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SUVs make up more than 40% of new cars sold in the UK – while fully electric vehicles account for less than 2%

platinumsage said:
Presumably you checked that before advocating such a policy?
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Which policy is that, then? I didn’t think I was advocating anything. I’m pretty sure that I was quite careful over the parameters and scope within which I was suggesting ideas.
 
maomao said:
The disabled people bit seems to be on the basis that some people who don't have blue badges 'need' an SUV for some reason (though somehow they managed before SUVs became a thing). This would seem to be a problem with the blue badge system rather than any restrictions on vehicles.
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Certainly some buyers are new to the large car market, but you also have to take into account that almost the entirety of what was once a very large MPV segment is now entirely SUVs that are pretty much the same size as the MPVs they replaced.
 
kabbes said:
Which policy is that, then? I didn’t think I was advocating anything. I’m pretty sure that I was quite careful over the parameters and scope within which I was suggesting ideas.
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This one, certainly a policy you were advocating:

kabbes said:
If I were going to impose some kind of law based on the concept of “SUV”, I’d want to start with the specific problem I’m trying to solve for. In cities, I think that’s the height and length of the bonnet. So that’s where my legislation would start — something to do with the angle of visibility from driver to ground.
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kabbes said:
It’s certainly the claimed problem — not being able to see children, wheelchair users, pets, the elderly etc. I can believe that it is a problem too, when I see some of the designs out there. It seems like a sensible place to start in specifying restrictions in design.
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But it seems you haven’t actually checked anything to do with visibility from different vehicles and how that might affect safety.
 
kebabking said:
I think kabbes is right on this one - if I'm crawling through Worcester at walking pace I need to be able to see the 4yo who walks out 3inches from my bumper, while whats happening 300m down the road is as much relevance to me as what's happening on the far side of the moon.

If I'm on the motorway doing 70, what's happening a foot in front of me is an irrelevance - at 70 I can't either stop or avoid it, but what's happening 300-500m up the road is critical, and the better view I have of it the better.
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If a child has run out in front of a moving car, within a metre of the bonnet, a few cm extra visibility to the driver isn’t going to help because it’s already too late to stop or even start to press the brake. The only things that would have helped the driver in that situation are improved visibility to either side and autonomous emergency braking utilising cameras and radar on the front of the vehicle.
 
Chz said:
Certainly some buyers are new to the large car market, but you also have to take into account that almost the entirety of what was once a very large MPV segment is now entirely SUVs that are pretty much the same size as the MPVs they replaced.
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This mildly fustrates me. I quite liked mid sized MPVs for cargo space. The SUVs that have replaced them often have far less. Ive now got a longer estate car as a replacement.
 
UnderOpenSky said:
This mildly fustrates me. I quite liked mid sized MPVs for cargo space. The SUVs that have replaced them often have far less. Ive now got a longer estate car as a replacement.
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The car-like SUVs are basically the result of people wanting more space than a regular car, but unwilling to be seen dead in an MPV. :D Though I can't talk, my car used to be described as a micro-MPV.
 
platinumsage said:
This one, certainly a policy you were advocating:






But it seems you haven’t actually checked anything to do with visibility from different vehicles and how that might affect safety.
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I’m sorry, you don’t appear to have actually quoted a policy at all, let alone one I was advocating?
 
kabbes said:
I’m sorry, you don’t appear to have actually quoted a policy at all, let alone one I was advocating?
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Do I not? I do accept your apology, but you might nevertheless want to crack open a dictionary with a view to help you avoid any future such misunderstandings.
 
platinumsage said:
Do I not? I do accept your apology, but you might nevertheless want to crack open a dictionary with a view to help you avoid any future such misunderstandings.
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Do you know what a policy comprises? Hint; it isn’t something that starts, “if I were…”, nor does it say “that’s where I would start, something to do with…”

What you have quoted there is a positioning statement, and a request for further investigation as prepatory work in advance of formulating a policy.
 
kabbes said:
Do you know what a policy comprises? Hint; it isn’t something that starts, “if I were…”, nor does it say “that’s where I would start, something to do with…”

What you have quoted there is a positioning statement, and a request for further investigation as prepatory work in advance of formulating a policy.
Click to expand...

