Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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Great! Now can we have this in the US too, please? Like, semis and other class-8 commercial trucks at least have a valid excuse to be massive (and even then, Europe manages to make their semis smaller than in the US while still having equivalent GVWRs by way of cabovers still being common over there, while cabovers are all but extinct in the US outside of trash trucks and fire trucks, basically); they're typically carrying payloads as heavy as 100k+ lbs in some cases, and need specialized licensing to operate on top of that (CDL requirements kick in at class-7, or GVWRs above 26k lbs in the US, class-8 is 33k+ lbs, and semis are typically 80k lb GVWRs), but pick-ups really don't need to be as big as they are, they have no excuse.
Plenty of people use their large pick up trucks for towing large trailers. Just today driving home from my farm I passed a dually truck towing a massive load of hay bales. A little Ford Maverick or Toyota Tacoma couldn't handle that, and a semi would be overkill.
They're just extremely impractical to drive in the city. I don't know why so many people buy massive trucks and mostly drive down small streets and cramped parking lots, not to mention they never hook up a trailer even once in their life.
I still remember when my state required large pickups to have commercial licenses and have commercial insurance. Adding a few extra hoops to jump through could be similar to abolishing pickups while still allowing reasonable exceptions, maybe requiring extra drivers training
I know it could be personal bias but a lot of pickup drivers don’t seem capable of staying in their lane, taking a turn, maneuver in a parking lot. We need to recognize these are huge vehicles and require a little extra skill to drive.
And they should lose that license if they leave the trailer hitch in while they’re parking over a sidewalk
Pick-ups didn't used to be huge though, see the S10/S15 for instance, a modern-day Colorado/Canyon dwarfs an S10/S15 from the final year they were sold in the US.