Here’s a wildly unpopular idea – too many people own pickup trucks and SUVs, and we should do something about that.
Let me start by saying that I actually like pickup trucks. I learned to drive on a blue-and-some-rust coloured ‘78 Chevy. For several years I drove an early-1990s Dodge Ram 150, before I bought a Subaru Forester that gave me enough cargo capacity with the advantages of more seats and much better gas mileage.
Pickups are nice. You’ve got a high vantage point. You can help your friends move. You can haul all your purchases home from IKEA in one trip.
But we don’t need as many pickups and SUVs as we have on the road right now. We’re wasting gas, and we’re burning up our planet in the name of convenience and ego.
I don’t expect this to ever happen, but every pickup and SUV over a certain engine size/frame size should be slapped with an immediate tax. At least $500, and scaling up rapidly with the size of the vehicle and its fuel consumption, with the proceeds going to improved transit, bike lanes, and supporting car share co-ops.
It would make our roads safer, and our air cleaner, if it pushed a few more people towards buying lower-gas-mileage minivans and hatchbacks.
You know this, too. You know, even if you like pickups, even if you love your big SUV, that 99 per cent of the time you just don’t need it.
We live in the friggin’ suburbs, folks. We don’t need that much hauling capacity. When a gravelly-voiced actor tells you how much torque the new Dodge Ram has, you may imagine yourself hauling tree stumps or driving up a rugged logging road surrounded by red cedars.
But in reality, where do we take our trucks and SUVs? We take them to the store for groceries. We drive to and from work. We sit and wait for the light to change. That’s the vast, vast majority of all the driving we’ll do.
No one likes to admit that image and marketing played a part in how we choose our vehicles… but it does. Otherwise there’d be no point to all those car and truck ads. We want to see ourselves as tough, independent, outdoorsy. But face it – most of us aren’t.
I’d exempt from the tax anyone planning to use their truck, SUV, or van for work purposes. Farmers, contractors, veterinarians and others need a big truck to haul around tools and goods, and that’s fine.
Industry has to take some of the blame for the situation we find ourselves in. It’s not just that we’re buying more trucks and SUVs, it’s that those vehicles are getting bigger and bigger.
Trends have driven the replacement of the mini-van over the past decade to the point that there are barely any of those boxy people-movers left. Sedans are also suffering. If you want something with five seats and a big cargo area, you have almost no choices – except for a pickup or an SUV.
(When I finally replaced my early-2000s Subaru Forester with a new model last year, I found myself driving not a jumped-up station wagon like the old Forester, but a wider, heavier, crossover SUV. I didn’t need or want that.)
And that’s literally killing people.
I don’t mean through air pollution and global warming (though that also kills people) I mean by vehicles literally hitting people.
A study last year in the U.S. found that deadly SUV-pedestrian accidents were up 81 per cent from 2009 to 2016. Lethal collisions with cars were up 41 per cent, with pickups 32 per cent. Lethal crashes with vans and minivans were up just 15 per cent.
So that’s my argument. We should tax bigger vehicles, use transit more, and get industry to revamp towards smaller, lighter, more fuel-efficient vehicles that serve the same purpose, including new versions of those old standbys – mini vans and big but light hatchbacks – a.k.a. station wagons.