikes? https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A --62.0.12.1 20:50, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

On the (current) closing paragraph of the Explanation, note that (at least where I am) it is illegal to ride a bike on the footway, unless specifically signed and permitted as a shared/split pavement area. As a cyclist, I really wouldn't even want to (or to increase fellow motorists' misconceptions that they exclusively own the road) when it's a perfectly good highway, but 'people on bikes' seem to do what they like and perpetuate such misunderstandings. 82.132.244.30 21:41, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

It's illegal here too, and I've added a note to that effect. As a cyclist, I do sometimes ride on sidewalks where sharing a road with cars is just too dangerous, but I try to be extremely cautious in my interactions with pedestrians. They've got the right of way; I don't. BunsenH (talk) 23:06, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

On top of often ill-conceived official cycle/pedestrian paths, I have a mild dislike for "cycle lanes", personally, as a sort of official "we really would prefer you to not be on the road, but we don't know what else to do with you, and it looks good when we add up the amount of 'cycle friendly' routes we have" kind of thing. With awareness (so no plugging your ears with headphones playing your 'tunez') most roads that I might use ought to be safe to cycle without badly implemented off-road/side-of-road segregation, and an overwhelming amount don't have such provision (riding to a cafe forty-plus miles away and circling round a different way back home, there's surprisingly few no-motor-vehicles opportunities to take).

Even worse, though, is walking by a road with a 'perfectly good' clearly marked cycle lane (not particularly bad, compared to some instances, clean gutter and no bad grates) and some idiot on a bike rushes past me on the pavement (i.e. sidewalk), these days it often being an electrically-assisted, near silent bike (courtesy of Deliveroo/whoever), except that he's (assuming 'he', but it's a good chance) zooming past me, slightly uphill, without pedalling at all... Technically, he's riding an electric motorcycle, and going at normal traffic speeds (and wearing a motorcycle-style helmet, so probably no point shouting at him as his ears are covered, if he hasn't also got earbuds in!) and definitely shouldn't be sharing the pavement with me (on the verge of needing a registration plate and paying insurance/tax for his e-moped).

Of course, he'll act just as badly when he transitions back on the road, ignoring other traffic rules and barely avoiding become the jam on an asphalt smogasbord, various drivers cursing him and wishing all cyclists were off the streets. (The same drivers might well sneak through lights themselves, though "if it's quiet and nobody else is there", plus happily exceed the 20/30/40/50/60/70 mph limits on roads whenever they can, and don't have me driving at the limit in front of them when it's awkward for them to pass...)

Not saying I'm perfect, but there are idiots out there with everything from no wheels (just two legs) up to perhaps 18-ish or whatever their juggernaut has, engines of whatever type or none, but I hope that I do my bit by being more considerate than most (except when it comes to dealing with inconsideration itself, when I internalise any joy I get about stopping others breaking the law for a few short moments) whether I'm walking, riding or driving. Though always trying to be aware of what the inevitably ever-present idiots out there will be doing. (Well, I couldn't do a thing about the time that a car pulled out in front of the bus I was a passenger in. But neither could the bus-driver, really, from what I could work out. Bus. Small car. Not a battle that I'd want to fight, on inertia alone.)

Darn... this was not intended to be a holier-than-though rant, when I started, but I still don't regret it starting to go that way one bit... 82.132.245.223 23:56, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Starting to go that way?! Bro, you went full Jeremy Vine caller. Might I suggest that you grow up and realise that the ones you see are 100% of the ones you see, but that doesn't mean they are 100% of the picture. There is nuance. There are rules that are worth avoiding because that allows cyclists to get out of the way quickly – crossing in a way that a pedestrian is allowed to do, at a speed that a pedestrian can't, for example. Co-exist. High horses are far less welcome than cyclists. Yorkshire Pudding (talk) 17:55, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

The marking of a 'red bit of asphalt' ahead of the line that cars are expected to stop at, to give cyclists that little extra space when the lights go green, is useless when motorists don't just drive into that space but seem to think the 'stop line' is where the driver should position themselves (long bonnet being well over that line, half way across the pedestrian crossing or even out into the road junction).

I blame bad driving for that (as a cyclist of decades experience, I have to ride defensively), but bad 'biking' doesn't help.

I'd much rather ride across a box-junction with traffic (when the lights allow) than do the slalom of hopping on and off the pavement 'at will' and either waiting for the pedestrian crossing (ideally a proper Toucan, or even Pegasus, given that you normally should only walk your bike across a Zebra or Pelican/Puffin) or disobeying those lights too, at your own risk and giving inconvenience/annoyance to both wheeled and walking traffic.

