"Easy button" - increase the weight/tax curve on vehicle registrations or gasoline tax. It should be more expensive to operate a large SUV.
There's the argument that they shouldn't be on the road due to their higher weight, but I'll disagree with that line of argument in advance.
Tangent: I'd love to replace my wife's BMW 2-series with a lightweight EV. Like an electric Miata or similar. But no such thing exists. :sad-trombone: The BMW is a porker - 3500lbs or so - beating that with an EV should be easy. It's our second car, so range could be a bit lower than some current offerings. No need for 300 mile range on a car that's primarily used to make 10 mile round-trips to the office during the week and 40 mile round-trips to family/friend's homes on the weekends.
I have two short friends who live in the city and have two kids. When their second arrived (and their first was a toddler) they replaced their sedan with a "mini"-SUV specifically because it became difficult to fit all the things required for taking both kids somewhere at once, especially if they were flying.
Right now, it's just too darn cheap to own one in the US, leading us to policy decisions that prevent smaller, more efficient, cheaper vehicles. And diminishing safety for non-car uses of public spaces. We'd all be safer, richer, and healthier if more of us could get by without owning large vehicles.
And note you said "mini-SUV". I'm more concerned about the Escalade EXTs and super-cab pickup trucks and things.
Makes sense, and fwiw that's not something I was trying to rebut. The article I read a while back argued that it might be good to relax the height/weight requirements on car seats. I can't remember exactly but I think it argued that a modest reduction in the requirements would result in an increase of ~30 deaths of child car occupants per-year and some larger number of injuries, but that the externality of reducing incentive for sizing up the family car would result in fewer childhood deaths in general (as well as reduce them for other age cohorts).
> Right now, it's just too darn cheap to own one in the US, leading us to policy decisions that prevent smaller, more efficient, cheaper vehicles. And diminishing safety for non-car uses of public spaces. We'd all be safer, richer, and healthier if more of us could get by without owning large vehicles.
Agreed. I'm really glad I live in a town with a centrally located bike path
> And note you said "mini-SUV". I'm more concerned about the Escalade EXTs and super-cab pickup trucks and things.
I ended up getting the same one (Hyundai Ioniq 5) but it's still larger than I'd like. Our other car is a Honda Fit, which--other than the legroom being a bit cramped and it not being electric--is the ideal car for me. The Ioniq doesn't have the insane completely vertical Everest-sized grills you see on the giant vehicles, but it's still much larger than the Fit. It also doesn't offer the driver the visibility of the Fit which makes me a smidge more nervous around small children, though it has cameras to somewhat compensate.