Unlike Smaller Cars, 'Megacars' Drove More in 2020

"According to estimates from the Federal Highway Administration, vehicles classified as “light truck, long wheelbase” — a category which includes many of America’s most popular pick-up trucks, or any car with at least 121 inches between its axles — were driven about 1.5 billion miles more during the year that much of the country fell under quarantine orders than they were the year before, an increase of about one percent." Smaller cars, by contrast, traveled 16 percent fewer miles in 2020 than in 2019. The implications for public health are severe, writes Kea Wilson for Streetsblog.

The rising popularity of both SUVs and light trucks has long been recognized as a significant factor in the nation’s rising pedestrian death rate, which surged 21 percent between 2019 and 2020, the largest annual increase ever recorded by federal agencies; light trucks of all lengths are two to three times more likely to kill a walker in the event of a crash, because of their weight, height, and front-end design.

The article outlines a variety of possible reasons for the discrepancy, including the use of bigger vehicles by workers who can't telecommute and the correlation of large vehicles with right-leaning voters. But Wilson argues "Whatever the reason why so many megacar drivers took to the road in 2020, there’s no doubt that those motorists posed an outsized danger to vulnerable road users — and that something must be done about it."