It’s time to end the SUV arms race
Guest blog from James Ward at SUV Alliance
My son recently celebrated his second birthday, and like all 2-year-olds he loves nothing more than running, climbing, jumping and generally moving as fast as he can, wherever and whenever he can.
To capture his energy, I’ve started looking at balance bikes. I myself don’t drive so I walk and cycle everywhere and I really want my son to grow up knowing that you don’t need to drive to get around.
But I immediately run into a dilemma. As much as I want to see him ride his bike to school or to his friends’ houses when he’s old enough, I know that the reality is very different. He will be sharing the streets with increasing numbers of increasingly large sports utility vehicles (SUVs) - a seal pup in an ocean of orcas.
Like all the most dangerous predators, SUVs operate by stealth: quietly infiltrating our streets from less than 5% of annual car sales at the start of the Millennium to over 62% today. The consequences of this are plain from the statistics. An SUV is 8 times more likely to kill a child in a collision, compared to a traditional small car.
It’s not even a solution to say that my son can cycle on the pavements, as the pavements near our house are so covered in cars - mostly SUVs due to their “carspreading” inability to fit into roadside parking spaces - that it’s more difficult to be on the pavement than it is in the road.
Can I, as a responsible parent, encourage my son to walk and cycle as I do, knowing that doing so will put him in harm’s way? I know that I’m not alone in feeling like this. So many parents have the same battle, and some respond by choosing to put their kids in the back of their own SUV, which only makes the problem worse. But what can we do?
One answer is to reduce the presence of large SUVs on our roads, to make them safer, cleaner and more welcoming. This is exactly what the new SUV Alliance aims to do. A coalition of organisations, the SUV Alliance has published a manifesto for safer, fairer streets. We aim to reverse the trend towards ever-bigger, ever-heavier, ever-more polluting SUVs and 4x4s and to create space on our streets for alternatives.
The full manifesto is available on the SUV Alliance website. It consists of 5 policy asks:
Reform vehicle excise duty to include a progressive tax on vehicle weight (with electric vehicles and adapted vehicles given greater leniency). This ask received a boost of support in a recent Times poll, in which 70% of respondents backed the idea that heavier cars should pay more.
Introduce limits to passenger vehicle size, including bonnet height. SUVs are dangerous by design: a 10 cm increase in front-end (bonnet) height of a vehicle raises male pedestrian death probability by 19% and raises female pedestrian death probability by 31%.
Local councils can ban SUV advertising on council-owned advertising sites like bus shelters. Advertising like this normalises the presence of SUVs on our streets and disincentivises use of alternatives like cycling or using public transport.
Ensure all new vehicles sold have an “eco-score” combining engine efficiency and lifecycle emissions. It’s crucial that as we shift to electric vehicles we don’t also shift to electric SUVs, as many carmakers are already doing. Not only are electric SUVs still more dangerous, they’re also more expensive than small EVs.
Local councils can introduce higher parking charges for SUVs, based on size or weight. The city of Paris did this in January 2024, tripling parking fees for the largest cars, and since then they’ve seen SUV numbers in the city drop by two-thirds.
What can you do?
If you want to see a future of safer, fairer streets without SUVs then you can share our manifesto with your councillors and your MP. Ask that they back the call to end the SUV arms race, and to ensure that the future of transport is one that prioritises children, gives space to active travel and public transport, and encourages small electric vehicles for necessary journeys.
