By this logic what is wrong with all those people getting up early and driving to work, don’t they know some of us don’t have a job! Where do they get off?
This ignores every laborer that requires heavy tools to complete their daily task. The people that keep your buildings and homes comfortable, for example, can easily have hundreds of pounds of tools.
Steve the Office Manager doesn't need a 2.5 ton pickup truck with a 6-foot-tall frontend that needs a forward-facing camera because the visibility is so shit that there's no way to avoid splattering all of the children on the 2 mile trip through populated neighborhoods between his house and office.
And yes, Steve is a representative buyer of big trucks these days. Actual working professionals want to be able to actually see where they're going, so they buy vehicles with short frontends and high capacity, like the Ford Transit.
A Edwards poll of Pickup owners in 2018 showed that 75% have never hauled anything, and 70% use the bed less than once a year (ie, never). The sales numbers bear this out as well, pickups with actual usable bed space are very unpopular, almost all the units that are sold have crew cabs, with about as much room in the back for hauling as a minivan with the bench down.
Another case of complete disconnect from reality. Many tradesmen use their own personal vehicles. If you want to call it a 'company car' because the commute involves transport of professional tools, then go ahead and play that semantic game.
>And yes, Steve is a representative buyer of big trucks these days. Actual working professionals want to be able to actually see where they're going, so they buy vehicles with short frontends and high capacity, like the Ford Transit.
Something you're so intimately familiar with, that you totally overlooked that there actually are reasons 'anyone should need to use a personal car for commuting inside urban areas.'
>Steve the Office Manager doesn't need a 2.5 ton pickup truck with a 6-foot-tall frontend that needs a forward-facing camera because the visibility is so shit that there's no way to avoid splattering all of the children on the 2 mile trip through populated neighborhoods between his house and office.
And you probably don't need to have your heat set past 50 degrees in winter or 90 degrees in summer, but I bet you use more energy than you need, helping destroy the environment and kill off animals. You don't need to buy lots of things, but won't someone THINK of the splattered CHILDREN!!!
>A Edwards poll of Pickup owners in 2018 showed that 75% have never hauled anything, and 70% use the bed less than once a year (ie, never). The sales numbers bear this out as well, pickups with actual usable bed space are very unpopular, almost all the units that are sold have crew cabs, with about as much room in the back for hauling as a minivan with the bench down.
The change in pick-up trucks to be massive oversized behemoths including those with large cabs is the result of mental illness of those passing CAFE standards which made it effectively illegal to produce a small efficient truck.
A personally owned vehicle used to commute your tools to work could semantically call a 'professional vehicle' if you want to play games, but it's still commuting with your personal vehicle.
So who, really, is the common man?
It takes a serious disconnect from reality to make the statement 'There's no reason that anyone should need to use a personal car for commuting inside urban areas.' Either someone remarkably rich or naive.
And at the end of the day, are you really willing to strip people of the freedom to drive through an urban area?
People who "just want to feel in control" are, essentially, externalising the cost of their choices while having better options available to them. There's not an upside for anyone.
Whereas people who need to drive, where work couldn't be done at all if they didn't, would actually be more efficient if they had clearer roads to get around on. It would save them fuel costs and time.
Really though, I sense that your argument isn't in good faith. A nuanced look at this can easily see that some activities in a city require a vehicle to add value, and others don't. Lumping the two together and citing freedom (to externalise the cost of your choices on to others) is a little like using tradespeople as human shields.
Yes, for exactly the same reason as I'm willing to strip people of the freedom to practice shooting at elementary schools.