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

[editor]

If you want to get casualties down you lower cars to 20mph on urban streets.

Using smaller cars would obviously help too, not that many drivers respect the 20mph zone around me anyway.

 

[weltweit]

I like smaller cars, easier to park, usually get higher mpg, usually cheaper to tax and insure.

And now that I am ancient and prefer no points on my licence, my 1.2 Corsa will drive along at 70mph just as fast as a Porsche 911.

 

[Spymaster]

Plenty of small cars are superb

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Or a bike. Or public transport. Or a scooter. Or hire a van. Or get over this whole car ownership thing and join a car pool or use Zip cars, so zillions of cars don't have to be made every year. Just a thought.

How many of these 'big jobs' requiring a 'massive car' do you think the average family has every year, anyway?

Every day since schools closed in a March I have take two kids and a dog out to exercise in remote spots within a 15 minute drive of my house. Often taking one or two bikes with me too.

There is no viable public transport here and to imagine there could be is the realm of the mad, yet we are only 30 miles from Charring Cross.

ideally, live in a city and not own a car, or own one for very occasional, fun use.

or not live in a city and have ONE car that can meet all your needs.

hope that some day some cunt has the balls to make cycling infrastructure good enough that I would be happy for my kids to join what are currently death trap roads to cycle to Guildford...

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

Seems a suitable thread for a teuchter

He doesn’t drive, so fuck him, like inviting a Catholic priest to a gangbang.

 

[Athos]

Using smaller cars would obviously help too, not that many drivers respect the 20mph zone around me anyway.

Until public transport is much more effective, reliable, comfortable and cheaper, people will continue to use cars. And, if people are going to buy a car, they figure that a bigger one allows them to do all that a smaller one can, whereas the reverse isn't true. A decent system of progressive taxation that really makes people think twice about using a car (except for those who really don't have a choice e.g. disabilities or a rural location) with the revenues pumped into public transport, might work in the medium term. In the meantime, misinformed ranting about a particular style of car won't acheive anything.

 

[weltweit]

editor not a trick question, but do you drive? Use cars at all?

Obviously I know you are an Urban dweller, perhaps you have no need?

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Using smaller cars would obviously help too, not that many drivers respect the 20mph zone around me anyway.

Once you get the speeds down that slow almost every modern car will have similar results in impacts. That’s the entire point of the legislation that governs modern car design. You get the injuries/deaths down further from that point with infrastructure changes.

 

[Spymaster]

... misinformed ranting about a particular style of car won't acheive anything.

It's funny though.

 

[editor]

Once you get the speeds down that slow almost every modern car will have similar results in impacts. That’s the entire point of the legislation that governs modern car design. You get the injuries/deaths down further from that point with infrastructure changes.

Except there's plenty of fucking cunting drivers will who continue to ignore such speed restrictions. Like in my street just about every day, where there's been plenty of accidents recently.

Do you think that the perceived extra safety of driving a bigger, heavier car might make some drivers take more risks?

 

[SpookyFrank]

Yes. Modern cars are filled with impact beams, deformable structures, airbags and so on. They have to go somewhere.

This as I understand it is one of the major reasons why all modern cars are near-identical blobs. It's not nothing, the visual impact of so very many big ugly things cluttering up so much of our public space. It has an effect. The effect of so many people using their big ugly blobs to demonstrate their wealth and status is also not nothing.

 

[teuchter]

Seems a suitable thread for a teuchter

I already looked at it and decided it was a waste of time. People saying that we should make railways safer instead, or that they need a car to take their bicycles from one part of the countryside to another. Everyone's just on a wind-up, and none of them are even any good at it. Boring. I do take it as a mark of my success in bringing the anti-car agenda more fully to urban75 though.

 

[Athos]

... to demonstrate their wealth and status is also not nothing.

Plenty of people doing the same with bikes, though. I know a bloke who paid £3K for a pushbike!!

 

[editor]

Berlin doesn't seem so keen on SUVs

While the UK government doesn’t record passenger vehicle type in collision injuries and deaths, British academics who analysed police collision data have identified pedestrians as 70% more likely to be killed if they were hit by someone driving a 2.4-litre engine vehicle than a 1.6-litre model.

“You’re saying if you’re hit by a large engine car you’re almost twice as likely to be killed,” says Adam Reynolds, one of the researchers.

Reynolds and Robin Lovelace, who jointly performed the analysis, are still looking into the figures. “Rather than making a declaration that SUVs are dangerous what we can say is large engine cars are dangerous,” he adds. The lack of collision data is “masking a deadly problem created by the car industry marketing and producing taller, heavier vehicles”, he told Forbes.

'A deadly problem': should we ban SUVs from our cities?