If you make a policy positioning statement (or whatever you want to call what you said) that advocates a policy based on legislating for visibility over bonnets, perhaps by including the words "that’s where my legislation would start — something to do with the angle of visibility from driver to ground" then like it or not you are advocating a policy based on visibility over bonnets.

But it seems like you didn't check any details of visibility over bonnets before producing your policy positioning statement which advocated that sort of policy.

I think what you actually did is surmised something and then jumped to talk of legislation without really thinking about it much.
 
There’s nothing wrong with a positioning statement that says it is angle of visibility that matters, and hence bonnet height and length are the items that could be limited. It doesn’t matter if every single car currently in existence meets the proposed threshold — you can quite happily have a policy that restricts future changes while not affecting current cars. So I fail to see the relevance of wittering on about one specific Volvo.
 
kabbes said:
There’s nothing wrong with a positioning statement that says it is angle of visibility that matters, and hence bonnet height and length are the items that could be limited. It doesn’t matter if every single car currently in existence meets the proposed threshold — you can quite happily have a policy that restricts future changes while not affecting current cars. So I fail to see the relevance of wittering on about one specific Volvo.
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You denied you were advocating a policy based on bonnet visibility, which is what I found weird.

I wasn’t “wittering on about one specific Volvo”, I was using it as an example to show that a policy based on bonnet visibility wouldn’t necessarily satisfy your notion to “impose some kind of law based on the concept of ‘SUV’”. A bonnet visibility law might actually promote SUV use.
 
platinumsage said:
You denied you were advocating a policy based on bonnet visibility, which is what I found weird.

I wasn’t “wittering on about one specific Volvo”, I was using it as an example to show that a policy based on bonnet visibility wouldn’t necessarily satisfy your notion to “impose some kind of law based on the concept of ‘SUV’”. A bonnet visibility law might actually promote SUV use,
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I’m glad that we’re now agreed that it is possible to create a policy based on objectively measurable factors that matter to the people who colloquially summarise those factors as “SUV”, and that the policy can be tailored towards mitigating the risk that matters. It would seem that we’re now into the grunt work of turning that positioning statement into an actual policy (containing the actual detail). I’m happy to leave that part to the numbers guys, now that the operating principle has been agreed.
 
kabbes said:
I’m glad that we’re now agreed that it is possible to create a policy based on objectively measurable factors that matter to the people who colloquially summarise those factors as “SUV”, and that the policy can be tailored towards mitigating the risk that matters. It would seem that we’re now into the grunt work of turning that positioning statement into an actual policy (containing the actual detail). I’m happy to leave that part to the numbers guys, now that the operating principle has been agreed.
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I’m glad too kabbes, I just hope those people who colloquially summarise the factors as “SUV” won’t be disappointed when your numbers guys return a policy that doesn’t target quite the same group of vehicles that they’re getting annoyed about.
 
Time to ban these polluting pieces of shit off the city roads.

The increasing popularity of ultra-heavy SUVs in England means a conventional-engined car bought in 2013 will, on average, have lower carbon emissions than one bought new today, new research has found.

The study by the climate campaign group Possible said there was a strong correlation between income and owning a large SUV, which meant there was a sound argument for “polluter pays” taxes for vehicle emissions based on size.

Data on vehicle ownership in England showed that households in the top 20% income bracket are 81% more likely to own a highly emitting car than vehicle owners in the other 80%.

The top 20% income group drive three times as many miles a year as those in the bottom income quintile.

The study found the carbon impact of the richest people’s driving habits to have damaged the climate more than “those of the poorest”.
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SUVs are even more prevalent in some other countries, accounting for about half of all sales in the US. This year, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said that, globally, SUVs produced emissions equivalent to the combined national totals of the UK and Germany.

In the US, there has been a separate focus on the safety impact on pedestrians and cyclists from SUVs, particularly ultra-large “trucks”.

After decades of decline, US pedestrian deaths have begun rising again, and are now at 7,500 a year, the highest level since 1981.
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www.theguardian.com

SUVs emit more climate damaging gas than older cars do, study finds

Exclusive: UK climate campaign group Possible calls for ‘polluter pays’ tax based on vehicle size
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

*thread moved to the more appropriate climate change forum
 
Sadly platinumsage frequents that one as well to get in his regular whinge about protesters ruining his successful climate change policy of doing nothing, so no doubt he'll be along shortly to inform us that the study was conducted by someone who forgets to put the loo seat down and is thus totally irrelevant.
 
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