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Vans and minivans do everything trucks and SUVs do, and they do it better. Every time. No exception. SUVs and crossovers are just worse minivans for people who think they're too cool to drive a minivan.
And those outside of North America largely need not apply. I wish we could just have a robust public transit system here, but apparently, public transit is antithetical to muh freedum or something. Or so they tell me.
And that's not even getting into the point the post makes, which is that these monstrosities are getting bigger and more dangerous to pedestrians, yet our governments do nothing to stop it.
Why do they need to do it "better", and how are we defining "better"?
Those vehicles are all much better at not running over pedestrians. They get better fuel mileage when not towing things, which is the vast majority of the time. They fit into parking spots better. We could go on and on arguing the pros and cons of these classes of vehicles and how good or bad they are at different things. And then we can dive further into specific models and how electric trucks might get better mileage or how kei trucks are much closer to vans than modern American trucks. Or even how small pickup trucks used to exist in America and we're mostly fine. Or we could look at things like how all the biggest logistics companies in the world have put billions of dollars into developing their own vehicles and none of them have landed on pickup trucks.
Honestly I don't really care how good a vehicle is at towing or hauling stuff. If it cannot do so without losing a ridiculous risk to pedestrians and property it shouldn't exist. There are tons of products that have been banned despite being very effective at what they were designed to do because they also happened to be good at killing people.
I think you need to go back to middle school science to understand the importance of sample size. With a sample size of 1, it is not possible to isolate variables and determine a correlation, let alone causality. Was the driver under the influence of any substances? Was this on a section of road or intersection that was poorly designed or maintained? Were any parts of the bus or bike poorly designed or malfunctioning? And while I hate to blame victims, if the goal is to understand what happened and prevent future incidents, we need to understand the victim's behavior and how that may have contributed as well. What a case study, particularly an individual death or injury CAN tell us is that we need to further study the situation to learn how it happened and how to prevent or mitigate it in the future.
And of course, I mentioned several other personal vehicles as options. Over 40k people die each year in the US alone from all motor vehicle collisions- we should also be looking at legislation to sedans, vans, busses, motorcycles, roads, and everything else safer. However, compared to busses personal vehicles are WAY more dangerous. To the point where it's kind of silly to even display this data in a bar chart.
Here is a study looking at a larger sample size. Trucks and SUV's are more likely to strike pedestrians and more likely to be fatal.
Or are you suggesting we should do nothing? Just accept the fact that manufacturers are allowed to design and market death traps, and individuals are allowed to rampage through the streets as they please? Maybe we should remove seatbelt requirements too while we are at it?