These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us

I make videos about how walkable cities are more efficient more environmentally friendly more financially sustainable and just better places to live so given these benefits it's not surprising that cities all around the world are trying to build more mixed-use walkable neighborhoods and viable alternatives to driving unfortunately as Engineers planners and Advocates try to repair the mistakes of the 1960s and build the cities of the future there's a growing Trend that could undo all of that hard work the growth of SUVs and light trucks I really don't think it's an exaggeration to say that if there's a positive goal that cities have for the future SUVs fight against that they're just bad for cities really bad if you're walking and you get hit by an SUV you're three times more likely to die than if you've been hit by a regular car and if you're in that regular car you're more likely to die in a crash if it's with an SUV SUVs are more likely to hit people in the first place because they're big unwieldy and have poor visibility SUV drivers themselves are twice as likely to be killed in a rollover than car drivers SUVs make congestion worse because they take up more space on the roads they have terrible fuel economy too and the list goes on and on and to be completely honest I'm making this video because I'm absolutely fed up with the conversation around SUVs and light trucks we're constantly being told that doing anything about the astronomical growth and the average size of Motor Vehicles would infringe on the freedoms of people to do whatever they want but your freedom to swing your arm ends where my face begins and SUVs are a giant punch in the face to everyone who doesn't drive one in short SUVs are oversized ridiculous unnecessary death machines that are literally killing people even their own drivers so let's look at why they're so popular in time about 40 years you wouldn't really see any SUVs if you lived in a rural area you might see a small pickup truck or a Bare Bones Jeep used for hunting or farming but until fairly recently pretty much everybody drove a car or maybe a van but today light trucks and SUVs make up almost 80 percent of all new car sales in the U.S 80 percent the Auto industry has been heavily pushing these vehicles for years and it's been done to avoid regulations meaning more profit for car manufacturers this is possible because in America SUVs are classified as light trucks which aren't subject to the same safety and emission standards as cars light trucks originally referred to commercial vehicles that needed to carry or tow heavy loads or Traverse difficult terrain to facilitate this light trucks have large engines and stiff frames both of which are disastrous for fuel economy and safety but more on that in a second and it all started because of these ink chickens in 1962 Europe placed a heavy import tax on American chickens in retaliation America levied import taxes of their own they specifically targeted European light trucks that were typically used by small businesses and since foreign automakers were already producing better and cheaper cars the declining American Auto industry really wanted to shift to a vehicle where they didn't have to compete because like competition is for suckers so that carved out light trucks as its own category in America but what really kicked off the explosion of SUVs was ironically fuel efficiency regulations the corporate average fuel economy or Cafe standards required all automobile manufacturers in the U.S to improve the average fuel economy of their entire fleet or face Financial penalties but here's the catch American automakers lobbied hard so that a light trucks were classified differently than Passenger cars this was necessary they argued because unlike cars light trucks were used by honest hard-working red-blooded American Patriots like this guy I asked an AI art program to make this picture for me which is why he has this dead look on his face and his pickup has an extra door hanging off the side so rather than build cars that met Cafe Standards auto manufacturers were incentivized to get as many people to buy light trucks as possible the first SUVs could be classified as light trucks because they were built in the same factories and using the same body on frame construction as traditional pickup trucks these SUVs were basically pickup trucks with a longer roof this allowed American car manufacturers to save a lot of money by using existing design parts and factories and of course it also allowed them to avoid any regulations for passenger vehicles including safety regulations because these were after all light trucks so this saved the auto manufacturers a lot of money and avoided regulations but there was a problem how are they going to convince people to buy a vehicle that was Impractical uncomfortable ugly and dangerous the book high and mighty written by a Detroit automobile journalist and published in 2002 documents the history of how SUVs came to be and it was one of the books that helped radicalize me against our dependency and while this book is rather out of date today the history of the SUV is still very relevant the earliest SUVs were Jeeps marketed to Rich guys who went hunting on the weekends marketers use this outdoorsy image to lure people who wanted to be cool hey you might live in Suburbia and work a super lame desk job in a business park but you're still the kind of guy who might maybe someday go on a camping trip and this is the car to do it in no no don't look at that significantly more practical car over there station wagons are for losers and Boomers and this marketing