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Comment by geocrasher | Hacker News Reader

Don't hate SUV's. Don't hate trucks. If you're going to have disdain, have it for the people who drive them as status symbols or as compensation for... things. I own one vehicle, and it is an old SUV. I enjoy it because it's borderline a classic vehicle but it's also extremely economical for my use case. My use case does not factor in MPG. Plus, it's cool.

The only thing a video called "These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us" is going to do is get a bunch of people who dislike SUV's to agree with it. And that's fine. Any argument can be true if you want it bad enough, I guess.

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These things can all be true at the same time:

* SUVs are useful tools that can serve a real purpose

* Even within the same vehicle classes, cars are getting bigger and heavier in the name of safety and consumer preferences. This is disastrous for the safety of pedestrians and drivers of smaller vehicles

* Most people will never take their SUVs/trucks off-road, or use them for blue collar-type work, or tow anything more than once a year, for which they could easily rent a vehicle

* Thus, barring safety concerns (which are themselves exacerbated by the prevalence of massive vehicles on the roads) or an opportunistic desire for more interior space, most people would be equally well served by smaller cars.

* However, people are not buying smaller cars. This has the effect of “literally killing” sharply increasing numbers of pedestrians every year, and indirectly killing countless others through increased air pollution and greenhouse gas effects.

You can tow a small trailer with any car. That's the common way to haul the occasional big load in rural Western Europe. My relatives who live in the country side have one or borrow one from a friend when they need to stock up on fire wood, move a washing machine or carry away debris to the recycling center.

I also drive a SUV and find it alarming how much bigger a lifted F250/F350 next to me is. The way they drive can be pretty appalling... full throttle just to pass, switch 3 lanes without looking, intensionally cutting off small cars (2 things I saw in the past week!) I can't imagine how intimidating that would be in a sedan. Which I think is the point of lifting a huge truck?

Plenty of people in Dodge Chargers behave the same way. Idiots are going to be idiots no matter what they drive.

And this is kind of my point. BroMobiles != SUV's

There are other good arguments for disliking SUVs compared to all other consumer cars like crash incompatibly & bad vision for 'low' objects (children, other cars).

The video basically points the finger at you.

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