[quote=EJ]IMHO … there should be a more strict driving test if you want to drive a car over a certain weight.

Just like the truckers … if you want to be safe in your “tank” demonstrate your driving skills.
– Too many tickets and you are back in your civic.
– One head-on accident in your “tank”, banned for life
– Not related to safety, but a very difficult parking test for large vehicles would be my personal favorite.

If you want to be safe: drive defensive, expect the unexpected, don’t tailgate.

I guess the other option is buy a huge car and drive however you want. That seems to be the prevailing attitude currently, at least while gas is cheap.[/quote]

Actually, when SUV’s first became popular, I was one of those folks thinking that the states should have another class of license for those vehicles (Class C+ or something like that for light truck/van/etc). The driving dynamics of those things were completely different from passenger cars. Unfortunately, the auto bureaucrats wouldn’t ever approve of something like this. Instead, now, we see auto manufacturers watering down the SUV’s to build them on unibody, more passenger-car-like body frames. I guess very few people really take their vehicles off road, especially those soccer parents.

As far as the parking test is concerned, I think it’s less of the actual parking tests, more of a literacy tests for drivers, followed up with bigtime parking tickets. “Compact parking” does not mean SUV/CUV.