approach saw some modest success but the real winning strategy was to make scared people feel safe early focus groups showed that Americans were obsessed with crime and violence so automobile manufacturers took advantage of that the city is a big scary place protect yourself with a big stupid car that's how we got ads that say think of it as a 4 000 pound Guardian Angel and this one that says let nature worry about you for a change which addresses the incredibly common Suburban Eye problem of crocodiles attacking you from trees this also turned Road Safety into an arms race Whoever has the biggest vehicle wins and so Vehicles became bigger and more aggressive every year it's got to the point where you can't even buy a small practical fuel-efficient car in America anymore even if you wanted to when we lived in Brussels for example we owned a Toyota iGo which was perfect for our family but Toyota doesn't even sell this model in America hmm I wonder why so where does it all end when everyone is driving tanks tanks what a funny joke right except that this is one of the largest Sherman tanks from World War II and this is a Cadillac Escalade yeah incidentally the website where I got these images of cars SUVs and trucks but not tanks is carsides.com an excellent and addictive site that lets you easily compare the sizes of many different kinds of vehicles they were also nice enough to let me use their vehicle photos in this video so check them out I put a link in the description but like just type in carsized.com yourself it's really not that hard it's incredibly depressing that SUVs were marketed as being safer because their classification as light trucks has been disastrous for actual safety one of the most dangerous things about SUVs is their bumper height American cars are required to have bumpers between 16 to 20 inches off the ground but surprise light trucks don't have to deal with that regulation so they can have their bumpers pretty much as high as they want SUVs were also stiffer Than Cars the original light trucks were built to haul or tow heavy weights which means they needed a heavier stiffer chassis rather than crumpling in a crash like a car frame which distributes energy and acts as a protective cushion the chassis on a light truck acted like a battering ram and the people inside became the crumple Zone combine that with a high bumper and you run into a problem known as crash compatibility when two normal sized cars crash into each other they are compatible in that their safety features are pretty much aligned and designed to work together which provides more protection to the drivers of both cars but when a regular car in an SUV crash into each other the bigger higher stiffer vehicle doesn't line up with the smaller car's safety features which can make the crash more deadly of course it's even worse for anyone outside of a car when a person gets hit by a car they're typically thrown onto the hood this can cause injury to the lower legs which sucks but generally doesn't kill you at low speeds but the higher front end of an SUV means the impact is centered near the Torso and head which is much more deadly people hit by SUVs are also more likely to hit their head on the ground or go under the vehicle thanks to their High ground clearance and in case it isn't obvious it's a bad thing to be underneath a gigantic heavy light truck and what makes this all even more insane is that most of the features that make SUV drivers feel safe actually make them or dangerous many buyers say they wanted an SUV because you sit up high while driving them which gives better visibility but that's not really true it might make it easier to see farther down the road but it's actually harder to see stuff right in front of you the advocacy group kids and cars put 17 children in front of an SUV and they couldn't see any of them from the driver's seat since the introduction of SUVs there has been a massive increase in what are called front overs a person usually a child getting run over by an SUV by a driver who can't even see them kids and cars have been documenting the rise of front overs in America and the results are shocking but before we move on I want you to look at this chart and understand what you're seeing this is saying that over a 10-year period over 500 American children were killed by being run over by SUVs usually by their own parents in their own driveways this is insane this is legitimately insane in any civilized society this information alone would be enough to regulate the hood design of SUVs and light trucks but instead the industry solution for this is proximity sensors and front-facing cameras because car companies are happy for any regulations that means they can sell you more stuff now I personally believe that drivers should be looking at the road and not a screen inside their SUV but hey what do I know I'm just a weirdo who objects to children being run over by trucks if you agree with me then you can sign the consumer reports petition Link in the description light trucks are usually four-wheel drive as well which is pitched as another safety feature four-wheel drive is great for accelerating in Slippery conditions like mud but what four-wheel drive doesn't do is help you slow down that means overconfident SUV drivers can go as fast as they want in bad conditions as long as they're not planning on stopping maybe that's fine in a rural setting but these lanyards are all over American cities I once drove across Texas in the middle of a once in a decade snowstorm and there was literally a light truck in the ditch every few miles while my rear-wheel drive Oldsmobile push through without any issues though part of this is