Hey, It is a Long Rant on People Driven Large Vehicles

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Angry Bear
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It is an accurate rant and depicts what I see on the highway.

I see much of this in Arizona where we live today. An explosion of oversized vehicles which typically do not carry anything but people. As one planning commissioner said to the builders, sixty percent of the vehicles being driven in southern Arizona are pickups. The implication here was driveways must be long enough to accommodate them so they do not block a sidewalk. And then, do the behemoths fit in the garage and allow for doors to be opened without banging a wall or the other vehicle next to it.

The dynamics of driving a large vehicle differ greatly from a standard automobile. They use more fuel, take longer time and more distance to stop, cause more wear on the roads, take up more room on the roads and parking, are under taxed and licensed for their size, etc.

The article hits every issue about oversized pickups and SUVs and the issues with them today besides the drivers.

Cars Turned Into Giant Killers

An irresistible trend took hold in American cars 50 years ago. We’re all paying the price.

Just after noon on Nov. 27, 2022, a few days after Thanksgiving, Neal Greenfield and his daughter Kimberly Karsen were heading toward their car in Des Plaines, Illinois, outside Chicago. As they walked, a driver lost control of a Honda SUV. The vehicle jumped the sidewalk, striking Karsen and Greenfield before smashing into a building. Karsen was later pulled from under the vehicle; Greenfield was found nearby on a sidewalk. Both were killed. The force of the impact was so powerful that it destroyed a storefront and triggered a gas leak.

Imagine if the crash had involved a sedan instead of an SUV. A lighter vehicle could brake faster. The impact could have conveyed less force. A lower hood would have created a smaller blind spot and been less likely to strike a pedestrian’s torso. Research suggests that SUVs may be two to three times more likely than sedans to kill pedestrians in a collision.

There is no way to know for certain this particular crash would have been less catastrophic if the driver had been in a smaller car. But the trends are clear. Karsen and Greenfield were two of the 7,508 pedestrians killed last year. The most since 1981. Something else happened over that 40-year period: car bloat.

In 1977, SUVs and trucks together represented 23 percent of American new car sales; today they comprise more than 80 percent. Meanwhile, the models themselves keep getting larger. These four-wheeled behemoths started as niche vehicles, meant to allow certain groups of people to accomplish specific tasks. Today they have become a fixture of everyday American life. They are also linked to myriad societal ills, from crash deaths to climate change to social inequality. Bigger cars make each of those problems harder to solve.

The story of car bloat and the continually expanding size of the typical American automobile is one of carmaker profit, shifting consumer preferences, and loophole-riddled auto regulations. It is also a story of hidden costs: to the planet, to taxpayers, and to the American families. Families whose lives have been shattered by a crash that could have been avoided, or at least mitigated, with a smaller vehicle.

But this story is far from over, and it is ending far from certain. The auto industry plans to keep foisting ever-larger vehicles on the American public. The question is whether it will be allowed to.

The origins of car bloat can be traced to an auto company by the name of American Motors Corporation (Its CEO in the 1950s was future Michigan Gov. George Romney, father of Mitt). In 1969, AMC acquired and later repositioned the Jeep, a legendary military vehicle, as a car for everyday consumers. The Jeep became the first modern sport utility vehicle, targeted toward suburbanites attracted to its rugged vibe, even if the most dangerous place they were going was a supermarket.

In his 2002 book High and Mighty: The Dangerous Rise of the SUV, Keith Bradsher wrote that “AMC promoted the Jeep’s four-wheel drive even though its engineers and executives knew that it had little value for urban buyers.” As many carmakers would come to realize, that was a savvy approach when selling SUVs, motor vehicles designed with features like raised ground clearance that make them capable of going off-road.

In a precedent-setting move, AMC convinced the federal government to categorize Jeeps as “light trucks.” According to the Corporate Average Fuel Economy/CAFE standards Jeeps were in model year 1978. The intent to boost the engine efficiency of American cars after the Arab oil embargo, CAFE set loose fuel economy standards for light trucks (like pickup trucks). Light trucks which were to be commercial vehicles for hauling, lumber and tools, rather than children and sports gear. Even though SUVs were selling to consumers as a substitute for sedans and station wagons, the feds were treating them as though they were being for business operations.

