These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us

Get a year of Nebula for only $30: go.nebula.tv/notjustbikes Consumer Reports petition: action.consumerreports.org/20221116_stop_blindspot… CityNerd on pickup trucks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIy5uv5-VrE Truck babies can go cry somewhere else. I don't have time for losers.

One thing that really bothers me is that I'm blinded by headlights during nighttime driving because every car on the road is higher than mine.

"the roads are too narrow" "cyclists take up too much space" "we need more parking" - people driving 15-foot-wide monstrosities

The true irony is that full size SUV's are more common in a city then in the rural areas.

A friend's daughter, a school teacher, was "T-boned" by a 4x4 full-size pickup last week. The truck ran a stop sign and its high front bumper hit her at shoulder-height sitting in the driver's seat, sending her car across two lanes and into a field. She died instantly. The driver of the truck walked away claiming the sun was in his eyes.

Most of my coworkers that buy these monstrosities, look down at my “small” car, and say they buy them so they can “drive over cars like mine”. And I find, locally at least, people do drive them like weapons, or at least with reckless abandon. It makes driving to work more anxiety inducing than it already was.

When I moved to Los Angeles (from Europe) and needed to rent a car for a week, the renter was super excited to tell me that I got an upgrade and could have a bigger car than the one I ordered. To which I said absolutely not, I wanted the smaller car because we're in a city and I want to be able to park easily. Never saw someone so confused!

fun fact from florida: alligators do in fact climb extremely well. not usually trees, but chain link fences do nothing to stop them.

I am not immune to the appeal of an absolutely massive machine roaring down the line at impossible speeds. But like. That's why i'm into✨trains ✨

The point made about kids being hidden by the front bumpers of SUVs (9:40) ... it's not just kids. I'm a wheelchair user and going past an SUV is a TERRIFYING experience. More than once I've intentionally waited on the pavement before crossing in front of an SUV I think is about to pull into the road because I KNOW they can't see me. I've nearly been hit in supermarket car parks twice. The first time I went past a parked SUV and realised the bumper was over my head was sobering. I started using my chair a bit over two years ago because of chronic illness. Before I got sick, I cycled, so I've always had a healthy wariness of SUVs. But the sheer sense of vulnerability that comes from being so low to the ground a driver couldn't see me if I were RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEM... that's a whole different beast. I'm in the UK btw. Bigger cars are slightly less ubiquitous here than the States, but not by much. I can't drive for medical reasons. Thank goodness we have decent public transport - I would have absolutely no independence or autonomy if I were anywhere even slightly more car dependent. I'm not even anti car. I have a Blue Badge, that gives me access to disabled parking in whichever car I'm in. Cars are useful in a lot of cases. But my mum has a Renault Clio, which is wonderfully compact, and yet I can EASILY get my chair in and out of it without any assistance from the back seat. This would be challenging in a taller vehicle, and impossible in a flatbed or similar. Basically - SUVs are terrifying, horrifically dangerous for me, and would actively make my life harder if they were the only car available on the UK car market.

As one of those niche rural “light” truck drivers I don’t understand why anyone who doesn’t need one would want one. They don’t fit in garages, eat gas like a bottomless pit, and are so much harder to park and maneuver.

We know someone who's 4 year old child was killed in a crosswalk. They were walking as a family and their daughter was walking just behind the dad. The SUV thought everyone was through the crosswalk and drove right over the child and killed her. She didn't see her. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

My old man actually ordered a single cab pickup to do pallet loads in his local area. You won't believe how many actual trades people asked about it when he got it delivered. Really shows how the intended audience of the pickup is getting ignored.

"one of this vehicles is designed to carry lots of stuff, while the other is designed to carry fragile egos" made my day

I worry that if we started giving cars both a "safety" score (how dangerous it is to the driver) and a "danger" score (how dangerous it is to other drivers), truck drivers would brag about their danger score.

Another consequence of higher bumpers is higher headlights, few things are worse than driving at night with a truck or SUV behind you, its headlights at exactly the same height as your rear mirrors

ok, now I get the Futurama joke about "registering a grosly polluting robot as a light truck"

One thing I was waiting for you to say but never did: estate cars (station wagons) have another key advantage over SUVs. Their roofs are lower, so if you need to put something on the roof rack, like a kayak or a hang glider, it's possible for an average sized person. As an outdoors person myself and a station wagon owner I was so glad to hear someone sing their praises. I sleep in the back of mine when I'm out on an adventure sometimes. You actually get to use the extra space that comes with a long vehicle.

For me in Pittsburgh, it's the headlights on these vehicles that have driven me nuts at this point. We have a lot of winding, older, sometimes ambiguous road designs that don't mesh very well with this new trend of aggressively bright headlights. When these headlights get mounted 2-3ft higher compared to your typical car, you're bound to eat an eye-full of lumens that can seriously mess up your night vision!

What's really annoying is how electric cars seem to be chasing the "bigger is better" model as well, at least in the USA. It's a known fact that lighter and smaller is far better for electric cars, especially if you want them to travel longer distances.