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.