In the process we've made cars huge and hugely expensive, so it's not all roses.
The rest of the world buys reasonably sized vehicles well served by the automakers.
Not exclusively, no. But a regulatory regime considering only occupants' safety and not the safety of the other party in crashes is inherently biased towards larger vehicles. And various other regulations favor large SUVs/trucks over cars, from historical fuel efficiency rules to more recent depreciation schedules.
Of course that growth rate is still nothing compared to some pickup/off-road models. Every time I'm in NA I am shocked by the size of these behemoths. The crazy part is that more and more people are buying these things in my corner of Europe, preferably if they live in an old village with roads that are barely 2m wide per lane.
Some of these child decapitators have worse visibility and maneuverability than (EU) trucks. Ffs, if an 8-year old runs infront of your F250's grille they become invisible. This would be a valuable area of regulation imo, instead of mandatory speed limiters and breathalizers.
I want and need something that I can drive out into the pasture, up the hill, to the row of oaks at the back of my property, whilst towing a log splitter, so I can saw down two oak trees and turn them into a cord of firewood that I can then load into the bed and drive back to my home to stack on the firewood rack.
You worry about your life and let other people worry about theirs.
If your hypothetical 8 year old's parents were worried about his or hers, it wouldn't be an issue to begin with.
There is no practical reason that pickups need to have flat grilles made of solid metal and very little practical reason to have the hood be so tall in the first place. You could have your 3000kg vehicles with a torque-heavy V8 without unnecessarily endangering others.
ps: You might think differently after the 100th time you had to emergency brake and drive onto the grass because of a pickup that takes up 1.3 lanes going full speed around a blind corner.