>side/curtain airbags that made the A-pillar larger Even cars of the mid-2000s have this pillar sufficiently large to completely block the view of pedestrians

>side/curtain airbags that made the A-pillar larger Even cars of the mid-2000s have this pillar sufficiently large to completely block the view of pedestrians and vehicles under certain conditions. This is, I'd argue, a contributing factor in the modern preference for taller vehicles- the visibility is equally poor, but being higher up lets people believe they can see more out front and they "win" in sightline contests with other cars. >Automakers started adding a lot of weight to vehicles Note also that electric cars in particular are significantly heavier than combustion ones; as such they take more effort to stop and are even more dangerous to other cars in crashes. Oh, and since electric cars are inherently heavier, the roof has to be stronger to maintain the same rollover protection, which also means the A-pillars and blind spots will continue to get larger. >they should have just raised the federal gasoline tax If you do that you run into price-sensitive agricultural users. Other countries exempt those users with marked gas to detect tax fraud, but that requires legislative action (marked gas is illegal in the US) and new infrastructure to support it to the point where it might not have been worth it. Also, the chicken tax means unless the light truck is domestically produced it's not worth it, so only a select few automakers could really make a run at it (especially in the context of safety requirements that don't scale).