I have a low opinion of the way 'helpful' cycle-infrastructure has been implemented, and a low (but understandable) opinion of how ignorant people are of the bicycle position in the Highway Code and all relevent laws (see Section 72 of the Highway Act 1835, and all successive legislation, which establishes a bicycle as a road vehicle, and I do not want either my rights or obligations to be eroded, either legally or through misconceptions and misunderstandings).

I also know that I can drive at 70mph on a motorway (where there's no lesser limit applied to it by gantry signs and/or contraflow-protection signage) and, though I may be going faster than all HGVs, and possibly someone else happy to tootle along at 60ish (which I'm happy to do, too, but not in an overtaking lane unless its due to all the lanes being congested), there'll be traffic passing me at 80, 90 or maybe more in the outside (or middle!) overtaking lane. The only time it seems motorists will not exceed the limit (not just for a particular road, having not realised the local limit, but for every UK road) is where there are Average Speed cameras. (Site-only speed-cameras just have them maybe touch the brakes then speed up again afterwards. I've even been parked by the side of a road, by a 30-sign, and seen the approaching traffic really slam the brakes on on thinking my car (red) is a speed-trap, then speed back up once the guilty reaction has worn out. Stand in the very same place, inconspicuously and without any car, and nobody does it anything like that (probably going 70+ in the 60-zone, easing off to eventually 35-40 in the 30-zone).)

With the widespread ignoring of such laws, I am of course not surprised that people who may-or-may-not have even passed a driving test (or cycling proficiency test) are riding bikes badly. But I don't have to like it. And (like the title-text's forcing of 'lesser vehicles' off the road), I'd rather not have it rebounding upon those of us who aren't troublemakers.

It almost wants me to change my mind over the ideas of having "taxed, insured and registration-plated" cycles. But that is what other people suggest, probably to 'restore' the car's supremacy of the road (short-sightedly and ignorant of road-history) by making supposed nuisance-cyclists be made accountable (while they'll be shocked if they're ever stopped from going 30 in a 20-zone, or 90 in a NSL-zone).

This is no kneejerk opinion. I've been a cyclist for the best part of five decades (only marginally less than I've been walking, though I was also apparently first taken out in a cycle-trailer as a week-old baby) and a motorist for well over three. I've seen cycling become diminished as an everyday past-time and 'biking' spring up as a more elitish one (MAMILs, etc). And the rise of "Kensington Tractors", in the UK, but luckily it's still not heading inexorably down the comic's story. And if I can do my bit to evangelise for general law-abiding consideration and prick the conscience of all road users (and pedestrians), without myself causing problems to others (I don't count blocking those who intend to drive faster than my on-the-limit speed, just wait until I'm going slower than that because I don't want to spin off an icy road!), I will do so without apology. It doesn't have to be like that (cycling in Belgium is a dream, better even than the Netherlands, with not too shabby experiences from other countries from Denmark through to France), and really shouldn't be like the US, where even walking often seems to be an inconvenient eccentricity that's barely tolerated.

Ok, more enough of that. Most people reading this will never share the roads with me, anyway, even if you might. And Jeremy Vine has nothing to do with it. (Nor any of the Jeremies 'Kyle', 'Clarkson' or 'Corbyn', in their own ways. "Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D.", perhaps...) 82.132.231.193 19:41, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Translation for Yanks-- "in England, “Kensington Tractors” (referring to expensive 4WD Land Rovers in the city, and Kensington, a posh district in London.)." --PRR (talk) 21:50, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Pretty good comic Mathmaster (talk)

As someone who lives in the UK, the title text comes across as a comment on the US attitude to jaywalking - where the "solution" to vulnerable road users (pedestrians) being put in danger by careless drivers is to make it illegal for the vulnerable group to using the road at all. US people, is it likely that Randall had something like that in mind? (Unrelated, but when posting this I got a captcha asking me to identify bicycles...) 87.115.222.218 00:29, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

I don't think so. I think he's just joking about not caring about peds at all. --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 00:47, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

As somebody who's lived in both the UK and the US, the US rules have been far more favorable to pedestrians. While it varies by states US rules have crosswalks at all intersections. US rules have always given pedestrians priority over turning traffic, something only introduced in the UK a few years ago, and still honoured mostly in the breach. And in the US drivers are required to yield to pedestrians even when the pedestrian is jaywalking, while in the UK drivers were taught that they must strive to "make progress" and preemptive slowing down while driving past questionable pedestrians was cause for failing a driving test.76.180.39.133 16:52, 21 November 2025 (UTC)

