It's definitely one of the reasons cars in general have gotten bigger, you can't deny that better survivability in crashes is good marketing material. Trucks are just among the larger of them.
>If everyone switched from large trucks to an even larger amount of small trucks it's possible the problem is made worse.
Right, but isn't the whole premise that the damage is the truck's weight cubed (or ^4)? Splitting large trucks to small trucks only increase wear linearly.
>Why the focus on small trucks as if they're a panacea?
My truck doesn’t drive near pedestrian areas. A smaller truck cannot trailer my work loads or toys. My modern diesel with high-tech emissions systems intact gets 20+ mpg unloaded.
Perhaps some of you remember trucks of the 80s. Not much has changed dimensionally, without safety improvements. Those did ~8-10 mpg unloaded while making 25% of the power with half the tow rating of a recent truck and none of the modern safety features for collision avoidance, blind spot monitoring, etc. The armchair distortion is real here. Please visit the numbers before making blanket anecdotes—the manufacturer websites have good uptime for their brochures. :)
The trucks in question have outsized power for their size, it's part of their legitimate use as work vehicles. You get in these massive, comfortable vehicles and you accelerate, maybe not as fast as a sports car, but you're easily beating a Honda Civic and instead of a squeal from the transmission you hear a deep-throated roar from your engine.
"Bigger trucks pose a greater hazard to pedestrians and smaller vehicles"
It's an arms race.
I used to live near a couple who were both doctors in the ER and they both drive the biggest trucks that they could find because they saw that people in large trucks tended to be fare better in accidents.
I have a small sedan for myself and a smallish SUV for my wife and kids. I feel pressure to upgrade both to something larger.
> ... large and heavy vehicles... Aside from the safety problems (for pedestrians & cyclists, not the driver of course), these trucks also wreck city streets, which are not designed for them.
The best selling trucks in America, the F150 and the Chevy Silverado, are lighter than a Tesla S.
Don't forget that aggression and belligerence in vehicle design is a selling point to certain segments of truck buyers. It's not enough that the vehicle will protect its occupants in a crash. Its ability to destroy the thing it crashes into is a selling point to some people. I have more than once heard people boasting about how much their truck would damage a [slur] little Prius (or whatever) if they ran into one.
Interesting, thanks. I've always found the manufacturers' figures to be optimistic, but the real figures do seem to have improved over time. Perhaps not the case with trucks.
I noticed the same, but only for large and extra large pickups. It actually made me feel better about driving a small/midsize pickup (Colorado). It's crazy that the extra large trucks have a 4-5x other driver death rate over a reasonably sized pickup.
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