You are putting together 3 or 4 different things here.
> Make our infra as difficult as possible for these modern SUVs and trucks and suddenly the office workers commuting from age Styx will decrease
While personally attractive to me, this is a losing proposition. Lots of people have (unfortunately) locked in usage of these vehicles; and will vote out any changes to car-centric infrastructure.
In my opinion, a better and more practical way to do it is:
First, clamp down on the manufacturers with regulations. Set super low speed limits for these things -- safety and road damage are obvious rationales. No truck should be able to go above 60 mph; that alone will make them much more unattractive.
Second, increase registration taxes slowly every year on these large vehicles, to reflect the increasing burden that they pose to society. That will go the rest of the way towards making sure carmakers turn their focus back to smaller, more sustainable cars.
A massive rework of our infrastructure is attractive, but not necessary.
You don’t even need to go that far (and speed limit restrictions would never fly anyway), just increase registration fees for vehicles bigger/heavier than X unless the vehicle is certified (under penalty of perjury) commercial use only. If these drivers had to pay 5 grand a year for registration, they might rethink life.
How many pedestrian fatalities are there due to collisions with trucks going more than 60 mph? I'd guess very few, because nearly all the places with speed limits above 60 mph in the US are also places with few pedestrians. Often they are places were pedestrians are prohibited.
these limitations are common in the US insofar as many places, particularly more rural areas, it's not safe for these types of vehicles to be going faster. These vehicles require a separate license to operate and have completely different concerns, such as riding their brakes on a downslope causing the brakes to get so hot they stop working and you get runaway semi's that cannot slow down and become dangerous.
That these types of vehicles have specific laws applied to them does not naturally stretch to applying them to 2-axle vehicles since these same dangers flat don't apply to them.
Semi's are required to have properly functioning mud flaps, this in no way implies a corolla should ever be required to have mud flaps installed.
> Make our infra as difficult as possible for these modern SUVs and trucks and suddenly the office workers commuting from age Styx will decrease
While personally attractive to me, this is a losing proposition. Lots of people have (unfortunately) locked in usage of these vehicles; and will vote out any changes to car-centric infrastructure.
In my opinion, a better and more practical way to do it is:
First, clamp down on the manufacturers with regulations. Set super low speed limits for these things -- safety and road damage are obvious rationales. No truck should be able to go above 60 mph; that alone will make them much more unattractive.
Second, increase registration taxes slowly every year on these large vehicles, to reflect the increasing burden that they pose to society. That will go the rest of the way towards making sure carmakers turn their focus back to smaller, more sustainable cars.
A massive rework of our infrastructure is attractive, but not necessary.