But families towed tent trailers back in the 80s behind their sedans and station wagons, too.

Maybe there's a bit of circular reasoning going on here where people bought giant vehicles because they liked the aesthetics and internal roominess, and then the prevalence of giant vehicles opened up the market for larger and heavier towables— rigid body RVs, seadoos, a trailer full of gas dirt bikes, whatever it is.

I also feel like in past times, it was much more common to see a two car household with two very different cars, with one being a hatchback or sedan for getting the family around down and doing grocery runs, and the other a truck or van for those occasional "hauling" requirements. Nowadays I feel like many times it's two big SUVs, just tuned to his and her brand tastes rather than two shared vehicles for different usages. I'd be interested to know if the stats on multi-car households would bear this out.

You should leave the continent and gain some context. Every summer the whole of Europe is full of campers towed by humble family sedans and wagons. Not just cheesy tent pop-ups, full-on campers with a family's worth of bikes hanging off the back. But the ads on TV said you'd be a lesser man without a truck, so I guess we can't blame you.

But that does get to the point. Maybe differentkinds of vehicles need different kinds of qualification testing. Would you trust your 16yo that just passed their driver's test in a sedan to tow a boat through town with an F250?

Was there something that happened that changed the needs of US families after 2009?

Because the trend in TFA only happened in the US, and only after 2009.

Then they can get a license for that class of vehicle and add "towing up to NNNN lbs" option.. Anything over 500 or 1000 lbs towed, for example, IMHO, should require a license.

Obviously not for a hitch-based bicycle carrier - I think most people can manage to use those reasonably safely.

I see lifted trucks and massive SUVs in neighborhoods and grocery stores. I very rarely see them using their towing capacity.

If the thing you are towing is so heavy you need a truck to tow it, maybe there should be stricter licensing requirements.

There might be a requirement for these drivers but it’s uh…nontechnical, so to speak

You're going to have a hard time hiding the entire SUV and Light Duty truck market behind an airstream, especially considering neither have transmissions capable of hauling one. Statistically almost nobody tows anything. Of those that do the vast majority tow stuff that comfortably falls within the pulling capacity of a Subaru Outback (or a VW Golf hatchback if you're really feeling rude). Nobody's trying to take anyone's dually away, just reign in the excesses of the auto industry that were mainstreamed by a combination of emissions laws carveouts and aggressive marketing. Hell if this went through we all might start seeing approximately affordable vehicles on the market again and I feel like that would be a welcome change.