As a German, I take offense to this comic. ONLY CARS WILL SURVIVE THE APOCALYPSE! 2A02:2455:1960:4000:652A:12CB:761D:93F6 08:45, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

The comic is a typical example of US-centric views. Car ownership in Europe was much lower 50 years ago than in the US. Most people were still stuck in the first panel.--2001:638:807:507:B425:E1E7:68BD:B213 10:08, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

...Because Randall is American? --DollarStoreBa'al^Converse 14:34, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

Europe has been catching up to the US. In 1995, SUV sales were only 2%, but they were 54% in 2024. This is just a little lower than the US 58%. Barmar (talk) 15:17, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

the concept of people buying bigger cars is western-centric in general. raeb 01:32, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

For those of you who keep a eX-Twitter account, someone posted a similar take that was so hilariously self-unaware: https://x.com/jerimiahlee/status/1758883775642059265 that people started one-upping him with larger and larger vehicles in quote posts, sometimes veering in chains that ended up with fictional vehicles, but my personal favorite on one-upmanship was the one who posted an image of a Takraf strip mine excavator… https://x.com/carl___spackler/status/1759646389376852009 89.83.116.217 15:17, 13 November 2025 (UTC) Pierre Lebeaupin

I realize this is US-specific, but the comic completely ignores the fact that vehicle manufacturers are incentivized by the US Government to increase the size of the cars they design, since the CAFE standards are graduated based on vehicle size. Larger vehicles are allowed to get lower MPG, so the bigger the vehicle you design, the less you have to worry about making it efficient. In fact, it's difficult to find a small vehicle for sale in the US. 136.226.7.177 04:19, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Renault Twingo ? So I followed the link, and this is pretty obviously a gag video. Now I know I'm not hip and with it on all the best memes, but I don't see how this helps explain the comic, or is actually relevant or noteworthy. 104.129.192.105 19:00, 13 November 2025 (UTC)

I think you've answered your own question - it's there as a gag. And it is lampooning exactly the kind of sales talk that helps drive the trend in the comic. 82.13.184.33 10:52, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

I second. I don't feel it helps explain the comic, or is actually relevant or noteworthy. OrwellFan (talk) 01:52, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

It should be noted that some electric scooters can reach speeds in excess of 80 km/h, which makes them a really serious threat to pedestrians or bicycles. (but less so than to the rider, obviously) 176.138.186.7 (talk) 18:02, 14 November 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"This would almost certainly never happen in real life"... have you never seen spiked lug nuts? (Technically, spiked lug nut *covers*.) They seem to be standard on long haul trucks around here. 2600:1700:9DA3:8040:684C:E1EE:D1AD:89AD 22:07, 14 November 2025 (UTC)

Again, I second. OrwellFan (talk) 01:52, 15 November 2025 (UTC)

I have thought about adding spikes (fake and/or soft) to my car to keep other drivers from getting too close. Especially if they are following too close and I decide to slam my brakes. SDSpivey (talk) 04:50, 16 November 2025 (UTC)

Does randal reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation with the alttext? ---- 2a00:fbc:f303:76a5::2 (talk) 18:49, 17 November 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Usually Randall’s comics are well-researched, but the historical examples in this one seem ludicrous. Can anyone confirm whether this is accurate at all? 76.131.222.161 21:32, 20 November 2025 (UTC)

Well, the '100 years ago' car is a bit ancient-looking. Less like any of the Category:Cars introduced in 1925 entries than a 1910s or earlier one (could be artisitic licence on "early last century"). The bicycle is probably not very on-era either, though that style of step-through frame had appeared pre-1900 and can be seen in more contemporary versions of "ladies' bike". (The handlebars are a certain old-style, the saddle has an 'old-style' look (though tends to be reinvented for less 'racy' bikes) as far as one can tell from a few lines.

...added later: after much searching, this bike seems to be closest by both date and form... 2.98.65.8 (talk) 01:23, 21 November 2025 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The '50 years ago' image looks to feature a mid-1980s small-car, rather than a 1975 one. (There's so many more actual models to check, though I'm thinking maybe something like a Datsun, or similar exported Japanee brand?) The larger car... well, apart from perhaps being a Rolls Royce (or otherwise featuring a prominent hood-ornament like that) it's the kind of luxury-sedan style shape that is almost contemporary up to the present day.

For 'Today', you're going for basic "SUV", in both cases, just one with less SuperMini-like wheels (probably alloys) and plenty of add-on details. Features that clearly get an upgrade in the more visible 'Soon' car (the other one might be even bigger, the way its 'club-rotor' seems to be sat higher up, as well as having larger spiked-clubs). 2.98.65.8 23:55, 20 November 2025 (UTC)
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