Oversize SUVs are making traffic worse, in Bloomberg.
I bought my family an SUV in early 2023, and it was the first time in my life that I owned a car that was more than fifteen feet long. While spacious inside, at 186″ in length ours is still considered relatively small by modern SUV standards.
Truthfully, those modern standards are totally out of whack with how big our personal vehicles should and need to be. All that mass results in lower fuel economy, faster tire degradation and more wear-and-tear on our already strained roads.
A friend bought a GMC Yukon XL that makes him laugh with glee at its ridiculousness. At 225.2″ in length, it is a more than three and a half feet longer than any of the cars I owned prior to 2023. It’s subtantially taller and wider, too.
Here’s an example of how much things have changed. In high school, our friend Frank’s dad had a brand-new, loaded 1991 Toyota Land Cruiser. It was huge! When he drove it to school we all wanted to check it out. We called it the Frank Tank.
That huge, show-stopping Frank Tank (188.2″ long, 72″ wide) is slightly smaller than a run-of-the-mill 2025 Hyundai Santa Fe (190.2″ and 74.8″).