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It's already been proven time and time again.
Emission standards.
Emission standards are based on size and weight. Bigger vehicles have less strict emission standards so rather than giving a fuck about the environment car manufacturers found a loophole by just making everything bigger.
Something people overlook when the word "loophole" is used in federal regulation. Mot of the time those loopholes are intentionally put there so that the industry that is the target of regulation doesn't have to do anything. And since congressmen don't actually write regulation, understand what they are regulating, nor give a fuck about anything besides getting paid, they all vote for legislation that has those "loopholes," and can shrug their shoulders when the "intent" of the regulation is ignored.
We don't need a theory, the answer is because of the chicken tax and the CAFE light truck loophole.
(I did not read the article)
Another interesting contributing factor are safety regulations and their knock-on effects, which weren't immediately obvious when they were implemented.
For instance, in an effort to reduce pedestrian fatalities from frontal collisions, vehicles in the US were mandated to have at least three inches of crumple space between the hood of the car and the engine block. The thinking being that more crumple depth would help prevent fatalities and serious injuries that occurred when a pedestrian hit the hood of the vehicle, which would deflect, allowing those soft human bits to continue right into the (not soft at all) engine block.
Well increasing the height of the hood of the vehicle meant that they had to raise the A-pillar, which raised the height of the window opening on the doors, since the bottom of the side windows generally lines up with the hood on passenger vehicles. This meant that the side body panels of the vehicle just generally increased in size, and in an effort to maintain a proportional look, the wheels also had to increase in size otherwise they would look weirdly small. And to maintain a comparable amount of visibility out the windshield and side windows, the roof of the vehicle had to be raised to compensate for the new position of the window sill in the doors.
So something that was intended to just add an inch or two of height to the hoods of existing passenger vehicles to satisfy a safety need, ended scaling up the entire vehicle.
It’s also (western) safety standards. Even small cars are larger; compare an 80s Corolla to a 90s to a 2010s. Compare bmw 3-series across the same time span. To make cars safer for occupants, you need more metal and more space. So they got larger.
So they got larger
. . . to survive crashes with trucks and SUVs. It's an absurdly vicious circle.
There are stil legitimate reasons for those size vehicles to be on the road so I think it's still good to have safety for all sizes, but I see what you mean about spiraling out of control easily.
God its nice to see actual articles in this comm. Mods, can we please place limits restricting memes?
That article is intentionally stupid. He says the reasons in the first paragraph ($$$$) and then ignores them. It's the money, stupid.
It's comfort, primarily... Americans are big and bigger cars are more comfortable if you're less flexible.
Cars aren't getting bigger in Europe, only in the US. In Europe, everyone is downsizing due to various restrictions.
I'm in Britain and there are definitely more large suvs than there used to be.
Cars are definitely getting bigger also in Europe
In Italy the most popular car is transitioning from the fiat panda (365 cm) to the jeep Renegade (425 cm)
And the newer model of the fiat panda that's coming out is 40 cm bigger
That'll be hilarious when they can no longer fit down their streets.
Just came from Italy and I absolutely loved how easy it was to see on the road, because all the cars were small.
But fight the large cars as much as you can, they're absolutely awful to live with.
it's already hard to fit a small car to park in the city, i don't understand how people can even think to buy a car that's longer than 4 meters. Roads and houses were built during the baby boom when cars weren't used by everyone, so for example in my area there are 0.8 car parks per family.
Then i see my cousin, living alone, single, no family buying a huge 5,5 meters SUV "because in the next three years i plan to move, bigger space is useful". Could rent a van for 100 euro a day instead of spending 10k euro extra for a monster...
Dunno, in Lithuania and around they are getting bigger, not sure about the western Europe though. But seeing every car brand making bigger versions of each car (Yaris cross, Peugeot 2008, Volkswagen t-cross and many more)makes me think they probably are getting bigger there as well.