“We made damn sure [Jeeps] were classified as trucks, and we lobbied like hell,” Gerald Meyers, AMC’s former chairman, told Bradsher. A Sierra Club official, meanwhile, called the CAFE definition a “loophole big enough to drive a truck through.”

As a result, automakers selling big SUVs felt less pressure to lower the average fuel economy of their lineups, either by selling more sedans or finding ways to make SUVs more fuel-efficient. That mattered, because the weight of SUVs made them gas guzzlers. A 1984 Jeep Cherokee got 16 miles per gallon, 36 percent less than a Chevrolet Cavalier sedan, the year’s most popular car model. Today, the average “light truck” still gets around 10 miles per gallon less than a passenger car.

AMC was a part of Chrysler in 1987. The establishment of SUVs as an emergent and lucrative market segment is its legacy. Other automakers soon followed AMC’s lead, and no wonder. In the early 1990s, Bradsher notes in High and Mighty, Ford’s profit margins on its Explorer SUV exceeded 30 percent. That’s many times the margin on a typical car.

SUV ads of the 1980s and 1990s frequently featured the great outdoors, fostering an image of environmental stewardship that ignores the vehicles’ outsize contribution to climate change. Other pitches appealed to SUV buyers’ self-orientation. A 1996 Chevrolet Suburban ad depicting the golfer Greg Norman bypassing a traffic jam by powering his way over highway rubble. The voiceover intoned . . .

“On the freeway, all men are created equal. Fortunately, all vehicles are not.” SUV sales rose steadily, from 5.1 percent of the American new car market in 1985 to 18.9 percent by 2000.

As SUVs gained popularity, pickup trucks were going through a metamorphosis. Pickups were around  since the 1920s. They were typically used by farmers and workmen. It changed in the 1980s, as car companies sensed an opportunity with SUVs to upsell customers who would otherwise purchase a cheaper and less profitable passenger car. They targeted urban dwellers who had little need for a truck’s bed or towing capacity. Nonetheless attracted to its macho image.

Case in point: A 1995 Ford Ranger ad featured a young man whose new truck delights his girlfriend, impresses his buddy, and sparks envy in his father. At no point does he use the truck to haul or carry anything.

Ford knew what it was doing with that Ranger ad. According to a 2019 survey by Strategic Vision, a consultancy, 75 percent of truck owners haul something at most once per year, and more than a third place something in the truck bed once or never. (An article in the Drive about that survey was headlined: “You Don’t Need a Full-Size Pickup Truck, You Need a Cowboy Costume.”)

“In the case of pickups, I think a lot of people are using them as people carriers, rather than stuff carriers,”

Tony Posawatz, who led General Motors’ full-size truck division during the 1990s, told me. Truck designs have evolved accordingly:

The first F-150s in the 1970s were 36 percent cabin and 64 percent truck bed, but by 2021 the percentages had almost flipped: 63 percent cabin and 37 percent truck bed. Today’s pickups (like SUVs) are typically used as passenger cars. The federal government has maintained the separate, looser “light truck” fuel economy designation. And yet, for many owners, the truck bed itself functions like a plume of peacock feathers—attractive, and mostly for show.

As carmakers touted SUVs and pickups, the two categories’ share of the auto market surged. By 2002 they were outselling sedans. Today, more than 4 of every 5 new cars sold is an SUV or a truck. Station wagons, capable of transporting a comparable number of passengers, have virtually disappeared.

In fact, sedans, vehicles containing separate boxes for the engine, passenger area, and trunk, are themselves becoming an endangered species in the U.S. In 2016, Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said the quiet part out loud when he publicly pivoted away from small cars, declaring that his company’s future lay in SUVs and trucks. Ford, which once produced the iconic Model T and Taurus, no longer sells any sedans in the U.S. And although the U.S. is unique in its rapid adoption of SUVs and trucks, other countries are catching up—especially with SUVs, which comprised more than half the new cars sold in Europe by early 2023.

