An oversized truck on display outside USDOT on June 9, 2022. Its front end reaches the shoulders of two adults. (Photo by the author)

A pick-up truck that comes up to the shoulders of an adult woman is a life-threatening hazard on our crowded city streets.

But someone’s going to need to tell that to the US Department of Transportation (USDOT): Thursday, the agency celebrated progress toward a national EV charging network with an auto show featuring huge trucks and SUVs outside its Washington, DC, headquarters.

No matter how “green,” these vehicles make safe streets advocates see red.

Just one day prior, the DC Council’s FY 2023 Budget Support Act passed its second reading. Included in the final budget is a first-in-the-nation step to make owners of oversized vehicles pay extra for the risks they impose.

A federally unregulated free-for-all

Over the last 15 years, auto manufacturers in the United States have been churning out ever-larger SUVs and pick-ups in a federally unregulated free-for-all with a measurable pedestrian death toll (1,000+ and counting). Pick-up trucks and SUVs now make up approximately 75% of vehicles sold in the U.S.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has known since at least 2015 that large vehicles are causing increased pedestrian deaths. At that time, the administration released a report noting, as the Detroit Free Press summarizes, “SUVs and trucks were involved in a third of pedestrian injuries but 40 percent of deaths.” If you get hit by someone driving an SUV or truck, NHTSA said, you’re two to three times more likely to die than if you’re hit by someone driving a sedan. In 2018, the Detroit Free Press/USA Today tallied up a 69% increase in SUV involvement in pedestrian deaths from 2009-2016.

In 2018, NHTSA claimed to the Free Press that it was working on regulatory standards to reduce pedestrian injuries.

This year, NHTSA ‘fessed up that, instead, they’ve shirked that responsibility in terms of vehicle design (though of course they don’t describe it that way). The newest car crash performance ratings look to technology, like advanced driving assistance systems, to keep pedestrians safe.

That’s not enough. As David Zipper wrote in March, the ratings do “nothing to halt the growing risks borne by pedestrians from vehicles that have grown heavier, taller and more powerful.”

Under the new scheme, owners of this Hummer who register it in the District – displayed outside the USDOT headquarters on June 9, 2022 – will have to pay $500 per year in registration fees, an increase from $72.  Image by Ron Thompson used with permission.

DC Council steps in where the feds failed to act

Meanwhile, DC is taking a stand to ensure drivers of dangerously oversized vehicles are paying for at least part of the costs they impose on others.

As Zipper explains, Ward 3 Councilmember Mary Cheh, chair of the Committee on Transportation & the Environment, “proposed overhauling the city’s vehicle regulation framework. Annual fees for machines under 3,500 pounds would remain at $72/year, while those from 3,500 to 5,000 pounds would now cost $175. The fee for registering a car between 5,000 and 6,000 pounds would rise to $250. The biggest hit is aimed at a new category created for SUVs and trucks weighing over 6,000 pounds: Their owners would now have to shell out $500 per year.” Electric vehicles get a 1,000 pound credit.

In a win for safe streets advocates – and everyday pedestrians and cyclists – the proposal made it into DC’s final budget for FY23.

Is this fee high enough to discourage any DC residents from buying one of these vehicular monstrosities in the first place? Eh, maybe a few.

More significantly, this policy change will yield about $10 million per year for the District. That’s money that should be used to directly mitigate the harms these drivers impose on District infrastructure and District residents.

Councilmember Cheh and the DC Council are walking the walk. Now, it’s Secretary Buttigieg’s turn.

And as for the drivers of ginormous pick-up trucks and SUVs? This is a small price to pay for the potential they have to kill another person.

This article originally identified the anticipated revenue from the increased registration fees as $40 million per year. It is actually $10 million per year. The article has been updated. We regret the error.

Chelsea Allinger (she/her) is GGWash's executive director. Before coming to GGWash in 2021, she spent nearly 15 years working in different capacities on land policy, urban policy, and community development. Outside of GGWash, Chelsea is a doctoral candidate in public policy and public administration at George Washington University. She served as an elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington, DC, from 2019-2023.