I hope someone said "You can't park there mate" to him.

Imagine that thing coming down one of the many narrow hedge lined country lanes at you.

Whoops, that was me for a while because I was too stubborn to sell it before moving to England. It mostly sat in the driveway because it was such a pain to park anywhere and wouldn't fit through the garage door. I've since shipped it back to the Southwestern US where it's average sized.

That was an interesting read. I'm from Europe and unfortunately the trend of bigger and bigger cars has made it's way here too. Not as much as in the US but still. It really encroaches on both space of pedestrians and cyclists when a dozen of them are parked in a narrow alley/street. Also makes it very hard to see children weaving through the gaps. I think consumer vehicles that are too big should simply be zoned out in inner cities where space is limited as is. Every year the cars grow bigger but the streets stay the same.

It is crazy and undermining years of progress towards reduced emissions and better road safety. I have no idea why these don't attract a massive tax.

I saw a person driving an OG (civilian) hummer when I was in Japan several months ago. The juxtapositions between it and a sea of kei cars was hilarious.

I'm seeing more and more large vehicles in Japan. I don't think it will become an issue as much as it is in the West due to less car dependency, small roads and the weak yen making fuel rather expensive right now, but just around Kyoto I keep seeing those stupid Mercedes G Wagon things and some kind of large Jeep all over the place. There is also a large Toyota Land Cruiser thing that I see from time to time, but it's less popular.

Smaller car SUVs are fairly common though, and just the other day a friend drove me to a barbeque in his SUV thing that he got to replace his perfectly fine and nice previous car. It seemed really unwieldy on many of the country roads he was driving, and he frequently had to pull over to the side of the road in order to pass cars coming the other way. When I asked about it, he said he got it because he often has to drive business customers around, so he mostly just thinks having a stupid big car looks classy and respectable.

that's a weird way of phrasing "the industry took advantage of regulatory capture to carve out a loophole for larger trucks"