But it’s not just that SUVs and trucks now dominate the road in numbers. An arms race in car size has been underway—and the consequences are all around us.

As they gained market share, American SUVs and trucks have steadily grown bigger. In 2021, the average SUV and truck were 7 and 32 percent heavier, respectively, than in 1990. The 2023 F-150 truck, now the most popular vehicle in the U.S., is around 7 inches taller, 15 inches longer, and 800 pounds heavier than its 1991 version. Electrification, requiring a battery large enough to move an already massive car hundreds of miles between charges are causing SUV and truck models to become even heftier. An electric 2024 Chevrolet Silverado weighs 8,534 pounds, over a ton more than a gas-powered Silverado.

Maybe you’ve seen the pictures: a massive truck towering over the older model next to it. A vehicle’s hood level with the neck of a 5-foot-4 woman standing beside it or a SUV’s grille concealing a small child. These are the images of car bloat within vehicle classes.

Carla Bailo, a longtime Nissan executive who later led the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research, told me that model expansion was a natural consequence of the market pressures that drive automakers’ product development processes. “When you start to design a new vehicle, you look at what the competition is, and ask, ‘How do I get a leg up?’ ” she said. “Often you want to have the most legroom and most storage capacity.” That typically leads to a larger vehicle. Posawatz, the former GM executive, said that new car features have also added heft, noting the screens, computerized safety systems, and numerous airbags now commonplace on contemporary models.

The responsibility for car bloat cannot be placed entirely on automakers. Some car buyers clearly prefer larger, heavier models, which can provide more space as well as a perceived edge over other, smaller cars on the road. Bailo thinks that customer preferences have been the dominant factor behind vehicle expansion.

“People are larger now than they used to be, and they have more stuff they want to haul around. Automakers are fundamentally giving people what they want.”

Maybe—but maybe not. The billions of dollars car companies spend on advertising would seem to tilt at least some purchases toward more profitable SUV and truck models. And it’s plausible, customers who prefer a smaller car will ultimately opt for an SUV or truck either because sedan offerings are so scant, or because so many other people already own a huge car. They do do not want to be at a disadvantage on the highway.

Meanwhile, Federal regulators have shaped the auto market in ways consumers may not notice. The light-truck loophole within the CAFE fuel economy standards is one example. There are many others. Section 179 of the U.S. tax code, for instance, allows small-business owners like realtors and chiropractors to deduct the full price of a vehicle from their taxable income, but only if it weighs over 6,000 pounds. Many large SUVs and trucks clear that threshold, but sedans cannot. And unlike most international peers, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has not updated its crash ratings to evaluate the risk car designs pose to pedestrians and cyclists, which would likely penalize many SUV and truck models.

What or who deserves the most blame? Disentangling the influence of automaker choices, consumer preferences, and federal policy on car bloat is a daunting task for even the most meticulous of researchers. But if nothing else, one thing is clear:

As University of Iowa law professor Greg Shill called it, “the engorgement of the American vehicle,” has been a defining trend of the automotive market over the last 40 years. We are only starting now to reckon with its consequences.

Of the various societal ills attributable to car bloat, its effect on road safety may be the most intuitive. The sheer weight of big SUVs and trucks adds force in a collision, putting anyone walking, biking, or inside a smaller vehicle at greater risk.

Because of inertia, heavier cars will travel farther before coming to a halt, making it harder for a driver slamming on the brakes of a big vehicle to avoid a collision. Added height creates its own problems, since taller vehicles are more likely to strike the torsos of pedestrians rather than their legs. A recent study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that vehicles with hoods higher than 40 inches are 45 percent more likely to kill pedestrians than smaller cars. (For context, the hood height of a Jeep Gladiator and a Ford F-250 are above that threshold by 10 and 20 inches, respectively.)

Taller cars also limit a driver’s vision, for instance by concealing pedestrians behind their A-pillars (the sides of windshields). Even if a driver is looking straight ahead, vehicle height expands blind zones: In 2022 a TV station in Washington, D.C., sat nine children in a line in front of an SUV; all were invisible to the woman sitting in the driver’s seat.

