The last thing I want is for the government to tell me what is ‘excessively large’. Everyone has different lifestyles and needs. I think it is totally fine for me to be happy with a Prius and another person to want a Ford Superduty. Sure that person driving the truck may have some externalities from their choice, but even if I have fewer externalities from my Prius, I have other externalities from choices I make in other parts of my life. It seems unfair to target one but not the other.

I know this is an unpopular take here, but I also feel the search for safety on roads is going too far. Cars give us a benefit - we can get to places fast, on our own schedule unlike public transit, with all the people or cargo we want to take. Life is much better because of it. Chasing zero fatalities just seems illogical - when life inherently comes with risk. I am comfortable having some number of deaths for these benefits, and would like to see an accounting of how much benefit people derive from these targeted vehicles and weigh that against the costs. To me, NHTSA’s claim of saving 67 lives a year though this program isn’t really worth it.

I’ll also note that The Verge is guilty of poor journalism on this topic. For example it makes a claim that vehicle design doesn’t address crash fatalities when all the safety features this article dismisses - like cameras, blind spot detection, and automatic braking - are part of that vehicle’s design in reducing fatalities. They also don’t talk about how cars are incredibly safe today, with only around 1 fatality per 100 million miles driven. We have about the same number of total road deaths as the year 2000 even though the population is 20% higher.