The Stakes in the SUV “Arms Race” Go Way Beyond Safety
(Source: Pexels/Obi Onyeador.)
Did you follow “Do not put your family in a small car”-gate a few weeks back? In this viral tweet, a husband shared photos of his wife’s badly damaged SUV: while driving with their child, she’d been hit head-on by a delivery truck whose driver had had a seizure. He described the terror of being alerted to an accident and pulling up to the scene, not knowing what he would find. Incredibly, there were no serious injuries, but police told them if they’d been in a smaller vehicle, the collision would have been fatal. The tweet ends:
I am so thankful they are okay (and the other driver is too) and that we chose to buy a large vehicle. Please do not put your loved ones into a small car. In an accident the size and weight make all the difference. Instead of the worst day of our lives, we’re celebrating my son’s 2nd birthday today with chocolate cake.
Social media being social media, you can guess what happened next. People immediately jumped on the original poster for the hypocritical idea that keeping his family safe requires the endangerment of others. Soon, there were tongue-in-cheek calls to just go straight to a tank or a Starship Enterprise for maximum size and weight. Others suggested a city bus was even safer (bigger, heavier, and has a professional driver!).
It was fun to read these for a minute or two, and, truth be told, a few years ago I might have joined in the pile-on. But this time around, while I did share that reaction—we can’t build a safe and healthy city around everyone owning mammoth vehicles—I was surprised to find that my second reaction was that I also that I couldn’t really blame him for feeling that way.
After all, I know plenty of people who have felt forced into moving up in the car size department because they felt too vulnerable on the road in their smaller vehicle. I feel it, too, when I get into a sedan (my personal preference, for no reason other than it’s what I learned to drive on) and realize that the majority of other drivers are sitting much higher up and have a completely different vantage point.
There’s been talk of the vehicle size “arms race” for at least 20 years, and the data is very clear on the impact that ever-bigger vehicles have on safety: they might be safer for the people inside the vehicle, but they are much more dangerous for everyone outside them, including those in smaller vehicles and folks walking and biking.
All the way back in 2004, research found that “[t]he safety gain that families obtain for themselves from driving large vehicles comes at a very high cost: for each fatal crash that occupants of large vehicles avoid, at least 4.3 additional fatal crashes involving others occur.” (Uytae Lee has a good video explainer on why SUVs are particularly dangerous—it’s worth a watch if you’d like to understand this better.)
But it’s not just this sobering fact that should have us reconsidering the place of large vehicles in urban settings.
The bigger and the heavier the vehicle, the more wear and tear it creates on roadways, creating the need for more costly maintenance. There’s also the fact that heavier vehicles create more particulate pollution from tires, brakes, and road surfaces. (The uptake of EVs adds a few interesting twists, too: their batteries make them significantly heavier than gas-powered vehicles, which will have an additional impact on road wear and tear. And what happens to road maintenance funded by tax on fuel products when we’re collecting a lot less fuel tax?)
Bigger vehicles make congestion worse because they take up more lane length. Vehicle bloat has consequences for parking, too. VICE writer Aaron Gordon writes:
Increasingly, cars are too big for parking spaces, especially in parking garages and other paid parking lots where developers pay close attention to space size. Like the proverbial frog in a slowly heating pot of water, our cars have gotten ever-so-gradually bigger with each passing year, but the parking space standards have barely budged. Now, in the third decade of the growing car size trend, people are starting to notice.
The parking space size discussion is cropping up around the world. And it’s not just size: there’s also concern that parking structures weren’t built to support the weight of today’s heavy vehicles.
Knowing what we know about parking—that it’s the least productive use of land, with grave financial and climate implications—the prospect of devoting even more finite land to parking should be a concern to us all.
To recap, bigger vehicles are bad for safety for everyone outside of them, bad for road wear, bad for climate, and bad for congestion and for parking. But here’s the tricky part: “bigger” is a relative term, one that at present is always inching higher. Where does it end? Who’s the arbiter of how big is too big? If there’s a line to be drawn, how do we determine where to draw it?
Sometimes when trying to address a problem, it’s helpful to look at the root causes. How did we get here? In this instance, the regulatory SUV loophole has incentivized automakers to produce more SUVs and trucks and fewer small vehicles for decades. In the same way, regulatory changes will also play an important role in reversing this destructive trend. Registration and parking fees tied to size and weight are beginning to be implemented in some places. Mandatory vehicle safety features are another option. But changing vehicle design, laws, and federal policies is out of the hands of everyday people and even municipalities. So, what are we to do?
Despite the tall order, the situation isn’t hopeless. Whatever your particular concern with bigger vehicles and their consequences for our cities—whether that’s safety, the environment, livability, finance—the solution is the same: a system that creates viable alternatives to motor vehicle transportation by prioritizing walking and biking.
Sure, making changes that will improve walkability in our cities won’t happen overnight, but neither will the purchasing habits, preferences, and existing inventory of cars currently on the road in North America.
Our towns and cities have a lot of control over the built environment within the transportation system. We may not be able to change vehicle design specs or emissions standards, but we can certainly change our street design.
We can use this control for good, making continuous incremental changes that make our streets safer and more productive with each passing week, month, and year. Or, we can use the control to uphold the status quo, leaving people with every reason to put the safety of their loved ones above everyone else’s. The choice is ours to make.
Emma Durand-Wood likes walkable cities, front porches, street trees, bumping into neighbors, riding her bike, downtowns, and any excuse to check out a new coffee shop, bakery, or shop. A Winnipegger by choice, she lives in Elmwood with her husband and three children. You can connect with her on Twitter @emmaewood.