Not only in the USA. Germany also has a growing number of big SUVs.

What's interesting is that it was possible 25 years ago to build a 3 litre/100km car. The Audi A2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A2

Now a modern SUV has at least double the weight and a worse wind resistance value and uses 6l/100km of fuel.

And while there are limits what physics will allow it seems it was possible to reduce fuel consumption and emissions by at least 50% 25 years ago. With modern computer simulations and technical progress over the last 25 years something like this should be at least possible? Yet it's difficult to buy a car like this today.

Somewhere something went really wrong.

There are several great examples of factors that contribute to vehicle size bloat in this article. One factor I don’t see mentioned often is the increased rates of obesity in the US. We’re nearing 40% of the population being obese [1]. Perhaps there’s several Americans who are so large they need larger vehicles in order to comfortably fit inside?

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/prevalence-maps.html

As someone who travels to the US a lot, I’ve wondered what drives this phenomenon for a long time now as it’s unlike anywhere else in the world for the vehicles you see. My assumption had been a snowballing macro edition of one-upmanship that was in the car makers favour so they leaned in with marketing, I had no idea it was legislatively beneficial to go bigger. 4 out of 5 vehicles sold being SUV or Truck is crazy though, no way does 4 out of 5 of the population need that surely.

Invert this point ("SUV or a pickup colliding with a smaller car was 28 percent and 159 percent, respectively, more likely to kill that car’s driver.") to get that one is less likely to die in a big vehicle.

It is in your interest to buy and drive the biggest car you can afford, due to the presence of other large cars on the road.

See [1] 12 black swans to avoid, YouTube video from ER physician Dr. McGuff. First thirty seconds. Force equals mass x acceleration.

[1] https://youtu.be/xoPCIUwc4zY?si=wUvR7bhkBthiTsU_

The fact that fuel prices is the US are like 2.5x lower than Europe may also have contributed to the oversizing trend.

You would think twice about gratuitously moving around a multi-ton behemoth if it actually hurt you economically.