Free trade. Any products that fulfil local safety standards should be allowed to be sold. Just because USA doesn't want to make cars that fulfil European standard does not mean they should be able to get away with those.
EU legislation requires a number of design considerations for pedestrian and cyclist collisions, like specific energy absorption requirements for front-impact and side-impact protection, restrictions on sharp corners/steep angles that could concentrate impact forces, minimum clearance around hard internal structures, mandatory ADAS (automated emergency braking, lane departure warnings) etc. Not saying that US cars are "not safe" in a binary fashion but for the most part these things are either optional or unregulated in the US.
Yeah, not a fan of cyclists. And it's kind of braindead to have my car break because if I hit a pedestrian somehow it is its job to absorb the impact. Maybe cyclists and pedestrians should be more mindful of their surroundings.
The EU regulations have killed all the nice things about cars: straight lines, retractable headlights and so on.
You know what else will be braindead in your nice world? The child who runs out in front of a car after a rigid tight-angled metal corner drives into their skull. These regulations aren't about blame or "drivers/pedestrians/cyclists should be more aware!", they're about reducing or avoiding as much harm as possible when things don't go to plan and an accident happens.
You seem to be desperate to talk about blame but ultimately they're called accidents for a reason. Not because we want them to happen, not because we can always prevent them. Regulations like this are about changing the outcome, not the initial reason it happened.
Yes. It started with the BS of "US would undermine the EU’s global leadership in road safety, public health, climate policy and competitiveness.". The only thing the EU has a global leadership is killing everything with regulations and bureaucracy.
Here, I googled it for you: "The European Union generally has higher road safety standards than the US, resulting in significantly lower fatality rates. The EU mandates stricter vehicle safety features, including automated emergency braking, and has more stringent traffic laws regarding speed, seat belts, and drunk driving. In contrast, the US has higher average vehicle weights and a less consistent application of safety regulations." and it proves my point: the EU just regulates stuff to death.
Sure you can. I'm not even sure why I need to support this statement. You can have any kind of trade you want.
In the longer term, these sorts of things are governed more by demand than anything else. Sure, some governments might sometimes enact protectionist policies, but if most people in a country think the cars made by their domestic car companies are garbage, they're going to end up with a government that allows cars from other countries in.
If region X happily produces and sells rotten meat, no other region is obligated to trade with them. But region X might choose to import non-rotten meat if they want.
If the EU cars aren't "safe enough" for the US then sure. Some of it is political silly buggers and protectionism but at the end of the day countries (or unions of countries) can set their own rules.
If the US wants to sell cars to the EU, they can. Plenty of countries export cars to the EU just fine. It's not the EU's fault that American car manufacturers make dangerous vehicles. It's also not American car manufacturer's fault that European cities and roads are often smaller and Europeans have less appetite for road deaths. But it is their fault if they want to export to that market without making any effort to design suitable cars for it. American exporters aren't granted a God-given right to inflict American standards in the rest of the world.
If they don't meet EU safety standards, they are, by definition, legally unsafe for sale in the EU.
Front sightlines are a common example given for larger pickups and SUVs. Pedestrian outcomes in collisions are also given more weight in the EU standards (which is why you can't buy a Cybertruck).
American semi trucks are also generally considered unsafe for that reason plus overall length - nearly all EU and UK HGVs are cabover models.
There's no rule againt US-made vehicles. It's just that many vehicle models that happen to be made and sold in the US don't meet safety requirements in other places.
You can well argue that EU vehicle standards are excessively strict (many EU residents may agree or disagree on various aspects), but coming at it from "very unfair trade, it's a huge deficit, sad!" angle seems more like simping for car manufacturers then reasonable public safety policy tuning.
It isn't. Quite the opposite. It's about a level playing field. There are standards for allowing products to market, some of them are more costly to implement. US car makers want to sell at lower standards than competitors, that's not a level playing field.
The customer has no right to deside on issues that affect _others_. A customer can decide on what affects the customer. If car A is more dangerous for other people than car B, then it's for somebody else than the car customer to decide what should be allowed. A car owner can't decide that "it's fine to drive this car which will kill other people because of its design".
It feels very much like a self-inflicted problem that manufacturers made by lobbying for domestic rules that they knew to be incompatible with foreign markets, followed by inability to innovate sufficiently to supply both markets economically.
I have no sympathy with this plight. They should take responsibility for their past choices. They have agency, they're not victims.
It's not even that you can't see big pickups in the EU, there are plenty of Hiluxen and even Chinese brands like Maxus (SAIC) could figure out how make an EU-compliant vehicle (much as I think even such models are undesirable to share roads with).
It's also not there are no US imports - there are, when the models comply with local regulation.