because SUV owners are more likely to be bad drivers that's not just my opinion car companies paid millions of dollars for market research to find this out people who gravitate toward SUVs tend to be less confident in their driving abilities and rely on the large size of the vehicle to keep them quote unquote safe at the expense of everyone else what made this even worse is that in the early days most SUV buyers were [ __ ] I'm not being flippant and suggesting that all SUV drivers were [ __ ] but [ __ ] were literally the primary target market when automakers wanted to make SUVs mainstream Auto industry research determined that the average Light Truck purchaser was obsessed with status less likely to volunteer or feel a strong connection to their communities less giving less oriented toward others more afraid of crime more likely to text and drive more likely to take risks while driving and more likely to think stuff like this looks cool what thought ten years ago a baby-faced Mark Rober put plastic animals on the side of the road to see which ones were most likely to get hit he found that some drivers would purposefully swerve to run over the animals and 89 of those people who tried to murder animals were driving SUVs yep the market research is correct these people are [ __ ] but you know what SUV drivers are typically not outdoorsy SUVs are marketed for going off-road towing a boat or for going camping but in reality 75 percent of light truck owners tow something once a year or less and 70 go off-road once a year or less in fact the vast majority of SUVs are driven in cities and will never go off-road they are just used for everyday tasks like commuting and buying groceries well I guess they go off-road when the driver is texting and plows into a building or something the most outdoorsy people I've met those who regularly go hiking or camping Drive something like a Subaru Outback wagon because their actual adventurous people not just a bunch of posers and SUVs and Americans seem to think you need some giant truck to tow anything but you see all kinds of regular cars with trailers in Europe and the Dutch in particular are famous for vacationing with their Caravans pulled by normal cars though this recent example was extreme even by Dutch standards and the reactions to this video will be extremely predictable people will inevitably claim that these SUVs and pickup drivers need that space for all the stuff they're hauling that somehow SUVs and pickup trucks went from Niche rural vehicles to literally the most popular vehicles on the road because of some magical demographic shift that turned every American suburbanite into this guy wait why does he have six fingers and if you do live in a rural area you might need to drive a light truck and obviously that's fine and I don't care but we're talking about Suburbia here and come on you know as well as I do that the vast vast vast majority of drivers in these light trucks are carrying exactly two things their briefcase and their fat ass and most people don't use a briefcase anymore this is particularly true with so-called luxury SUVs we all know these aren't hauling [ __ ] right and the Mercedes G Wagon has to be the absolute dumbest luxury vehicle ever made I can just imagine the conference room at Mercedes when these were designed how ugly uncomfortable and inefficient Kevin makes this sing and still have these rich fault will buy it we can't just ignore this and say it's personal choice because SUVs are a huge problem for cities oversized SUVs take up more space and make congestion worse longer Vehicles mean fewer cars get through a light which means more people gunning it to get through a yellow or red and subsequently slamming into more people trying to cross the street and parking which is already disastrous in cities is even worse because of SUVs which take up more space at the curb London that's real London is having problems with street parking because SUVs are getting longer so fewer parked Vehicles can fit on a street hell even in Fake London these stupid things don't even fit in the giant parking spaces so new parking spots in new developments are being made bigger which means bigger parking lots and even more paved surfaces in our cities and you'll often find light trucks parked in driveways because they don't fit in a typical garage SUVs are wider too look at how much less space a cyclist has in a world full of light trucks and the cyclist can't see or be seen over the roof of the truck either these vehicles make the streets more dangerous for everyone outside of a car and put even more pressure on already crowded city streets of course SUVs don't just hit people in bike Lanes or crosswalks their off-road capability means it's easier for them to jump the curb and hit people on the sidewalk where they're supposed to be safe it's very likely that more SUVs on the road is a significant factor in the recent increase in pedestrian deaths in the USA a trend that's not being seen in countries with sane vehicle sizes and SUVs aren't just killing the people they run into they're also doing it through pollution the Auto industry specifically promoted SUVs to avoid Cafe emission standards it's so bad that SUVs are the second largest factor in the rise in emissions from 2010 to 2018 and if SUVs were a country they would rank 7th in the world for carbon emissions which is more than the Netherlands and UK combined okay I really don't want to think about the Netherlands in the UK combined SUV apologists like to point out that modern SUVs are more fuel efficient than early models but that comes from overall improvements in technology thanks to advancements in materials and