I’d prefer if they didn’t drive at all—they make great cargo bikes nowadays that can fit multiple passengers, and of course mass transit has no passenger limit. But if that’s not an option, they make vehicles that are designed for carrying large numbers of passengers. They’re not pickups though.

Still, I want to point out that it’s relatively few families these days that have more than 2 kids. If you absolutely need a car then one compact car or hatchback works great. No need for these behemoths—except for ego.

Those trucks kill more people than any other vehicle and they pollute the environment. Drivers of these vehicles are more likely to have their high beams in city traffic and they are more likely to remove their air filter so black smoke comes out of their exhaust.

Horrible people with fragile egos.

The portion of people that have these vehicles and fit the very narrow use case that it specifically satisfies is observably very small. People that don’t need a truck often can rent one. As mentioned by others, many of these trucks aren’t particularly good at what they were ostensibly built for. As my grandfather might have said, “those are just for sellin’”.

Judgement is fair, partly because these trucks only exist because of the scam legal definition of “light” trucks, partly due to the climate impact, but most immediately because of how dangerous they are to everyone else.

FYI, Fortnine is based in Canada.

Increases or decreases in the frequency of pedestrian-driver fatalities is affected by lots of things, although I suggest that poor road design and traffic laws might have a positive feedback effect when combined with limited forward visibility (e.g. a truck with poor forward visibility isn’t a huge liability in Canadian road designs might be a larger liability in typical US road designs).

Unfortunately I don’t know if we collect the right accident statistics. Perhaps the more relevant question is: are pickup trucks over-represented in pedestrian fatalities as a result of vehicle collision compared to other vehicles, and has that representation grown as truck grill heights have grown? I found a doc on Canadian pedestrian fatalities, but it classified all passenger vehicles as a single class – and unfortunately that doesn’t tell us much since most 4-wheel pickups are classified as passenger vehicles.