Let me be the first one to say it - anyone who drives a large pick-up truck for non-commercial reasons is a grade A asshole. SUV drivers aren't that far off, though I sympathize with the game theory element of buying SUVs to protect against other larger cars -- but I would expect you to take accountability and drive slower and safer than smaller cars.<p>These monstrosities are environmentally unfriendly, pedestrian unfriendly, kid unfriendly, biker unfriendly, small car unfriendly, and are antithetical to the type of walkable and bikable cities that point to healthier and happier living. I wish we could tax the crap out of these things and drive them out of our towns.
CAFE standards were written in such a way as to encourage large vehicle footprints to work around the requirements of the standards.<p>Motorcycling youtuber fortnine offers a good view on some other aspects of the situation.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpuX-5E7xoU</a>
We could encourage smaller cars the way much of Europe does: narrower streets, smaller parking spots.<p>I’ve noticed in cities with tighter roads, like San Francisco and Seattle, these kind of massive trucks and SUVs aren’t popular.<p>A lot of state and local regulations create minimum sizes for roads and other auto infrastructure that’s simply too big.
> <i>The next time you are stuck in traffic, look around you. Not at the cars, but the passengers. If you are in America, the chances are that one in 75 of them will be killed by a car—most of those by someone else’s car.</i><p>The author doesn't elaborate if the statistic they're referring to is really only considering car occupants, otherwise I'd say that people should rather look around for pedestrians and cyclists (if there are any in sight of course), because those are even more vulnerable than people in smaller cars...
Given the conclusions in these articles, I'd expect insurance prices for larger vehicles to be substantially higher, because the underwriters have a large incentive to get this right.<p>My own policy has two drivers with a long flawless history, and several vehicles, including a heavy duty pickup truck and a compact crossover.<p>The truck policy prices for bodily injury is 8% higher than the crossover, while property damage coverage costs 20% <i>less</i> for the truck.<p>There appears to be a material difference in conclusion between my insurance underwriters and the producers of these studies on the danger of these vehicles.
I drove a Miata for 11 years, even a regular sized car would be a mortal threat.<p>I drive an SUV now and I plan on driving a bigger safer car once I have a family. It is an arms race on the road.