SUVs should be banned, or taxed the point of economic non-viability. The fact that such a deadly category of vehicle, on top of being much less energy efficient, is being allowed to take over the market, is completely inane.
For one, there is just the mass: yes, it makes it safer for the SUV driver, but at the expense of the smaller cars/bikes/pedestrians.
But there is another factor. When I learned to drive 40 years ago, I took it for granted that most of the time I could look through the car in front of me, and often the car in front of that, to anticipate changes in traffic conditions. Now I mostly see the rear of the large vehicle in front of me and no further.
A better analogy is sitting at a concert and complaining that the people are standing in front of you.
SUVs are allowed and expected to be on the road. Standing in a movie theater is not.
But even that's not entirely true that people inside the SUV are safe because you can also look up the history of "rollover deaths". In an accident an SUV is a big immovable object, right until it isn't anymore and then it's a very heavy thing with a weird center of gravity. If an SUV tips over somehow in a collision, or worse rolls over itself more than once, that often has spelled death for the SUV's occupants. There's been more safety measures and center of gravity balancing and rollover cages added to SUVs since the height of rollover deaths in the 1990s, but the brinksmanship of "the safest option is to be inside the SUV" moving "everyone" to SUVs for their own skin, increases the likelihood of SUV versus SUV accidents and the return of rollover death statistics.
SUVs are unnecessarily large and heavy, dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists, blocking the view for other drivers, causing more wear to the street surface and take up precious space when parking in cities. And for what? Hummers might be an exception, but most SUVs aren't even suitable for off-road use. Not that most owners even need that.
So yeah, it is absolutely insane for people to drive a car that causes so much harm to other road users and society as a whole for no good reason other than "me want BIG BIG CAR" and so it should be taxed to offset these effects.
How do you know what my capacity needs are?
> causing more wear to the street surface
Presumably, they also pay more in fuel taxes and vehicle sales tax, which is the main source of road funding?
Do you suggest taxing all vehicles by weight for this purpose?
The damage to roads scales O(n^3) by vehicle mass.
The death rates have already been spoken for.
The space taken by SUVs on roads and parking is subsidized by people who drive smaller cars, cyclists, and pedestrians.
Road-goers should not be subsidizing SUV owners.