Background
Pickup trucks (and, to a slightly lesser extent, SUVs) are a menace to society. They are no longer predominantly work vehicles; most of them are rarely used to haul or tow and are instead vanity purchases. As of 2022, SUVs and pickup trucks made up 80% of US vehicle sales, and predictably, having so many of these giant canyoneros drive around city streets has led to an increase in pedestrian fatalities.
Why did these giant murder trucks become so prominent on our roads? It comes down to a loophole in US vehicle emission standards:
To understand the change, you need to start in the 1970s, when the "SUV loophole," as policy nerds call it, was created. US lawmakers were writing the nation's first auto pollution rules, at a time when the only people driving heavy vehicles like trucks were folks who had things to haul or real reasons to drive off-road. Farmers and construction workers and such. Who else would shell out to buy and fuel such a big set of wheels? It made sense to place trucks under more lenient fuel-efficiency rules than for cars.
Cut to 2010. In the midst of creating new tailpipe emission rules for cars, the Obama administration's EPA used the same logic to carve out an additional and similar exception for large vehicles based on their "footprints"—the area between their wheels. An automaker selling cars with bigger footprints faced less stringent tailpipe emissions rules than those selling sedans or compacts.
If they were smart, our governments would introduce regulations designed to reduce vehicle size and weight, something that will become even more important as passenger vehicles electrify. Larger vehicles require larger batteries, and mining the materials for these batteries is extremely damaging to the environment. One large electric pickup truck battery could be used to power over a hundred e-bikes instead. Or in the case of the monstrous electric Hummer, several hundred e-bikes.
But our governments aren't smart, so 🤷
Song Notes:
This song is the second AC/DC song on my list and the first time I've covered a band more than once. I'm not an AC/DC fan by any means, but the band has a consistent, signature style, and a number of well-known songs. The singing is not the easiest to emulate, but the songs tend to have good energy and simpler rhyming structures that work with parodies. For this song, the key was finding a good replacement for the word "thunderstruck" – I came up with "pickup truck" pretty quickly, probably because I constantly complain about them. Despite the subject being on my mind constantly, the song still took me a while to complete. I'm still not entirely happy with the first verse, so I might tweak it in the future.
Warning: this song contains four instances of a word many people find very naughty.
Lyrics
Pickup, pickup, pickup, pickup Pickup, pickup, pickup, pickup Pickup, pickup Parking lots Riddled with idling smokestacks (pickup) Look around Your "idyllic", "quaint" cul-de-sac (pickup) All defaced It's a plot, I thought you knew? (pickup) Residues We continue, continue to spew (pickup) Sixty-five tons Driving down the road The damage is done It can't be slowed Fucking Pickup trucks Riding to doomsday Watching glaciers all melting down How many places – and people – will those things drown You make it electric Tons of metals that you'll have to mine Governed by fools They break all the rules Yeah, yeah, they, they, they should resign Let's just take away their keys We're tired of the sleaze Or it's the end of mankind Fucking Pickup trucks, pickup trucks No, no, no, pickup trucks Nooo, pickup trucks, no Let's just take away their keys We're tired of the sleaze [Instrumental Break] Pickup trucks, pickup trucks No, no, no, pickup trucks, pickup trucks No, no, no, said, no, gotta fight, and find a spine No, gotta fight, and find a spine, spine, spine Pickup trucks, no, no, no Pickup trucks, pickup trucks Pickup trucks, no maybes, baby Pickup trucks, fucking pickup trucks Pickup trucks, pickup trucks Pickup trucks, fucking pickup trucks