Statistically less safe than regular cars and with higher CO2 emissions, campaigners argue the heavily-marketed cars have no place in urban areas

www.theguardian.com

 

[Saul Goodman]

These figures suggest that if you care about your loved ones, you should definitely be driving an SUV.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Plenty of people doing the same with bikes, though. I know a bloke who paid £3K for a pushbike!!

That’s... really nothing out the ordinary for a nice mid range road bike nowadays. The really expensive ones are over £10k now

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

This as I understand it is one of the major reasons why all modern cars are near-identical blobs. It's not nothing, the visual impact of so very many big ugly things cluttering up so much of our public space. It has an effect. The effect of so many people using their big ugly blobs to demonstrate their wealth and status is also not nothing.

Looking around your average carpark I’d say we’re actually in a period of quite decent design when it comes to cars. They’re certainly a lot more interesting to look at than the dull boxes of the late 90’s/early 00’s.

As for people using them for status? Well yes, they do. As people do with clothes, watches, shoes, phones, computers, houses and, well, everything. Welcome to capitalism.

 

[Athos]

That’s... really nothing out the ordinary for a nice mid range road bike nowadays. The really expensive ones are over £10k now

For a pushbike?! That's nuts. Whay are they so expensive? Can only be a status thing, surely.

 

[editor]

These figures suggest that if you care about your loved ones, you should definitely be driving an SUV.


View attachment 224934

Unless they happen to the kind of loved ones that use the pavement too.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

For a pushbike?! That's nuts. Whay are they so expensive? Can only be a status thing, surely.

Partly status, partly expensive carbon fibre.

 

[Athos]

These figures suggest that if you care about your loved ones, you should definitely be driving an SUV.


View attachment 224934

Wow, five times more likely to die in a mini-size car than a very large SUV! To be honest, to offer your loved ones that protection at the cost of an increased risk to pedestrians seems a price worth paying, especially if you drive sensibly such that any pedestrian you hit is likely to be at fault e.g. stepping out whilst glued to their phone.

 

[Athos]

Partly status, partly expensive carbon fibre.

Buy what proportion of pushbike riders need expensive carbon? Unless you're competing at a high level where marginal performace gains are critical, does it really make that much difference to the riding experience?

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

Buy what proportion of pushbike riders need expensive carbon? Unless you're competing at a high level where marginal performace gains are critical, does it really make that much difference to the riding experience?

Just like any hobby isn’t it, sometimes it’s nice to have the shiny toy.

 

[editor]

Buy what proportion of pushbike riders need expensive carbon? Unless you're competing at a high level where marginal performace gains are critical, does it really make that much difference to the riding experience?

Same reason amateur photographers buy top of the range Leica cameras, I guess.

 

[Athos]

Just like any hobby isn’t it, sometimes it’s nice to have the shiny toy.

I guess. (The other day I had a 20st bloke try to persuade me that it made sense for him to shave 6kg of the weight of a motorbike by spending £4K on aluminium wheels!) But you gotta suspect a lot of the lycra boys' dick waving is akin yo audiophoolery.

 

[David Clapson]

SUVs around here are a status thing, driven by people who take no responsibility for their actions. They don't give a flying fuck about emissions or climate change. If you ask them to stop idling they lose their shit competely and tell you 'it's a free country'. Er, no, fuckwit, it's a country of laws and you're breaking the law on idling.

 

[Spymaster]

Wow, five times more likely to die in a mini-size car than a very large SUV! To be honest, to offer your loved ones that protection at the cost of an increased risk to pedestrians seems a price worth paying ...

Incompetent not to really.

 

[Saul Goodman]

Wow, five times more likely to die in a mini-size car than a very large SUV! To be honest, to offer your loved ones that protection at the cost of an increased risk to pedestrians seems a price worth paying, especially if you drive sensibly such that any pedestrian you hit is likely to be at fault e.g. stepping out whilst glued to their phone.

I didn't realise the difference was so great, and it does make me think that my next car should definitely be an SUV. Not a silly monster of a thing but if a mid-sized one affords so much more protection than a car, it's no wonder people are buying them, and I think I might join the ranks.
I did wonder why so many people were driving them, and it makes perfect sense now.

 

[Little Piranha]

SUV drivers have shown to be more aggressive, which I have certainly found to be true. Where I live every other car is an SUV and it is horrible to drive around them. So maybe it's safer for those in the SUV, but more dangerous for everyone else.

Is that an ok way to live? "I'm all right and who cares about everyone else? If they don't drive the same huge car as me they're irresponsible".

 

[Spymaster]

SUV drivers have shown to be more aggressive ....

I thought that was Audi drivers.