Ah yes, the tired old trope of “but Democrats were once bad too!” I get a chuckle when conservative neanderthals use it for a whatabout-ism.

How the hell do they keep it balanced?

Yup, you’re 100% right, cars are expensive here (Ecuador), the most basic, cheapest sedan in the US is an expensive option for us. We do have the option, you can get a camry here, but at $50 - $60K, is not going to be your first car. Is either a cheap unsafe car or a chinese made motorcycle.

Not to mention that in most Indian cities traffic is so bad that going faster than 20mph in a car is merely a dream, making airbags and crash safety standards fairly unimportant.

Makes sense to me. A camry here goes for more than $60K, a minivan is a luxury thing and a big pickup can go up to $100K, keeping cars cheap is hard, the most basic (and unsafe) car you can get here is still expensive. In the US a chevy cruze is a basic car and goes for around $17K. Here is the fanciest sedan chevy…

But they’re so soft!

I strongly suggest you do not engage shindean in a discussion on this. He/she seems intent on starting a massive flame war over...I’m not sure what. Just dismiss and walk away.

And whatever family you speak of uses their asses as trunks, and keep their arms out to hold the baby seat. Sure.

You mean using car sales in rich countries to subsidize car sales in poor countries, right? Interesting idea. I imagine it would be incredibly difficult to regulate effectively. Any thoughts on how to work that out?

No, seriously. In India it is extremely common to see entire families on motorcycles, 5, 6 or even 7 people on a single motorcycle. No Ringling Bors Circus experience required.

unless you work in Ringling Bros.

I think it should be considered a privilege to sell cars to the American/Euro/Japanese market and if companies like Renault and Hyundai want to sell cars in our markets they must be good corporate citizens in ALL and not sell death traps to others. If being good citizens means they can’t get the price down to compete…

Quite. Typically messy, though.

Frowned upon maybe, but effective

Except you can’t fit a full family on a bike,
unless you work in Ringling Bros.

That’s extremely poor logic. I have no other words. That’s like a mindset from the 50's.

Using your baby as an airbag is generally frowned upon.

The last three maybe but the Kwid got a 0.0 rating for a reason. At least on a motorcycle with five people the others might act as airbags and save you.

I would take being on a motorcycle with the slim potential of being thrown from a crash to some kind of relative safety over being chewed up alive inside of that Renault any day of the week. There’s no way that’s safer.

I bet they’re all safer than a motorcycle with five people on it, which is realistically what these cars are competing with. Making the cars safer will make them more expensive, which will make more people stick with the motorcycles, which will make them less safe.