I think we need another license class for vehicles larger than your average 4-door sedan (or saloon, in the UK). An F-150, Highlander, or Suburban drive and handle appreciably different than the Civic or Accord-sized vehicle that most drivers-ed classes use. And it shows when you see how people park or drive these larger vehicles in crowded areas. We’ve essentially discounted the increase in vehicle size to whether you can get financing for it, with no regard to your ability to drive it.

There is another class called: CDL. Commercial Drivers License and it is required for vehicles over a certain tonnage or with air brakes.

Why not just reduce the tonnage to 4,000lbs for example? Easy. You want to drive a Humvee, go get a CDL first.

I was referring to another class above regular, but not a CDL. People who drive SUVs don’t need a commercial license.

As a biker, Geo Metros are unacceptable. It makes me c absolutely livid when I bike past a shiny new Geo Metro which is 1800 pounds of wasted metal and my knee caps are about level with the front. How have we grown to accept these things driving around on public roads with no higher bar to entry than that required to bike in my BMX?

I see this all the time where I live, and it drives me insane. Truck culture is a waste of resources. What causes someone to pay $$$$ to decrease the efficiency of their vehicle? And don’t even get me started on soft rubber mud tires that only see pavement...

Obligatory MMM article:

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2015/04/28/what-does-your-wor...

My mother was insistent on driving SUVs because she said she could see the road better from higher up, which to me really just meant that when she would look at cars, she wouldn't consider the feature she actually needed: raisable seats.

However, in practice, she backed into a couple poles in her old SUV and said she didn't see them. Hm.

She now drives a car instead of an SUV and not once has complained about being unable to see, and I don't think it has raisable seats, so I think she may have simply convinced herself of something that was untrue.

This seems like a strange reaction. Why would it make a difference if the bed is empty?

Well, I don't want to say trucks shouldn't be allowed on public roads at all. That would exclude working vehicles that serve crucial roles in our society.

The condition of a truck's bed, i.e. is it dusty and marked up by loads carried, is it full of gear, etc., serves as a proxy for whether the operator of the vehicle has been or is currently making use of the capabilities it offers beyond e.g. a compact hatchback. If they are not, I see that as a signal that they belong to the category of truck owners who own them for vanity and/or personal expression reasons rather than because they need the carrying capacity. This sort of ownership is, I believe (as I said) an antisocial act.

This signal is not perfect, but as I keep it to myself in every case I don't feel that I'm harming anybody by making these judgments, and if someone could demonstrate to me that e.g. the majority of F-series truck (the most popular "car" in America, last I checked) owners need that capacity, as in they use it on a regular basis to the extent that a smaller vehicle would not suffice, I'd be happy to change my thinking.

There definitely are truck owners like that, but I think there are a lot of truck owners who don't use them for their job, but extensively for work on and around their home and for recreation (or for activities which are both productive and recreational, like fishing and hunting), and that many of these folks like to take care of their trucks and try to keep them looking clean.

For most people, it's far from a given that those activities require the sort of vehicle I'm talking about.

Regardless, all this fixation on my "empty bed" comment is totally missing the point. We should look at the data, at how many human lives are lost each year because of the proliferation of these vehicles, and on that basis we should decide whether further regulation and/or transit engineering is needed to protect the public. People are, evidently, dying because of said proliferation, and that's just totally unacceptable to me.

Maybe I just don't understand the mindset that I should be able to do whatever I want, for my own vanity/amusement/whatever, at any cost to my fellow humans up to and including the loss of their lives.

The empty bed idea is a terrible one. It'll only encourage people to leave their beds loaded.

The only wrecks (only fender benders) I've ever been in were when I had a heavily loaded bed or was pulling a trailer. Not only does stopping distance increase, but weight is sometimes taken off of the front tires, meaning ability to steer/swerve is also impaired.

This is one of those rules that not only would have the opposite of the desired, but also increase the severity of accidents that do occur.

> The empty bed idea

What's the "empty bed idea"?

> This is one of those rules

Which rule?

That an empty bed implies the "truck isn't being used" and therefore isn't needed and that person shouldn't be driving a truck. Extended to include the idea that only people who need trucks should drive trucks, and even then, should only drive them specifically when you need the bed or to pull a trailer.

This topic always devolves into someone suggesting "there ought to be a law..." And some variation suggesting tickets be given to people driving vehicles bigger than what's required for any particular trip, with an empty bed being evidence of guilt.

Well, just to be clear, it is not my opinion that we should be issuing tickets to the drivers of pickup trucks with empty beds.

Do I think the massive proliferation of obviously-underutilized pickup trucks in America is a symptom of a particularly destructive and vapid brand of consumerism? Yes, I do.

Big pickups are just another facet of the 'Harleyfication' of personal transport.

There's a subset of people that seem to like big, heavy, noisy soot belching vehicles, perhaps because they imagine it projects power to drive them.

I just don't understand why people let it bother themselves so much.

And remember that embedded energy is a thing. It's almost always more efficient to drive a single vehicle that meets all of your needs than to purchase a second one just for occasional use. For trucks specifically, rentals usually don't make sense.

It bothers me because these vehicles apparently kill people at a significantly higher rate than "normal cars". That's what this whole thread below the parent of my original comment is about. When innocent human lives are extinguished by completely avoidable causes, it absolutely bothers me. It bothers me on behalf of myself, my friends and family and loved ones, and every single person out there who deserves better than being snuffed out before their time by some moron who's decided to purchase an identity for themselves by way of an F-250 XLT 4x4 TEXAS RANCH KING EDITION CUMMINS POWER STROKE SIX-POINT-TWO LITER FLEX FUEL. Or whatever.

I've rented many trucks in my life, at times when my car at the time wasn't big enough. In each case it made perfect sense.

Except the claim is for SUVs, not trucks. And even then, the suv connection is grasping at straws, the same way cell phones have been blamed for a decade. Apply the same methods to the 90s, which had more "true" SUVs (on truck frames), and it looks like SUVs save lives with the declining pedestrian deaths. Most SUVs sold today come on car frames and aren't as tall or as those were.

They even make the point in the article- that the rise in fatalities corresponds more with pedestrian safety features than anything else, but we're not blaming them.

It indicates they’re not using it for work.

this probably isn't what GP cares about, but it is kind of silly to drive around a pickup truck with no weight in the bed. these vehicles are designed to handle a heavy load in the bed. the tradeoff is that a pickup doesn't actually have it's best handling when the bed is totally empty. it's not catastrophically dangerous, but a pickup with an empty bed is more susceptible to stuff like lift-off oversteer than something like an SUV, which isn't designed with the same assumptions.