The cause was easy enough to identify: Data parsed by Kuhls and her colleagues showed that drivers were speeding more, on highways and on surface streets, and plowing through intersections with an alarming frequency. Conversely, seatbelt use was down, resulting in thousands of injuries to unrestrained drivers and passengers. After a decade of steady decline, intoxicated-driving arrests had rebounded to near historic highs.
… The relationship between car size and injury rates is still being studied, but early research on the American appetite for horizon-blotting machinery points in precisely the direction you’d expect: The bigger the vehicle, the less visibility it affords, and the more destruction it can wreak.
It’s partly that, but the other aspect is the absurd “light truck” exemption where SUVs and pickup trucks have less stringent emissions standards. So there is less incentive to go the downsizing route, and instead make bigger and bigger cars because if you’re a car company, you make more money per vehicle this way.