Big Trucks are Evil

Giant pickups are killing pedestrians and no one seems to care

If you’ve been driving around the US lately, you might have noticed an alarming trend in the size of vehicles around you.

The number of big trucks in this country seems to have grown exponentially, with even the smallest trucks in the line dwarfing sizes from decades ago.

In a Kelley Blue Book survey from 2024, it was found that 47% of people in the U.S. drive trucks, and that 41% are alarmed at the size that trucks have gotten.

Size and popularity seem to be correlated here, accelerating the move toward size even in a time when parking and urban sprawl in cities need to be reduced and contained.

The questions still remains: Why are people buying these trucks? Is the size the driver of their popularity?

You can make an argument that lower gas prices lead to more truck purchases, but sometimes that doesn’t seem to be true. In California, for instance, there seem to be just as many large pickups as fuel-efficient Priuses. So even if they can ignore the ethical problems with owning such a truck, how are they affording them at the pump?

So what gives?

The Danger of Big Trucks

The sheer size of these trucks almost guarantees issues for traffic safety. This includes not only worse outcomes for general traffic collisions, but more critically for incidents involving pedestrians.

The stats back this up: A pedestrian collision with a vehicle that has a hood over 40 inches is 45% more deadly than ones with lower hoods. Vertical truck grilles also create blind spots in these tall cars, leading to worst-case scenarios for pedestrians as they dodge vehicles in long crossings.

Measuring the height of these giant trucks, it’s easy to see that a small child would be hidden behind the hood. Plus, the sheer force of this truck combined with its clearance is an immediate danger in a collision situation. Pedestrians don’t stand a chance.

Unsurprisingly, pedestrian deaths have risen 80% along with the popularity of these giant trucks. If mowing down pedestrians with large, wasteful vehicles isn’t evil, I don’t know what is.

United States car culture seems to be in a race to the bottom, everyone trying to buy a bigger car in the hopes that they aren’t the ones that are hurt in a possible accident. You don’t have to be a philosopher to understand that this is an issue for society as a whole, one that has to be curbed by regulation in a market gone crazy.

The Only Need for Big Trucks

If you have to tow something, A truck is probably necessary. If you have to haul a bunch of things, then some sort of truck is helpful. Most of these enormous trucks are disturbingly empty, though, absolutely devoid of the payload that would make them worthwhile to have.

Instead of actually being of service, these trucks have instead become symbols of evil, of a mentality that is causing significant harm to society.

The fact that there hasn’t been any significant legislation about the size of these trucks means that they’ll just keep getting bigger. And bigger. And BIGGER (There has been some legislation, but no action taken yet. More about this at the end of the article).

The sheer size of these big trucks is so irrationally in defiance of the needs of our cities that it sometimes reaches a comical level. Driving down the coast highways in California, you actually have to dodge trucks that extend well out into the driving lane from the diagonal spots they’re parked in.

Once you accept the fact that big truck drivers have no regard for the rest of the society, all of this behavior makes sense. If you truly believe that you are the only one that matters, and that the rest of society should bow down to your will, then you drive the biggest truck you possibly can, extending your philosophy into your chosen vehicle that announces your symbolic “screw you” out into the world.

The fact that this comes at a time when U.S. cities need to reduce parking and create denser, more walkable places is an attack on cities, on safety, and on the efficiency of our transportation networks.

Instead, smaller cars and pedestrians now have to dodge large cars in a transportation race to the bottom.

A study in The Economist found that these large, heavy vehicles are responsible for almost half the vehicle deaths on roads in the United States. Nearly 40,000 people die every year on America’s roads, and big trucks are a big contributor to that fact that America’s roads are almost twice as dangerous as other first-world countries.

The YouTube channel Not Just Bikes recently made a video about these trucks that drives this point home.

Selfishness has always been the American curse. Now it can become its downfall. Welcome to transportation hell.

Note: There has been some legislation about the size of these trucks in Congress as of 2024, but no action has been taken as of the writing of this article.

For more information, check out this Streetsblog article.