Manufacturing but a big heavy SUV is always going to use more fuel and have higher emissions than the same technology applied to a lighter car this is just basic physics it takes more work to move something heavier this is going to cause a huge problem with the necessary transition to electric vehicles too because the heavier the vehicle the more batteries are required to move it and the bigger and heavier those batteries need to be for the electric Hummer the batteries alone weigh more than an entire typical European car a few years ago I made a video about the adoption of electric micro cars here in the Netherlands and I often see light electric trucks like these on the streets as well but the gut reaction from many North Americans is to call these death machines but why it's because North Americans have been conditioned to believe that you need a large heavy vehicle in order to be safe on the roads we should be moving to lighter electric vehicles that require smaller batteries with better range lower cost and fewer resources needed to make them but we're going in exactly the opposite direction where even the smallest Tesla has a curb weight of over 1600 kilograms significantly more than a similarly sized Toyota Yaris sedan and okay I gotta say what the hell is up with a sport in sport utility vehicle are we really that stupid there is absolutely nothing sporty about any of this oh yeah feel the burn so at this point in the video I've likely pissed off every truck owner and they're furiously writing long angry comments about how they absolutely require an SUV for whatever reason so let's say you live somewhere car dependent you have 2.3 kids routinely need to stop by Home Depot and you want to head out into the Wilderness more than once a decade well I've got good news because I've got the perfect vehicle for you a station wagon the thing that literally every family use before auto manufacturers convince people to buy the light trucks that made them more money uh that's an estate car for all you Brits out there station wagons are more useful than SUVs for almost everyone in a city they're easier to get in and out of they're more maneuverable and much easier to park in cities where again almost all SUV driving takes place SUVs are built to be cool and curvy so that aging gen xers can pretend they never became parents but this means that the actual usable space inside is shockingly low the monstrously large Cadillac Escalade has 25.5 cubic feet of carrying space behind the last row of seats which is less than something like a Subaru Outback or Audi A6 Allroad both of which have over 30. but the numbers are deceiving because the fancy design means the usable space in an Escalade is surprisingly small of course you can take out the rear seats of an Escalade but you can fold down the seats of a station wagon too SUVs hold much less than you'd think because so much space is wasted by fancy styling unnecessarily High ground clearance car smashing bumpers and pedestrian killing hoods and of course I'm not saying that you can't carry stuff in an Escalade only that you don't need an Escalade to carry stuff have you ever tried to move a bunch of stuff with a station wagon I have many times it's a wide open rectangular cuboid of spacious goodness a station wagon is a superior vehicle for families more storage space better fuel efficiency and plenty of room for kids which is why they're still very common in Europe the reason you don't see station wagons in the US anymore is because automakers could make more money convincing Jennifer Mike Dave Amy and Kimberly that station wagons were uncool because apparently this is cool and if you really need a lot of space or extra seating on a regular basis a minivan beats an SUV every time I've seen this myself when we once booked a large taxi to the airport and they sent a Suburban our luggage wouldn't even fit in the back and we had to put some of it on our laps but when we got to our destination our taxi was a minivan and everything fit comfortably in the back a minivan will hold more stuff and it's easier for passengers to get in and out of too because the doors are bigger and it's lower to the ground but after a few decades Americans are getting bored of SUVs so automakers are trying to promote pickup trucks as the new family vehicle which is even more ridiculous at least SUVs had a cover over your cargo of course Ford knows this is ridiculous too while they were promoting the F-150 pickup to Americans as the perfect family vehicle they use the exact same marketing language to market the seven seat s Max to Europeans because European regulations make it harder to profit from upselling people to light trucks let's be really clear here American automakers are not promoting SUVs and pickup trucks because they're practical they do it because it makes them more money it's very apparent in Europe that actual trades people you know the people who actually need a vehicle with lots of space on a regular basis almost universally choose vans a typical European van will easily carry more than a pickup truck and certainly more than an SUV and the lower bed is easier to load too I really struggle to understand how a DHL delivery driver can do his job with a Kangoo van but a middle-aged suburbanite thinks they need a Chevy Silverado to buy groceries and to be fair these Vans can get quite big but that space is used to make it efficiently carry lots of stuff and they still have a design that is safer in a crash and gives the driver good visibility proving that it is possible to provide all the goods and services the city needs without needlessly murdering people one of these vehicles is designed to efficiently