this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2025
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It’s a surprise to hear how many truck/SUV owners are women. The theory delivered has been that women generally feel unsafe in the open due to misogynistic behavior as well as rare cases of road rage, and so a big tough car acts as a “safety blanket” - so even in traffic when surrounded, they can feel control and ownership of their space.
That’s a stretched theory but it could make sense.
You clearly don't know many fairly well-off (or aspirationally well-off) women / mothers, if this is surprising to you.
Its not a theory. Its... many of them will just tell you that, verbatim, if you ask them.
"I just don't feel safe in a smaller car."
Its a primary component of the marketing angle the US entire auto industry has been using to market to 'the affluent careerist modern woman' / 'responsible and practical mom' for ... two decades now?
Big car = You are safe.
(and stylish or powerful or practical or eco-conscious or rugged or w/e other adjective)
For moms, an SUV is a minivan from the 90s, but with more style and performance.
For yuppie women, an SUV is a luxury sedan or coupe, but tank-sized, more authority commanding, more intimidating.
(Modern US SUVs are routinely as large or larger than actual M4 Sherman tanks from WW2, sans cannon barrel, if you go by volume, 'bounding box')
... I'm surprised that you're surprised by this.
With women truck drivers, I can understand that somewhat more, as you apparently just don't know too many white trash women, who are disproportionately Republican.
Makes sense here on lemmy.
For the entire MAGA type of people, well, trucks are real cars, everything else is "gay" or at least not as strong, or capable.
... even though that hardly ever actually is the case in any kind of practical or realistic terms.
Its all marketing, all appealing to the consumer, in ways said consumer both does and does not realize they are being appealed to.
It's all about how buying, "owning", and operating some kind of vehicle makes you feel, and what your exact choice, what message you think that sends to other people.
Here, I found this after writing my first section, and its almost verbatim what I said:
https://agirlsguidetocars.com/women-driving-suv-sales
Yeah that's from 2016.
This has just been how SUV marketing in particular has worked basically since I got out of high school. almost 20 years ago now.
kinda wild how weaponized psychology is, and everyone kind of thinks they're immune to it themselves till one day it smacks em in the face
What do you think psych majors do when they want to make a lot of money?
They go into marketing.
Marketing is literally just the corporate wing of "you are not immune to propoganda."
Modern, psychology based propoganda techniques were originally pioneered for marketing purposes, then later adapted to politics.
Look up Freud's nephew, Eddie Bernays (sp?), and how he basically co-opted the Suffragette movement in the US to establish cigarettes as 'Torches of Freedom', thus making it hip, rebellious, and progressive for women to smoke, where previously this was largely seen as unwomanly behavior.
Net result?
Tobacco companies now have a whole new market demo to play with, sell to.
... Corporations have had over 100 years of practice at this, and now, they have an actually unimaginable amount of data, from our social media-ized digital age to become exceedingly efficient at pushing what they want.
You think its an accident that various content 'pipelines' exist on video platforms?
That corpo social media in general promotes anger and division in the general populace?
That shortform video social media actually does rot your brain, cause an actual biological addiction, destroy your attention span and ability to focus?
No. They know it does all these things, in astounding detail, with incredible levels of statistical certainty. Tiktok and Facebook definitely have been sued for knowing that they are doing this, ... their whole marketing business model based on statistical profiling models requires them to know this, theres no way they could have the data and algos they do and not know this.
They're engineering consumers' brains into what they want, what they can make money selling to.
We basically already live in the Matrix: It's called omnipresent advertising.
oh trust me, i know it. adhd/autism combo...ads crafted over centuries to grab your attention are pretty much impossible for me to ignore and i hate it
Well then, I guess you would agree with me that We Are Not Their Kind Of People.
People are sold on the idea that bigger vehicles are safer. Complete lie:
They take longer distances to stop
They do not have to meet safety standards of cars due to a regualtory loophole.
They flip much easier because of the high centre of mass, and this is worse with stuff in the truck. It gets much worse with the lifting trend. So lifters then space out the wheels, which is not what the suspension was designed for and suspension arms and hubs crack.
Some have 16 ft front blind spots, people are running over their own children in driveways.
They are worse in snow and ice, because chunky man tires are not winter rated and heavier vehicles slide off roads easier.
the middle aged white woman with bleached blonde hair and designer clothes in a big white SUV is such an interesting trend
This honestly sounds likely. My step-mother, in the 80s, said something like this when she got an SUV (before the term had even kicked in). She felt safer and more confident being higher than the rest of the traffic. I "get it", but it's a race to the bottom (or top?). Maybe if they get tall enough, some of us can get ultra efficient and low profile wedge shaped cars and just dodge underneath these gigantic abominations.
We need to see more cars with a wedge shape, extremely tough body, and explosive flipping mechanism.
Taller vehicles, driven standing up like a speedboat. Hurrr
That's fine for Mad Max style extended chases where you want to board other vehicles, but in a head-on collision a wedge is going to win every time. Taller vehicles are just easier to flip.
A colleague of mine who was a little woman, decades ago and even before the SUV craze, drove a car like that (which was stupidly large for her size) because it made her feel safe.
Years later I found out such cars were more likely to roll-over than other cars.
I don't think it's a gender thing at all, people just like the higher seating position and the upper hand in the case of a collision. I'm personally a small hatch guy, but every time I've asked somebody why they want a bigger car despite not carrying anything those are the two reasons I got back, gender regardless.