A growing number of studies have linked car bloat to the surge in deaths among American pedestrians and bicyclists, both of which recently hit 40-year highs. University of Hawaii economist Justin Tyndall  attributed 1,100 pedestrian deaths in the U.S. to the shift from cars to SUVs in the period from 2000 and 2019. A number that did not include effects of pickup trucks or the expansion of model sizes. Notably, most other rich countries where large cars are not as widespread, have seen a recent decline in crash fatalities, while the American death toll has surged.

Lost lives from collisions may be the most immediately dire consequence of car bloat. But the size of huge SUVs and trucks also endangers us in the long term due to their effects on the planet. The problem is due to basic physics: Heavy cars require substantial power to propel them down a road. Although some SUV and truck models have grown marginally more efficient in recent years, the biggest ones remain gas guzzlers: An eight-cylinder Cadillac Escalade gets just 16 miles per gallon of gas, about the same as a new Chevrolet Silverado—or a 1984 Jeep Cherokee.

Electrifying such behemoths is only a partial fix. Electric vehicles generate no tailpipe emissions, but heavy vehicles need huge batteries that impose an environmental toll through the mining of minerals like cobalt and lithium as well as the generation of electricity consumed during charging. On the extreme end, the 9,000-pound Hummer EV has a battery so enormous that driving it produces more total carbon dioxide  than some gas-powered sedans. One study published in January 2023 found that electric SUVs require such massive batteries that they might worsen climate change by consuming scarce materials that could otherwise electrify a greater number of smaller cars.

The environmental toll of car bloat extends beyond its impact on global temperatures. Vehicles’ added weight causes tires to erode faster, lofting tiny, toxic particles into the air and onto the ground. Such tire pollution is a kind of microplastic, and scientists have only recently begun examining its effects on human health and aquatic ecosystems. Studies have already linked one chemical, known as 6PPD,  to the collapse of coho salmon in the Pacific Northwest, and found it to be deadly to other fish species as well. (The Environmental Protection Agency recently announced a formal investigation into 6PPD, which could lead to a ban.) All cars create tire pollution, but bigger ones generate more of it.

Just as heavy cars put greater pressure on tires, they also cause pavement to break down faster. Although an individual SUV or truck will cause only marginally more highway wear than a sedan, most are loaded onto auto haulers en route to the dealerships where they are sold. Because roadway erosion grows at the fourth power of vehicle weight per axle, car bloat can turn these auto haulers into veritable asphalt shredders. As roadway maintenance costs rise, everyone ends up footing the bill.

Americans pay for car bloat in other ways, too. The dominance of SUVs and trucks has increased the cost of owning a car, which is a near-necessity in most of the United States. As automakers retire smaller models, the bigger ones that remain cost more. The added expense extends beyond the purchase price; SUVs and trucks usually require more gas or electricity than sedans, and their insurance premiums are higher, too. AAA recently found that those factors together have raised the typical cost of owning a car in the U.S. to over $1,000 per month, around 70 percent of the cost of the average American rent.

“The gorge keeps getting deeper and wider. There are people who can afford to buy what car model they want, and then there are those who can’t afford to buy a new car at all.”

All in all, car bloat has increased vehicle prices while making autos more destructive to human life, natural ecosystems, and pavement alike. Because the full societal costs of crashes, pollution, and road repairs are not borne by owners of SUVs and trucks, every American is effectively subsidizing car bloat. Even if they drive a sedan. Even if they don’t own a car at all.

It has taken decades, but the world is starting to recognize the dangers of unfettered car bloat. National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy has spoken publicly about the resultant risks to road safety, and the issue has attracted coverage in outlets including National Public Radio, the New York Times, and NBC News. Even some auto executives have admitted to having reservations. Ned Curic, the CTO of Stellantis, told Automotive News in July.

“It’s frustrating for me how heavy cars have become. It’s not good for the environment, it’s not good for resources, it’s not good for efficiency.”

But such views are far from universal within the C-suites of American automakers. Last summer, I posted  online about car bloat endangering people who are walking. This prompted Mike Levine, Ford’s North America product communications director, to claim the surge in pedestrian deaths was due to “street lighting.” (When I asked Levine if he could clarify his views, he cited a recent report that found that good lighting can help reduce pedestrian crashes, but does not attribute the increase in pedestrian deaths to a decline in street illumination.)