carry lots of useful stuff while the other is designed to carry fragile egos and I'm not even gonna go into the fact that so many professionals here in the Netherlands whether they're a handyman or doing package delivery can do their job just fine using cargo bikes a pickup truck is mostly useful if you're loading heavy dirty items into the bed like on a farm or construction sites so outside of the US that's usually the only place you'll find them for almost any other use case for moving people or cargo a van or minivan is a better option frustrates me the most about all this is that when City Advocates complain about the insane growth in oversized trucks in our cities a bunch of people come out of the woodwork claiming that those drivers really need that cargo space but consider that the Ford F-150 was the single most popular vehicle sold in America in 2022 literally number one yet 40 years ago in 1982 the number one vehicle was the Ford Escort Are you seriously telling me the cargo hauling behavior of Americans has changed that much in 40 years are you really proposing that all of these empty pickup trucks you see all over the U.S and Canada with pristine shiny tailgates are just extremely careful construction workers that just happen to be between loads or is it the much more likely explanation that these people have been up sold on these vehicles by automakers looking to skirt regulations to make higher profits in fact these pickup trucks have become heavier and less practical over the past 40 years this axios article is a great read Link in the description but the best part is this graphic showing how the size of the truck bed has changed over the years these are clearly morphing from practical Farm Vehicles into status symbols for insecure suburbanites with a cargo fetish and to be perfectly blunt it's pretty insulting to our intelligence to suggest that all these new pickup trucks are really needed for hauling but as extended cab pickups become the new Suburban assault vehicles to Wine moms everywhere there's been a surge in interest in older pickup models as actual contractors seek vehicles that are more practical they are easier to load because they're lower to the ground easier to maneuver and park at job sites and the size of the bed is usually larger too you can still order a new pickup with a longer bed but they're a special order that can take months to arrive well you can drive an extended cab pickup off the lot today the only guy who shows up on the job site in the shiny new F-150 Raptor Super Crew is the owner's son whose cosplaying is a blue-collar laborer so SUVs and light trucks are oversized in Practical Vehicles which were heavily marketed to impressionable people because they make more money for automakers by skirting regulations and while the average SUV buyer in the early 2000s was likely a sociopath and or easily manipulated by marketing nowadays it's not so clear American automakers have literally turned off the production of station wagon sedans and smaller vehicles to focus almost exclusively on the more lucrative market for light trucks people argue that consumers prefer SUVs and automakers are just responding to demand but that demand is coming off the back of billions of dollars in advertising and marketing pushed because SUVs are artificially cheaper than they should be thanks to the light truck exemption and as the road safety arm race makes Vehicles bigger people aren't rationally concerned about their safety and gravitate toward larger vehicles to protect themselves so a new class of vehicle has emerged the crossover which is an SUV built on a car frame instead of a truck frame but fundamentally these are just cars that are bigger than they need to be cars with more ground clearance than is necessary cars with a higher bumper than is safe cars with lower fuel economy than if they were lighter but they're popular because people are rightfully scared about sharing the road with giant SUVs and pickup trucks so I can't really blame Americans for wanting to buy SUVs and crossovers today I would probably do the same thing if I were forced to live somewhere like this of course the most vulnerable people are those who can't participate in the arms race everyone who's not in a car so what are we gonna do about it the first solution is to close the light truck loophole that allows these ridiculous vehicles on the road in the first place light trucks should be required to meet all the same safety standards as every other passenger vehicle and they need to be safer in crashes a lighter and have much better fuel economy unfortunately the recent changes to the cafe standards in 2021 still have the light truck exemption in place and even some crossovers like the Honda CRV and Toyota RAV4 can be put in the light truck category depending on how they're configured the us could also remove the import restrictions and duties on light trucks that are still around today they're the reason why you won't see smaller more practical foreign-built trucks like these in American cities and you won't see these small electric trucks coming to Market there either what's also desperately needed for all vehicles is for pedestrian crash tests and crash compatibility to have a more prominent role in determining safety ratings and now that light trucks are mainstream Vehicles they should be tested for safety and fuel efficiency the exact same way that other vehicles are for example in the US the frontal crash test done by the nhtsa are only done with vehicles in the same weight class why do we accept this it's not like SUVs have their own class of roads all vehicles share the same roads so they should all be crash compatible