Given our understanding of just how randomly incorrect clankers tend to be on occasion, I’m losing faith that self-driving will ever be the solution to this issue.

Though this is certainly an example of hegemonic and toxic masculinity, I think it is important to recognize that “it is only insecure men,” is not an accurate description of the current landscape (even if just because pretty much all men are insecure in their masculinity and are disproportionately responsible for vehicle deaths at all). The popularity of these vehicles emerged out of the US’s “War on Terror,” and its increasingly fascistic, masculinist culture, as well as regulatory policies dating back to the Reagan era. They’re purposefully designed to be violent because the power of violence is valued within US culture, and that design is enabled by a system that has become incapable of restricting capitalistic trends in favour of public safety. Since they are fucking dangerous to everyone else and light trucks in general (not just pickups) have dominated the car market in the US, there is a huge number of people who straight up have to buy a variation of these to protect themselves or because that is what is made available to them for utility (or at the very least, it being the easiest option means that people buy them even if just from apathy and ignorance).

Like, yes, men are much much much more likely to be the insecure pieces of shit who want these things and are willing to die or kill to feel masculine enough to own them, but this is a consequence of the patriarchal and capitalist system we live under and functions to their benefit.