[shiroiushi]

>How about reversing those trends?

How? Americans clearly want huge SUVs, and want to drive them very, very fast, and act like any effort to restrict these from them are attacks on their "freedoms". They even think it's an attack on their freedom if they have to pay for parking or for driving on a road.

[MBCook]

A lot of people only seem to want huge SUVs because of the safety issues caused by other huge SUVs.

People definitely don’t like the high costs. And I’m not sure how much they love the really big ones, only the smaller.

They’d live the better fuel economy of smaller vehicles. They hated SUVs at first and had to be convinced by years and years of ads and product placement.

Yes some tiny part of the populace will freak out about their rights to 20ft tall SUVs. Let them have them, just put an insane tax on them to cover the horrific externalities.

No one likes new cars pushing $40k. Sitting in an SUV and seeing the hood of the truck next to you is over your head.

Some people didn’t want seatbelts. Or airbags. Or helmets on motorcycles. It’s ok to move forward anyway.

[supertrope]

When the implied value of dismounted people is high enough, better design will happen.

Car drivers are forced to drive 20 MPH near schools during school opening and closing times. In tourist districts pedestrian safety and accessibility is favored over being able to drive an SUV 40 MPH down a street. In neighborhoods filled with relatively politically empowered people, roads are never straight to discourage speed, speed bumps are added, stop signs are added, and there can even be focused police traffic enforcement.

If an area has an 8 lane wide stroad with a 45 MPH speed limit then it's implied that the lives of drivers speeding through are valued over those who live in the neighborhood.

[shiroiushi]

So everything really depends on the locality and the local politics. So a few unusual places get designed for better safety, and the vast majority get the opposite. Most efforts at slowing motor vehicles down, or making them more inconvenient, are met with angry voters.

[Moomoomoo309]

Better road design. Speed humps, trees on the sides of the road, narrower roads, all of which will make drivers slow down simply because of the design of the road itself. No one's speeding on narrow roads, they'd be too likely to hit something.

[shiroiushi]

How do you get people to adopt better road design? American drivers don't want this, and they'll vote against anyone who tries to push it (in most localities, not all).