Obviously, American carmakers do not want to draw attention to the growing size of their lineups, given their profits rely on the juicy margins of big SUVs and trucks. Such revenues are essential to finance multibillion-dollar investments in electric and autonomous driving technologies, as well as to cover the increasing labor costs enshrined in new union agreements. Posawatz, the ex–GM executive, told me that he suspects automakers’ top brass understand the downsides of car bloat, but that they see no alternative. He said . . . “In fairness to them, in their hearts, they want to be responsible, But they have to create positive cash flow to fund various opportunities.”

Cash-flow pressures are hard to overcome. In theory, external market dynamics could cause a sharp shift in car shoppers’ preferences, as they did in the 1970s when a spike in oil prices led consumers to embrace gas-sipping “subcompacts.” A comparable surge in gasoline prices could likewise tilt purchase decisions toward smaller, gas-powered cars. It wouldn’t shift consumers away from bloated EV models.

The sole remaining force capable of curbing vehicular enormity is the government. Congress or the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could intervene in the name of public safety, the environment, or market efficiency (since car bloat’s many externalities present a textbook case of market failure), slapping new taxes on the heaviest cars, as France has done. Or they could add crash tests that evaluate the risk that car designs pose to pedestrians and other vehicles in a collision. But nothing of the sort is happening. There’s just not strong public support, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat, told me. “You’re up against all the marketing of car companies, Every football game, you’ve got 15 commercials about the freedom of the road.”

The Department of Transportation, for its part, seems antsy about any move that could be framed as preventing Americans from expressing their freedom by driving humongous vehicles. “They haven’t done anything to address the issue of heavier and bigger vehicles—at all,” Homendy, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, told me. In February, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was asked in an interview in Fast Company what role regulations can play in managing the safety issues created by large SUVs and trucks. He ducked, replying that “it’s important to do further research.” In December, DOT shared a picture of President Biden grinning inside a gargantuan Hummer EV in a social media post celebrating car electrification.

With the federal government failing to act, it has fallen on state and local officials to push back against car bloat. The good news is a growing number are doing so. In 2022 the District of Columbia revised its car registration fees to charge those with especially heavy models $500 per year, seven times more than owners of small sedans. Since then, Colorado and New York have proposed similar moves. Such policies hold intuitive appeal: Buyers are still free to purchase a big SUV and truck, but they must pay extra to account for the costs their purchase inflicts on everyone else.

But this is a frustratingly piecemeal approach to an issue that affects all Americans, and besides, cars can be driven across jurisdictional lines. To truly get a handle on American car bloat, the federal government will need to shake off its lethargy and enact new fees, regulations, or both. Given the power wielded by an auto industry invested in the status quo, such moves are unlikely in the absence of popular outrage that forces federal action.

Convincing Americans to rethink auto regulations—and then get very fired up about it—is not easy. However, it is possible. In the 1960s, a surge in crash deaths, a series of Senate hearings, and the explosive publication of Unsafe at Any Speed. Ralph Nader’s jeremiad against the car industry, led to the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the enactment of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and the establishment of road safety as a federal responsibility.

That 1960s reformist movement focused on risks to cars’ occupants. The current car safety crisis in the U.S. revolves around risks borne by those outside modern SUVs and trucks and includes people walking, biking, or inside a smaller vehicle. That dynamic makes political mobilization harder, since some SUV and truck owners may resist it because they do not see themselves as beneficiaries. If so, they would be mistaken: A nation with smaller cars would confer myriad benefits on every citizen, not only through safer streets, but also cleaner air and more affordable mobility.

Building political momentum to address car bloat will take time, particularly because many Americans are unaware of the steep, often hidden costs that it imposes on them, regardless of how they travel. A good first step is to simply name hulking SUVs and pickup trucks for what they are: monstrosities whose size is deadly, destructive, and, for almost everyone who has one, utterly unnecessary.

How Cars Turned Into Giant Killers