Missing Bench Seats

My old truck had bench seats, which allowed three people to sit up front – and two people to sit close, which can be nice. My current truck has bucket seats and so only two people can sit up front and not close together.

Interestingly, both are the same trucks – Nissan Frontiers – with the major difference being my old truck was a 1998 model and my current one is a 2002 model. A lot had changed in between ’98 and ’02, even though the two trucks were still largely the same.

Well, one thing had changed.

By 2002, bucket seats had become standard in my Frontier and they are now standard in pretty much everything. Why? Bench seats are much more functional as well as more comfortable. They not only allow a given people to transport more people, they allow people to stretch out. You can sleep on a bench seat just the same as you can on a couch. That is to say, not sitting up. Bench seats are nice to have for reasons like that. And most trucks used to come standard with them. So did most luxury cars. Because luxury cars did not used to pretend to be “sporty.” That being at odds with luxuriousness, which once-upon-a-time meant soft and plush.

So, what happened? Besides the bizarre-when-you-think-about-it transitioning of luxury into sportiness?

Well, the government happened. Again.

Bench seats, you see, are  . . . “unsafe.” More finely, they make it harder for car companies to comply with “safety” regs. In order for airbags to work ideally, the person sitting in front of one must be sitting tightly. Bench seats allow for too much movement – and positioning. Especially as regards the occupant in between the driver and passenger, who is not positioned directly facing one of those built-into-the-dasboard Claymore mines that are blandly styled “air bags.” As if they were pillows – and that styling is deliberate, to soft-peddle the truth about the violence of air bags, which can and have killed as well injured thousands.

But they save lives! Well, that’s fine – unless of course your life is one of the ones snuffed by an “air bag.” We’re not allowed to decide for ourselves whether the risk outweighs the reward (or the reverse). It is decided for us – and imposed on us – by the government. This entity that was once regarded by most people as a perhaps necessary evil that kept people from harming one another that has assumed the parental prerogative of keeping us from harming ourselves.

Even if we’re harmed as a result of such safe-keeping.

So, no more bench seats – which has also harmed us in that our vehicles are less useful and less comfortable. I would need to buy (or rent or borrow) another vehicle to pick up two people because my ’02 Frontier can only realistically carry two people, me and one passenger. My ’02 extended cab truck does have a pair of vestigial, child-sized sideways-mounted rear jumpseats, but these are not realistically usable by adults. My ’98 regular cab did not have the jump seats but did have the bench seat, so I could transport two people in addition to myself.

By 2002, the Frontier was no longer available with a regular cab – or a bench seat. If you wanted to be able to realistically carry more than just one adult passenger, you had to buy the more expensive four-door version with a pair of forward-facing rear seats. It was an upsell, in other words.

The practical truck now cost more rather than less.

Just as it is now necessary to buy a larger car – or crossover, given that there are very few cars left on the market – if you have a family of more than four. In the past, five or even six people could fit in a small car with a bench up front and in the rear. Now you need to buy a three-row crossover to get the same seating capacity as you used to have in most compact-sized four-door sedans.

The subtler harm done, though, is the elimination of alternatives and so the diminishing of choice. And this goes much deeper than just bench seats, which haven’t been formally outlawed but effectively out-regulated.

See that bit about compliance.

Which is also why you’re denied the opportunity to buy a new truck that cost about $13,000 – like the just-launched 2024 Toyota HiLux Champ the government doesn’t allow Toyota to sell here. Not because it isn’t “safe” but because it is not compliant with the latest “safety” regs, a distinction that’s important to make because it reveals the underlying lie regarding the government’s claims about “safety.”

It is also why you’re denied the opportunity to buy a sub-$10k electric vehicle, which could dramatically reduce the costs of vehicle ownership, especially for young people looking to get their first new vehicle – as well as (if you accept the truth of the argument) “save the planet,” since more people could afford one of these as opposed to the $40,000 EVs they’re told are the only alternative.

Would bench seats make a comeback if vehicle manufacturers were not forced to make compliant vehicles?

Wouldn’t it be nice to find out?

. . .

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