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I agree with a of your points that we should be reducing the negative impacts of cars to society (reducing/removing parking minimums, better zoning, etc) but I don't feel this is a red herring at all. Large vehicles are a problem for all the reasons the article indicates. Those issues should be addressed, and what your talking about is a while other problem that also needs to be addressed.
Just because it's factually true, doesn't mean it can't also be a red herring anyway. You've got to think about why it's a point that's being brought up.
In this case, there are a lot of people with a vested interest in keeping their [perceived to be] convenient car-oriented lifestyle, but who may have been feeling twinges of guilt and doubt about it lately because of all the talk about climate change and whatnot. There are also a lot of businesses with a vested interest in selling them cars and fuel and drive-thru food and pavement and other trappings of said car-oriented lifestyle. So there are huge forces motivated to push narratives aimed at absolving these drivers of their guilt.
That's what I believe the intended takeaway of an article like this is: "Oh, it's not me who's the problem; it's those other folks with the bro-dozers and mall-crawlers who are the problem. I'm behaving just fine -- virtuously, even! -- because my 'green' and 'safe' hybrid sedan shuts off instead of idling in the Starbucks drive-thru in the morning."
They want you to pay no attention to the fact that the existence of that Starbucks drive-thru, and more to the point, the existence of the stroad upon which its queue overflows each morning, are what's really causing the car crashes, and the lack of walkability, and the unsafe biking, and the climate change from everybody whose car doesn't shut off when it stops, and so on...
No. This is literally about how the likelihood of death for other drivers or pedestrians from car collisions is higher because of these larger vehicles. This is not about the tangential argument that you're trying to inject. Not everybody ingests media from Fuck cars, not just bikes, and citynerd. No, many people probably don't feel any twinges of guilt or doubt about their car oriented lifestyle, because not everyone is even aware of the alternative in the US.