with one another I'd like to see different classes of vehicles tested against each other and to dock points if a vehicle caused a significant damage to vehicles of another class cities in particular should be doing a lot more to regulate SUVs they go against every goal that cities have to reduce the effects of climate change to reduce pedestrian deaths to reduce traffic to maintain roads and to make best use of The Limited space available City should tax Vehicles by weight and limit vehicles with bumpers that are too high or require commercial driver's licenses to operate them parking permits for longer Vehicles should be more expensive to compensate for the Lost space licensing and ensuring SUVs should be more expensive too and since a big part of road safety is the kinetic energy of the crash which comes from mass and velocity than if the weight keeps increasing we should be decreasing the speed in other words cities can and should be lowering speed limits in response to heavier vehicles these are all great ideas but right now cities are doing basically nothing to stop the spread of SUVs and pickup trucks here in the Netherlands cars are taxed more depending on their weight but the increase is minimal and North American cities are doing even less Washington DC will introduce a higher vehicle registration fee for heavier vehicles but this only applies to the absolute highest weight class of over 6 000 pounds so with effectively nothing being done to slow the adoption of heavier Vehicles some people are taking matters into their own hands a group calling themselves the tire extinguishers have started deflating the tires of SUVs in Europe it's unclear whether this is a crime their stated goal is to make it impossible to own an SUV in the city now obviously this is really extreme Behavior but but let's be clear this group only exists because of the complete and utter regulatory silence that has come from City and federal governments when it comes to curbing the problems caused by SUVs in cities and even if the U.S is too far gone European cities need to deal with this issue immediately SUVs and crossovers now account for 40 percent of all vehicles sold in the EU a 900 increase since 2001. I don't think Europeans realize how bad this can get I hear people justifiably complaining about the infestation of giant Land Rovers in European cities but look at how small this Range Rover looks next to a full-sized American SUV needs to get ahead of SUVs and pickup trucks now before more Europeans end up under them fundamentally SUVs are a plague on cities they're impractical dangerous expensive and polluting but car manufacturers have spent billions of dollars to convince you to think otherwise don't fall for it let your local Representatives know you're not okay with these Suburban assault vehicles taking over our roads ultimately this really is about Freedom the freedom to get around however we want the freedom to drive a small and efficient car without worrying about the road safety arms race or even better the freedom to not to have to drive to get around by walking cycling in public transit without the constant threat of serious injury or death from bloated oversized trucks and finally since the typical light truck driver is so status obsessed let's use that to our advantage so when you see someone driving a truck like this let them know they look like a ping idiot get a station wagon loser if you've made it this far into the video without rage quitting then you might just be ready to learn more about good urbanism it's not about hating cars it's about building wonderful cities that are designed for people though admittedly the smaller the cars the better but you don't just have to take my word for it online urbanism has become a movement and we're spoiled for Choice when it comes to Great creators these days and did you know that many of these urbanist creators are on nebula the most recent Edition is City nerd who makes weekly video essays about cities in the U.S and abroad and if you like this video you'll enjoy his video about pickup trucks in the U.S you'll also find RM Transit a toronto-based Creator who makes videos about you guessed it Transit as well as City beautiful a channel run by an actual urban planning professor in California watching these creators on nebula is the best way to support their work and you'll also get access to nebula plus content like the city beautiful series great cities about some of the greatest cities in the world a series that's only available on nebula a subscription to nebula gives you access to over 150 other creators who make videos and podcasts all ad free and sponsor free you'll also get access to nebula classes which used to be a paid add-on but is now included for free if you use the link in the description classes are a great way to learn from your favorite creators about something they're an expert in or something they're passionate about my own videos are also released on nebula first several days ahead of their release on YouTube and of course without any ads if this sounds good to you then sign up at go.nebula.tv not just bikes for a discount and get all of nebula including classes for as little as thirty dollars per year thanks so much to nebula for supporting this channel I'd also like to thank my supporters on nebula and patreon who pay me to piss off everyone in Texas if you'd like to support the channel visit nebula.tv not just bikes or patreon.com not just bikes

Channel: Not Just Bikes

Views: 5,606,227

Keywords: urban planning, road safety, suvs, light trucks, suv safety

Id: jN7mSXMruEo

Length: 35min 27sec (2127 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023