So if the theory is that passenger vehicles are getting heavier cause of a Red Queen Race regarding collision safety why on this particular timescale? Like, to give it a shot, collision safety wasn’t a selling point until after Nader (my mom had an ‘80s Volvo! I remember crash test dummies being iconic!) but fuel efficiency pressure from post-embargo gas prices and regulations kept that from translating into weight and instead channeled to technology – crumple zones, airbags, collision avoidance systems – but the drag factors have decreased and technology’s hit diminishing returns?

Plausible, but there’s a lot of wavy stuff in there it doesn’t cover. Why did typal high-capacity family vehicles go from station wagons to minivans to SUVs in my lifetime? Why are modern pickups so big I keep thinking I’ve lost Darwin behind them at the supermarket? Was it just that from early long-nosed coupes until tailfin land yachts, before post-oil crisis compacts, cars didn’t have any practical room to get bigger? What was up with Hummers, anyway?