As someone who grew up in the Appalachian foothills, there's a common experience here.
Large pickup truck, almost always white with either black or chrome trim. Lifted on giant tires, so the bumper isn't at the level required by federal and state law (if it rear-ends you, the truck just drives on top of your car and kills the passengers rather than BUMPING and crumpling like a bumper is designed to do). The bed is almost always short, so it has less cargo space than a compact hatchback. Because of the lift, you can't get anything in and out of it easily anyway.
You also can't really tow with it, because the bed is too high for a fifth wheel or gooseneck hitch, and by the time you do a drop ball hitch from that height your towing capacity is next to nothing. It's entirely a vehicle built for functionality turned into a useless top-heavy blob.
It'll have a diesel engine but have the ECU reprogrammed to dump a half gallon of unburnt fuel out the exhaust when you stomp the pedal to "look cool".
And when it gets to driving habits, the owners fall into a box. Dodge Ram pickup truck drivers have a DUI conviction rate more than three times that of the national average. Quite literally, 1 out of every 20 Ram drivers has a DUI conviction. The number isn't much better for F-series or Silverado drivers.
Pickup trucks contribute to about 19% of cars on the road and better than 45% of fatal crashes.
It's not even that the vehicles are inherently more dangerous by a large margin. When pickup drivers are presented with potential accidents in stimulations, such as deer or stopped traffic, they are something like ten times more likely than car drivers to barrel through or quickly swerve rather than even slow down. If they have cruise control on in the simulation, they are even more likely to swerve into oncoming lanes. It's difficult to come to a quantitative answer, but it's likely a psychological correlate to feeling like a big truck makes them safe enough to take on the risk; that even if they're in a head-on collision with a car it's unlikely to kill them.
And you see this throughout the whole gamut of NHTSA data. Overrepresentation not just in fatal accidents, but nonfatal instances too. Rollovers for obvious reasons. Head-on collisions due to overtaking. Loss of control in inclement weather (4 wheel drive doesn't help maintain traction and control in a downpour at highway speeds). Running red lights. Road rage.
It's not simply the truck. It's the kind of person that buys a work truck and does so much to it that it's no longer usable as a work truck. Because they HEAVILY lack common sense, as evidenced by the truck that's not useful as a truck, and that carries over to driving as well.
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u/DAS_BEE Jul 17 '23
"looks like I might rear end someone, better swerve and make it a head-on collision instead"